Event Calendar

A free series inviting audiences to share the power of the big screen at no cost to attendees, often with filmmakers in attendance for a discussion.

Carrie Haddad Gallery is pleased to present Mortals, Saints & Myths, an exhibit that explores the idolized and idealized figures that preoccupy our realities- both real and imagined. This special group of Hudson Valley artists are best known for their representation of the figure via painting, photography and installation. In tribute to the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, Poughkeepsie based artist Carl Grauer debuts The Lavender Temple of Their Most Fabulous, a new series depicting notable figures of the LGBTQ rights movement. Portraits of activists, such as Harvey Milk, Barbara Gittings and Audre Lorde, will be encased in handmade frames resembling Catholic altarpieces. One room will be dedicated to a shrine-like installation to celebrate these “saints” for their advocacy. Other featured artists include the collaborative team Kahn & Selesnick specialize in fictitious histories set in the past or future using photography and installation art; the master impersonator, Mark Beard, invents an artistic persona to create homoerotic portraits in an academic 20th century painting style; Juan Garcia-Nunez re envisions the Greek God, Dionysus, and the festive image of body and nature in a series of watercolor paintings; John T. Unger recreates Eustachi’s 16th century drawings of the human anatomy as life sized mosaics comprised entirely of stone; and David Sokosh presents a series of tin types created using a 19th Century photographic process.

Carrie Haddad Gallery is pleased to present Mortals, Saints & Myths, an exhibit that explores the idolized and idealized figures that preoccupy our realities- both real and imagined. This special group of Hudson Valley artists are best known for their representation of the figure via painting, photography and installation. In tribute to the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, Poughkeepsie based artist Carl Grauer debuts The Lavender Temple of Their Most Fabulous, a new series depicting notable figures of the LGBTQ rights movement. Portraits of activists, such as Harvey Milk, Barbara Gittings and Audre Lorde, will be encased in handmade frames resembling Catholic altarpieces. One room will be dedicated to a shrine-like installation to celebrate these “saints” for their advocacy. Other featured artists include the collaborative team Kahn & Selesnick specialize in fictitious histories set in the past or future using photography and installation art; the master impersonator, Mark Beard, invents an artistic persona to create homoerotic portraits in an academic 20th century painting style; Juan Garcia-Nunez re envisions the Greek God, Dionysus, and the festive image of body and nature in a series of watercolor paintings; John T. Unger recreates Eustachi’s 16th century drawings of the human anatomy as life sized mosaics comprised entirely of stone; and David Sokosh presents a series of tin types created using a 19th Century photographic process.

A free series inviting audiences to share the power of the big screen at no cost to attendees, often with filmmakers in attendance for a discussion.

The SUPERTONE Music Festival returns to Columbia County for a third summer, showcasing all that is vibrant and original in rock, roots and honky-tonk music on a technicolor stage for an upstate audience.

This year, Oldtone Productions has teamed up with Basilica Hudson to present the show in our solar-powered reclaimed 1880s factory on the waterfront.

FEATURING

EX HEX – Washington DC’s MEGA Power Trio! RIPS!

The Felice Brothers – Hudson Valley’s own

Thelma and the Sleaze – Nashville rock & roll

Zepaniah Ohora – NYC’s honky tonk king

El Front – Kingston’s hometown punk heroes

Chops, Sauerkraut & Krewton – Hudson’s own rockabilly country

Wild Leek River – Country from the Green Mountains

Hoot & Holler – Original Roots music from Asheville North Carolina

Jon Hatchett – Country from Nashville

Riley Downing – A solo set from Deslondes guitar and vocalist hailing from New Orleans/Kansas City

Habibi – Brooklyn psych-rock with a surfer-Middle Eastern flare

VENDORS
Local 111 – New American cusine from Philmont, NY

Poor Devil Pepper Co. – Tex mex from Hudson’s hottest

Skyview Farm – Pastured sausages, grown locally in Sheffield, MA

Sundust Culture – Vintage &Amp; original fashions from Kingston, NY

Galavant Home Decore – Unique home decor &Amp; finds

Hot Dog Boat Mobile Recording Studio – Pop-up recording studio for the Hot Dog Boat Project (write and record spontaneous hot dog inspired songs & sounds)

Big City Cat – My Life in Folk-Rock, singer/songwriter Steve Forbert’s exceptional new memoir co-written with Therese Boyd, allows him ample opportunity to candidly reflect on those specific circumstances that first brought him to the public eye.

