Carrie Newcomer

Carrie Newcomer weaves her life and her art together, with music, community activism, and personal concerns all playing a role. She’s one of those people who exudes a spirituality that’s all her own, and she has to be seen in concert to be truly appreciated. Says novelist Barbara Kingsolver: “She’s a poet, storyteller, snake-charmer, good neighbor, friend and lover, minister of the wide-eyed gospel of hope and grace.”

Keller Williams brings back his “Shut the Folk Up and Listen” series with one of his favorite folk gurus, Steve Poltz. As Keller said in 2016 when he kicked off this seated evening of song and stories concept with Leo Kottke and again in 2018 with Martin Sexton, “I take great pride in the evolution of my career. Between all the electronic toys and all the eclectic people that allow me into their worlds, this set goes back to the beginning. Guitar and microphone. Loopless. You’ll hear songs you recognize and a few you won’t. I may even hit you up for a request. All in all, its a loose night in comfortable chairs with acoustic music.

Over the course of her twenty five year touring career, Susan Werner has built a reputation as one of the country’s most compelling live performers. She’s written songs in the style of Gershwin and Cole Porter (I Can’t Be New, 2004), gospel music (The Gospel Truth, 2007), traditional Cuban “son” (An American In Havana, 2016), and New Orleans junk piano (NOLA, 2019). In 2014 she composed the music and lyrics to the musical theater score Bull Durham, The Musical (MGM). Susan comes to Michigan with a unique new EP, “The Birds of Florida.”

Pitchfork called Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” “the pop song that launched a generation of piano lessons.” But Vanessa has released five albums since that song came out in 2002, each one revealing more of herself as a songwriter. “Always building up, falling apart. Love is an art,” sings Vanessa Carlton on the title track of her new “Love Is an Art.” Like the recording itself, the song is a meditation on the eternal seesaw that is human connection: the push, the pull, the balance, the bottoming out. It’s that constantly evolving nature of love Vanessa explores, from romantic, to parental, to the friends that hold us up and the leaders that repeatedly let us down.

Since his neo-psychedelic Green On Red days, Chuck Prophet has been turning out country, folk, blues, and Brill Building classicism. His latest album, “The Land That Time Forgot,” is something different, a weather vane picking up signals from outer space—or maybe from the Heartland. Come and hear the latest from one of our favorite songwriters to have come out of the world of alternative rock.

Ask about the new generation of social justice music-makers ,and Crys Matthews will be mentioned. A southeastern North Carolina native who now calls Washington, D.C., home, Crys has been compared to everyone from Toshi Reagon to Tracy Chapman and Ruthie Foster. A prolific lyricist, Crys blends Americana, folk, jazz, blues, bluegrass, and funk into a bold, complex performance steeped in traditional melodies punctuated by honest, original lyrics.