SATURDAY JUNE 2, 2012

8:00pm

DIANA JONES

With special guest

MEG BRAUN

$20 ($17 members)

CLICK HERE TO ORDER TICKETS ONLINE

When Diana Jones flew on a plane from New York to Eastern Tennessee and took her grandfather’s hand for the first time, her life was changed. Growing up as an adopted child in New York, Jones had an affinity for songs by mountain music artists not popular with her contemporaries. After searching out her birth family at 15, she connected with her Tennessee roots, and discovered that her birth grandfather (Robert Lee Maranville) had been a professional picker touring with Chet Atkins. Jones’s journey took her to Austin, where she worked on the craft of songwriting, and back to the Northeast, where, after her grandfather’s death, she locked herself away in a cabin to write.

Her music is in the best of folk/country/roots music traditions, focusing on the richness of story combined with strong melody. In 2006, she won the prestigious New Folk Contest at Kerrville. That year she also released My Remembrance of You which earned glowing reviews in British magazines like Uncut and Q, as well as the chance to tour with Richard Thompson. More validation came when Joan Baez recorded Diana’s “Henry Russell’s Last Words” on her 2008 album Day After Tomorrow. Jones recorded the song, as well, on Better Times Will Come, which the Chicago Tribune hailed as Best Country Recording of 2006.

Just as authoritative as Diana Jones’s pen, however, is her singing voice, a clarion alto whose rich timbres and elongated phrasing sometimes suggest a cello or viola. “I try to be very present to my material, to mean each word I sing,” she says. “That to me is the bottom line. It’s like telling a story. You want people to understand what you’re singing, but you also want to believe it yourself, to really get into it. And that’s really the joy of it. It feels like flying.”

“There’s some kind of channeling from some other lifetime going on. I don’t know the answer to these things, but all I can think of is that it must come from some mysterious part of her soul.”

 — Joan Baez

 

* * *

Opening the evening will be singer-songwriter Meg Braun.   The Toledo, Ohio native arrived in New York with only a diploma (for her degree in Philosophy) and hopes of building a career in non-profit advocacy, but she soon found far more in the city than she had imagined. 

While living in Manhattan’s East Village, Meg filled in for a friend one Tuesday evening as host of the open mic at the neighborhood’s legendary C-Note.  Immediately, she knew she had stumbled into something special.  When the host position became available shortly thereafter, Meg gladly took the helm and guided for years what became a weekly salon of sorts, welcoming songwriters of all stripes.  As host, Meg encouraged writers to share new songs each week, and gradually built a community that inspired its members toward sharper skills and wider success.

Immersed in this creative cauldron, Meg herself began writing in earnest.  Soon, many of her songs – bubbling with love, loss, transformation, and joy – became audience favorites at the C-Note and paved the way for success beyond the neighborhood.  In 2009, Meg released her debut CD, Tomboy Princess, which features some of the songs she polished back in the East Village.  Even as she begins to play out-of-town shows with greater regularity, Meg continues to nurture the acoustic music scene in New York City in her work as co-founder of the Christopher Street Coffeehouse.

"Definitely someone to watch."

- Richard Cuccaro, Acoustic Live!