Friday, March 13 7:30pm Jackie Tice

Radio programmers from New York City and Boston to Chicago and San Francisco have heralded Jackie Tice with banners like, “Best new songwriter”, and “A stand-out!” With the release of her most recent CD, Second Skin, Tice has made full use of her award-winning performing and song writing skills. Produced by 2005 Native American Grammy Winner, Bill Miller, in a week-long studio marathon in Bucks County, PA, Tice steps up and out with ten songs spanning pop-rock, jazz and folk styles. Jamey Haddad, percussion, (Paul Simon, Lenny Kravitz, Dave Liebman) and Pete Cummings, electric guitar, (Tanya Tucker, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley), are among the luminaries who helped create this sonic landscape framing Tice’s lyrical story songs. "She writes songs with messages," says Miller. "Her music has elements of jazz and rock. Hers is a voice that needs to be heard and her songs are as poetic as they are powerful."

"Lyrically brave" is how Acoustic Guitar magazine describes the music of Jackie Tice, adding, "Tice's songs capture instances of universal recognition and appeal. Her ode to a Dublin pub, 'The Marijo Tonight,' is a guitar player's 'Piano Man,' and as bittersweet as John Prine's 'Angel from Montgomery,'

A Kerrville New Folk Award-winner, the co-mingling of Tice's Native American and Old European roots informs her musical and lyrical points of view, carefully combing through subjects from Shakespearian love to the call of coyotes. She's been called "an eloquent storyteller whose songs elevate common experience with subtle layers of meaning," (Richard Fox, WCUW), and an artist with "a poet's touch," writing about "complex, believable characters who grow more vivid with each listen," (R.A.B. Perch, Folk Acoustic Music Exchange.)

Raised in a Pennsylvania steel mill town with a family of twelve, Tice grew up fast and with enough songwriting fodder “to last a lifetime,” she says. Forays into social work and college music theory eventually lead her back to performance and songwriting and her strong Native spiritual roots. Today, she has four albums to her credit, artist endorsement deals with John Pearse Strings and Audix Microphones, and a long list of kudos from major music media in the US, Australia, Italy and Canada. "I love your songs," Lucinda Williams said to Jackie backstage at the Kerrville Festival. Christine Lavin, folk diva of New York City, endorsed Jackie by declaring her song, The Marijo Tonight, "a modern-day classic," and including it on the compilation CD, The Stealth Project: Music Under The Radar.

In 2002, Tice produced a collection of songs inspired by her oil paintings entitled "In These Bones," which, alongside the Doc Watson/David Holt collection, Legacy, was recently nominated as Best Traditional Folk Album by the grassroots JPF Music Awards. In 2003, Tice composed the soundscape for an educational video documentary produced by Rutgers University entitled, Riparian Buffers: Restoring and Managing New Jersey's Streamside Forests.

Tice's song, Domestic Delinquent, was included in the 2002 Random House publication, Life's A Stitch: The Best of Contemporary Women's Humor. An anthology of humorous short stories, poetry, songs, and cartoons-all from the pens of women, and all proceeds donated to benefit charities- it includes the writings of Kathy Najimy, Wendy Wasserstein, Gloria Steinem, Erma Bombeck, Christine Lavin, Julie Gold and others.

Jackie Tice has appeared with many formidable artists. On-stage festival and listening club performances and workshops with Bill Miller, John Gorka, Christine Lavin, Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey, Garnet Rogers, Susan Werner, Frank Christian, Caroline Aiken, Dana Cooper, and others, from Club Passim (Boston) and the Tin Angel (Philadelphia) to the Bluebird Café (Nashville) and Eddie’s Attic (Atlanta) have paved the way for her recognition as an important voice among American songwriters.

"Her songs are as poetic as they are powerful." GRAMMY winner, Bill Miller

"Musically buoyant and lyrically brave tunes - folk-rock with Native American spirituality...Tice's songs capture instances of universal recognition and appeal."

Steve Givens, Acoustic Guitar Magazine

"An eloquent storyteller whose songs elevate common experience with subtle layers of meaning. Jackie's messages are delivered memorably amid graceful, emotive performance."

