Eden Brent

Eden Brent's piano playing and singing style ranges from a melancholic whisper to a full-blown juke joint holler. She's simultaneously confident and confiding, ably blending an earthy meld of jazz, blues, soul, and pop as she huskily invites listeners into her lazy, lush world.

That world lies just north of Greenville, Mississippi on the two-lane Highway 1, which follows the twists and turns of the river through fecund swampland, time-forgotten plantations, and blink-and you'll-miss-'em communities like Rosedale, Benoit, Wayside, and Grace before it dead ends into Highway 61 at Onward.

It was there that Brent was able to develop her gutsy vocal-and piano chops via family sing-a-longs and a 16-year apprenticeship with the late blues pioneer Boogaloo Ames, who ultimately dubbed his protégé "Little Boogaloo."

"Music school taught me to think, but Boogaloo taught me to boogie-woogie," says Brent, who appeared alongside her mentor in the 1999 PBS documentary Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound and in the 2002 South African production Forty Days in the Delta.

 

 

Genre: Jazz/Blues

 

8PM - $12 in advance // $15 day-of // $20 reserved table seating - Eden's site

93XRT welcomes Jay Farrar

As a founding member of Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, songwriter Jay Farrar helped popularize the alt-country movement of the 1990s. He also launched a solo career during the following decade, making it plain that his musical ambitions stretched far beyond the retro-leaning twang of his contemporaries.

Beginning in 2000, Farrar started giving acoustic performances. He released Sebastopol, his debut solo project, in the fall of 2001. Farrar had help from Steven Drozd, keyboardist of the Flaming Lips, Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster, and Tom Ray, bassist for the Bottle Rockets. Son Volt went on indefinite hiatus. When pressed in interviews, Farrar has said that Son Volt is in some combination of being on hiatus and having broken up. He has declined to give a straight answer as to whether the group will play together again.

"I always knew that I would try something solo," Farrar told Denver Westword in a January of 2001 interview. "After three Son Volt records, it just felt like the right time to do it. When the band was done touring, when it was over, it seemed like the time for me to try something on my own. I pretty much wanted to try some different textures and use some of the odd instruments I'd collected over the years that didn't really fit into what Son Volt was doing. … To a certain extent, in Son Volt, I was writing knowing that those three guys would be playing the songs," Farrar said. "Here I was able to sort of write outside of that, write what I wanted to and then fit the musicians to the music."

 

 

Genre: Singer Songwriter

 

On-sale Saturday, August 28th at 11AM

 

8PM - $20 in advance // $25 day-of // $34 reserved table seating - Jay's site

Corky Siegel's Chamber Blues

 

Featuring Siegel-Schwall Band Bassist/Vocalist Rollo Radford

 

 

Is it blues, is it classical?

Walking the line between Beethoven and B.B. King and armed with the creative genius and instrumental prowess that have defined his career for nearly four decades, Corky has pioneered an original, genre-busting Chamber blues - a fresh, innovative sound capturing the sparkling qualities of classical music merged with the emotional melodic style of blues, all within an intimate chamber setting.

Under Corky's lead, The West End String Quartet and percussionist Frank Donaldson complete the Chamber Blues Band. Described by critics internationally as: remarkable, astonishing, extraordinary, hot, mesmerizing, joyous and outrageous fun, their music and concerts have delighted diverse audiences globally and their genre-defying presentations are drawing new and old concert-goers to places they have never been before.

Audiences don't merely like it, they love it. - The Banff Centre - Canada

 

Genre: Blues/Chamber

 

7PM - $25 in advance // $30 day-of // $38 reserved table seating - Corky's site

Dempster St Pro Musica Presents...

Beethoven's Friends and Rivals

Beethoven had a complex personality. He could be a loyal friend and a brute.  This concert explores music of his contemporaries who had both good and bad relationships with him.

 

 

Genre: Classical

 

 

 

3PM - $28 for a single concert ticket // $80 for a 3 concert season pass, 11/07, 01/30, & 04/03 - DSPM's site

Kat Eggleston and Kate MacLeod

Kat is one of the most accomplished guitarists and singer/songwriters in the folk, Celtic and traditional music genres. Elating, moving, and amusing audiences with her beautiful blend of sweet melodies, gentle honesty and searing humor, Kat's music reflects a wide range of life's experiences with unusual clarity and authority.

