Cahalen Morrison & Huck Notari
Tickets: $10 advance, $14 at the door.
Click here to purchase advance tickets.
Acoustic roots music son
gwriter Cahalen Morrison has a gift for communicating the simple truths of folk music. He hand-crafts songs that sound timeless, and Cahalen clearly knows and loves the early American music from which he draws his inspiration. His guitar picking sounds like the laid-back playing you might have heard at Mississippi John Hurt’s fabled community BBQs back in the 1950s, with maybe a guest visit from Doc Watson. Morrison’s playing fuses the best of country blues and early country picking into an effortless foundation for his songwriting. And it’s his songs that truly shine on his new album, Old-Timey and New-Fangled.
It’s not uncommon for songwriters to tap into earthy, organic imagery to lend their songs a rootsy sound, in fact an entire genre of music was born from this recently, but what we like about Cahalen’s songs is how natural this imagery sounds with his music. He sounds like he’s lived the life and known the life and understands what it means to be connected to the land. Added to his songs, Cahalen’s playing on a multitude of acoustic instruments: mandolin, guitar, clawhammer banjo and slide guitar seems effortless. The fact that his album, “Old-Timey & New-Fangled” was recorded live with family and friends playing along yet sounds as polished as a studio album speaks to Cahalen’s mastery of acoustic music making.
A fixture of Portland, Oregon’s ever-growing roots music scene, Huck Notari has his own unique style of
timeless songwriting and beautiful acoustic guitar playing. After forming his band four years ago, Huck has been turning heads at home and abroad with his soft voice and earthy lyrics. His songs are honest and simple. They reflect his passion for living in the country and his hope for brighter days.
Originally from the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Huck Notari made his way south to New Orleans as a young man, where he performed on the street as a Charlie Chaplin mime. He then moved west to Oregon where he joined *The Kitchen Syncopators*, a seminal country blues and ragtime band that also featured *Gill Landry* (now with Old Crow Medicine Show) and *Woody Pines*(now touring internationally with his own band).
Huck began his prolific songwriting journey while living alone in a little house in the Oregon countryside. Surrounded by the lush natural landscape, Huck poured his energy onto the page and set the course for his songwriting career. With the release of his second album, *Very Long Dream*, in 2009, Huck has been busy touring along the West Coast and through Ireland. This new album features a veritable who’s-who of Portland’s roots scene, but throughout, Huck’s earthy voice and soothing guitar/piano playing steer the music towards a gentler side of folk. *Very Long Dream* shows an artist with a firm grasp not only on the rich heritage of American folk music, but the same burning need for truth that originally built this heritage.
Forrest Gibson, Jim Miller, Cahalen Morrison and Ethan Lawton
Tickets: $8 advance, $12 at the door.
Sorry, this show is completely sold out! No tickets will be released at the door.
Catch a one-time, wild-hair-of-a-show by four distinct Seattle roots musicians. An evening of traditional, original, and cover songs, three part harmonies, rippin’ instrumentals, and general, all around fun. Don’t miss it!
Forrest Gibson started playing bluegrass mandolin and guitar after he moved to a log cabin in Denali Park, Alaska. Gradually moving further north to Fairbanks, he found himself deeply drawn to the blues as well as old time and Cajun/Zydeco music, picking up the electric guitar in the process. A long-time performer in various duos and trios as well as in many bands including the Improbabillies and the Harmonicasters, he now spends his days working for the Experience Music Project in Seattle while carving out time for music and beyond.
Jim Miller grew up on the music of a local Seattle musician, Jimi Hendrix, but quickly realized that his hopes of being a guitar god were out of reach. As an alternative, he learned bluegrass and old time music. Jim has been singing and playing traditional American music on guitar and banjo for over 30 years. He co-founded the New York based roots rock band Donna the Buffalo in 1990 and toured nationally with them for 15 years. In addition to recording five CDs with DTB, Jim has recorded with Tim O’Brien, Jim Lauderdale, Ginny Hawker, Dirk Powell, and Tara Nevins. He currently writes books about moths and butterflies, performs with The Starry Ramblers, an old time band based in Ithaca, New York, and plays electric guitar with Louisiana legend Preston Frank as a member of Big Daddy Zydeco.