WCUW, Worcester, MA (Richard Fox.

Phyllis Tannerfrye, a lowland blues singer from South Carolina.

Phyllis is South Carolina's Lowcountry Songster ... and Rag Painter. With a head full of Dylan in the early seventies, she left the Baptist church for rock and roll, left rock and roll in the mid eighties to raise her daughter ..and turned into a song magician on a mission ... her inspiration burst, and she landed on the highway in 2001 as a solo songster. ...so these 'mysterious and beautiful works of art' are rooted in gospel and sixties rock and roll.
What other folks say about Phyllis:

"Phyllis is an artist who refuses narrow categorization. Her talents as an AMERICAN singer songwriter are far too broad for that. I don't want to take this CD out of my player." -DAVID BUTLER, WQFS-FM, Greensboro, NC

"This is what songwriting should be; Phyllis is a winner." -Beth Judy, SUWANNEE SPRINGFEST, Live Oak, FL

"You will listen for the next twist of phrase in Phyllis' intricate lyrics and beautiful melodies. She has highly expressive vocal technique & an engaging stage presence." -Bill Beckett, WUFT-FM, Jacksonville, FL

"Phyllis has a powerful voice with bluesy overtones, and her songs are exquisitely crafted and emotionally compelling." -CHARLOTTE FOLK SOCIETY, Oct'02

Phyllis Tannerfrye is riveting and visionary.." - ANNIE GALLUP, Beat Poet Songwriter Artist

Sunday, February 22 7:30pm Lindsay Mac

Lindsay Mac is a girl you’ll not likely forget. The obvious is that she is the girl who straps her cello to her body. Like a guitar, she strums and plucks it while singing. “A classical education gone horribly wrong” is usually the gist of the local headline. Yet what you’ll remember about this musician might not be the obvious. Beneath the headlines the single most valuable bow in Mac’s indie-music-making quiver is her songwriting. Her songs of love, bewilderment, protest and reverence are what move Lindsay’s fans to drive long distances, to pre-order CDs a year in advance and to spread the word to friends on opposite coasts and throughout the world. And thank God because that cello surely gets heavy.

As you might expect, the bulk of her instrument hasn’t affected thebulk of her tour schedule (though buying an extra seat on the plane has its disadvantages). In her first two years on the road, Lindsay and her cello logged in nearly 300 dates, helping her find her audience and laying the groundwork for multiple North American tours and radio support. The focus of 2008 partly shifted in order to accommodate the recording of her sophomore release, Stop Thinking, though the touring has still been burly with several multi-month tours including the epic Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Preview Tour - 28 shows in 28 days - which included venues like The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Mac also showcased at the 2008 International Folk Alliance Conference and performed on the Main Stage at the Falcon Ridge Festival in July.

Lindsay Mac has been on both the front cover and the cover of the Weekend section of the Boston Globe, the cover of Strings magazine, and has been featured in many other publications such as The New York Times’ About.com, Northeast Performer, Music Connection, and the largest Spanish-language music magazine, Musico Pro.

Lindsay Mac was born in Iowa to bohemian, party-hungry parents. She was classically trained starting at the age of six in church choir and formal training in piano and cello came shortly thereafter. After attending a public high school and, in the summer, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Lindsay enrolled in Dartmouth College to study medicine.

She took advantage of the College’s foreign study opportunities and moved to London to study at the Royal College of Music and then briefly left Dartmouth to study at The San Francisco Conservatory as well as to be a professional ski patroller in Utah and bike messenger.

She returned to Dartmouth, graduated, and starting experimenting with her music while living in a cabin heated by a wood stove. It is there that she found her voice and her unique style was born. Fearing the cello might be used for kindling, she enrolled in Berklee College of Music and shortly thereafter began touring full-time. The rest is yet to come.

Johansson och det starka bandet

February 18, 7:30pm Johansson och det starka bandet, a Swedish band from Goteborg on the Swedish west coast, will give an emigrant themed concert. Tickets are $12 evening of the concert or $10 advance sale, students $5.

