CIRCLE OF FRIENDS 2024-25 SCHEDULE
Click a show’s “View Event” button to order tickets.
All shows start at 7:30PM, doors open at 7:00PM. Tickets will be held at the door. No refunds.
In the event of bad weather please check this website for the latest information. If a show is canceled all tickets will be refunded.
Tickets may be ordered with a major credit card through PayPal. You do NOT need a PayPal account to purchase tickets.
John Gorka $30
John Gorka
From New Jersey, John Gorka is a world-renowned singer-songwriter who got his start at a neighborhood coffeehouse in eastern Pennsylvania. Though small, Godfrey Daniels was and is one of the oldest and most venerable music institutions and has long been a hangout for music lovers and aspiring musicians. In the late 1970’s, John was one of these aspiring musicians. Although his academic coursework at Moravian College lay in Philosophy and History, music began to offer paramount enticements. Soon he found himself living in the club’s basement and acting as resident MC and sound man, encountering legendary folk troubadours like Canadian singer-songwriter Stan Rogers, Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton and Claudia Schmidt. Their brand of folk-inspired acoustic music inspired him, and before long he was performing his own songs – mostly as an opener for visiting acts. Soon he started traveling to New York City, where Jack Hardy’s legendary Fast Folk circle (a breeding ground for many a major singer-songwriter) became a powerful source of education and encouragement. Folk meccas like Texas’ Kerrville Folk Festival (where he won the New Folk Award in 1984) and Boston followed, and his stunningly soulful baritone voice and original songwriting began turning heads. Those who had at one time inspired him – Suzanne Vega, Bill Morrissey, Nanci Griffith, Christine Lavin, Shawn Colvin – had become his peers.
Chris Smither $30
Chris Smither
“Smither is an American original – a product of the musical melting pot and one of the absolute best singer-songwriters in the world.”
—Associated Press.
Richard Shindell $35
Richard Shindell
Richard Shindell lives as both an immigrant and emigrant, crossing thresholds, that informs his illumination of the human experience through narrative song. Shindell has inhabited a Zen Buddhist monastery and busked in the streets of Paris.
Originally from New York, now living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Shindell is a writer whose songs paint pictures, tell stories, juxtapose ideas and images, inhabit characters, vividly evoking entire worlds along the way and expanding our sense of just what it is a song may be. Meticulously recorded over three years in New York and Buenos Aires, his most recent release, Careless, offered an ambitious, luxurious, full- length statement. Shindell immersed himself in the studio, allowing the time and latitude to explore, experiment, take risks—to play—as each of these eleven songs was given form and substance. While his signature acoustic guitar style is used to good effect, Careless also found Shindell plugging in more. “The wider sonic and dynamic range of the electric has been a real inspiration. Rejuvenating.”
During the pandemic, Shindell stayed in Argentina, out on the wide open Pampa, reading, writing, taking walks, doing a little experimental recording, and tending the garden. He now returns to the road for a limited number of performances. Innovative, original and occasionally spiritual, Shindell’s songs weave tales that interchangeably champion the downtrodden, exalt the disaffected or wax empathetic to those lost to society’s fringes. From lighthearted ballads and adulterous love songs, to dirges and diatribes that skillfully skewer politics, prejudice, war and religion, to the comic point-of-view of a cow stuck in a barbed wire fence, he has a unique ability to morph into the soul of the many and varied personalities he casts as narrators in certain songs—veritable novellas framed in haunting acoustic melodies.
To book Richard Shindell in North America, please contact:
Craig Grossman
RUNA $25
RUNA
Celebrating 14 years together as a band, Celtic-American Roots music “super group”, Runa, continues to push the boundaries of Irish folk music into the Americana and roots music formats. Interweaving the haunting melodies and exuberant tunes of Ireland and Scotland with the lush harmonies and intoxicating rhythms of jazz, bluegrass, flamenco and blues, they offer a thrilling and redefining take on traditional music.
Ellis Paul $30
Ellis Paul
When the world was shut down by Covid-19 in 2020, Ellis Paul, like many musicians, turned to the internet as a safety net to catch the fall of his tumbling livelihood. He set up microphones and lights in a spare bedroom and started performing livestream shows, hosting songwriter sessions, and playing one-on-one concerts for fans. He relied on the good will of a devoted audience that he had built over three decades. He was able to cobble together enough to keep his family fed, and he did it all from his home.
He also began to write. Before the pandemic, he’d never had the luxury of so much time at home. Songs and recordings had often been created on the fly, on open calendar dates during intense stretches of over two hundred nights per year on the road. Rushing to studios, rushingto shows, writing on airplanes. But now Ellis was home, with time on his hands.
He was turning 55, and not struggling with the idea of the age, but the consequences of it. Dupuytren’s contracture, a disease that tightly closes the fingers into a fist, had settled into both of his hands. He was wondering how long he had left as a guitarist and a pianist before it rendered playing and writing almost impossible. It eventually would.
So he just began. Song by song. While he had the time and still had the use of his fingers. Eventually, his journals had over 40 new songs etched into them.
He wrote about turning 55 during a pandemic, about the catharsis of outliving the things he’d grown up with—milkmen delivering to the door, 8-track tapes, fax machines—while at the same time losing his hero John Prine to Covid-19...