Cahalen Morrison h
ails from the high desert of Northern New Mexico. He grew up playing drums in a country and norteño dance band, playing all the dance bars before he hit the age of 14. At home, he was surrounded by old-time, bluegrass and country music, and spent a good deal of time playing guitar with his dad, who plays a mean old-time and Irish fiddle. After studying jazz drums in college, Cahalen hit the road, solo, and toured the US and Canada nonstop for 3 years, before landing in Seattle. Currently his full time project is a duo with Seattle multi-instrumentalist and singer Eli West. Together they tour the US, Canada and Europe, and just released their debut record, “The Holy Coming of The Storm,” which is currently charting on the Americana charts, both in the US and Europe, and garnering high praise from press all across the world.
Born and raised in Seattle, Ethan Lawton has been a big figure in the bluegrass scene for many years. A powerful force on the mandolin, and a voice to be reckoned with, Ethan lends his hand on mandolin in Zoe Muth and The Lost High Rollers, and with his trio, Armstrong Lawton Katz.
Grab your tickets today for this unique opportunity to see four distinct talents on one sweet stage!
Rain City Tales & Tunes
Tickets: $8.00 advance, $10.00 at the door.
Click here to purchase tickets.
Rain City Tales & Tunes is a brand-new radio show which brings the Northwest’s best storytellers and musicians together onstage. Taped in front of a live audience at Empty Sea, the show features acoustic music and tale-telling. Each episode features a unique theme, and audience members are invited to volunteer for the storytelling spotlight.
Produced jointly by Empty Sea Studios and KBCS storyteller Auntmama (Mary Anne Moorman), Rain City will be available to public radio stations this fall.
January 7th’s show theme is about families and the roles we play in them. You’ll hear as a baby sister becomes a wise elder, the family jester becomes the family hardass, and the ancient bigot becomes something else entirely. Neo-oldtime prodigies Cahalen Morrison & Eli West will share their tight harmonies and banjo-driven tunes with us, telling their stories through haunting melody.
Cahalen Morrison is not like many other 20-something musicians out there. He is genuinely old-time, but from a region (rural New Mexico) not often associated with a thriving string-band music scene. His multi-instrumental and songwriting talents were developed in small circles, privately, over many years, far outside the mainstream. He shows definite influences of kindred old spirits like Norman Blake, Greg Brown, and Doc Watson that were obviously instilled at a young age and not picked up in a “back-to-acoustic” fad. But he is very much his own man, traveling and playing with a determined Western independence and an easy hospitality towards those he encounters along the way. And so it was that along came Eli West – another unique twenty-something who came by this music more circuitously, but sharing the same authenticity and Western spirit – and their mutual musical easy-goingness found some common ground in which wonderful things grow. The roots are strong, the branches are shady, and the guitars, banjos, mandolins and voices carry you far off the beaten path to a Good Place out under open Western skies. -Kevin Brown (KPBX, Spokane Public Radio)
A Suzuki violin kid that took a left turn early on, Eli West has been busy multi-instrumentalist since, sitting in with members of the Wailin Jenny’s, Crooked Still, Michelle Shocked, and others. He was the voice and guitar behind the Seattle-based Loose Digits, and now finds it quite comfortable to be in a Duo with Cahalen Morrison.
Greg Brisendine is a writer and performance poet based in Seattle. Greg has performed on stages across the Pacific Northwest and is the author of two chapbooks: One Lap Around and A Cautionary Tale.
Greg’s work will make you better at parallel parking. It will make you appreciate yogurt more – the fruit on the bottom kind. His work is always fat free and carb-free with only a small hint of cheese. When not writing, Greg is dispensing relationship advice through his alter ego: The Bitter Single Guy.
Named Auntmama by a nephew of choice, Mary Anne Moorman gathers audiences up in her blend of music, and storied southern
lore. Her voice is a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains at dusk, rolling and misted sweet. These stories are conversations with memory as well as with the audience that’s enjoying them.
“I’d be a singer if I could sing, but I like music too much to mess it up,” she says. Her Appalachian roots are intertwined with the music she grew up with, many of her stories reflecting that harmonic heritage through influences from Gershwin, Cole Porter, Flatt & Scruggs, and Porter Wagoner.
