Four concerts between January and April feature touring bands and special guests performing across an array of genres, including:
Alt-Country, Folk Rock, American Jazz, and Bluegrass.
All concerts held at Weston Playhouse at Walker Farm.
WESTON, VT (January 16, 2019) – The Weston Playhouse Theatre Company has announced a new music series, WALKER FARM MUSIC, to be presented at their new, state-of-the-art performance facility, Walker Farm in Weston, VT.
The music lineup includes Alt-Country and Americana wailers, THE MALLETT BROTHERS BAND with support from guitar-picking nostalgia-ist, HUCK NOTARI; Folk and Root rockers, THE DAVID WAX MUSEUM with support from timeless multi-instrumentalists, CARLING & WILL; American Jazz stylings from the JOE DAVIDIAN TRIO; and, foot-tapping Bluegrass by THE LONESOME ACE STRINGBAND with support from THE TERRIBLE MOUNTAIN STRINGBAND.
First to perform is THE MALLETT BROTHERS BAND (Saturday, January 26th at 7:00pm | Walker Farm). The Mallett Brothers Band’s busy tour schedule over the past seven years has helped them to build a dedicated fanbase across the U.S. and beyond while still calling the state of Maine their home. With a style that ranges from alt-country to Americana, country, jam and roots rock, theirs is a musical melting pot that’s influenced equally by the singer/songwriter tradition and by harder rock, classic country, and psychedelic sounds. Texas Hill Country Explore Magazine calls them “New England’s wildly eclectic crew of genre rebels.” Bill Copeland Music News says “Combining their authentic roots rock sound with a reflective lyrical style that perceives stories on the level of epic myth, it’s like William Faulkner has been resurrected with an electric guitar in hand..”
—HUCK NOTARI offers support on the evening. His lyrics and authentic guitar picking are timeless and draw his listeners into a place of nostalgia, broken hearts and old values. It was his grandfather, Glenn Burris, a Broadway singer who first sparked Hucks curiosity of singing at a young age. Huck Notari grew up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where his parents first introduced him to the piano and he taught himself to play the guitar at the age of 17. Huck later moved to Eugene, Oregon where he joined up with a country blues, ragtime band called the Kitchen Syncopators (with Gill Landry of Old Crow Medicine Show, Woody Pines and Felix Hatfield) and toured up and down the west coast. He also found himself in New Orleans, where he was a Charlie Chaplin mime on Royal Street. But it wasn’t until 2007, when he moved to Oregon City that Huck discovered his own voice and wrote his first album, “Highland”, followed by his second album,” Very Long Dream”, in 2009 and his third, “Huck Notari and the River” in 2013.
Next, Walker Farm Music presents DAVID WAX MUSEUM (Saturday, February 16 at 7:00pm | Walker Farm). Entertainment Weekly describes the music as “Andrew Bird with a Mexican Folk bent”. The roots of David Wax Museum stretch back nearly a decade, and all the way from New England to Mexico. As a student at Harvard, Wax began traveling south of the border to study and immerse himself in the country’s traditional music and culture. Back in Boston, he met fiddler/singer Suz Slezak, whose love of traditional American and Irish folk music fused with Wax’s Mexo-Americana into a singular, energetic blend that captivated audiences and critics alike.
Their 2010 breakout performance at the Newport Folk Festival made them the most talked-about band of the weekend, with NPR hailing them as “pure, irresistible joy.” They released a trio of albums that earned escalating raves everywhere from SPIN and Entertainment Weekly to the New York Times and The Guardian (which dubbed the music “global crossover at its best”). They earned an invitation to return to Newport, this time on the main stage, as well as dates supporting The Avett Brothers, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Buena Vista Social Club, and more.
—Support on the evening is provided by CARLING & WILL. Both multi-instrumentalists, Carling & Will combine elements of traditional music with contemporary melodic instrumentation. Carling Berkhout and William Seeders Mosheim were playing old songs together on back porches before forming officially as a duo in 2016. Their self-titled EP is a collection of American tunes and folksongs.
