Featuring: Pete Donnelly, Rosa Diaz, Up the Chain, and Hennessey Bonfire
Come hear four top-notch Philadelphia Music Co-op artists showcase for an opportunity to play at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. While this is not a battle of the bands, a panel of programmers from the Festival will select one (or more) artists for the 2013 event based on each performer's level of craft, performance quality, audience draw, crowd response and more. Come support your favorite act for the chance to send them to the Philadelphia Folk Festival!
Pete Donnelly: As the ever active bass player and song writer in The Figgs, founded in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. in 1987, Donnelly has spent the better part of the past 25 years touring with the band, as well as a number of other artists such as Soul Asylum, Mike Viola & The Candy Butchers and Tommy Stinson. Living in the Philadelphia area for the past decade, when not on the road, Pete Donnelly has been writing, performing, engineering and/or producing for a variety of artists, including John Legend, Sub Pop artist Death Vessel, G. Love & Special Sauce, Carsie Blanton, The Capitol Years, Amos Lee and Ben Arnold, to name a few.
Rosa Diaz: The island born, Philly-raised singer-songwriter Rosa Diaz has an old-world yet multiethnic style that has been likened to the flower of her namesake, a cross-stitched rose, but modern and geometric. Currently, Diaz is researching and recording the follow up to her first full-length, WHIM. A tribute to family and ancestry, WHIM features musical ingredients of bare-bones acoustic guitar blended with Latin-American folk music and layers of church-inspired choral harmonies in a bilingual collection, mixed expertly by Philly local Joe Baldacci's minimalistic production style (Early Ape, Dragon Kng.) The latest project, For Boys Who Like Bukowski: A Healing Album for Broken Men, aims at fusing together songs, images and text to stitch old wounds and regenerate DNA.
Up the Chain: What was once a rotating cast of some of the area's best musicians has since coalesced into a tightly-knit, soulful live band. The streets have been watching Up the Chain for years, but now the road beckons. Holy, Open, Drying Road, released in 2011, is a spirited, earnest debut album from a band ready to take their locally reputed sound nationwide. In true Americana fashion, the album reveals a sensibility raised in Philly, refined in New Orleans, and bound for New York City.
Hennessey Bonfire: Hennessey Bonfire is the world pop project of songwriter and percussionist Shawn Hennessey (Leana Song). Their debut Let's Get Carried Away is a prophetic melting-pot of honest songs, world percussion, luscious harmonies and gang vocals. Shawn played and recorded most of the instruments himself, in various lofts and studios from 2008-2012. The tunes are both epic and personal; simple and deep; contemplative and full of love. The band features both ancient and futurist sounds and instrumentation with Dijon (tabla), Nezih Antakli (cajon drumset), Elliot Garland (Electric bass), Gina Ferrera (TrapKatControllerist) and Shawn Hennessey (nylon guitar). Rooted in African, Mediterranean, Cuban, and Indian grooves, Hennessey Bonfire delivers intimate performances of lush organic music, while keeping songwriting and soulful delivery at the helm.
The Twisted Tail
509-511 2nd Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19147
$8 for PFS Mebers / $10 for Non-Members
Baroque & contemporary music plus Brazilian jazz.
