- This event has passed.
Joe Crookston and Amy Speace (CANCELLED)
August 20, 2020 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO HURRICANE SANDY. WE HOPE TO RESCHEDULE THESE ARTISTS IN THE FUTURE. ADVANCE TICKETS WILL BE REFUNDED VIA PAYPAL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
About The Event
Joe Crookston an Ohio native now residing in Ithaca, NY, has been developing a reputation as an energetic, charismatic and thoroughly engaging live performer. He was among the artists voted “Most Wanted to Return” during the 2007 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in upstate New York and wowed attendees in 2008 with a mix of his own lyrically compelling, narrative-style songs and choice covers (including a solo acoustic version of Supertramp’s “The Logical Song”) — much as he did during the Falcon Ridge Preview Tour”s concert in Centerport earlier that year. A serious craftsman, Crookston has heeded his father’s advice to work with his hands (and heart) in metal and wood. His latest album, Darkling and The BlueBird Jubilee has received critical acclaim. His previous release, Able Baker Charlie & Dog, a collection of songs inspired by stories ordinary New Yorkers from the Finger Lakes region related to him during his year-long travels under a songwriting grant from The Rockefeller Foundation, reached the top of the folk/acoustic radio charts and was recognized as Album of the Year during the 2009 International Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis, TN. His prior release, Fall Down As The Rain, was a Performing Songwriter Magazine Top 12 DIY independent recording. Joe Crookston also has been a finalist in several prestigious national songwriting contests.
Come and enjoy Joe as he stands on stage holding his Martin OM 28, stompin his foot, singing songs about ruby red dresses, drunk roosters, ex-slaves, window washers, Polish Immigrants, Tinian Island, rutabagas and the cycles of life & death — songs about the thread that runs through us all.
For more information on Joe, click here to visit his website.
Here are links to two videos featuring Joe:
Amy Speace has been quietly but steadily making waves in the Americana/folk world for a few years now, and in the journey, gaining support from the likes of Judy Collins, Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark and other icons in the songwriting community. A self-described ‘late bloomer’ to songwriting, Speace was born in Baltimore, grew up the oldest of four, moving homes and states every few years. After College, she headed to New York City to pursue a life in theater. She studied acting at The National Shakespeare Conservatory, toured the US with the National Shakespeare Company, started her own theater company to direct and produce the plays she had written, and in the midst of her early 20’s, picked up a pawn shop guitar, wrote her first songs, and found herself with steady gigs at such storied venues as The Bitter End and The Living Room.
In 2005, a chance encounter with Judy Collins’ manager changed her life. Judy Collins signed Amy to her own Wildflower Records label in 2006, releasing Songs for Bright Street. The Killer In Me followed in 2009, with a rare duo appearance by Ian “Mott the Hoople” Hunter, who brought her to the UK for his Acoustic Tour. USA Today called her “a rising star”, NPR named the title track from Killer “Song of the Day” and wrote “her velvety, achy voice recalls an early Lucinda Williams.” In 2010, John Platt host of Sunday Breakfast on WFUV named Amy’s song “The Weight of the World” in the Top 5 of his list of the “Best Folk Songs of the Decade,” a song that Judy Collins herself would record and call “one of the best political folk songs I’ve ever heard”. In 2009, Amy shifted landscapes, moved south to Nashville, and began writing the songs for her latest album, Land Like A Bird. In its review of the album, the Houston Press wrote: “Amy Speace is the perfect torchbearer for the unconscious cool of true Americana”
For more information on Amy, click here to visit her website.
Here are links to a couple of videos featuring Amy:
Note: This 8:30 p.m. concert will be preceded by an open mic at 7:30 p.m.,for which sign-up begins at 7 p.m.