The band is going to USA for a tour in February 2009 starting in Chicago February 14th and ending up in Minneapolis February 21st. “Johansson och det starka bandet” has released three albums and plays everything from rock´n roll to pure folk music. The latest album Amerikat is the reason why the band is going to USA to do this tour. The album is a rock-opera and contains 20 songs about the young emigrant Gustav Johansson from Sweden. The project started in 2004 when Martin Johansson, the founder and leader of the band, visited his relatives in Illinois and Minnesota. The trip to USA inspired him to create a story that starts in Dalsland Sweden and goes all the way to Clarkfield Minnesota.

The band will tour with Swedish-American emigrant songs. The repertoire contains both their own material and some really old covers. Some beautiful Swedish-American hymns as well. The tour brings the old Swedish American songs and stories alive and the American audience will understand the content through new translations. Everything is performed with great energy and artistic attitude.

The members of the band include Elisabet Eriksson, 28, viol; Niklas Ottosson, 27, mandolina; Claes Johansson 35, bass; and Martin Johansson, 36, guitar, banjo, harmonica. The band is touring to keep the great adventure of the emigration alive. This is a tour for all people with interest in Swedish-American history and culture. That is why the tour is important, entertaining and great fun.

by Martin Johansson

February 7th, 7:30pm Brian Wicklund and the Fiddle Pals band. Tickets $9 advance sale and $12 at the door. Teens $8 and kids twelve and under free.

Sponsored by Minnesota Bluegrass and Old Time Music Association and the Whistle Stop Bed and Breakfast

A native of Minnesota, Brian Wicklund has carved out a name for himself with his fiddle and mandolin mastery and his stagecraft. For decades he’s traveled internationally as a sideman playing with professionally touring bluegrass bands Stoney Lonesome, Kathy Kallick, Chris Stuart, and Kane’s River, and his debut recording with the Rocky Mountain based acoustic power trio, Brother Mule, won the best Americana CD of 2005 by Indiemusic.com. Now Wicklund is excited to perform his own music with his own group of top notch Minnesota-based musicians, the FiddlePals. Bassist Pete Mathison and guitarist David Peterson have been integral players in the acoustic music scene in the Midwest for decades, and percussionist Jerry Montie joins the three playing acrobatic rhythm on a box-shaped drum called a cajon. Together Brian Wicklund & The FiddlePals play traditional and original American roots music with spontaneous musicality and uncommon fun.

Talvijuhla Winter Celebration

Ski and Snowshoe on February 7th at Sonnenberg Farm at New York Mills and learn about sustainable forestry practices

Enjoy a fun winter outing on Saturday, February 7th at Bob and Ingrid Sonnenberg's farm just north of New York Mills. We'll gather in a parking area (follow the signs) at the farm. To get to Bob's place go north out of New York Mills on #67. Go past the Sculpture Park and Cenex station slightly less than one mile and turn to the left on 395th Street. Go 1/4 mile and turn right onto the Sonnenberg driveway. Go another 1/4 mile, and park .
At 11:00am we'll ski (or snowshoe) to a warm cabin in the woods on the farm. A second group will depart for the cabin at 11:15am. You must supply your own skis or snowshoes.

There will be a simple lunch, and at 1:30pm Bob will give a talk on his sustainable tree farming operation. He has been harvesting and planting red oak and white pine since he returned from New Mexico to make his home at his family farmstead. Bob is an active forester trained by the University of Minnesota Forestry Department as a woodland advisor. He is a board member and chair of the Minnesota Forest Resources Partnership and a board member of the Minnesota Forestry Association.

At 2:30pm Bob will lead a skiing and snowshoing tour, showing the fruits of his efforts to create a sustainable forestry business on his 550 acre farm. The tour will arrive back at the parking area at 3:30pm.

On that same evening there is a bluegrass concert with Brian Wicklund and his Fiddle Pals band at the Cultural Center (beginning at 7:30pm-see below). After the concert, we'll gather again at the Sonnenberg farm for a moonlight outing of skiing and warming up. We'll meet at 10:00pm again at the Sonnenberg farm and ski back to the warming house for a chance to admire the moonlight, have a glass of wine, and enjoy the quiet woods. If the weather cooperates, February 7th should be a bright, moonlight night.