Amerouche

Ameranouche
(Richard Sheppard)

The award winning Ameranouche (pronounced uh-Mare-uh-noosh) plays a passionate style of music they call “Gypsy Flamenco Swing.” They are veterans of the Newport Jazz Festival, Djangofest Northwest, Muzikfest Bethlehem, PA and the National Press Club. The name is derived from two words: American and Manouche, the gypsy tribe of guitarist Django Reinhardt. The rip-roaring ensemble is a super force of hot acoustic Gypsy inspired music mixing Flamenco, Bebop and Jazz swing influences. Played on traditional French jazz guitars, the music is rhythmic, vigorous, and elegant. Whether they’re playing a musette waltz from 1930 or an Andalusian inspired original tune, Ameranouche’s Gypsy Flamenco Swing style is a fresh and highly enjoyable new sound for the 21st century.

Gypsy Flamenco Swing is about coming together and celebrating our shared humanity. Ameranouche is committed to connecting deeply with its audience and sharing joy and peace through its live shows and recorded albums.

 

 

OPEN MIC NIGHT

The Tradition continues, Stop by to listen or join in. Sign up on site with the host for your 15 min or three songs. Storytellers also welcome!

Andrew Dunn

Andrew Dunn

Andrew Dunn is a songwriter from Jersey, where talent seems to grow in the fertile soil. His poignant wit and infectious melodies are staples of his canon of memorable story songs drawn from everyday theater of life moments. Raised in the Raritan Valley of central New Jersey, he spent years playing trumpet for school marching band before discovering the acoustic guitar and songwriting in his late teens.

Finding his instrument, he quickly found his network and graduated from Rowan University with a music education degree while trading notes, swapping songs and gigging with rising folk singers of the time, Antje Duvekot, Jackie Tice and Gregg Cagno, among others. He was an invited participant on the songwriting compilation, Southside Sunday Nights, Vol. 1, which included John Gorka, the preeminent songwriter of that time. Andrew spent over a decade as a school music teacher while honing his passion for rock and roll, country and folk into an acoustic folk-pop sound all his own.

Dunn has now left the classroom for the stage. In the troubadour tradition, he has been carving his way back as a factory worker, a carpenter, and a Triple-A driver composing lyrics and melodies between calls. His keen and often surprising observations deconstruct life's complexities, framing them like a poet journeyman on a building site. A favorite on the NJ folk scene, Andrew has been repeatedly featured on the legendary stages of The Folk Project and Godfrey Daniels. He has opened for folk icon, Judy Collins and shared songwriting nights with veteran songwriters Tice, Bill Hall, and former Melanie sideman, Ron Heacock.

The music, like his point of view, is full of space and completely irresistible. His songs have been called “rare…with a gravity akin to James Taylor.” Dunn’s latest CD, House Above the Factory, reintroduces his momentum as an artist and places an Americana shine on his unique panorama of everyday experiences.

Click Horning

Click Horning &
Joanie Horning

The Lake Sunapee, NH region has always had more than its share of musicians. Maybe it's the mountain air or maybe it's the scenery, but something keeps them coming back. Just ask Click Horning, New London's singer songwriter who left when he was seventeen for the Big Apple. Twelve years, a record contract and an album later it was time to come back. Early influences were Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Peter Paul & Mary, as well as rock and roll and R&B that he listened to growing up.

Click's music has taken him across the country several times, to the Rockies and to the deep south . Click has produced two more solo albums and two albums with his band Night Kitchen , a "get up and dance" band composed of Click on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Gerry Putnam on lead guitar, Dinty Child on electric rhythm guitar and keyboards, Dana Flewelling on drums and Dave Doran on bass.

Click began playing guitar at boarding school, influenced by other guitar playing students, one in particular being Gram Parsons. Click persuaded his grandmother to finance a bottom-of-the-line Gibson guitar (a combination birthday and Christmas gift). "I had been spending all my spare time practicing on a friends guitar, but soon found I had to have my own."

He began playing folk songs, but after hearing Gram and writers like Bob Dylan, he decided to try his hand at writing songs. "It was the perfect blending of poems and music that intrigued me. I've always loved lyrics that tell a story."

The Click Horning Trio is: Click on acoustic guitar and vocals, Joanie Horning on bass, Justin Ferren on lead guitar, and an occasional gig with Harley Walker on Drums.

