#Freshgrass Foundation

[krispyweiss]

Aoife O’Donovan Clears October Touring Schedule, Blaming “Unforeseen Circumstances”

Aoife O’Donovan has cleared her October concert schedule, blaming “unforeseen circumstances.”

Four solo performances of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album have been rescheduled for Nov. 28-30 and Dec. 10. Yasmin Williams supports.

Concerts in Steamboat and Aspen, Colo., are canceled, “but we hope to get back there in 2024,” O’Donovan said in a statement.

“Thanks so much for understanding.”

The schedule change leaves O’Donovan with just one gig - but it’s a big one - between now and Nov. 28. On Sept. 23 in Massachusetts, she’ll debut three commissioned works for the FreshGrass Foundation alongside a rare performance of her song cycle “America, Come.”

9/13/23

[deliciousmusiczombie]

From folk music to alt-country to Americana to blues and soul, the throughline between all varieties of roots music is the history at the heart of each group and each performance, a history that should be considered by each person in the audience.

[freshgrassfoundation-blog]

Hub Of American Roots Music - FreshGrass Foundation

FreshGrass Foundation is the hub of American Roots Music where the famous music artists and musicians create the new innovative grassroots music and perform their masterpieces in the FreshGrass Festival at Mass Moca.

[freshgrassus-blog]

FreshGrass is dedicated to providing roots music artists with opportunities to create new work and to take artistic risks outside the pressures of the commercial music space. We do this through several commissioning programs: the FreshGrass Composition Commission and FreshScores.

[concerthopperblog]

Favorite Roots and America Albums of 2021 So Far: 5-1

2021 has been a mixed bag of a year. On one hand, it's been rough for those of us who need our live music fix on the regular (and, as you'd imagine at a site called Concert Hopper, that's our whole staff) as the first half of the year has been a trickle of shows returning in socially distanced forms. On the other, as people start getting vaccinated, shows are finally starting to ramp up. A side effect of all this being at home is that roots and Americana artists had time to write and record some of the best albums of their lives in the first half of 2021. Finding only 10 favorites in six months was harder than you'd think. Notice I didn't say “best” there like so many other publications. Being a one-man review show, I can't listen to a tenth of the albums out there, even in the roots and Americana categories. So these might not be the best. If you've heard better, put them in the comments. I'd love to hear them! A good list is a conversation starter, kind of like a tasting menu in a nice restaurant.

To keep the list's size manageable, I have excluded live albums and EP, which took out some great releases both live (the dozen or so Jason Isbell shows on Bandcamp, Richard Thompson's Live from London, Aoife O'Donovan's many “house shows”) and EP (Danny Burns' Hurricane).For this, where I reviewed the album, I've linked to the full review. Where not, I've linked a YouTube video of one of the album's songs.

Here is the second half of my mid-year list. If you'd like to see which albums made 6-10, you can find them here.

5. Sarah Jarosz- Blue Heron Suite Sarah Jarosz has had a busy quarantine. After releasing World on the Ground last year, which was my favorite roots album of 2020. This year, she's already released another, Blue Heron Suite. But it must be pretty bad to be all the way down at 5 when World on the Ground was #1, right? Nope. It's just a testament to how strong this year's albums are. In many ways, Blue Heron Suite sounds like a much-needed bridge album between her previous efforts and the John Leventhal-produced 2020 album. That should be no surprise since, though it was released this year, was written in 2017 as part of a commission from the Freshgrass Foundation. There is all of the instrumental virtuosity you'd expect from Jarosz here, but an even more meditative maturity of lyrics from an artist who was more mature at 17 than most of us were at 30 (go listen to her debut Song Up in Her Head for proof). Essential Listen: “Mama”, “Blue Heron.” 4. Amythyst Kiah- Wary & Strange The second of three (of the four) members of Our Native Daughters to release a solo album that made it into this list, which should tell you something about the talent in that group. After scoring Grammy and Americana nominations for that group's “Black Myself”, Amythyst Kiah has seen her star rise in the Americana community and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. Kiah is a blues wailer straight out of the Sister Rosetta Tharpe mold, but shows a sensitivity and talent for country ballads elsewhere on Wary & Strange. From a more rough-hewn re-recording of “Black Myself” to the bass harmonica-driven (how often do you hear that phrase?) “Fancy Drones (Fracture Me)” to the quiet ache of “Wild Turkey”, about Kiah's struggles to cope with her mother's suicide, this is an album that should show up on a lot of year end lists. Essential Listen: “Fancy Drones (Fracture Me)” 3. Aaron Lee Tasjan- Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! It's hard to bring anything too new to the Americana table, given its Borg-like ability to assimilate whatever misfit genres are floating around into its own sound. But nobody has tried to bring the glitz, jangle pop melodies, and sexual fluidity of T. Rex or New York Dolls to Americana... Until now. Tasjan's always been a great live performer but Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! is his first album to capture that energy in the studio. Careening from Tom Petty to The Beatles to Bowie with a detour through John Prine, Aaron Lee Tasjan touches on dating reduced to tiny electronic pictures (“Computer of Love”), anxiety disguised as a party anthem (“Up All Night”) and vapid corporate songs (“Cartoon Music”). Of all albums on this list, this one is the most pure fun. 2. David Olney and Anana Kaye- Whispers and Sighs David Olney had no idea Whispers and Sighs would be his last album. He listened to the final mix just days before his untimely death on stage at the 41-A Songwriters' Festival in January of 2020. But if he had, he couldn't have crafted a more fitting final bow. There is no one in Americana who was so adept at crafting country songs that felt like epic poetry, or tragic theater. So it's no surprise to his fans that the songs on Whispers and Sighs are deeper than any 3:30 minute interlude should be. What is surprising is that Anana Kaye, his Georgian partner for the album is well on her way to taking up the torch with her own literary offerings. You get haunting, emotionally as well as literally, ghost stories (“The Great Manzini”), mysterious Gypsy-folk tales (“Thank You Note”) and the album's biggest surprise, the Rolling Stones-esque electric guitar rocker “Last Days of Rome”, which has Kaye sounding like Chrissie Hynde jamming with Keith Richards. Essential Listen: “The Great Manzini (Disappearing Act)” 1. Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi- They're Calling Me Home We have reached the point where we may as well admit to ourselves that Rhiannon Giddens is without flaws. She has consistently raised her game with each new album going all the way back to her days with Carolina Chocolate Drops. They're Calling Me Home, recorded with instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, was the result of the pair spending 2020 quarantined in their mutual adopted home of Ireland and coping with the reality of being unable to return to their birth homes (North Carolina for Giddens, Italy for Turrisi) to spend time with their families. Through a mix of originals and carefully chosen covers, the pair pull together a loose concept album with the unifying theme of “home” and its many meanings, from a mother's embrace to the final embrace of death. It is as beautiful an album as you'll hear this year, and one that, should you not own, should be in your library immediately. You won't regret it.

