On Friday February 22, the me&thee will present a “song swap” featuring Jennifer Kimball, Alastair Moock and Michael Troy. The three will be on the stage at the same time and alternate singing, perhaps joining one another for certain songs. Each one of these is a fine performer on their own, but together they will create some real magic. The me&thee turns 38 years old in February, so stop by and help us celebrate.

Jennifer Kimball released her second solo CD, Oh Hear Us (Epoisse) in 2006. It is a long-awaited gift for Kimball’s dedicated fans and is sure to win her new ones. Birth, death, sorrow, joy and musical renaissance mark the eight years since Veering from the Wave was released. Setting aside solo touring for a period of time, Kimball experienced the vastness of human experience, losing her mother to cancer and becoming a mother herself. She returns with sharpened skills, a greater confidence and a stunning batch of radio and concert hall-ready songs that pick up where Veering left off. An Amherst College English major, she and fellow student Jonatha Brook formed the duo, The Story, which met with great success. Jennifer decided to move on from that and launched a successful solo career. She accompanies herself variously on her trademark cornucopia of instruments: baritone ukulele, acoustic guitar, piano and Wurlitzer.

Alastair Moock started performing in 1995, moving from his home outside New York City to the folk haven of Boston, Massachusetts. After honing his skills on Boston’s innumerable open mike stages and working his way up through the local coffeehouse and club circuit, he began touring around the U.S. By 2002, he had already traveled extensively throughout the East and Midwest, performing at many of the top listening rooms and outdoor events in the country, including the Newport and Boston Folk Festivals. In 2003 he made his first trip to Europe, where he performed at the prestigious Bergen Music Fest in Norway. Since then he has made numerous trips across the pond with appearances in the UK, France, Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Moock has recently released his fifth CD, Fortune Street, to rave reviews and was nominated for a Boston Music Award for Best Singer/Songwriter of 2007. Moock’s last CD, Let it Go, charted for fourteen consecutive weeks in the Roots Music Report Folk Chart’s Top 10 and cracked the Americana Music Chart’s Top 40 in February, 2006. Worcester magazine calls it “one of the best roots music records to come out of New England in recent memory” and Daniel Gerwertz of the Boston Herald included it in his Top 10 list for the year, saying, “Moock has become simply one of the top songwriters in the region.”

Michael Troy was born and raised in the rough-and-tumble mill town of Fall River, Mass. In many ways, his life reflects the lives of the hard-working common folk who populate this part of New England. Having spent parts of his own life as a mill worker, fisherman, laborer and carpenter, and most of his adult years as a husband and father, Michael has traveled many paths, and the experience and wisdom he’s gleaned along the way echoes through his music. Both his CDs, Whispers in the Wind (1998) and Romancing the Moon (2004), celebrate the beauty and intrinsic value of hard work and perseverance, memory and history, love and friendship, and above all, survival. Michael has received many awards — the latest for winning the 2007 New England Songwriting Contest.

$16.00
 

 

On Jennifer Kimball:

[Kimball’s CD Oh Hear Us] is the epitome of what a singer-songwriter recording should strive for — memorable songs and singing, and music that can reveal new facets at each hearing. George Graham

. . .

On Alastair Moock:

Moock’s songs are simple, built on country-blues structures and free of the convoluted metaphors and self-conscious wordplay that clutter so much modern folk music . . . Every one is a gem. The Washington Post

. . .

On Michael Troy:

Michael Troy’s songs tell the stories of people we recognize instantly. Mined from wisdom and experience hard-won, his language and poetry reveal true meaning sifted from raw fact, and, like our best songwriters, he leads us to revelations about ourselves. This is a songwriter who bears repeated listening. Geoff Bartley