The Stranger has written of Auntmama’s tales: “As a precious, southern belle, she’s conflicted and her extremes and voice boil out the sweetest words I think I’ve ever heard in my life. A real gem, she is. Glad I saw it, haven’t stopped hearing her lilting voice in my head.”
Moorman, a former machinist, management consultant and journalist, teaches storytelling at Washington State’s famous Wintergrass festival, Northwest Folklife Festival, Hugo House’s Write-O-Rama, as well as offering workshops throughout the country. She is the recipient of grants from Artist Trust, 4Cultural and the City of Seattle. Her three albums are available through her website, in local bookstores or through iTunes. She can be heard every Sunday morning on KBCS 91.3 FM.
Cahalen Morrison & Eli West w/ Shaun Cromwell
Tickets: $8 advance, $10 at the door.
Click here to purchase advance tickets.
Cahalen Morrison is not like many other 20-something musicians out there. He is genuinely old-time, but from a region (rural New Mexico) not often associated with a thriving string-band music scene. His multi-instrumental and songwriting talents were developed in small circles, privately, over many years, far outside the mainstream. He shows definite influences of kindred old spirits like Norman Blake, Greg Brown, and Doc Watson that were obviously instilled at a young age and not picked up in a “back-to-acoustic” fad. But he is very much his own man, traveling and playing with a determined Western independence and an easy hospitality towards those he encounters along the way.
And so it was that along came Eli West - another unique twenty-something who came by this music more circuitously, but sharing the same authenticity and Western spirit – and their mutual musical easy-goingness found some common ground in which wonderful things grow. The roots are strong, the branches are shady, and the guitars, banjos, mandolins and voices carry you far off the beaten path to a Good Place out under open Western skies.
“A Suzuki Violin kid that took a left turn early on, Eli West has been a busy multi-instrumentalist since, sitting in with members of the Wailin Jenny’s, Crooked Still, Michelle Shocked, and others. He was the voice and guitar behind the Seattle-based Loose Digits, and now finds it quite comfortable to be in a duo with Cahalen.
A Los Angeles-based singer/writer of eclectic roots-inspired songs, Shaun Cromwell uses his guitar, banjo, and voice to weave tales of intrigue and epics of sorrow. He draws heavily from the pantheon of American roots traditions, but infuses the music with more contemporary influences such as Bill Frisell, Lowell George, and Tom Waits.
“Shaun Cromwell has the unmistakable sound of someone who has put in the time and the heart, someone who has truly got inside the music.”
- Peter Mulvey: Singer-Songwriter
Cahalen Morrison & Zoe Muth
Tickets: $8 advance, $10 at the door.
Click here to purchase advance tickets.
Amongst red rocks, dry soil, and clear sky, Cahalen Morrison was reared on Hot Rize, Doc Watson, Norman Blake and Rory Block while running around in a diaper, trying (at times unsuccessfully) not to fall into patches of prickly pear. Now, he’s got the ears for roots music. Hopping effortlessly from fingerpicking to mandolin, clawhammer banjo to lap slide guitar, Cahalen’s writing encompasses everything from punchy political commentaries, to soul warming serenades, branching out into instrumental rags and fiddle tunes, yet still retaining his subtle musical signature.
Though only 24, he is quite well traveled, having toured nonstop for 2 years. In June of 2008, Cahalen debuted his first full length record. Subcontinent has been applauded by his peers, and by spun regularly by DJs and fans across the country. After its release, Cahalen hit the road hard, not spending more than two weeks anywhere for a solid 13 months before taking a break. From Santa Fe to Seattle, New Orleans to Minneapolis, Nashville to Boston, he has played most every nook and cranny of this fine country.
In November of 2009, Cahalen released his second record, a live album entitled Old-Timey & New-Fangled featuring his father Dave Morrison on guitar and fiddle, Santa Fe fiddler Andy Cameron, and Jenny Fisher on harmony vocals. OT&NF was recorded live on August 14th, at the historic Western Jubilee Warehouse Theater in downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado by Butch Hause (engineer for Norman Blake, Don Edwards, and Waddie Mitchell.)
Joining Cahalen will be Eli West, former singer and guitarist of the bluegrass band Loose Digits, playing musical chairs on clawhammer banjo, flatpicking guitar, and octave mandolin.
Sharing the bill with Cahalen is Seattle’s own Zoe Muth.
