Thursday 9th June
Jeni & Billy +Support
£9/£11 [+10% Booking fee]
Doors open 8pm
“There are two kinds of music – the blues and …….
That’s what Townes Van Zandt said. But there is a third kind, which finds the best parts of both of those kinds of music and turns it into something seamlessly American and wonderful. That third kind is Jeni & Billy music.”
That’s the assessment of Grammy-nominated songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Dillon O’Brian, who co-produced “Picnic in the Sky,” the latest studio recording from the Appalachian folk duo.
For the first time in their eight-year partnership, Jeni & Billy recorded with a full band a crack group of Los Angeles-based musicians assembled by O’Brian and Grammy-winning co-producer, Dave Way.
The result is a sparkly new sheen on the impeccable storytelling and musicianship that fans expect from Jeni & Billy. But the deep Appalachian roots of the music shine through. “Hankins’ approach is often compared to that of Hazel Dickens (1925-2011) and aptly so,” Rob Weir of “SingOut!” magazine writes. “Though Hankins has a smoother, less nasal voice than Dickens, it has the same born-in-the-bone twang the kind you don’t get by dressing up country and scouring songbooks. Hankins also grew up in the same contiguous coal mine region that spawned Dickens, and with the same sensibilities: an appreciation for the grace of ordinary people, mountain gospel music, support for miners’ unions, and a gift for finding beauty where less attuned people fail to see it.”
Billy Kemp’s schooling in the traditions of mountain music took place in the mill village of Ellicott City, Maryland, among Appalachian migrants who had come to escape the mines and work in the mills, bringing their fiddles and banjos with them. Billy listened and learned becoming a versatile instrumentalist who can soar in any style from Rockabilly to Indian ragas.
That Southwest Virginia catch in Jeni’s voice blends perfectly with Billy’s finely tuned vocal harmonies.
Jeni’s solid rhythmic playing provides a solid bed for Billy’s syncopated and gorgeously melodic guitar and banjo solos and fills.
As producer Dave way puts it, Jeni & Billy are “the sweetest, most down to earth, good people making music just like that.
Their roots run deep and sprout the most fragrant flowers.”
Bookings are not currently available for this event.