In a clear alto with flawless intonation, Kat Eggleston goes straight to the lyrical and emotional truth of every word and every note. Her musings on home, childhood, and her father's garden are gems of direct, unassuming plainspokenness. Her narratives push hard at our senses and demand we return again and again to pick up the pieces we dropped on first hearing, expanding our comprehension of difficult, personal and universal experience

Kate MacLeod is living proof that time, maturity, and a good place to grow only make you better. On her new recording Blooming, you will hear exactly that truth. Blooming will "rock your world" in one way or another. Kate went to Nashville, TN to record this project in March, 2009. With Tim O'Brien as producer, David Ferguson as engineer, and musicians Darrel Scott, Byron House, and Kenny Malone, Kate recorded an eclectic collection of her original songs. The outcome is a culmination of her love and experience with the styles of American music that she has been performing most of her life. On this recording you will hear twelve songs expressed in shades of country, folk, bluegrass, folk-rock, pop, art-song and sounds of modern Americana music held together in a project that is full of personality and ease. With the help and inspiration of the musicians she was working with, Kate gave her all on this recording. Her heart's desire is that it is a recording endearing to the listener. That's the goal...for after all...it is for you. Blooming is distributed by Waterbug Records. 

 

Genre: Singer Songwriter

 

 

7PM - $12 in advance // $15 day-of // $20 reserved table seating - Kat's site - Kate's site

Green River Ordinance

Jamey and Geoff formed the original GRO, with a different lineup of musicians that came and went as time went on. At the tender ages of 16 and 14, they were seasoned club performers who already had a local following. When Josh joined the band they discovered the bond they had in writing songs. There was great freedom in shaping and hashing out the songs that they wrote. It was the most incredible experience. When Joshua and Denton joined the band the songwriting was taken to a whole new level. There was a certain magic that happened when all five of them got into a room together to write songs.

They found that every one was able to contribute to the songwriting process; and that certain chemistry would took place as they all worked together. In between shows they would sit around and work on songs. Each person would bring their own ideas to the band; sometimes it would just be a riff, or a tune. Sometimes it was a whole piece. But together they found that they would create a free flow of ideas between the five of them, as they encouraged and pushed each other forward. At the end of the process after much work and challenging each other, the song would be complete.

 

Genre: Singer Songwriter

 

On-sale Saturday, September 11 at 11AM

 

8PM - $10 in advance // $14 day-of // $18 reserved table seating - Green River Ordinance's site

TFDI: Tony Lucca, Jay Nash, Matt Duke

 

Lucca, Nash and Duke set off on a 25-city U.S. tour on August 21, 2009 that culminated in the two-day singer-songwriter event of the year, Hotel Carolina. Lucca shares, “It was such a blast sharing the ride  
(and the stage) with Jay and Matt. It's one thing getting to know your tour mates' tunes, it's another thing to actually look forward to hearing them every night and getting the opportunity to record alongside each other in such a stellar environment. I was all too happy and proud to be a part of it.”

Through a series of video blogs, fans had the chance to watch the “bromance” blossom and get a sneak peak into their nightly shows and road trip across the United States. An inspired Nash was filmed on the  
blog singing “Totally F*ckin’ Doin’ It”, a high-energy jingle turned motto, and the rest was history.

Just months after the tour ended, the trio released the TFDI EP, a 4 song project recorded during a day of spent at SPACE in Evanston. This November and December the fellas return to the studio where it all began to record some additional tracks for a future release as well as tour the country again.  They'll booked this project with two  
shows at SPACE; a tour kickoff on Nov 11 and a finale show on Dec 18.

Be a part of these special shows with a $40 two show pass, which includes a private pre-show meet and greet with Tony, Jay, and Matt and a signed poster and premium seating in the first or 2nd row.

