Kane Mathis
Tickets: $12 advance, $15 at the door.
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Kane Mathis began his musical career at age 16 playing blues and jazz clubs in Chicago and performing with legends such as Barrelhouse Chuck and Harmonica Todd for 5 years. He performed everywhere from festivals to roadhouses before going to The Lawrence Conservatory to study Jazz and Classical guitar. Simultaneously Kane began making trips to The Gambia, Africa to live with a family of hereditary musicians, which he has done for the past 14 years. Kane holds a diploma from The Tiramang Traditional music school in The Gambia and has performed for the President of The Gambia, the American Ambassador to The Gambia, and he has appeared on Gambian National Radio and Television. Kane’s first album was on daily rotation on Gambian radio. Kane is also one of the leading interpreters of Ottoman classical music having studied at Istanbul’s I.T.U. conservatory before beginning a 5-year apprenticeship with Oud virtuoso Münir Nurettin Beken.
As a composer Kane is regularly commissioned to create original works for dance, theater, and instrumental ensembles. Kane’s new works are created for live performance and fixed media. His new compositions merge his experience with African and Middle Eastern music with new forms and electronic media. Performing on the 21-string Mandinka Harp and the Turkish Oud, Kane Mathis renders compelling interpretations of traditional music, and years of study with generous masters have given Kane a rare opportunity to share these traditions with other cultures.
Grant Dermody & Orville Johnson
Tickets: $20 advance, $24 at the door.
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Grant Dermody (DER-muh-dee) is a harmonica player, singer, songwriter, and teacher from Seattle, Washington. Described as “an understated harmonica virtuoso and a vocalist of subtlety and warmth” by Don McLeese of No Depression magazine, Grant is a highly versatile musician. A lifelong student of the harmonica and acoustic blues, Grant’s latest release is the masterful Lay Down My Burden. Grant’s musical travels have seen him playing with many of America’s most beloved acoustic musicians. In 2010, he embarked on a successful international tour with guitarist Eric Bibb. Previous explorations saw him performing in a trio with Orville Johnson and John Miller, live and on their 2006 release Deceiving Blues. In addition, Dermody has performed with blues legends Leon Bib, Honeyboy Edwards, Robert Lowery, Big Joe Duskin, John Dee Holeman, and Cephas & Wiggins. Beyond the blues, Grant is passionate about old-time music. As a member of The Improbabillies, whose 1998 self-titled CD made a serious splash in the old-time world, Grant brought a unique blues sensibility and an innovative harmonica style to that genre.
An excellent accompanist, Grant uses his instrument to add just the right shade, feel or energy to a player, piece or project. He has played on several of Seattle based singer/songwriter Jim Page’s recordings, and was a guest artist on Dan Crary’s, Rennaissance of the Steel String Guitar. Dan described Grant’s playing on “Reedy’s Blues,” as “powerful and beautiful,” and referred to him as, “One of the best studio musicians I have ever worked with.” Ask other harmonica players about Grant’s style, and they all point to his big, warm, wide-open tone, his ability to bring his own voice to a wide variety of musical styles, and his subtle, un-hurried approach. Though Grant spends most of his musical time playing acoustic music, he never hesitates to plug in and lay down some Chicago Blues. In performances, recordings, and teaching engagements, Grant’s soulful sound shines through, inspiring listeners and fellow musicians.
Orville Johnson was born and raised in the southern Illinois heartland. He acquired his love of singing as a youth in the fundamentalist Pentecostal church he attended and, when he later began playing guitar and dobro, responded to the roots music that surrounded him by learning to play the blues, bluegrass, rockabilly, and country music that are all part of the mosaic that characterizes his own mongrel music.
He is a singer, instrumentalist, record producer, songwriter, session player, teacher, the top dobro player on the West Coast of America and, above all, an instinctive and sensitive musician. As his entry in the Encyclopedia of Northwest Music (Sasquatch Press 1999) states, he has become a vital figure on the NW music scene in the thirty-some years he’s lived there, appearing on over 400 CDs, movie and video soundtracks, commercials, producing 22 CDs for other artists, hosting a roots music radio show, and appearing in the 1997 film Georgia with Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Mare Winningham, on the Prairie Home Companion radio show and on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show.
Orville is also known as a patient and insightful teacher of music and has taught often at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop as well as the International Guitar Seminar, Pt. Townsend Blues Workshop, Euro-Blues Workshop, B.C. Bluegrass Workshop and others. He has several teaching videos and DVDs and CDs of his own music available.
Namoli Brennet
Tickets: $12 advance, $15 at the door.
