Saturday June 15, 2024

Chris LaVancher New England Area Songwriter WITH RURAL PENNSYLVANIA ROOTS Chris LaVancher released his third full-length album in November 2021 – “After The Flood” a collection of songs full of heart from a seasoned and skilled craftsman mining life’s subject matter – family, work, love and love lost, childhood memories, and finding one's place in the universe. Chris’s performance evokes a mini-movie festival in your head, complete with a full soundtrack. He writes cinematic, character-driven songs. His song Nostalgia from his second album, Big Fat Love, received an honorable mention in the 2018 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival Songwriting Contest. In 2023 and 2014 Chris was selected as a Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist. He was also selected for the Suzi Wollenberg Folk DJ Showcase at the North East Regional Folk Alliance. Chris grew up in a small town in the hills of North Central Pennsylvania where he learned to observe the many wonderful characters that inhabited that little town. Today he lives just north of Boston Massachusetts, a Mecca for folk singers and songwriters, but much of his inspiration still goes back to that little town in Pennsylvania. The Lied To's Susan J. Levine and Doug Kwartler were award-winning solo singer-songwriters when they first met at a folk festival in 2009. After reconnecting at an open mic in 2013, Levine began recording in Kwartler’s recording studio. The two started sharing gigs and discovered that they were a match both musically and personally. Three albums and nine years later, the pair, who took their name from The Everly Brothers’ “When Will I Be Loved,” continues to share music and life. Between them, they have been finalists at the Kerrville Folk Festival, Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, the Rocky Mountain Folks Fest, and the International Songwriting Competition, among others. Kwartler is a respected music producer who owns and runs Hollow Body Recording Studios in Chelmsford, MA. His songs have been featured on network tv shows including CSI, All My Children, The Young and the Restless and Dark Blue. The Secret Sauce Janet Feld is an award-winning performing songwriter, appearing at folk festivals and coffeehouses from coast to coast throughout a nearly four-decade career. She's been teaching general music classes and private lessons to people of all ages since the 1980s. Since 2000, she's been teaching guitar and songwriting at The Passim School of Music and is the founder and Chief Music Officer at Janet’s Planet: Music Lessons for Humanoids, Inc. She has recorded 5 CDs and published her first book in 2023 for music teachers, Practicing Safe Music - Create an emotionally and magical experience for your music students, while rocking your self care. Esther Friedman is a Boston-based acoustic singer & songwriter. She started writing songs in the mid-nineties after moving to the area from Cleveland, for Lesley University’s Expressive Art Therapy, Master’s Degree program. Inspired by buskers who braved street corners and t-stops she started writing and performing. Today, she provides therapy in a private practice, counseling those in recovery from trauma, while performing and song writing as much as humanly possible. Jackie Damsky was originally trained as a classical violinist, and has developed a unique improvisational style over a range of genres including jazz, folk, blues, acoustic rock, and popular music. From halls and clubs to the recording studio, Jackie’s warm and sweet, passionate and evocative violin playing leaves listeners profoundly affected and deeply moved. Jackie weaves a harmonic tapestry with her fellow musicians, adding depth, color, richness… and a little magic. Tom Smith One fanciful fan put it this way, “If you could combine the DNA of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie with that of Robert Frost and Kermit the Frog you would end up with someone very much like Tom Smith.” In the words of noted WUMB-FM Boston radio DJ, Dave Palmater – “Contrary to what a lot of people think, folk music is still a living tradition. It’s a living tradition that feeds on new songs that speak of people’s wants, people’s needs, people’s struggles and people’s triumphs. Tom Smith is more out of the tradition of say Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton than Jackson Browne or Connor Oberst. He’s a man who writes songs that seem like they’ve always been there. There are very few songwriters working today that I would call folksingers, but I would call Tom Smith a true folksinger.” Veteran singer/songwriter Barbara Kessler writes, “Tom Smith will make you laugh and cry (maybe even in the same song) – a very captivating songwriter and performer.” Tom grew up in rural Pennsylvania in a family where music was part of the fabric of everyday life. As a young man living at the epicenter of the folk-quake that was Cambridge, MA in the 1960’s, Tom solidified what has become a life-long love of self-made music. Now a folk veteran of over forty-five years, Tom performs at festivals, coffeehouses, schools, and concerts throughout the Northeastern United States to audiences large and small, young and old. In Tom’s popular monthly blog The Kitchen Musician, going strong since 2007, Tom uses his music to reflect on modern life. Mark Stepakoff Boston area singer-songwriter Mark Stepakoff is widely admired on the local folk and roots music scene for his trademark mix of wry humorous material and poignant ballads, in the vein of songwriters such as Loudon Wainwright III and John Prine, to whom he has often been compared. He has won numerous songwriting awards and his songs have reached as high as Number 3 on the national folk radio airplay chart. Mark performs frequently in the Boston area. He has headlined on a number of occasions at Cambridge's legendary Club Passim, and has also headlined or been featured at (among many other venues) Johnny D's, the Burren, Tupelo Music Hall, Nashville's Bluebird Cafe and Listening Room, and the Center for Arts in Natick, where he hosts the bi-weekly folk open mike. Mark has appeared on WCVB/Channel 5's "Chronicle" program and New England Cable News' "Coffeehouse" program, and his music has been featured in the HBO series "Made For Love", the Netflix series "Bodkin", and the motion picture "Americana" starring Sydney Sweeney and Halsey. Among the artists he has opened for are Bill Morrissey, Steve Forbert, Buskin & Batteau, Christine Lavin, Cheryl Wheeler, Don White, Kevin So, Geoff Bartley, Claudia Schmidt, Susie Burke & David Surrette, and the James Montgomery Band. Erin Ash Sullivan A New England native, Erin Ash Sullivan’s music reflects a deep sense of place, and her lyrics—sometimes heartfelt, sometimes funny—are always authentic and drawn from her lived experience, harnessing the power of story to build connection. Victor Infante of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette describes her music as “delicate and evocative” with songs full of “nuance and emotional resonance.” Erin’s 2021 debut solo album, We Can Hear Each Other, reached #10 on the FAI DJ Chart, and in 2023, she was a “Most Wanted” selection from the Grassy Hill Emerging Artist Showcase at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. An award-winning songwriter, she has been the winner of the Rose Garden Coffeehouse Performing Songwriter Competition, recipient of the Mark Erelli Judge's Choice Award in the New England Songwriting Competition, and a finalist in the Great American Song Contest and the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest. Her second full-length album, Signposts and Marks, will be released in June 2024.