The Kennedys $25
The Kennedys
Songwriting duo Pete and Maura Kennedy make a strong return to the studio and stage after three years of weekly live-streamed lockdown-era concerts. They took the opportunity to explore classic songwriting in depth, performing over a thousand songs during the pandemic. That vast overview strengthened and refined their own writing and laid the foundation for this new collection of original, socially-conscious songs.
Joe Crookston $25
Joe Crookston
Joe is a force of nature on stage. He is in his power AND he communes with his audience and welcomes them into the magic.
From touring with Gordon Lightfoot, headlining major US festivals, receiving Folk Alliance International “Album of the Year,” releasing NINE BECOMES ONE (2023) to being named Folk Alliance International Artist-in- Resident, Joe is on fire. He’s played with Suzanne Vega, Dar Williams, David Francey, John McCutcheon, John Gorka, Judy Collins and 100’s more. His songs are are being made into award winning films. Watch this trailer for Brooklyn in July
He’ll surprise you. He awakens the cynics. He’s plumbing for lyrical gold.
His rhythm is infectious. In concert, he is funny as hell one moment and transcendent the next. photo: Linda McDonald
Tracy Grammer and Jim Henry $25
Called "a musician and singer of dazzling versatility", Tracy Grammer is among contemporary folk music's most beloved artists. Renowned for her pure voice, deft guitar and violin work, and incantatory storytelling, Grammer has recorded and performed with Joan Baez and Mary Chapin Carpenter, headlined several of the nation's top folk festivals, including Philadelphia Folk Festival and Falcon Ridge, and enjoyed 12 consecutive years as one of folk radio's 50 top-played artists, both solo and with the late Dave Carter.
Grammer is currently on tour celebrating her highly-anticipated eleventh release, LOW TIDE, which is the first of her albums to showcase her original songs. LOW TIDE was the ninth most-played album on folk radio in 2018 and was voted a Top 10 Album of the Year by Fish Records UK.
"One of the finest singers and musicians anywhere in folkdom." - Boston Globe
"A brilliant artist" - Joan Baez
"One of the most enduring, irreplaceable voices in American folk music." - Anti-Heroin Chic
Peter Mulvey with Jenna Nicholls $25
Peter Mulvey
Peter Mulvey has been a songwriter, road-dog, raconteur and almost-poet since before he can remember. Raised working-class Catholic on the Northwest side of Milwaukee, he took a semester in Ireland, and immediately began cutting classes to busk on Grafton Street in Dublin and hitchhike through the country, finding whatever gigs he could. Back stateside, he spent a couple years gigging in the Midwest before lighting out for Boston, where he returned to busking (this time in the subway) and coffeehouses. Small shows led to larger shows, which eventually led to regional and then national and international touring. The wheels have not stopped since.
Jenna Nicholls
In a tapestry of sound, Jenna Nicholls weaves a spell: strumming her ukulele with the spirit of New Orleans or crooning a cowboy’s tale with the soul of the West. Her melodies, like vintage vinyl spun anew, carry the weight of memory and promise of tomorrow. With three albums under her belt, her songs have found their way into the heart of cinema and the pulse of television. On the road she’s shared stages with legends like Ingrid Michaelson, and Oscar winner Glen Hansard. From the storied stages of Carnegie Hall and the Beacon Theatre, Jenna’s music echoes through the night, a testament to the enduring power of song.
Heather Pierson Trio - Charlie Brown Christmas $20
Vince Guaraldi’s A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS as performed by THE HEATHER PIERSON JAZZ TRIO
with Shawn Nadeau on bass and Craig Bryan on drums
Heather Pierson is a New Hampshire based singer/songwriter, pianist, song leader, and performer with a passion for cultivating joy, both onstage and off. With a toe in each of the realms of New Orleans jazz, blues, vocal chants, instrumental piano, and folk, her multi-genre songwriting places her firmly in a category all her own, one honed by decades of diligent practice and curious exploration. Whether solo, as a duo, with her trio, or in a community sing, Heather’s live performances feature her bell-tone vocals, ease at the piano, and are infused with happiness, honest self-reflection, and a genuine desire to connect and share from the heart. In over twenty years on her own record label, Vessel Recordings, she has released fourteen albums and several singles of original music.
Abbie Gardner $25
Abbie Gardner
Abbie Gardner is a fiery dobro player with an infectious smile. Whether performing solo or with Americana harmony trio Red Molly, her acclaimed tales of love and loss, both gritty and sweet, are propelled by her impeccable lap style slide guitar playing. Solo performances feature the dobro as a solo instrument, bouncing between a solid rhythmic backbone and ripping lead lines, all in support of her voice and songs. Her latest recording DobroSinger was released May 13, 2022. It’s intimate, real and raw – her dobro and voice recorded at the same time at home, without a band or any studio tricks to hide behind. You can hear every breath, every chuckle, as if you are in the room with her. (passim.org)
Tickets may be ordered with a major credit card through PayPal. You do not need a PayPal account to purchase tickets. All sales are final.No refunds. Tickets will not be mailed; they will be held for you at the door. Doors open at 7:00PM.
In the event of bad weather please check this website for the latest information. If a show is canceled all tickets will be refunded.