Originally conceived as a stage play and screen treatment, it finds him documenting his early adventures in the big city while pursuing his quest to make music. Sharing reflections and journals he kept at the time, he weaves an absorbing narrative that fully documents the trials, travails and triumphs that would eventually play out over the course of his prolific 40 year career.

The book is accompanied by its own soundtrack as well, an A new album entitled The Magic Tree that offers a series of songs gleaned from previously recorded acoustic demos, overdubbed with new backing tracks and fleshed out as a series of songs that ring with the verve and vitality that Forbert’s fans have always come to expect. Consistently upbeat and optimistic, they convey a firm sense that age ought not diminish a lust for living. Then again, that’s been Forbert’s mantra for quite some time, honoring his past while plowing his way towards the future.

Swing Dance w/ The Fabulous Versatones

Friday, July 19, 2019

Dewey Hall, 91 Main Street, Sheffield, MA 01257

Doors open at 7:30, Lesson with Harry Pisila at 8:00, Live music at 9:00

https://www.facebook.com/events/2148357605455870/
http://www.deweyhall.org/dewey-hall-calendar/julyswingwithversatones

Sliding fee scale $20-$10. No partner necessary, beginners welcome and refreshments available.
Enjoy dinner before the dance and get 15% off at the Stagecoach Tavern at Racebrook Lodge: (https://rblodge.com/thestagecoachtavern/) with coupon code #oldtonenative.

The Big Band sounds of the Versatones are the perfect fit for Swing
Dancing. We had a lot of fun with this band last year and are happily
anticipating their return. The Versatones are : Chris Kendall, tenor
sax, Josh Connors, lead guitar, Pete Tenerowicz, drums, Otto Gardner,
bass, Peter Jung, rhythm guitar.

This event is part of our Third Friday Swing series at Dewey Hall. Every month a beginner swing dance lesson is followed by a live band and dancing. Follow Oldtone Native on Facebook to keep up to date on all Oldtone concerts, dances, and festivals.

Please email beth@oldtonemusicfestival or call (413) 429 1176. for more information

NEXT UP:

August 16: One Straw Revolution
Sept 5-8: The Oldtone Roots Music Festival
Sept 20: South Street Swing
October 18: The Twangbusters
This program is supported in part by Massachusetts Cultural Council grants from the towns of Sheffield, Alford-Egremont, Monterey, and Mount Washington Massachusetts.

Oldtone concerts and dances at Dewey Hall are sponsored by Big Elm Brewery http://bigelmbeer.com/ , Wheeler and Taylor http://www.wheelertaylor.com/, and Racebrook Lodge: https://rblodge.com/

An Intimate Evening with Bettye LaVette

Bettye LaVette is no mere singer. She is an interpreter of the highest order. Whether the song originated as country, rock, pop, or blues, when she gets through with it, it is pure R&B. She gets inside a song and shapes and twists it to convey all of the emotion that can be wrought from the lyric. To quote the late, great George Jones: “Bettye is truly a ‘singer’s singer’ “.

On these intimate shows, Bettye is accompanied by her keyboard player, Evan Mercer. She will be performing songs from throughout her 57 year career, including songs that she used to perform in small Detroit clubs before her 21st Century resurgence began. Some of these songs she does not perform with her full band.

Her career began in 1962, at the age of 16, in Detroit, Michigan. Her first single “My Man – He’s a Loving Man”, was released on Atlantic Records. She recorded for numerous major labels, including Atco, Epic, and Motown, over the course of the 1960s through the 1980s.

The 2000’s started what she calls her “Fifth Career”. Her CD, A Woman Like Me, won the W.C. Handy Award in 2004 for Comeback Blues Album of the Year. She was also given a prestigous Pioneer Award by The Rhythm & Blues Foundation. She has received Blues Music Awards for Best Contemporary Female Blues Singer and Best Soul Blues Female Artist. She recorded 4 CDs for hipster indie label ANTI- Records over the course of 8 years, 2 of which received Grammy nominations. Her 2015 CD, Worthy, was also nominated for a Grammy.

In 2018 she released Things Have Changed, an album of all Bob Dylan songs, for Verve Records. It received two Grammy nominations, one for Best Americana Album, and one for the song “Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight” for Best Traditional R&B Performance.