 

 

Genre: Singer Songwriter

 

 

8PM - $12 in advance // $15 day-of // $20 reserved table seat // $40 VIP package

 

Tony's site - Jay's site - Matt's site

Mindy Smith

Art helps us articulate emotions. When complex feelings seem impossible to condense into words, we turn to musicians to speak on our behalf. On her new album, Stupid Love, Mindy Smith gives voice to the myriad sentiments, from elation to sorrow, that accompany falling in love.

As she acknowledges on the first single “Highs and Lows,” life is full of twists and turns. And so are these thirteen originals. The solemn “I’m Disappointed,” a bruised soliloquy for just voice and organ, gives way to the idyllic “True Love of Mine.” With her straightforward, honest delivery, Smith steers Stupid Love through its varied emotional terrain, till the journey concludes with the rollicking “Take a Holiday.”

Few singers are better prepared than Smith to sing convincingly about such a wide range of emotions. Her pure, unaffected soprano illuminates her words and sentiments—even when it seems as if she is singing for just herself, as on the intimate “Telescope.” Each performance is rendered with exquisite care. Listen to the way she slowly rises out of world-weary dejection on the opening “What Went Wrong,” the light gradually filling her voice like dawn breaking over the horizon.

 

 

Genre: Singer Songwriter

 

 

8PM - $18 in advance // $22 day-of // $30 reserved table seating - Mindy's site

Ellis Paul

Ellis Paul is one of the leading voices in American songwriting. He was a principle leader in the wave of singer/songwriters that emerged from the Boston folk scene, creating a movement that revitalized the national acoustic circuit with an urban, literate, folk pop style that helped renew interest in the genre in the 1990's.

 

His charismatic, personally authentic performance style has influenced a generation of artists away from the artifice of pop, and closer towards the realness of folk. Though he remains among the most pop-friendly of today's singer-songwriters - his songs regularly appear in hit movie and TV soundtracks - he has bridged the gulf between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger more successfully than perhaps any of his songwriting peers.

 

Genre: Folk

 

 

7PM - $20 in advance // $25 day-of // $32 reserved table seating - Ellis' site

Tab Benoit

In 1991, Tab Benoit was hired by Justice Records to contribute songs to a compilation record called STRIKE A DEEP CHORD: "Guitarist for the Homeless." The record featured Dr. John, Odetta, Gatemouth Brown, Sue Foley, Ronnie Earl, the late Johnny Copeland, and Tab Benoit all recorded tracks for the project . The record's proceeds were to benefit Houston's homeless, the city where the label had it's offices. Tab recorded two tracks "Nice and Warm" and "Bone Pickin" for the record and was immediately signed to Justice Records.

The very next year in 1992 these two tracks would lead Tab's national debut recording and Tab became the break-out roots Artist of the decade. Radio began playing his music on the same commercial stations that were playing the popular acts of the day such as The Dave Matthew's Band, Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler, Big Head Todd and the Monsters. It was the first time since the death of the Stevie Ray Vaughn that a new roots Artist was receiving heavy rotation on commercial Rock radio stations across the country.

Since his debut in 1992 Tab has recorded with Junior Wells, Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver, James Cotton, Cyril Neville, Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Henry Gray, and Jimmy Hall of Wet Willie to name a few and now fifteen solo recordings, three Grammy nominations, and a budding movie career later it may be his work as a wetlands activist that he will most be remembered but until then it is his rich tone, soulful voice, and seeped with tradition song-writing that makes him Louisiana's #1 Roots music export

 

Genre: Roots

 

10PM - $20 in advance // $25 day-of // $34 reserved table seating - Tab's site

Ellis Paul Kids Show

Ellis Paul is one of the leading voices in American songwriting. He was a principle leader in the wave of singer/songwriters that emerged from the Boston folk scene, creating a movement that revitalized the national acoustic circuit with an urban, literate, folk pop style that helped renew interest in the genre in the 1990's.

 

His charismatic, personally authentic performance style has influenced a generation of artists away from the artifice of pop, and closer towards the realness of folk. Though he remains among the most pop-friendly of today's singer-songwriters - his songs regularly appear in hit movie and TV soundtracks - he has bridged the gulf between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger more successfully than perhaps any of his songwriting peers.

