Shows are held in the great room of the common house at Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage. It's a cozy, comfortable space that’s perfectly adapted to house concerts. The acoustics are terrific and our audiences are very attentive and appreciative. The room easily accommodates about 45 people, but we’ve had as many as 75 (a very full house!).
This will be Cindy & Grey's third appearance at Common House Concerts. And for good reason. Their music is sublime, their interactions with the audience warm and engaging, and an evening spent in their company inevitably feels altogether too short.
Rupert Wates is a versatile, adept songwriter and a dazzling instrumentalist whose music is an eclectic mix of acoustic, art/folk, jazz, vaudeville, and cabaret. He has won over 50 songwriting and performing awards and has released twelve solo CDs.
Multistyle violinist Mari Black's dynamic performances are infused with a sense of playfulness and a deep love of the history behind the music. She weaves together driving dance tunes with beloved stories that give the music depth and life.
It's almost impossible to hear John John Brown sing and not think of John Prine. John John's voice, his songwriting, and his playing style seem to be channeling that great folk music icon. But John John Brown is definitely charting his own path.
The bluegrass and folk music worlds, once the exclusive domain of Monroe and Seeger-style traditionalists, have spun off an array of contemporary artists who've taken those forms to surprising places. Rachel Sumner and Traveling Light, for example.
Cosy Sheridan is one clever and thoughtful songwriter: "a Buddhist monk trapped in the body of a singer-songwriter," if you will! She is wildly entertaining, with a keen and wicked eye for the excesses of our screen-addicted, fast-food culture.
Apart from the Cape Breton fiddlers and Quebecois acts, Canadian music doesn't get a lot of attention here in the States. That's a damned shame. And we're doing our bit to remedy that by bringing you a true star in the Canadian folk firmament.