Fans, critics and artists have nothing but high praise for her live show and her vocal prowess. Now, at 73 years old, she is still performing with the ferocity of a woman half her age. She is one of very few of her contemporaries who were recording during the birth of soul music in the 1960s and is still creating vital recordings today.

Snider has long been recognized as one of his generation’s most gifted and engaging songwriters, so it’s no surprise he has returned with a brilliant set of songs — and make no mistake, Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 contains some of his best work as a writer. But what really jumps out on the album is Snider’s growth as a musician and vocalist. He plays all the instruments on the record, and his guitar work and harmonica playing are nothing short of exceptional; not only full of feeling, but highly skilled. In regards to his guitar playing on the record, Snider says he wanted to take everything he’s learned over the past 30 years and play the way he used to play really well.

As far as his vocals on the album are concerned, Snider is singing with more confidence than ever, a confidence born in part from his time with Hard Working Americans doing nothing but sing. His stirring vocal performances range from slurring blues mumble to Dylanesque talking blues to gravely, honest ache.

Of the five songs on which Snider serves up his humorous brand of socio-political commentary, three are performed in the talking blues style: “Talking Reality Television Blues,” a hilariously accurate short history of television; “The Blues on Banjo,” a bad case of the blues caused by the sorry state of everything from the crooked international monetary-military-industrial complex to the spineless politicians who serve it and which references “Blue Suede Shoes,” Richard Lewis, and Townes Van Zandt; and “A Timeless Response to Current Events,” a brilliant bit of wordplay on which he calls bullshit on faux patriotism, crooked capitalism, and lying politicians. Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires contributed backing vocals on the latter two songs.

There are two other songs on the album featuring Snider’s socio-political points of view: “Just Like Overnight,” about the surprising inevitability of change, and “Framed,” written from the point of view of the framed “first dollar bill” in a bar, a point of view that shows doing the right thing doesn’t pay.

There also are three songs with a music theme. If not for the events that led to the writing of one of those songs,”The Ghost of Johnny Cash,” there almost certainly would be no Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3. After a visit to Cash Cabin Studio for a Loretta Lynn session in 2015 where she recorded a song they cowrote, Snider began having a recurring dream about the studio that featured the Man in Black himself. The dream led him to book time at the studio and ultimately inspired him to write “The Ghost of Johnny Cash,” which tells the story of Loretta Lynn dancing with Cash’s ghost outside the studio in the middle of the night. As he did on much of the record, Snider played the century-old Martin that had long been Johnny Cash’s favorite instrument on that song.

Snider paid tribute to Cash’s longtime friend and confidante in another of the music-themed songs, “Cowboy Jack Clement’s Waltz.” Inspired by the iconic record man’s oft-quoted maxims regarding the art of recording, the song achingly laments Clement’s passing, while touchingly celebrating his legacy.

The album opens with the other song with a music theme, “Working on a Song.” It’s an existential exercise, a song Snider wrote about writing a song called “Where Do I Go Now That I’m Gone,” an idea he actually has been working on for thirty years, but which remains unfinished.

There are also two songs that are personal in nature: “Watering Flowers in the Rain,” which was inspired by a former associate of Snider’s whose nickname was “Elvis,” and “Like a Force of Nature,” a philosophical reflection on the orbital nature of friendships. Isbell also added harmony vocals to “Like a Force of Nature.”

If Snider is anything, he is a true artist, and he reminds us of that on Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3. At a point in time when the world has never been more complicated and confusing, with people getting louder and louder, Snider did a 180, went back to his roots as a folksinger, to a simpler, quieter form of expression; and it might be what the world is waiting to hear: just a man, his guitar, and the truth.

For over a decade The Fopps have satisfied New York’s 1960’s garage band and psychedelic music needs while dressing the part a la Paul Revere and the Raiders. The group burned down east side haunts like Otto’s Shrunken Head and Arlene Grocery. A reshuffling of the line up in 2014 allowed the Fopps to focus on three part vocal harmony and add keyboard-driven material. They expanded their reach to larger venues in midtown and the Catskills, as well as the Bitter End. From the Sonics to the Kinks to the Zombies to the Hollies, the Fopps offer the chance to see the music that exploded out of American garages and the British Invasion performed live in concert with the power and excitement of that era. All while looking like the groovy clothes horses they are, of course. You may have been born too late to have been on the scene, but the Fopps see to it you don’t miss the party.