 A tremendous bill featuring the brilliant World Cafe mainstay Dar Williams, plus a familiar face with special guest Shawn Mullins!
Dar Williams
Dar Williams has become a major force on the New England folk scene. An idiosyncratic songwriter who writes folk songs from a unique, often insightful perspective, Williams takes pains to avoid the coy, and the quirky; her songwriting and performing style has been compared to that of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez but with a few acidic and, at times, hilarious twists.
Williams claims to draw much inspiration from her home community. Her love of the folk scene stems from her admiration of its integrity toward honesty and real emotion, and a creative freedom not found in more popular music genres. She loves trying to use traditional methods to express the realities and foibles of contemporary life. After several self-released cassettes, Williams made her proper debut in 1993 with the independent Honesty Room to considerable critical acclaim for both her beautiful soprano voice and her lovely, intriguing songs. She signed to Razor and Tie Records the following year who reissued the album. Her second album, Mortal City (1995) has been similarly praised, and was followed by 1997's End of the Summer. Williams performs on the college and coffeehouse circuit and has also been winning rave reviews for festival appearances, including the Newport Folk Festival and the Mississippi River Music Fest, St. Louis; she issued Cry, Cry, Cry in 1998. The Green World followed two years later. Over the next few years, Williams remained a major facet on the concert trail; she also recorded songs during this two year trek across America and Europe. She hooked with Alison Krauss, Bela Fleck, Dave Matthews Band's Stefan Lessard, trumpet player Chris Botti and others for the impressive The Beauty of Rain, which appeared in February 2003. My Better Self, Williams' most personal set of her career yet, followed two years later.
 Shawn Mullins
Atlanta-based folksinger and songwriter Shawn Mullins was serving as a member of the U.S. Army Airborne Infantry Division when he released his first self-titled cassette on his own SM label in 1989. Following the release of 1991's Everchanging World, he left the military after eight years to pursue music on a full-time basis. After three years spent fruitlessly searching for a record deal, he established a new label, SMG, and released the LPs Better Days and Big Blue Sky in the interim. After 1995's Jeff's Last Dance, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (live companion discs recorded jointly with Matthew Kahler), Mullins returned a year later with the solo Eggshells. Soul's Core, his first album for major label Columbia, followed in 1998, scoring a Top Ten hit with the single "Lullaby." The album eventually went platinum, paving the way for an anthology of his early work with 1999's The First Ten Years. In fall 2000, Mullins released the official follow-up to Soul's Core, Beneath the Velvet Sun. The Essential Shawn Mullins collection arrived in 2003, followed by 9th Ward Pickin' Parlor for Vanguard Records in 2006. He remained with Vanguard for 2008's honeydew, which was inspired by (and recorded in) his native Georgia.
Check out - Dar Williams: "Promised Land" coming this September!
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Dar Williams will release her first album of original material in over three years, PROMISED LAND, in September. With clean, driving production by Brad Wood (Pete Yorn, Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins), the album features 12 songs that showcase Dar's signature wide range of stories and social themes on songs including "It's Alright," "The Easy Way," and "Buzzer." Dar also does a cover of "Midnight Radio" from the acclaimed rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, as well as a cover of the Fountains of Wayne song "Troubled Times." Lending support on the album are such renowned artists as Suzanne Vega, Marshall Crenshaw, and Gary Louris (of the Jayhawks). |
Check out - Shawn Mullins: "Honeydew" out now!
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1. All In My Head
2. Home
3. The Ballad of Kathryn Johnston
4. Homeless Joe
5. Leaving All Your Troubles Behind
6. Fraction of a Man
7. See That Train
8. For America
9. Cabbagetown
10. Nameless Faces
11. Song of the Self (Chapter 2)
12. Rewind the Years |
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