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| Little Toby Walker, 2007 |
Erin McKeown, 2008 |
Utah Phillips, '80s |
Don McLean, '70s |
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PDF Downloads:
Full Calendar
Mar-May
(1680KB) |
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Fridge Calendar
Mar-May
(180 KB) |
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Calendar
June 2008
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| Listed ticket prices are: Non-Member / Member. Tickets sold at door cost additional $2. |
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| Sunday, June 1 • 6 to 8 PM |
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Potluck Party for Volunteers |
A thank you to our volunteers is the best way to kick off the busy summer season. Volunteers enter data, stuff envelopes, wait on tables, wash dishes, raise money, water the flowers, create our web presence, and greet you with a smile at the door. If you’ve pitched in during the last year, come with a dish and let us say thanks to you. |
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 Christine Gelineau is the author of Remorseless Loyalty (2006, Ashland Poetry Press), which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Award in Poetry. Her chapbook In the Greenwood World (2006) was part of Foothills Publishing's ‘Poets on Peace’ series.
In 2007 she edited the anthology French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets by Louisiana Literature Press. |
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 19-year-old Mallory O’Donnell is a born singer who brings out all the sultriness, bliss and groove in songs penned by her musical partner, popular area songwriter Bob Warren.
Ranging from all out rock to soft soul songs, folk-rock ballads and groovy blues, Mallory can belt, whisper and croon like a seasoned pro. Tonight she’ll be previewing new songs from upcoming CD, scheduled for release later this year. |
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 Boston songwriter Meg Hutchinson has one of the finest new voices on the folk circuit. With lyric-based, contemporary folk songs that are full of optimism and love of the natural world, she counts poet Mary Oliver, songwriter Shawn Colvin, and mood maker David Gray among her primary influences.
At the age of twenty-nine, she has already won numerous songwriting awards in the US, Ireland and UK, including recognition from Merlefest, NewSong, Kerrville, Falcon Ridge and Rocky Mountain Folks Fests.
Her new album Come Up Full was released this spring on the prestigious Red House label. |
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 This Boston husband-and-wife team honed their style in Irish traditional sessions in Chicago, Boston and County Clare. They can play trad with the best of them, but as Statesiders raised on rock, country, and American folk, they’re as likely to get ideas from the Pixies as from Planxty.
The result -- Irish traditional music that honors the past while giving it a swift American kick into the present. It's pithy, finely crafted acoustic music and songs that break hearts and crack smiles at twenty paces. |
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 How many singer/songwriters have a co-write with Bob Dylan (“Well, Well, Well”) and a song recorded by Elvis Presley? Since releasing the top-five Billboard hit, "Goodtime Charlie's Got the Blues,” back in 1972, Danny O’Keefe has been writing beautiful songs, collaborating with top artists, and doing good works. Throughout he has been guided by a belief in music as a powerful means for motivating change.
Danny started The Songbird Foundation (www.songbird.org) to draw attention to the decline in songbirds and their habitats. Bonnie Raitt, John Mayer, Jimmy Buffet, Jackson Browne and many other friends have supported Danny in this work. Danny's voice is a superb mixture of blues and Americana; his songwriting speaks for itself. |
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 The Biscuit Burners from Ashville, North Carolina offer "fiery mountain music," combining the style of old country ballads with progressive bluegrass to create an original sound full of energy and passion. Currently building themselves a reputation as one of the hottest young bluegrass acts around, the Burners—Mary Lucey (acoustic bass), Bill Cardine (resophonic guitar), Dan Bletz  (acoustic guitar), Odessa Jorgensen (fiddle), and Wes Corbett (banjo)—have appeared on BBC World TV's Destination Music, NPR's Mountain Stage, and PBS' Roadtrip Nation.
Toughcats is a delightful three-piece band of Resonator guitar, banjo & mandolin, suitcase drums and singing. Hailing from the Fox Islands in Penobscot Bay, they have an “Imaginative, traditional, eclectic, high, can't-help-bopping-around energy” and, it goes without saying, an increasingly busy tour schedule. |
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4:00 PM Druming workshop with Gballoi, Ghanian drum ensemble
8:30 PMConcert with Gballoi and Berkshire Batteria
It’s time for the 2nd Annual SaratogaArtsFest. Music of every stripe, theater, dance, painting, and poetry are all part of this three-day celebration of Saratoga’s year ‘round world of arts.
This special festival event on the Caffè Lena stage brings together traditional drumming from two continents: Gballoi, a Ghanaian drum troupe based in Schenectady, and The Berkshire Bateria, the Great Barrington-based Brazilian Rio-style drum corps.
