Well friends let’s make a resolution together. Lets make 2023 the year we take it easy. Not get too excited, keep it simple, kind and relax in the comfort of our roots. On Live At The Linda, that’s likely some good old fashion folk music. Yes, folk music, take one part acoustic, one part home grown sincerity, add a dash of political justice and serve with friends. Tonight, we’re going to have a folkin’ good time.
We’ll hear from Rose Cousins, Kim and Reggie Harris featuring Magpie, and Jake Xerxes Fussell.
A native of Prince Edward Island, Rose Cousins lives in Halifax Nova Scotia. She deeply values being part of multiple music communities, and is constantly fueled by collaboration. Cousins’ 2012 album We Have Made A Spark celebrated her Boston community and featured a cast of musicians Cousins had known and played music with for a decade. It won a JUNO Award, 3 East Coast Music Awards, a Canadian Folk Music Award, was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, and made picks/best of lists in USA Today, NPR Music and Oprah Magazine. Her music has found its way into several TV shows including Grey’s Anatomy. This concert is from 2009 and its Folkin’ good. Here is Rose Cousins live at The Linda.
In the intro I talked about how the meal of Folk music is a feast best served with friends so let’s open the door to our good friends, Kim and Reggie Harris.
Consummate musicians and storytellers, Kim and Reggie Harris combine a strong folk and gospel legacy with a solid background in classical, rock and pop music. Creative curiosity, years of road and stage experience and interactions with performers such as Pete Seeger, Ysaye Barnwell, Jay Leno, Tom Paxton, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Harry Belafonte and others, has led them to produce music that entertains and inspires.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, a city rich in cultural and musical heritage, Kim and Reggie's early exposure to the diversity of musical styles and genres was nurtured in the schools and churches of their youth.
Audiences at venues such as The Kennedy Center, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Smithsonian Institute, Reunion Arena in TX, the Psalm Festival in Graz, Austria, as well as a myriad of theatre arts centers, festivals, universities and schools, have given this inspiring duo standing ovations for their vibrant performances.
Kim and Reggie Harris are dynamic and superbly talented traditional folk performers, whose captivating stage presence and unique harmonies has earned the respect and love of audiences throughout the US, Canada and Europe for over 30 years. They are unique in their ability to entertain audiences of any age and background as they blend their talents as singers, songwriters, educators, interpreters of history and cultural advocates.
Joining Kim and Reggie for this concert was Magpie comprised of Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner. The duo has brought their unique sound and remarkable versatility to audiences everywhere, featuring traditional and vintage Americana to contemporary and stirring original compositions.
With two strong voices in harmony and superb instrumental arrangements, their sound is powerful and moving. Award-winning recording artists, singers, songwriters, musical historians, playwrights, actors and social activists, Terry and Greg are proud to be, as Pete Seeger said of them, “…more links in the chain”, dedicating their lives and music to leaving this world a better place. Here are Kim and Reggie Harris featuring Magpie live at The Linda.
Singer, guitarist, and folk music interpreter Jake Xerxes Fussell has distinguished himself as one of his generation’s preeminent interpreters of traditional (and not so traditional) “folk” songs, a practice which he approaches with a refreshingly unfussy lack of nostalgia. By re-contextualizing ancient vernacular songs and sources of the American South, he allows them to breathe and speak for themselves and for himself; he alternately inhabits them and allows them to inhabit him. In all his work, Fussell humanizes his material with his own profound curatorial and interpretive gifts, unmooring stories and melodies from their specific eras and origins and setting them adrift in our own waterways. The robust burr of his voice, which periodically melts and catches at a particularly tender turn of phrase, and the swung rhythmic undertow of exquisite, seemingly effortless guitar-playing pull new valences of meaning from ostensibly antique songs and subjects.
This concert is from a couple months ago and Jake supplied us with his relaxing dose of Folk mellowness and we were there for it. Here is Jake Xerxes Fussell live at The Linda.
Thanks for sticking with us this week. Tune in next week for sets from Precious Metals, Reese Fulmer, Pony in the Pancake, and Side B recorded during our 2022 "Summer on Central Concert Series." For more information about The Linda or any upcoming events follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or visit thelinda.org.