John Emil

John Emil

John Emil Montagnino, an accomplished singer/songwriter, guitarist, and a master of slide guitar, has delivered show stopping performances at major music festivals like the Telluride Blues and Brews Fest, the Leek Blues & Americana Festival UK, the Florida Folk Festival, the Decatur Blues and Bluegrass Festival, the Bangor On Dee Blues Festival UK and the Zoetemeer Blues Festival in the Netherlands.

Equally adept with the acoustic Hawaiian lap steel guitar and Dobro, Emil first appeared on the South Florida music scene in 2000. Fans hear haunting, subtle hints of Delta bluesmen Son House and Blind Willie Johnson, but Emil ultimately creates a unique style all his own by integrating country blues, folk and bluegrass sounds into his repertoire.

Routinely taking the lost art of slide guitar in a new direction, Emil has composed a wealth of slide guitar tracks for media production libraries. His instrumental tracks have been published by LA Post Music in Los Angeles, Westar Music in Canada, Songs to Your Eyes Los Angeles and Strange Fruit in South Africa. Emil recently became the first American musician to be published by London’s KPM / EMI, one of the world’s largest production libraries. Among the many television and cable network shows Emil has supplied music for NBC's "Dateline," "The Voice," Anthony Bourdain’s "No Reservations," UFC's "Ultimate Insider," "American Pickers," and several international wildlife and nature documentaries.

 

 

OPEN MIC NIGHT

The Tradition continues, Stop by to listen or join in. Sign up on site with the host for your 15 min or three songs. Storytellers also welcome!

Decatur Creek

Decatur Creek

Doug Farrell, Steve Dionne, and Jack Henry are each accomplished NH musicians, singer/songwriters, and performers who together are - Decatur Creek. The 2016 addition of Beth Eldridge (The Bradford Bog People and The Hardtacks) on fiddle, vocals, and guitar has taken the band to another level. Their diverse styles complement one another and the group's evolving original acoustic sound will bring a smile to your face, rhythm to your feet, and leave you wanting for more. Doug and Steve handle most lead vocals and guitar with forays on harmonica, percussion, and mandolin (Doug). They have written most of the songs posted to date (except Southbound Train and Rain- by Jack, and Main Street - co-written by Jack and Doug) and most of the band's original tunes. Jack handles the bass, most harmony vocals, some lead vocals, rhythm and lead guitar, dobro, electric lap steel, and high-string guitar, so far...! Beth shines on the fiddle and adds rhythm guitar along with her solid lead and harmony vocals. The band's influences run from traditional/roots to Americana - country, singer/songwriter, folk, blues, and rock - always with the focus on the songs, lyrics, and vocals.

The Rough & Tumble

The Rough & Tumble

Formerly from Nashville, The Rough & Tumble now find themselves living full time on the road, in a 16ft camper with an 85 lb puppy named Puddle. If you ask Mallory Graham or Scott Tyler how their lives ended up this way they’ll likely respond, "with careful planning, spreadsheets and shoddy cell phone service."

On their new album, We Made Ourselves a Home When We Didn’t Know (February 2018), the Americana duo retrace their mileage back to their footsteps and explore the struggle between going home and being home already when there's no other home and everywhere is home. The R&T know how the tread wears down on the tires when you play 140 shows in year cross-country. They’re willing to stop, should the music run out of them and the road end, but until then, they are likely cross referencing a spreadsheet to play your town.

Rupert Wates

Rupert Wates

Rupert Wates was born in London and studied at Oxford University. He has been a full time songwriter since the late 1990s, when he signed a publishing contract with Eaton Music Limited. His contract required him to write material in all kinds of styles and genres, for all kinds of artists. He worked extensively with Jazz vocalist Liz Fletcher, and wrote the album 'Blue Afternoons' (Mainstem, 2002) specially for her voice. Moving in 2001 to Paris, Wates formed his own quartet and began playing live regularly. In fall 2006 he came to the US. He is now based in New York City and Colorado.

Since coming to the US, Wates has won more than 30 songwriting awards.