[garudabluffs]

Indigo Girls 1 Northampton MA 3-2019

The Countermelodies That Changed Us: A Lifetime Of Loving Indigo Girls                                                       May 21, 2020

Countermelody is a foundational form in the Indigo Girls' musical arrangements

The basest definition for a countermelody is that it's a subordinate or secondary melody played alongside, or in counterpoint with, a primary melody. A countermelody played by itself can be beautiful all on its own, yet it becomes something infinitely more special, and more gratifying when you hear it interact with the main line. Sometimes an untrained ear can drift to a well-crafted countermelody and hear it as the main one. In my mind, no songwriting style models humility more, nor captures the Indigo Girls' ethos better than this generous interplay with subordination, this mutual willingness to take the countermelody in one circumstance, with the trust and knowledge that you'll get your turn taking the lead in another. This graceful alternation has defined the Indigo Girls from their time picking out harmonies in the Ray family's basement, to their first years gigging together again in Atlanta after each abandoned their efforts to leave town for college. 

READ MORE https://www.npr.org/2020/05/21/858267498/the-countermelodies-that-changed-us-a-lifetime-of-loving-indigo-girls

Indigo Girls, "Hammer and Nails," FreshGrass 2018

[nodepressionalbum]

FreshGrass Public Foundation announces the addition of Folk Alley to its community of roots music organizations. Freshgrass and No Depression under the umbrella of the FreshGrass Public Foundation nonprofit organizations.

[hereisyoursongoftheday]

Lee Knight joins the Kronos Quartet (David Harrington, violin; John Sherba, violin; Hank Dutt, viola; Sunny Yang, cello) on a rendition of “Which Side Are You On?” from Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet & Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger, commissioned by the FreshGrass Foundation and slated for release by Smithsonian Folkways next month. Based on a melody drawn from the Baptist hymn “Lay the Lily Low,” Pete Seeger first performed the song with the Almanac Singers way back in the early 1940s.

[nodepressionstore-blog]

No Depression store Quarterly Magazine is a top of the line general amazing magazine that catches the full scope of music and way of music life. No Depression, the premier print journal on roots music distributed by the FreshGrass Foundation.

[krispyweiss]

Aoife O’Donovan to Unveil Three New Commissions at FreshGrass

- Set will feature 36-piece band, rare performance of “America, Come”

Aoife O’Donovan and a 36-piece band will unveil three new commissions and feature a rare performance of “America, Come” at this year’s FreshGrass festival in Massachusetts.

O’Donovan will be accompanied by a chamber orchestra, the Westerlies and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus to perform three new pieces commissioned by the FreshGrass Foundation. She’ll also play “America, Come,” her song cycle about the fight to ratify the 19th Amendment.

The piece has been played only a handful of times, including with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra in 2021, a gig Sound Bites reviews here.

O’Donovan is scheduled to appear Sept. 23 and will then participate in an on-stage question-and-answer session.

“I wouldn’t miss FreshGrass festival,” she said.

Slated for Sept. 22-24, FreshGrass also features appearances from Sierra Ferrell, Rhiannon Giddens, the Devil Makes Three, Mighty Poplar, Alison Brown and others.

9/6/23

[deliciousmusiczombie]

We get asked a lot where No Depression is based, and the answer in this age of remote work is, well, we’re all over. So it’s really special for us to get to gather as a staff, including our compatriots at Folk Alleyand the FreshGrass Foundation, at the FreshGrass Festivalin North Adams, Massachusetts (and now in spring in Bentonville, Arkansas, too) for good hangs, great music, and lots of chats about how to bring the sounds and stories of roots music to even more eyes and ears.

[freshgrassfoundation-blog]

Creation Of American Roots Music - FreshGrass Foundation

The FreshGrass Foundation is one of the most amazing music organizations which works with the motive of creating American roots music as much as possible. In this world of music activities, American roots music is produced and supported.

[freshgrassus-blog]

FreshGrass music celebration season is here before you recognize it. For best summer American music festivals this year get the summary of lineups, price ticket information, and timetables. Visit the Freshgrass website for more information about our lineups.

[freshgrassfoundation-blog]

Silent Film Scores Started By The Non-Profitable Music Foundation

Silent film scores is a donation service started by the FreshGrass Foundation to collect the donation given by the people in order to create new innovative grassroots music and for the benefit of the organization in spreading roots music in public.