Concerts are Sundays at 7 p.m.
Tickets $15 in advance (and for members) or $18 at the door.
Select Your Tickets for Alexandria Concerts Here
Mount VernonRockville
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Don White
If you laugh and cry within the same 10 minutes, you either need a vacation or you are sitting in the audience at a Don White show. This working class family man from Lynn, Massachusetts, has emerged as the thoughtful songwriter of the decade whose relevance to our lives is evidenced by the powerful reaction he evokes at every concert. Radio audiences, too, are not safe from the Don White experience. Valerie Adams of WNCS Radio, Vermont said, "I've never seen anything like it. Every time I play I Know What Love Is the phones light up like a Christmas tree. Stereo Review Magazine called it "a candidate for song of the year."
Don learned his art in the trenches: often doing nine shows a week at Catch A Rising Star over 2 1/2 years. Studying the masters who passed though that fabled club, he developed his own infectious brand of humor and pathos that rivets the crowd wherever he plays. He often conducts a performance skills workshop at Club Passim, Cambridge's legendary folk club, where he passes along his experience to aspiring performers. Guest instructors are veteran comics, performance poets, actors, and folksingers. "I see little difference between the skills of various performance artists", says Don, "I most admire someone like Utah Phillips who weaves a seamless stream of song, story-telling, poetry, and comedy."
Don illuminates the human experience though his writing and performing. His motivation for doing so is eloquently expressed in the spoken word piece he performs after singing Heartbeat of Heaven. Whether he is singing, speaking, or setting up the sneakiest punch line of the night, Don has the hearts of his audience.
“White is a riot on stage, a bona fide crowd pleaser. One of the most popular acts on the
circuit. He plays an audience the way Leo Kottke plays a 12-string.”
- Boston Globe
“...there is an honesty and self-deprecating wit in his material that is an immediate tonic.”
- Boston Herald
Sunday, Sept. 15, 2013
Eric Brace & Peter Cooper
plus Medium Gauge
Eric Brace was a music columnist for The Washington Post and the frontman for the Americana band Last Train Home; Peter Cooper, the senior music writer for Nashville’s Tennessean newspaper. Together, they are getting rave reviews--including a 2011 Grammy nomination--for their gentle country melodies and charming lyrics.
After Brace moved to Nashville in 2004, he met Peter at a “guitar pull.” Soon, they began performing live together, and since 2008 the duo has traveled around the United States and to England, Holland, Germany and Spain. Their CD "You Don’t Have To Like Them Both" reached Number 1 on the Freeform American Roots Chart, Top 5 on the Folk Chart, and Top 10 on the Americana chart, and the opening track, "I Know a Bird," written and sung by Brace, was the Number 1 folk song on its release and a finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. The duo's second album, "Master Sessions," is a tour de force that made its way onto numerous critics' lists of the best albums of 2010.
Brace continues to tour and record with Last Train Home. He also runs the indie record label Red Beet Records. Cooper, named one of Nashville’s “10 Most Interesting People” by Nashville Arts & Entertainment magazine, is also a session player and a professor of country music at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.
Medium Gauge
is the duo of Nick Peters and Steve Erickson, executives with a passion for songwriting and acoustic music. They combined forces in 2010 after meeting at a Songwriters' Association of Washington song circle.
Nick moved to Washington after 10 years in Los Angeles, where he and music partner Marck Smith recorded and performed regularly. Prior to moving to the DC area, Steve was active in the Atlanta music scene, writing and performing with a number of bands. Nick plays rhythm guitar and blues harp; Steve plays lead and rhythm guitar and mandolin. Both provide lead and back-up vocals.
“Their music resides in the large space between folk and country. It's tight and catchy without being slick or calculatedly commercial. Perhaps the term back-porch country best describes the mood here.”
- Steven Stone, enjoythemusic.com
“Peter Cooper looks at the world with an artist’s eye and a human heart and soul. His songs are the work of an original, creative imagination, alive with humor and heartbreak and irony and intelligence, with truth and beauty in the details. Deep stuff. And they get better every time you listen.”
- Kris Kristofferson”
