SATURDAY JANUARY 7, 2012
8:00pm

A HURDY GURDY NOTEWORTHY NIGHT CONCERT

SPUYTEN DUYVIL and HUNGRYTOWN

$15 ($12 members)

CLICK HERE TO ORDER TICKETS ONLINE

 As part of our 30th anniversary celebration, Hurdy Gurdy Noteworthy Nights is a special series of four co-bill concerts (11/19, 1/7, 2/4 & 3/24) that will celebrate our past and set the stage for the future.
We are offering this series at a very special price to enable our patrons
an opportunity to experience these amazing artists!

We kick off the new year with our second Noteworthy Night concert, and we feature a duo and a group  known for exploring their roots and entertaining audiences!

Spuyten Duyvil has a story to share.
In the beginning, there is a gift… A wife gives her husband a Bouzouki to cure the sadness in his soul. Having spent his youth making music on computers for video games, he is confused by all of the strings. He does not know what to do.

He finds a copy of Rise Up Singing and learns. She sings. They sing together. The old songs make them happy. Friends stop by their covered stone porch to listen and play. There is bbq. There is a guitar and a fiddle and a bass. And there is Spuyten Duyvil.

Local history is mined for tales of the peculiar individuals and accidents of history that make New York 'the island at the center of the world'.

Songs are written.  It sounds good. It is lyrical, it is mystical, it is strangely familiar and it grooves. There are gigs. There's an EP: 'In Spite of The Devil'. People hear it on the radio. And so it gets pretty interesting for the husband, the wife, their small tribe of friends and the Bouzouki.

The band grows; it adds a Chicago-style harmonica, a drummer, a wicked lap steel.. Now it rocks. It play s unapologetically amped-up Americana. It mashes up the blues, the Olde Timey, gospel, bluegrass, jug band, Appalachian, punk rock and second line music. It plays festivals, listening rooms, coffee houses, museums, Irish pubs, and live radio shows.

Now, they will appear at the Hurdy Gurdy. Spuyten Duyvil’s alternate roots sound wanders the last 100 years of American music conjuring embittered civil war veterans, recalcitrant small town bawds, suicidal bureaucrats, star crossed lovers and brave hearted fools navigating the mysteries of daily life. Spuyten Duyvil brings the energy and the excitement to every show.

"Spuyten Duyvil's songs draw on the roots of American music and history, but in the hands of eight superb performers they crackle with energy that's both contemporary and downright irresistible." 

—John Platt, WFUV

* * *

Hungrytown is the folk music duo of Rebecca Hall & Ken Anderson. They met and started dating in New York City in 1993 while Rebecca was singing torch songs in Soho bars and Ken was a rock drummer. Three months later, they took a road trip together--a foreshadowing of trips to come--and got married a year later. Rebecca and Ken have been performing full-time since 2003, when they made the decision to quit their day jobs, move into a tiny house up in Vermont and head out into the vast unknown from there.

Rebecca learned to sing in church as a child, and was an experienced interpreter of jazz and blues standards by the time she was in her 20s. Her discovery of roots music coincided with the reissue of the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music in 1997, and inspired her to begin writing in earnest. She soon developed a reputation for simple, melodic and achingly beautiful songs, stirring modern themes into traditional song structures: "Hall's original compositions hark back to the earliest traditions of acoustic Americana, tracing a sepia-tinged line from the Carter Family to the contemporary lo-fi classicism of Gillian Welch," writes Steve Bennet of Acoustic Magazine. 

Ken is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, who learned to play drums and organ as a young child, and has since moved on to bass, guitar, mandolin, banjo and harmonica. He is also a natural harmony singer, and his background in pop music is largely responsible for Hungrytown's unique vocal blend. Ken has produced all three of the duo's CDs, and his tasteful arrangements were soon singled out for praise, "Anderson has a knack for crafting rich arrangements that don't clutter things up," writes Casey Rea of Seven Days (VT) magazine, and shortly thereafter Ken began receiving requests from other performers looking for a caring and talented producer for their recording projects. 

When Rebecca and Ken are not on the road, they spend their time at home recording their songs, producing CDs for other performers, or just sitting out on the porch.

"I love the sound of Rebecca Hall’s voice. There’s a sweetness and a worldly wisdom in perfect balance. Rebecca is one of the few singers I’ve heard that is able to create that reaction.”
- Roger McGuinn