His music is an eclectic mix of acoustic, melodic art/folk, with flavors of jazz, vaudeville and cabaret. He has released seven solo CDs. They have been very well reviewed in the online press and tracks from them have been played on radio all over the world. Wates' songs have been recorded by other artists in the UK, Canada and the US. In 2015, Nashville-based performer Roxie Rogers released Crazy Puzzle, an album of songs from Wates' back catalog

Despite Wates' British background, and underpinning the universality of his music's appeal, Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange has called him "a prime figure in American music'' and goes on: "This is one gifted sonofabitch... If you're not hip to this guy yet you're missing out."

Audiences everywhere respond to Wates' brand of melodic art/folk—haunting songs that ring true.

 

 

OPEN MIC NIGHT

The Tradition continues, Stop by to listen or join in. Sign up on site with the host for your 15 min or three songs. Storytellers also welcome!

Doc Rogers

Alan "Doc" Rogers and the Coffeehouse Crew

“Doc” Rogers is a fine guitar picker and singer from the old school American folk/blues tradition. With a gentle sense of melody and an insistent thumb laying down a steady beat, his husky and comfortable vocals deliver the story of the song with a disarming directness. His performances have easy-chair charm, and dry Yankee wit.

Doc has been a student of the Southeastern American guitar styles for over 40 years. He delivers renditions of songs from Mississippi John Hurt, to Doc Watson, to the Prairie Home Companion's Pat Donohue, with equal confidence and skill. His repertoire starts in the 30's in the deep south, and covers blues, country and old timey tunes and then skips to the 60's, 70's and even 80's with tunes from the Great Folk Scare, covering artists such as Tom Paxton, Van Ronk and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. And while performing in the apres ski circuit in Colorado during the 70's, he even picked up pop/rock tunes from the Dead, the Beatles, and the Eagles, always adding his subtle but confident twists to the tunes he has adopted as his own.

———

Rounding out the evening for the second hour are the “CoffeeHouse Crew” all of whom do yeoman work to keep this coffeehouse alive and running, each of whom is a fine musician in his/her own right. Miss them at your peril. This will be a truly eclectic mix and it should be a rollicking good time.

NO COFFEEHOUSE

Thanksgiving Aftermath
&
Recovery

Scott Ainslie

Scott Ainslie

Considered a master of American roots music, Scott Ainslie brings a wealth of personal and musical history to the stage. With engaging stories he provides historical context for a repertoire of Delta Blues and ragtime guitar, gospel, and music of the banjo and fiddle traditions of the Southern Appalachians. Coming of age during the Civil Rights era, Ainslie studied with elder musicians on both sides of the color line. With a deep affinity for cross-cultural exchange, he plays this music with affection, authority and power.

Armed with vintage guitars, a fretless gourd banjo, a homemade one-string diddley bow, and carefully chosen historical and personal anecdotes of his encounters with senior musicians across the South, Ainslie brings the history, roots music, and sounds of America alive.

Scott Ainslie literally wrote the book on the Mississippi Delta Blues legend,“Robert Johnson/At the Crossroads”. Exploring the African and European roots of American music and culture in every concert,“he lives in the groove ...” says the Durham NC Spectator.

Ken Bonfield

Ken Bonfield

Ken Bonfield is an internationally recognized performer and composer of American fingerstyle acoustic guitar instrumentals played on guitars of his own design commissioned from master luthier; Alan Carruth.

In his open-hearted concerts, workshops and masters' classes, he shares with listeners new guitar dimensions and sonic explorations. His compositions are performed with his "chamber ensemble " of handcrafted instruments ranging from standard 6 string guitars to an 11-string harp guitar. Bonfield's work and calling is inspired by a deep love for the beauty, the sounds, and the craft of the acoustic guitar.

Ken Bonfield's instrumental guitar work patently avoids the incessant noodling… instead melody is king and Bonfield's gifted fingers flesh out a beautiful cavalcade of notes that are at times reminiscent of a human voice singing and often soaring." Frank Rabey, Mountain Xpress

“Ken Bonfield is a child of Leo Kottke. He shares Kottke's intricate finger picking techniques and casts them in an intimate setting that he calls, American Baroque.” John Diliberto, Host of PRI’s Nationally Syndicated show Echoes

 

 

OPEN MIC NIGHT

The Tradition continues, Stop by to listen or join in. Sign up on site with the host for your 15 min or three songs. Storytellers also welcome!

Bring your folk, blues original and/or holiday songs. All genres are encouraged.

Merry Christmas

Kathy Lowe's
Christmas show

It's Kathy Lowe! Need we say more?