- This event has passed.
Hard Luck Café: Scott Cook & Pamela Mae
October 16 @ 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Scott Cook and Pamela Mae – Photo by Tina Dominic
Scott Cook (scottcook.net), an award-winning Canadian prairie roots balladeer based in Edmonton, Alberta, will be the featured artist during the monthly Hard Luck Café concert series co-presented by the Folk Music Society of Huntington and Cinema Arts Centre in the Cinema’s Sky Room (423 Park Avenue, Huntington, NY) on Wednesday, October 16, from 7-10 p.m. The internationally touring troubadour will be joined by Pamela Mae on upright bass and backing vocals.
An open mic, for which sign-up starts at 6:30 p.m., precedes the 8 p.m. concert. Tickets are $25 ($20 for Cinema Arts Centre/FMSH members) and may be purchased online at cinemaartscentre.org or at the box office through the evening of the show.
Scott Cook – Photo by Steven Teeuwsen
Cook — who delves into folk, roots, blues, soul, and country, and accompanies himself on fingerstyle guitar and claw hammer banjo — quit his job as a kindergarten teacher in Taiwan in 2007 and moved into a minivan. He’s made his living as a troubadour ever since – touring almost incessantly across North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. He averages 150 concerts and a dozen summer festivals a year. Along the way, he’s released seven albums of plainspoken, keenly observant verse – with an eighth one coming soon. His most recent release, Tangle of Souls, comes packaged in a cloth-bound, 240-page hardcover book of road stories and ruminations, equal parts introspection and insurrection. One of its tracks, “Say Can You See,” was the second-most-played song of 2020 on Folk Alliance International’s folk radio charts and took top honors in the folk category in both the 2020 Great American Song Contest and the 2020 UK Songwriting Competition. That year, Cook also performed during a virtual Falcon Ridge Folk Festival after being voted a “Most Wanted to Return” artist following the Grassy Hill Emerging Artist Showcase at the prior year’s festival.
Scott Cook and Pamela Mae – Photo by Justin McMurdo
Cook and his sweetheart, Pamela Mae, have been back on the road full-time since January 2022, living in a camper van named Roadetta. Since then, they’ve visited 43 states and eight Canadian provinces, and also broadcast solar-powered livestreams from the back of the van during the pandemic.
“As good a modern folkie as we have these days. A voice perfect for the genre.”
— No Depression
“He sings his heart and soul, and in doing so let’s light flow into your own…truly one of Woody Guthrie’s children.”
—RnR Magazine (UK)
Video links: