Ali Marcus, Trina Willard and Michael Connolly
Tickets: $13 advance, $15 at the door
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Please join us for this “in-the-round” style show as Ali Marcus, Trina Willard, and Michael Connolly share the Empty Sea stage for a night of tight harmonies, singing strings, and general merriment.
Ali Marcus is a Seattle-based songwriter who tours the country singing songs for people. She has sang at festivals around America, including CMJ, Northwest Folklife Festival, and Noise for the Needy. She has sang in lots of awesome joints, like the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, IOTA Cafe in Virginia, the Evening Muse in Charlotte, the Starry Plough in Berkeley, the Experience Music Project in Seattle. She runs her own label and produces her own music and books her own tours. She also writes her own press releases, and talks about herself in the third person.
In the past year, Ali has toured in 15 states, including NYC’s CMJ, Nashville’s Bluebird Café, DC’s IOTA Café, Cambridge’s Lizard Lounge, Berkeley’s Starry Plough, and Seattle’s Experience Music Project. She has recently wrapped up a four-month tour of the Pacific Northwest with a trip to Oregon and California, hitting up places like the Makeout Room in San Francisco, the East Village in Monterey, and the redwoods along the way.
Trina Willard is a third generation folk singer from Missouri, her musical roots grounded both in the Southern Baptist music she
grew up with and the traditional Appalachian songs her grandparents brought to her from the coal mines. During her early years in St. Louis, she performed with St. Louis Opera Theater as well as the Repertory Theater of St. Louis. Upon moving to the Northwest her folk roots were nurtured by our region’s vibrant folk music scene.
She has performed with the Seattle Peace Chorus, which also commissioned her work as a composer, debuting one of her pieces at the International Choral Festival in Santiago de Cuba. Trina directed the vocal trio, Trillium, writing unique harmonies for traditional and original spirituals, folk songs, and a cappella works. She has performed her uplifting, socially conscious music across the country at conferences, protests, and gatherings, anywhere people want to sing their hopes, dreams, questions, and passion for life.
“One of the purest voices mixed with a soul from heaven leaves us with a musical experience not to be forgotten.”
“A voice like Baez with poetry that rivals Emily Saliers.”
A versatile multi-instrumentalist, performer, and teacher, Michael Connolly has been steeped in acoustic music since his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee. While his most called-for instruments are fiddle, mandolin, and accordion, Michael also performs and records on Hammond organ, piano, uilleann pipes, tinwhistle, harp, and guitar.
Michael’s familiarity with a range of genres from classical to jazz, Irish to old-time has landed him in a number of performance situations from recording with the University of Michigan Symphony to playing celidh dances in Saint Paul pubs to sharing the stage with the Indigo Girls. As a sideman, Michael has backed musicians such as Coyote Grace, Korby Lenker, Captain Gravel, Amber Darland, The Starlings, Kate Graves and others.
Chuck E. Costa & Amber Darland
Tickets: $10.00 in advance, $12.00 at the door.
Click here to purchase advance tickets.
Chuck E. Costa‘s candid and visceral delivery of literate and well-crafted contemporary folk tunes has steadily raised his profile on the national club, coffeehouse and festival circuits.
Chuck never started playing guitar. Instead, he started rummaging through the basement in search of his grandfather’s baseball cards. Meddling through stacks of old china and piles of winter coats, he never found them. Something found him instead. Strumming it’s scraggly strings; a progression of broken chords, he played with an honesty and innocence that would be preserved in the songs he would later write.
Since earning a degree in philosophy in Boulder, Chuck, a native New Yorker, returned to the Northeast and released 3 independent albums and an EP since 2002. He is a modern day troubadour who has been touring the country consistently for several years cutting his teeth as a performer and songwriter. With his dulcet voice and emotive lyrics Chuck has grown into a singer/songwriter with a unique and honest voice.
Last year, Chuck released his third independent release Where the Songs Come From. Chuck teamed up with Mark Thayer of Signature Sounds to create an album of rich arrangements that stay true to the heart of each of Chuck’s candid and visceral songs. The opening track was selected to be featured on a compilation released by Hear Music in every Starbucks in North America. The album appeared on the Billboard charts in its first week of release.
He has shared the stage with such diverse nationally touring acts as; Rosanne Cash, The Weepies, Pete Seeger, Peter Case, Dar Williams, Josh Ritter and Andrew Bird to name a few.
“Sensitive, introspective…inspired.” – The New York Times
Amber Darland is one of the most exciting up-and-coming singer songwriters of the Pacific
Northwest. Darland’s
intensely personal music has the passion reminiscent of Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams and Shawn Colvin and the soulfulness of k.d. lang, the Carpenters and Dar Williams. She is a master at making the simple, evocative.
Amber’s music is compelling because it’s both political and deeply personal – and by design, purposeful. In her performances, the listener becomes an integral part of the moment. Darland’s delivery of powerful, honest poetry with pure vocals, strong melodies, infectious rhythms and personal stories keep the audience engaged and experiencing a wave of emotions. It is not uncommon for her listeners to move from tears to laughter or from personal reflection to political action in response to her music.
Amber Darland has shared the stage with Ferron, Tret Fure, Catie Curtis, Mary Gauthier, Laura Love, Adrianne, Sweet Talk Radio, Coyote Grace, Angie Evans, Nedra Johnson, Jen Todd, Gene Tagaban, Chris Pureka, Misled, and many others.
Kat Eggleston & Robyn Landis
Tickets: $13 in advance, $15 at the door.