 

Genre: Folk/Kids

 

 

1PM - $10 for everyone - Ellis' site

The Chapin Sisters & The Pines

Abigail and Lily Chapin are singing, songwriting sisters who have been performing under the name The Chapin Sisters since 2004. They are known for pristine harmonies and haunting melodies that have gained comparisons to sister acts of old and Appalachian family groups, yet their songs and arrangements have a very contemporary aspect, with elements of pop, blues and psychedelic rock. Their first full-length record, Lake Bottom LP was collaboration with their other sister, Jessica Craven, who is now taking a leave of absence to spend time with her new baby. Produced by Thom Monahan (Lilys, Devendra Bandhart, Vetiver) and Mike Daly (Whiskeytown, Grace Potter), the record was critically acclaimed and was named on of the LA Weekly’s Top Ten Records of 2008.

In August of 2008, Abigail and Lily, along with co-producers Jesse Lee (Gang Gang Dance) and Louie Stephens (Rooney) retreated to an old family farm in rural New Jersey where they put-together a studio and recorded their forthcoming record, The Chapin Sisters 2. This record incorporates lush keyboards, layered percussion, electric guitars and warm, rich vocals tones, in addition to the staple acoustic guitar and three part-harmonies that the sisters are already known for. It is expected to be released in Fall 2010 (the sisters do not yet have a record label for this project).

In a world swimming in singer/songwriters, it's difficult to rise above the masses and create a truly unique sound that captures ears and stimulates the mind. The Pines are a band that has taken on this feat, honing their musical craft to near perfection with a sound that wavers on the edge of traditional acoustic/roots music, but embraces the nuances of today's indie-rock and blues music.

Meeting in a Mexican barrio in Arizona, fellow Iowans David Huckfelt and Benson Ramsey began playing music together, forming The Pines. Committing to a musical career, they returned to their Midwestern roots and settled in Minneapolis, a music haven that has launched the careers of such folk and rock legends as Bob Dylan, The Jayhawks and The Replacements.

 

Genre: Folk/Singer Songwriter

 

 

8PM - $10 in advance // $12 day-of // $18 reserved table seating - The Chapin's site - The Pines' site

Melissa Manchester

Melissa recorded her debut album, Home to Myself, in 1973, co-writing many of the songs with Carole Bayer Sager. 1975's Melissa produced her first Top Ten hit, "Midnight Blue". She and Kenny Loggins co-wrote the latter's 1978 duet hit with Stevie Nicks, "Whenever I Call You Friend," and the following year, Melissa returned to the Top Ten with "Don't Cry Out Loud." 1980 saw Melissa become the first singer to have two movie themes nominated for Academy Awards (Ice Castles and The Promise); two years later she achieved her highest Billboard singles chart placing with the number five hit "You Should Hear How She Talks About You," which won a Grammy for Best Female Vocal Performance.

Through the '80s and '90s, Manchester has alternated occasional recording with scriptwriting and acting, appearing with Bette Midler in For the Boys and on the television series Blossom as the title character's birth mother. In spring 2004, Manchester returned with her first album in 10 years. When I Look Down That Road, which included collaborations with Beth Nielsen Chapman and Keb' Mo, marked her first proper release with Koch.

Melissa recently received the Governor's Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for her contributions to the music and recording arts.

Genre: Singer Songwriter

 

 

8PM - $25 in advance // $30 day-of // $40 reserved table seating - Melissa's site

Pete Huttlinger

As a world-renowned finger-picking gutarist, Pete Huttlinger h occupied some pretty choice real estate, including the Hollywood Bowl and London’s Royal Albert Hall with John Denver, Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas with George Burns and stadiums around the world with numerous other pop and country superstars.

He has been a featured artist with the San Diego and Houston symphonies and is a favorite guest artist of the Nashville Chamber Orchestra. In 2000 Huttlinger won the title of National Fingerstyle Champion at the prestigious Walnut Valley Festival.

Huttlinger has performed on numerous Grammy-winning and Grammy-nominated projects. He has also been nominated for an Emmy for music he both composed and performed for a PBS special. His performances have been used in several national TV series, including the PBS Nature special "Let This Be A Voice." He created the theme song for ESPN’s Flyfishing America, a program on which he has made guest appearances.

