ABOUT THE
PERFORMERS
Kris Delmhorst will be performing at Stone Soup Coffeehouse on May 22, 2010. Ray Cooke will open the concert. (Jen Woodhouse was originally scheduled to open.)
This is the final concert for the 2009-2010 season, concluding the 29th year of Stone Soup Coffeehouse’s concert series. We open for our 30th year with the Stone Soup Fest at the Pawtucket Arts Festival.
Stone Soup is located at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 50 Park Place, Pawtucket, RI. The concert starts at 8:00 PM; tickets are $15 in advance through PayPal or $17.00 at the door. (Stone Soup is wheelchair-accessible.)
Kris Delmhorst has built a thriving career and a devoted following from the ground up, with a back catalog that includes two darkly rollicking roots records, 2001’s “Five Stories,” and 2003’s “Songs for a Hurricane,” and the 2006 release “Strange Conversation,” a vibrant collection of Americana songs inspired by the work of famous poets. The Irish Times called the latter CD “a remarkable album...as seamless and brave as it is brilliantly creative …” The same independence of spirit that led Delmhorst to spend some early years working on subsistence farms, cooking on a schooner off the coast of Maine, or hitch-hiking the back roads of Ireland with a fiddle on her back, is evident in the arc of her musical evolution: a willingness to work on her own terms and her own time. Along the way she’s parlayed a decade of successful cross country and trans-Atlantic touring into one of the most distinct voices in American music.
Delmhorst’s 2008 CD, “Shotgun Singer,” is a collection of songs fully realized and even lush at times, but retaining a hushed intensity, a spirit of lo-fi intimacy and unhurried exploration. Favoring perceptions over conclusions, and showing a willingness to evoke emotion but not to pin it down, Delmhorst leaves the mystery of creation intact at the heart of each song, while exploring the transformative power of love, as in “Birds of Belfast:” With “Shotgun Singer,” Delmhorst has trained her voice on a series of gracefully open lyrics and figures that transcend genre, ranging into the borderlands between indie-rock and folk. Adventurous, elegant, lucid, and haunting, the record is the work of a musician at full stride who has found a musical language equal to her vision.
Jen Woodhouse’s 2007 CD, “The Shaping and Shifting of Objects and Sound,” followed on the heels of her critically-acclaimed 2005 debut album, “This Honest Age.” The 2007 CD is a collection of cleverly spun tales of realism that relate to the many sides of the persona. Live elements mingle with metallic elements while Woodhouse’s voice is powerful but heart-wrenchingly sincere.
Woodhouse masters the balance between strength and vulnerability. Her intensely emotional songs bind the elements of self-sacrifice, redemption, and the constant redefining of identity.
Kris Delmhorst’s website is http://www.krisdelmhorst.com/index.php
Jen Woodhouse’s website is http://www.jenwoodhouse.com/