As we welcome October 2016 to the world, the weather couldn’t be any nicer. The music ain’t bad either, with the folkies finding fall familiar. Friday gives us Dana Cooper and Sally Barris at the Paris-Belle House Concert series in Williamsville (parisbelleconcerts@outlook. com). Dana and Sally, both residents of the Nashville, Tenn., community of hard-working musicians, work together now and again when schedules permit. Dana, originally from Kansas City, began playing out at age 16 and traveled to Los Angeles where he was signed by Elektra Records in 1973. His storied career brings together a lifetime of commitment to song, and it shows well in his performances and recordings. Sally, no stranger to Mr. Lincoln’s hometown or the Paris-Belle House, combines her years of experience as a successful commercial songwriter with an innate sense of a performer’s soul to light up the stage every time, everywhere.
On Saturday the Jacksonville Public Library hosts Bookstock, an inaugural, daylong free concert on the library grounds’ green space (see the Facebook page). I’m honored to be part of this incredible lineup, kicking off the event bright and early at 10 in the morning followed by Wil Maring accompanied by Robert Bowlin. Wil, an accomplished painter as well as a top-shelf singer, songwriter and musician, makes her home near Cobden, Ill., and is often joined in song by the incomparable Bowlin, known as one of America’s finest flatpickers and fiddlers, plus an astounding player on many other instruments.
Michael Johnathon, host of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour program, hits next at 1:30. Johnathon plays banjo and guitar while singing about things like playing music on front porches. Based in Lexington, Ky., he puts the folk back into folksy. The Tall Trees, a trio with our local hero Ben Bedford plus Tim Grimm, Indiana’s worldtraveling, acclaimed songwriter, and Diederik van Wassenaer on fiddle, bringing different sounds to the songs of Bedford and Grimm. The concert offers a big finish with Nashvillebased Harpeth Rising, a trio of classically trained, genre-crossing young women who’ve been called “the vanguard of a new species of progressive folk music.” Jordana Greenberg (violin, vocals), Rebecca Reed-Lunn (banjo, vocals) and Maria Di Meglio (cello, vocals) do amazing things with music, effortlessly blending voices and instruments to the delight of the universe. Next week you would need to travel to Portugal to hear them, so this makes the half-hour drive to Jacksonville seem not so far.
For more of this stuff on Saturday afternoon, venture to Petersburg for Pickin’ at the Patch at Indian Creek Farmstead from 3 to 5 with me, my pal and fabulous singersongwriter Amy Benton, and her friend from Nashville, Jacob Lyda. Mr. Lyda has been on the country music radar since the mid- 90s and recently had “Doing it to Country Songs” (Marty Dodson, Lyda and Paul Overstreet) cut by country superstar Blake Shelton.
The Walnut Street Winery continues a good run of folk-friendly original music with Mike LeGary (go, man, go) on Friday and Steely James from Nashville on Saturday. I just got word as I was writing that our old friend singer-songwriter-guitarist Chris Miller is coming up from Nashville (man, that word popped up a lot in this week’s column) to play the WSW on Oct. 7 with Joe Dawkins joining in the songfest.
Now for something completely different as End Times Trio and Roughhousing play improvisational, free jazz after Wendy Allen’s art showing at the Prairie House on Saturday at 6 p.m. That will be a show to experience and remember.
It’s your last chance this weekend to vote in our “Best of Springfield” poll.
Contact Tom Irwin at tirwin@illinoistimes.com.