For more details about the festival visit www.saratogaartsfest.org. |
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 Bill Morrissey's lyrical gifts and graceful, understated melodies have won him two Grammy nominations and put him on stages across the world. With songs influenced by Mississippi John Hurt, Hank Williams and B ob Dylan, Morrissey captures the harshness and small sadness of his characters, but tempers it all with wry humor that often leaves the listener with a smile.
Special guest Kelly Flint, lead singer of acclaimed jazz trio Dave’s True Story, pens postmodern folk songs with a tinge of Americana and sings them in the sultry voice that made her the toast of The New York Times, the Kennedy Center, and more. |
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| Friday, June 20 • 8 PM |
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Gandalf Murphy & the |
$25/22 |
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Slambovian Circus of Dreams |
| www.slambovia.com |
 This band draws perhaps the most diverse audience ever seen at Caffè Lena--everyone from little kids to oldsters, metal-heads to contra dancers—and the demand for seats gets stiffer with each appearance.
We're not sure how this one-of-a-kind rock band ended up in folk clubs, but whatever force steered them in that direction did a mighty kind thing.
Their songs have been described as "Hillbilly-Floyd, folk-pop," "alt-country roots-rock, and "surreal Americana." Dancing freely between religious and philosophical mythologies, their music is not only uplifting and empowering but also fun--a lot of fun.
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| Saturday, June 21 • 8 PM |
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The Quarrel |
| $15/12 |
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A Play by David Brandes & Joseph Telushkin on the
Caffè’s Main Stage |
 Incomprehensible horrors, overwhelming grief, shame and guilt, the soul-wrenching legacy of the holocaust. Two Jewish friends, Hersh (Victor Batorsky), now a rabbi, and Chaim (Ed McMullen), a Yiddish writer, having parted in bitterness, thinking each other lost in the holocaust, meet by accident 20 years later. In the wake of events that devastated their families, they struggle to find common ground.
One has lost all faith in God, the other any hope in mankind. The arguments are the same, but the answers they discover lie beyond words, beyond The Quarrel. Ultimately, this play offers understanding in the face of inexpressible loss. |
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 Troy, NY native Rick Rourke got hooked on the Animals and Bob Dylan as a young man and used their inspiration to create a body of rock, funk and blues songs. After decades of playing the rock circuit up and down the east coast, Rick's new, acoustic Lost Wages band features country and folk-flavored songs of a deeper, more political nature that ring with craft and honesty.
This very tight band features Craig Thaler on violin, Larry Clyman on guitar, Leo Kachidurian on drums and vocals, and Lucas Ruedy on bass, and Rick Rourke out front on guitar, sax and harp. |
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 “Jewell is becoming a national phenom with her cool, blue romances.”
– Scott Alarik, Boston Globe
This has been a great year for Boston-based artist Eilen (rhymes with feelin’) Jewell. Her new Signature Sounds release, Sinners & Strangers, garnered phenomenal reviews coast to coast; she opened a show for Loretta Lynn, appeared on Mountain Stage, and hit the Top Ten on the Americana Music charts.
“In an industry in which it's too easy to do it wrong, Eilen Jewell has done it very, very right, resulting in this superb and seamless romp through swing jazz, smoky country ballads, and nostalgic old-time music.” – Sing Out!
Truly, one of our finest discoveries in recent years. Don’t miss! |
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 This trio was a regular feature at Lena's in the '80s until family and careers took them in separate directions. They sing popular music of five centuries; including British and American traditional music, catches and rounds, music of the Renaissance, hymns, American Songbook standards, doo-wop (!), and original songs.
Their tight vocal harmonies, and their lively and humor-filled performances long made them favorites with audiences throughout the Northeast. They accompany themselves with some combination of piano, reed organ, recorders, accordion, synthesizer, spoons and other whimsical percussion instruments. |
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 "If you took heavy guitar lines from Radiohead, added beautiful vocal harmonies from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and mixed in some mandolin from David Grisman, you would only begin to construct the artistic beauty of Matthew Loiacono's new album, Kentucky."
- Alex Selby, Saratogian
Matthew Loiacono, best known to Caffe Lena audiences for his years with the Kamikaze Hearts, has made himself indispensible to the Capital Region music scene with his guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo, drumset and percussion.
He employed this wealth of skill to produce his new album, Kentucky, written and recorded over the course of 24 days last winter. Every note on the album is his own, including four-part harmony singing and mandolin choirs.
To reproduce the lush vocal arrangements in a live setting a small choir supplies voices and handclaps while Matthew sings lead and plays mandolin. |
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Photo:
Little Toby Walker
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Photo:
Erin McKeown
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Photo:
Utah Phillips
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Photo:
Don McLean
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| © 2007, Joseph Deuel |
© 2009, Joseph Deuel |
©, Joseph Deuel |
©, Joseph Deuel |
Copyright © 1998-2008, Caffe Lena, Inc.
All Rights Reserved |
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