Click here to purchase advance tickets.
Kat Eggleston 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
Kat has released five CDs to date, three of which are available from Waterbug Music, one from Redwing Music, and the most recent – Speak – in August 2009 as an independent release.
Also an actor, teacher and hammered dulcimer player, Kat has been a lead singer with The Otters and with Bohola, and recorded a duo CD with Kate MacLeod. She has played live and on recordings with David Bromberg, Bohola, the David Munnelly Band, Niamh Parsons, Jim Tullio, Tom Dundee, Dennis Cahill, Michael Smith, Brooks Williams, Andrew Calhoun, and many others. She has toured in Europe, Australia, Ireland, England, and Scotland as well as the U.S.
Robyn Landis is a writer of unusual depth and literacy. Her distinctive, powerful command of songcraft garners repeated
comparisons to Richard Shindell and Dar Williams.
Writing poetry at four and her first published magazine piece by 19, Robyn had a full career as a writer and author (publishing two bestselling health books in her twenties) before turning her focus to music. Her gifts and skills as a writer, applied to songcraft, earned her quick recognition. Since 2005 she has accrued more than 40 songwriting awards and honors.
She has won Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, first place at Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, second place in the Unisong International Songwriting Competition, a Telluride Troubadors honorable mention, and was a Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist in 2009.
Robyn is especially respected for her unflinching honesty, vulnerability, and fierce intelligence. Her courageous, heartfelt songs tackle subjects ranging from war to weather to love; adoption and dementia, betrayal and longing, friendship, child abuse, old sitcoms, and the environment.
Unpretentious, wistful and intimate vocals infuse her memorable folk-pop-Americana melodies with warmth and feeling.
Her followup/solo recording Many Moons, released May 2009, has guest appearances by Michael Lille, Mark Graham, Kat Eggleston, Larry Murante, Joe and Karena Prater (Cat Loves Crow), and Hans York; and features Paul Elliott on fiddle and Cary Black on bass.
Mark Tucker of Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange (FAME) says of Many Moons, “Every cut here is a keeper, and Landis obviously either lavished a good deal of time on the arrangements or has a natural gift for it, probably both. Like David Wilcox, her work is rich with sympathy for human frailty and the thousand and one disappointments the flesh is heir to… Robyn Landis, I’m quite sure, waited until her art was fully matured and, man, does it ever show.”
Indie-Music.com says, “Smooth vocals, like an earthy Laurie Lewis…Landis has won a lot of songwriting awards, and it’s easy to see why…Her writing is like a good short story.”
Nancy Vivolo, VICTORY REVIEW: “…smooth vocals caress the sensitive poetry and bittersweet sorrow…With each literary illustration, the landscape blurs by around another winding curve and bump in the road; another set of headlights grow then disappear in a flash, and yet a ghostly image remains…she can put you behind the wheel with her cohesive words and melody. Landis has been turning heads at many songwriters’ contests and festivals and as a result has chocked up her share of nominations and awards. Listening to the content and production quality of Many Moons, there is no doubt as to why…Many Moons is a brightly polished piece of work that will capture and carry you gently along on an intricate narrative adventure; an exceptional release.”
Sarah Sample & Kate Graves w/ Michael Connolly
Tickets: $10 in advance, $12 at the door.
Click here to purchase advance tickets.
Sarah Sample dishes up a plate of acoustic folk rock that is salty and sweet. In an era littered with shoegazing introverts, tragically detached hipsters, and overly stylized pop tarts, she stands out like a big, beautiful sore thumb. She lets the audience in by witnessing to what is known and felt by most of us. And wrapping it up in a way we may never have heard- or felt- it before. Engaging, witty, real. The songs and the moment become everyone’s. Just ask audiences from Austin, Texas to Logan, Utah where Sarah has played coffeehouses, concert halls, amphitheaters, and street corners with artists like Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart, Peter Breinholt, Julie Hill, and Colors.
The last thing Sarah Sample wanted to make was just another folkie -girl-with-acoustic-guitar album. Sure, the songs were born as just an acoustic guitar and a voice. And, in the folk tradition she loves and respects so much, would likely be taken across America that way. But she didn’t want to document them that way. At least not this time. Enter Scott Wiley (Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman, Elliott Smith) and a new sonic palette. With plenty of reverence for the songs– because, after all, it’s all about the songs– they set out to take Sarah’s music into new territory. The album Never Close Enough is to Sarah Sample as “Flaming Red” is to Patty Griffin: a marked departure from a promising, acoustic debut but never too far away from her soulful folk roots.
Kate Graves writes little songs….little songs that are raw. She tries to spread them around like wildflower seeds. She likes wildflowers. If she could be a plant, she would be a thistle branch. She sometimes worries that by saying she would be a thistle branch, she is saying that she symbolically pricks things, but she still picks the thistle branch as her flower totem.
Kate Graves is neurotic. She’s okay with this term and generally uses it as a term of endearment…or when somebody is really bugging her.
Kate Graves likes kissing. And singing. And trying to explain to the world that her chihuahua is just scared and not really cold-hearted.
Appearing with Kate is Empty Sea’s own Michael Connolly, a versatile southern-born multi-instrumentalist whose fiddle, mandolin, and accordion have shared the stage with Coyote Grace, Captain Gravel, Korby Lenker, the Barbed Wire Cutters, and the Indigo Girls.
Kate and Michael share tight harmonies, beautifully understated phrasing, and the love of a good novelty song.
