Saturday, June 5, 7:30 p.m.

Join us for another evening of incredible performances in an intimate and cozy setting. Come early to claim a spot on the sofa, all seats have a great view and great sound. Home-brewed sweet tea’s on us!

Chris Kasper: Kasper is an American original who has been quietly distinguishing himself from the crowd of musicians with acoustic guitars and original songs. Kasper is a gifted songwriter who follows neither genre nor format. His songs are not what you’d expect from a dude traveling with an old dawg and sporting a 3-day beard. His songwriting has won awards for himself and the Lowlands, a 4-member traditional bluegrass act. His songs take you on a musical ride, ethereal, floating, delicate, and genuine; he winds you up and calms you down.

Anaïs Mitchell: “Anaïs sings of love among the ruins, coming of age to find yourself an outsider looking for the place you belong, finding other strangers along the way. Details … are offered like clues or keys to the reality all of us sense is imminent and eternal beneath the surfaces of things.”—Hugh Blumenfeld, Sing Out!

From her home in a 200-year-old farmhouse in rural Vermont, Anaïs (“uh-NAY-iss”) Mitchell writes songs that are as intimate as conversations and as rich in detail as short stories. The daughter of “hippie back-to-the-landers” whose father was a novelist and English professor, she remembers her family’s home (another farmhouse in the same state) containing “a library full of novels, and lots of old folk and psychedelic rock albums. The books and the records all lived in the same room, which I am sure led to me thinking of songwriting as a kind of literature, a noble poetic enterprise.”

No surprise, then, that her musical references come from all over the map yet remain interconnected: the country ballads of the Carter Family, the hard-edged cabaret of Brecht and Weill, the story-songs of Randy Newman, the vast narrative scope of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and the intricately crafted tales of her namesake, bohemian feminist Anaïs Nin, to name afew.

All of these influences come together in Hadestown, an epic “folk opera” retelling of the Orpheus myth. The saga of the poet who ventures into the underworld to rescue his dead wife—a tale now set in a post- apocalyptic world of poverty—began as a live performance created in collaboration with fellow Vermont artists director Ben t. Matchstick and arranger/orchestrator Michael Chorney. In their neck of the woods—TV-less by choice, far from big cities, in a land of radical politics and culture—making your own entertainment, and getting your friends and neighbors to help you flesh it out, is the only way to go.

Allison Polans: Philadelphia, PA

Suggested donation: $10