Competing at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, Huttlinger matched licks with 37 of the nimblest guitarists in the world to win the 2000 National Fingerpick Guitar Championship. He has since been featured on the cover of Fingerstyle Guitar twice, and has been profiled in Guitar Player, Acoustic Guitar, Vintage Guitar and Guitar World Acoustic. He has created two series of instructional DVDs that have become Homespun Tapes top sellers. One series is his much in demand Learn To Play The Songs of John Denver (Vol. I, II & III). The other series includes instructionals of his own arrangements and practice techniques.

Peers consider Huttlinger one of today’s finest fingerstyle guitarists. Dirty Linen magazine labeled him "….a powerhouse guitarist," and Guitar Player magazine referred to his playing as "…an amazing display of all-around fingerstyle mastery. Scary stuff.”

 

Genre: Fingerstyle Guitarist

 

 

8PM - $15 in advance // $20 day-of // $25 reserved table seating - Pete's site

Bill Frisell's Disfarmer Project

 

Featuring Viktor Krauss, Greg Leisz, and Jenny Scheinman

 

This album is called Disfarmer, and it's by Bill Frisell. Frisell, you may know: He's a guitar tactician with warmth and a composer of unclassifiable songs. As a solo artist, Frisell is known largely for drawing upon the affects of Americana — folk, country and western, what-have-you — in ways you wouldn't immediately call jazz, but which draw from jazz in a way that implies no better descriptor.

But who, or what for that matter, is Disfarmer?

Mike Disfarmer was born Michael Meyers in 1884, the sixth of seven children in a family of German immigrant farmers in Arkansas. As he grew older, he came to reject both his family and its agrarian lifestyle. (A tornado, he once claimed, uprooted him from his birth parents and blew him into the Meyers household.) So he chose a new surname. Upon learning, somewhat incorrectly, that the German word "meyer" translated to "farmer" in English, he reasoned that he could only be called an anti-farmer, or Disfarmer.

In other words, Disfarmer was something of an eccentric, and a recluse to boot. But he was also an artist: Disfarmer ran a portrait photography studio in rural Heber Springs, Ark. — the only such enterprise for miles around. Thousands of black-and-white images captured his fellow townspeople from the years preceding the Great Depression to the period following WWII. And something about the solemn, stark plainness to his style lent his subjects an unexpected intimacy, ensuring his legacy as one of America's great outsider artists.

Disfarmer died in 1959, but his photographs were eventually rediscovered, exhibited and anthologized. The candor of those images would be a natural counterpart to the post-Americana music of Bill Frisell — so thought Chuck Helm, Director of the Performing Arts at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio. Sure enough, when Helm introduced Frisell to Disfarmer's oeuvre, the guitarist went on to create a touring multimedia work, scoring a slideshow of Disfarmer images.

The recording of that music, on Frisell's latest album Disfarmer, is what you can hear here in its entirety. It's filled with the sounds of a 21st-century string band: Greg Leisz's mandolin and pedal-steel atmospherics, Jenny Scheinman's sundry fiddle textures, Viktor Krauss' rich acoustic bass plucking. And then there's Frisell, the quiet tactician of the electric guitar, who engineers loops and subtle distortions with phrasing you never knew you were expecting.

There are evocative original themes and motifs here, surrounded by backgrounds sounding distant echoes of country, bluegrass and old-time mountain music. There's also a handful of carefully selected covers, among them Hank Williams' lament "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love With You)" and Arthur Crudup's blues song "That's Alright, Mama," a hit rockabilly vehicle for Elvis Presley. It's a record alternately spare and full, languid and rollicking, pastoral and urbanely produced.

And it's all in service to the work of the enigmatic Arkansas photographer Mike Disfarmer.

"What was he thinking?" Frisell asks. "What did he see? We'll never know, but as I write the music, I'd like to imagine it coming from his point of view. The sound of him looking through the lens."

 

Genre: Jazz

 

 

8PM - $28 Standing Room// $40 General Admission Seated // $58 reserved table seating - Bill's site Disfarmer Project's site