A year without Bill Staines on the me&thee stage would make for an incomplete musical season at our venerable coffeehouse. Bill brings an incredible portfolio of music, stories, and humor wherever he goes. This year we are spicing up the evening and presenting Diana Jones as part of this delicious co-bill, whose My Remembrance of You was the Chicago Tribune’s pick as album of the year for 2006.

Staines has been a mainstay at the me&thee since it opened its doors 37 years ago. A New England native, Bill has been singing his songs at coffeehouses, festivals, folk song societies, and concert halls since the 1960s and, for a time, he emceed the Sunday hootenanny at the legendary Club 47 in Cambridge. This fall, Bill was presented with the Boston Area Coffehouse Association’s “Jerry Christen Memorial Award” which recognizes a person who represents all that is good about the folk community.

In 2007, Bill released a new CD, Old Dog, giving him close to 30 albums of music produced over the years. Bill continues to play over 200 concert dates per year and is one of the most popular folk singers on the circuit. He has chronicled his life on the road in a book, The Tour: A Life Between the Lines. Each fall, Bill leaves his home in New England and sets out on a five-week tour of North America. He covers about 15,000 miles of open highway and gets to relay many of his adventures while he performs for his fans. Bill’s road memoir was begun on the 20th anniversary of his annual fall tour. This book is also a chronicle of a life, from the time that Bill spent growing up in the Boston-Cambridge folk music scene in the early 1960’s to the present, when he has come to be considered one of the most respected singer-songwriters on the folk music scene today. It is all here, and it is all written from the heart.

Bill is the epitome of the traveling folk troubadour. We guarantee you that you’ll be singing and humming Bill’s song all the way home after this show and we know you will be singing along with Bill during the show.

Diana Jones’s music is formed by the themes that have run through her life: love, loss, and redemption. Adopted as an infant and raised in New York, Diana left home at the age of 15 in search of her roots. Unlike most of her friends, Diana was attracted to the music of Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, as well as contemporary artists Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton. It wasn’t until she was reunited with her birth family and the music of the Eastern Tennessee hills some years later, that she discovered why that music had always moved her.

After establishing a solid folk career in the late 90s in the fertile Austin music scene, Diana returned to the northeast seeking time to heal from the loss of her beloved grandfather, Robert Lee Maranville, who as a young man performed with Chet Atkins among others. It was during this time of healing and isolation that Diana started writing from a deeper place, and after some serious woodshedding, she emerged with some of the most honest songs of her life. From the mournful lament of a dance hall girl, to the stomping melodic rant of a young woman’s burial instructions, each of Diana’s original songs from her latest CD, My Remembrance of You, draws life from the rich cross currents of old timey, country blues and mountain music.

$18.00
 

 

Any new song that can live comfortably beside the well-worn songs of folk tradition has a good chance of surviving the test of time. Such, we believe, are the songs of Bill Staines. Charles “Sandy” Paton, Folk Legacy Records

There is no better writer of instantly memorable sing-along choruses in this genre of music. The Boston Globe

Jones is on the verge of a critical breakthrough.  Increasingly compared to the likes of Iris DeMent and Gillian Welch, Jones just might be the best American songwriter most people have never heard of. Chicago Tribune

“Profound songs, purely country singing, light acoustic arrangements. She’ll break your heart and you’ll be glad she did. Philadelphia City Paper