Laurie Lewis Band –
Saturday, October 14, 2023 at 7:30 pm

For nearly four decades, Laurie Lewis has gathered fans and honors for her powerful and emotive voice and her versatile, dynamic songwriting. She is a sought-after recording producer and an equally skilled teacher and mentor.

And she is an inspiration and a ground-breaker – across genres, across geography and across gender barriers.

Laurie has shown us how a woman can blend into any part of the classic bluegrass singing trio, and she showed us how a great voice could move fluidly between bluegrass and other types of music.  She showed us how a female fiddler could emulate the strength and grit of the early bluegrass musicians. She has shown how a Californian can appeal to traditional bluegrass audiences, as well as winning acclaim in the worlds of Americana and folk music.

She has shown us how to lead bands of talented musicians – learning from them while helping them make their best music.  And she has shown us how to thrive in a constantly changing musical environment – without ever sacrificing her art.

“One of the contemporary acoustic music scene’s most skilled and enduring performers.”

Acoustic Guitar

“Her voice is a rare combination of grit and grace, strength and delicacy. Her stories are always true.”

Linda Ronstadt

www.LaurieLewis.com
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Tracy Grammer –
Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 7:30 pm

Called “a musician and singer of dazzling versatility” (No Depression), Tracy Grammer is among contemporary folk music’s most beloved artists. Renowned for her pure voice, deft guitar and violin work, and incantatory storytelling, Grammer has recorded and performed with Joan Baez and Mary Chapin Carpenter, headlined several of the nation’s top folk festivals, including Philadelphia Folk Festival and Falcon Ridge, and enjoyed 12 consecutive years as one of folk radio’s 50 top-played artists, both solo and with the late Dave Carter. 

Grammer is currently on tour celebrating her highly-anticipated eleventh release, LOW TIDE, which is the first of her albums to showcase her original songs. LOW TIDE was the ninth most-played album on folk radio in 2018 and was voted a Top 10 Album of the Year by Fish Records UK.

“…One of the finest singers and musicians anywhere in folkdom”

Boston Globe

“A brilliant artist”

“One of the most enduring, irreplaceable voices in American folk music”

Anti-Heroin Chic

www.TracyGrammer.com
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Ordinary Elephant – Saturday, July 22, 2023 at 7:30 pm

International Folk Music Awards 2017 Artist of the Year Ordinary Elephant captivates audiences with their emotionally powerful and vulnerable songs, letting the listener know that they are not alone in this world. The collaboration of husband and wife Pete and Crystal Damore, their connection, and their influences (such as Gillian Welch, Guy Clark, Anais Mitchell) all meet on stage. “Two become one, in song…hand-in-glove harmonies surprise the listener with focused intensity and musical mastery,” says Mary Gauthier.

In song after Honest song, the Damores take on what it means to follow your heart and eschew all the expectations, assumptions, and limitations projected upon you by others. They also use their own life experience to point out that the “safe” route can be anything but safe, as they do in “Rust Right Through.”

The choices we make are not always easy or safe, but they are important. The songs on Honest speak, again and again, to being our truest, best selves, no matter who we are or where we come from. Indeed, every of us has a heritage, a legacy, a story, of which we are a part, for better and for worse. Each moment and memory a lesson leading us to who we will be.

“…one of the best Americana albums of the year”

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Ordinary Elephant’s ‘Honest’ is One of the best folk duo records in Recent Memory”

popmatters

www.Ordinary Elephant.net
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The Special Consensus –
Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 6:00 pm at the Curry Public Library

The Special Consensus is a bluegrass band that has achieved a contemporary sound in their four decades of performing, making their music a modern classic. The band is led by Greg Cahill (banjo player and recipient of the prestigious Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) and inducted into the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America Hall of Greats) and includes Dan Eubanks (bass), Greg Blake (guitar) and Michael Prewitt (mandolin). Special Consensus has received six awards from the IBMA and two Grammy nominations. They are four talented vocalists and instrumentalists who follow their creative desires without straying too far from their bluegrass roots. The 19th band recording, Rivers and Roads (Compass Records, 2018), was nominated for the 2018 Best Bluegrass Album GRAMMY award and received 2018 IBMA awards for Album of the Year and Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year (for the tune “Squirrel Hunters”). Chicago Barn Dance, released by Compass Records in 2020, is the 20th Special C recording that celebrates both the 45th band anniversary and the long-standing connection of country and bluegrass music with Chicago from the time of the WLS “National Barn Dance” that was a precursor to the Grand Ole Opry. The songs on this recording relate to Chicago and/or are written by artists who once lived in Chicago. The title song “Chicago Barn Dance” received the 2020 IBMA Song of the Year Award.

“Credit producer Alison Brown for inventive arrangements that showcase each band member, and such guests as singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks and fiddler Michael Cleveland also contribute, sounding happy to join the dance.”

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

“It’s a lively number that should find a welcome reception from bluegrass radio.”

BlueGrass Today

www.SpecialC.com
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