2009

FRI JUN 19  8:30  OPEN STAGE

SAT JUN 20  8:30   OPEN STAGE

BILL CAMPLIN solo/ Josh Harty

Josh Harty began playing music in his hometown of Kindred, North Dakota when he was six years old. From the beginning his music was marked by a love of gospel, country, and blues, and over the years Harty’s sound has mellowed into a catalog of original songs that is at once greater than the sum of its parts and most assuredly rooted in its origins. In a career that has spanned 24 years, Harty has graduated from playing nursing homes and Lion’s Clubs with his father, to opening for music legends such as Iris Dement, Kelly Joe Phelps, Robert Cray, and B.B. King. On his second solo outing, Long List of Lies, Harty delivers on the promise of his immense and singular talent.

"..one of Madison's best singer songwriter's ... 'heavily influenced by the guitar work of Eric Clapton, has a waft of gospel soul and is entrenched deep in the spirit of storytelling."
- Dane 101

"I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The pros in Austin and Nashville have nothing on this guy."
Tom Laskin - Isthmus (Sep 4, 2008)
www.joshharty.com

FRI JUL 24  8:30    

JOHN SIEGER & the SUB-CONTINENTALS/ Satchel Paige

SAT JUL 25  8:30 OPEN STAGE

WED AUG 5  8:00   $12.50 advance  

SLAID CLEAVES

www.slaidcleaves.com

THU AUG 6  8:00  $15 

DAYNA KURTZ & MAMIE MINCH- songs for Hazel Dickens

In our experience, Dayna is magic.  We trust that anyone she collaborates with share her qualities.  She and Mamie are releasing a record with the songs of Hazel Dickens - the Appalachian bluegrass singer who collaborated with Mike Seeger's wife Alice Gerrard in the duo known as Hazel and Alice. Dickens appeared in the documentary "Harlan County, USA" and also contributed four songs to its soundtrack. She also appeared in the films Matewan and Songcatcher.

Dayna Kurtz began performing her original compositions in public as a teenager, and subsequently spent the better part of a decade touring solo across the back roads of America, selling CD's out of her trunk and mesmerizing club and festival crowds with her riveting live performances. Along the way, she opened shows for the likes of Richie Havens (who became a fan and lent guest vocals to her debut studio album, Postcards from Downtown).

The last few years has found Dayna winning over new fans in the New York City music scene. In the past two years she has been invited to open up for Rufus Wainwright, Antony & the Johnsons, and Keren Ann. Additionally, Dayna has won over fellow "Living Room" habitué Norah Jones, who sings a duet with Dayna on "I Got It Bad…" (From Beautiful Yesterday). Outside of her new hometown, the legendary Richard Thompson invited Dayna to open up for a coast-to-coast nationwide tour that found Dayna converting some of his faithful fans.

The fan response and critical attention generated by Kurtz's grass roots touring efforts inevitably drew interest from the mainstream music industry. Despite her indie status, Dayna has found an enthusiastic audience, winning high-profile guest spots on such radio shows as World Cafe, Mountain Stage and NPR's Morning Edition. But nowhere has the interest in Dayna's music been more pronounced than in Holland, where Dayna's debut studio album soared into the top 20 of the album charts on the strength of the hit single "Love Gets in the Way". In the summer of 2003, Dayna went from performing in front of 50 people at the Living Room in New York City's lower east side, to headlining the fabled Paradiso theatre in Amsterdam in front of 1000 people in what would be her first of many sold out shows in the Netherlands in the months to follow. Dayna has since then discovered a larger audience in Europe, and this spring alone will find her in Greece, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the UK.

But Dayna Kurtz has worked too hard to allow such adulation to go to her head. "Every step I've taken has felt really organic, and like they've been made at the right time," she states, adding, "The records I've made feel like honest expressions of where I'm at musically, and the making of them has been joyful and interesting."

"Besides, every musician should feel like a rock star in at least one country."
 

Singer and guitarist Mamie Minch sounds something like a well fleshed out 78 record. She is known in Brooklyn as the area's premier blueswoman, interpreting - and writing- antique blues songs and ballads. After a listen it will be clear- this is the music Miss Mamie seems meant to sing. Growing up in a seafaring family along the East Coast and eventually landing in small town Delaware, she got used to travel, attachment and loss- and early on managed to alienate herself from her peers by falling in love with lots of dead guitar players. Her biggest influences when she was young and learning to play were blues guitarists Bukka White and the Reverend Gary Davis- these giants helped her develop the percussive, intricate resonator work for which she's known. She made it to New York as soon as she was grown and her fascination with early blues found kindred spirits in a group of 78 collectors who'd throw listening parties for their rarest finds. She developed her repertoire and songwriting style listening to Memphis Minnie, Sara Martin and Bessie Smith- their shameless sexuality and the winking, confessional nature of their songs was a revelation.

In 2004 she co-founded The Roulette Sisters, a popular all-woman retro quartet that performed originals and covered blues, country tunes and early girl group harmony peices by groups like the Boswell Sisters. They released one record, Nerve Medicine, on the Soapbox Records label. Since leaving the band in 2007 she's travelled extensively and made music in many places- rabblerousing around Europe with anarchist Italian street bands, playing guitar and listening to 78s with R. Crumb in the south of France, and playing concerts and street shows all over Brooklyn and the world. She has shared the stage with Dayna Kurtz, Jolie Holland, Bliss Blood, Norah Jones and loads of other talented friends. She self-released her first solo record, Razorburn Blues, in 2008.
 

2009