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Tucson-based songwriter Namoli Brennet has been touring the country with her own brand of moody and inspiring folk since releasing her first CD in 2002. Since then she’s played over 900 shows and logged over 250,000 miles on her still-running 87 Volvo station wagon. Touching on often poignant themes, her music and lyrics ultimately paint a vivid and redemptive portrait; she’s a breathtaking and moving performer, and her sweet, road-weary voice is as quick to deliver her wit and humor as it is a turn of phrase. She’s been described as a cross between Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin and Sheryl Crow, and Zocalo magazine called her music, “Gorgeous and introspective.” Namoli is currently touring nationally in support of her latest CD, We Were Born to Rise.
Brennet was given her first guitar at age 8, and after picking it up quickly the ADD songstress started playing drums, piano and saxophone. By the time she graduated from college with a degree in music composition she was waiting tables while writing songs on the side and playing in bar bands. She didn’t start singing until her 20s, because, as she says, “I was surrounded by golden-throated sisters and wasn’t really considered the singer in my family. My voice was always…different.”
A 4-time Outmusic award nominee, Namoli has also won the Tucson Folk Festival Songwriting Award and was a finalist in the ISC songwriting competition. Her release Black Crow garnered critical acclaim and was named one of KXCI FM’s top albums of 2010. Her music has been featured on NPR, PBS and in films including the Emmy-award winning documentary “Out in the Silence”, which details the struggle of a gay teen growing up in rural Pennsylvania. You’ll often find this prodigious musician in the studio dividing her time between engineering, producing and playing most if not all of the instruments on her recordings. She’s also recorded and produced CDs for other artists, most notably Eric Himan’s 2011 release, Supposed Unknown, which is currently being featured on Sirius XM radio.
Bill Evans’ Banjo in America
Tickets: $15 advance, $18 at the door.
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Bill Evans is an internationally known five-string banjo life force. As a performer, teacher, writer, scholar and composer, he brings a deep knowledge, intense virtuosity and contagious passion to all things banjo, with thousands of music fans and banjo students from all over the world in a career that spans over thirty-five years.
Tracing the banjo from its West African roots to the New World, Evans performs musical examples from the 1700’s to the present day on a variety of vintage instruments, ranging from an African ekonting to a mid-19th century minstrel banjo, a modern bluegrass banjo and even an electric banjo. From an 18th century African dance tune to the music of the Civil War, and from early 20th century ragtime to folk and bluegrass banjo styles to Bill’s own incredible original music, Bill’s performances illuminate as well as entertain, exposing audiences to over 200 years of American music.
Bill is the author of Banjo For Dummies, the most popular banjo book in the world and has been a Banjo Newsletter columnist for over fifteen years. He has performed with acoustic luminaries David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Dry Branch Fire Squad, Tony Trischka and Maria Muldaur, among many others. His recordings Native and Fine and Bill Evans Plays Banjo highlight innovative compositions which blend jazz, classical, folk and world music influences. His 2012 CD In Good Company features over 26 musicians, including the Infamous Stringdusters, Tim O’Brien, and Joy Kills Sorrow.
Evans has presented The Banjo In America at Kobe Shoin Women’s University, Kobe, Japan; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Carleton College, Northfield, MN; Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; Clarion Music Center, San Francisco, CA; Border Folk Festival, El Paso, TX; Columbia Gorge Mixed Bag Music Festival, Stevenson, WA; the Maryland Banjo Academy, Buckeystown, MD; South Plains College, Levelland, TX; the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, Gettysburg, PA; the Mid-Winter Bluegrass Festival, Denver, CO and Wintergrass, Tacoma, WA. The Banjo in America was developed with the support of a grant from the Kentucky Humanities Council.
Bill has a Master’s Degree in Music from the University of California, Berkeley with a specialization in American music history and he has been a scholar/artist in residence at many universities across the United States. He has served as a consultant to the National Endowment for the Arts and is the former Associate Director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum in Owenboro, Kentucky.
You can learn more about Bill by visiting www.billevansbanjo.com. Watch video performances from The Banjo in America by linking to Bill’s YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/BillEvansBanjo.
Nelson Wright and Friends: CD Release Show
Tickets: $7 advance, $10 at the door.
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Nelson Wright came of age in the Northeast, in the shadow of the first great folk scare. Now in the maelstrom of Seattle’s exploding acoustic roots thrash, what goes around is coming around, and on his new album he circles his songwriting back to his roots.
His songs tap into the great traditions of indigenous American music–expressing deep and sophisticated human connections using the simplest words and music. Think of Jimmie Rodgers’ TB Blues, John Hurt’s Louis Collins, Memphis Slim’s Mother Earth, or the Louvin Brothers’ Lorene and you’ll have an idea of what Nelson’s about. His new album Still Burning contains ten original songs that mine this vein, telling stories with a common theme of love–good, bad, new and old. The album is graced with the support of some of the Northwest’s premier roots musicians, including Orville Johnson, Grant Dermody, and Michael Connolly.
Nelson claims to be the only folksinger whose picture is on the Woodstock album and whose inventions are in the Smithsonian. Who knew? Visit Nelson’s website at www.nelsonwright.org.
