Photo by Jesse Sheppard

Wednesday May 27 * Doors at 6:30, show at 7 * $20-25 * TICKETS

Glenn Jones is a master of American Primitive Guitar, a style invented in the late 1950s by John Fahey, whose traditional fingerpicking techniques and wide-ranging influences were used to create modern original compositions. Jones, who led the post-rock ensemble Cul de Sac, brings his own made-up tunings, the use of custom-crafted partial capos, and a highly skilled picking style on both banjo and guitar, to create personal compositions that are lyrical, emotive and elegant.

Jones has written extensively about the leading lights of the American Primitive guitar style, namely John Fahey (with whom he was friends for nearly 25 years), and Robbie Basho (Jones was friends with the guitarist until Basho's untimely death in 1986, and hosted the guitarist / singer's final tour of the East Coast). Jones's most recent release, Vade Mecum, is out on Thrill Jockey Records.

Liam Grant is a New England guitarist and improviser cut from the American Primitive cloth. The restless guitar explorations, modal epics, and driving uptempo rags recall the likes of Grant's pedagogue, Takoma Records, and the path that was paved by his forebears John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Peter Walker, Max Ochs, and later, Glenn Jones, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Jack Rose, and others. Bridging that past, Grant evokes the pith of the landscape where he was raised. Instrumental memoirs and ruminations on the banks of the Merrimack River, Amoskeag, and the place where the waters flow around it. Salmon tails up the river, the exodus to Stratton-Eustis and the last night on Dead River before the great flood. 

Ari Rosenfield is a folk singer and songwriter from the southwestern US who has had severe writer's block for about six years. She will play you some sad songs she wrote for the banjo a long time ago, and hopefully that will help her overcome her writer's block. She wishes her songs sounded like if Joanna Newsom helped Leonard Cohen write his songs and then Karen Dalton played covers of them, but in reality, they're probably much worse.