Carling & Will’s forthcoming album expands beyond the confines of old-time, with a modern sound deeply rooted in the style and history of traditional music. These new songs feel timeless, built on the rich drone of an electric guitar and the warm and lyrical open-back banjo.
In March, Walker Farm Music presents the JOE DAVIDIAN TRIO (Saturday, March 23 at 7:00pm | Walker Farm). Joe returns to his home state of Vermont to perform with an all star trio featuring Vermont legends Anthony Santor on bass and Conor Elmes on drums for a night of piano jazz trio that is not to be missed. The trio will be exploring unique takes on the classic American jazz songbook as well as original music.
Joe has released three albums under his name. The first, “For The Birds” [1999] was released while Joe was still in high school, winning critical acclaim in local media; “JD3: Live” [2001] captures an exciting live concert performance; and the most recent, “Silent Fire,” [2005] features mostly original compositions. Joe has performed at numerous festivals, including Festival Miami, Discover Jazz Festival, and the Ballydehob International Jazz Festival in Ireland. He has opened for Jane Monheit, Dianne Reeves and Danilo Perez, and has backed a “who’s who” of jazz artists, including Dave Liebman, Carmen Lundy, Duffy Jackson, Kevin Mahogany, Bob Mintzer, and Ira Sullivan. In addition to his classes at the NJW, he tours nationally and internationally with his trio, teaches adjunct piano at Belmont University and also maintains an extensive private teaching studio.
Rounding out the series in April is THE LONESOME ACE STRINGBAND (April 7 at 3:00pm | Walker Farm), presented in partnership with the Green Mountain Bluegrass & Roots Festival in Manchester, VT. The Lonesome Ace Stringband is an old-time band with bluegrass chops that play some righteous folk and country music. There’s a depth of groove and sense of space not often heard in bluegrass today, a level of instrumental interplay and vocal blend uncommon in old-time, and an on-stage rapport that transcends all of this.
Three Canadians lost in the weird and wonderful traditional country music of the American South, the band members Chris Coole (banjo), John Showman (fiddle) and Max Heineman (bass) are each journeyman musicians and veterans of some of Canada’s top roots music acts (New Country Rehab, The David Francey Band, The Foggy Hogtown Boys, Fiver). Instrumentation alone instantly sets LAS’s sound apart: consisting of just fiddle, clawhammer banjo, and upright bass, the band moves freely between having a sound so powerful that it doesn’t seem like it should be coming from a trio, to a sparseness and fragility that draws the listener in and refreshes the ear. All three are compelling lead singers, each with his own character and range. This allows for the vocal texture to shift depending on how the song needs to feel – and what the song has to say. When those voices come together the power of the harmonies is unshakable. It’s clear to anyone who’s heard LAS that they just don’t sound like any other band.
Wherever they go, listeners will hear a compelling and original band fueled by the creative spirit that is the seed of all traditional music.
—Support on the evening is offered by THE TERRIBLE MOUNTAIN STRINGBAND. Terrible Mountain Stringband fuses original, contemporary, and traditional material, bringing heartfelt new life and relevance to the chain of American folk music. Third generation fiddle players, Ida Mae and Lila Specker were born in a one-room cabin in the woods of Vermont and learned to play the fiddle from their father, John Specker. Together with Josh Norman on guitar, vocals and percussion, Lila and Ida Mae formed Terrible Mountain Stringband in 2017. Carrying on the legacy of their forefathers, the band pays homage to the past while continuously evolving their unique sound.
Walker Farm Music is sponsored by LONG TRAIL BREWING and MARVIN WINDOWS.
Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Children 12 and under are free (PROMO CODE: “Under12” to reserve children’s tickets online). Save 10% on total ticket price when purchasing tickets for two or more events in the series (PROMO CODE: “WFM10”).
The Weston Playhouse Theatre Company is a non-profit organization supported in part by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and an ever-growing family of individuals and organizations who believe in the impact that the performing arts makes on its community.