Thursday, June 12, 2008 Anaïs Mitchell & Antje Duvekot Windchime Champagne Gallery 518 Central Avenue SW 7:30 PM

Buy Tickets To This Show

Vermont native Anaïs Mitchell entered the underground folk scene in 2002. Mitchell, who grew up on a sheep farm, makes small-sounding, big-thinking folk albums that play like a front-porch serenade. Her 2004 release, Hymns For The Exiled, reached the ears of Ani DiFranco, a songwriter whose fusion of personal and political themes was a formative influence on a teenaged Mitchell. After seeing a few of Anaïs' captivating concerts, DiFranco signed the artist to her label, Righteous Babe Records; Mitchell's Righteous Babe debut, The Brightness, was released in February 2007.

While recording The Brightness, Anaïs lived above the studio, which was built into an old Vermont gristmill. She could wake up, shake the sleep out of her eyes and record tracks in her pajamas, resulting in a decidedly intimate listening experience. Spilling over with worldly metaphors, intense emotions and unshakeable reverence to the art of song, The Brightness shimmers with creative spark. And by no means is Anaïs Mitchell sitting on her laurels. She's staging a folk-opera based on the myth of Hades and Eurydice, and will be touring extensively to do what she does best: pluck chords and tell stories. All Music Guide wrote that Mitchell combines "the earthiness of Shawn Colvin, the child-like bite of Joanna Newsom, and the urban jumpiness of Ani DiFranco... These elements, as disparate as they might seem, come together as nicely as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg," while Popmatters called The Brightness "an album absolutely worth investigating for listeners seeking to be exposed to a fresh, engaging talent."

Antje Duvekot (pronounced Aunt-ya Doo-va-kot) first gained prominence when a song she wrote was covered by Irish supergroup Solas on their The Edge of Silence CD. Solas founder Seamus Egan returned the favor by producing Duvekot's first major studio CD, Big Dream Boulevard. Duvekot, who was born in Heidelberg, Germany and moved to the U.S. as a teenager, believes that her bicultural upbringing, and her relative newness to English, helped shape her unique way with a song, giving her a startlingly original poetic palette.

Like Mitchell, Duvekot was also influenced by Ani DiFranco. After moving to the U.S., she discovered the subterranean folk world of urban songwriters like Ellis Paul, John Gorka, and DiFranco. She made little tapes of them, and listened while she wandered through her strange new world. As she told the Boston Globe in 2005, "The only time I was truly happy as a teenager was walking around the neighborhood, listening to my folk tapes." In that scene, she found kindred spirits, fellow exiles, a society of outcasts. Now living in Boston, Duvekot, writes the Boston Globe's Steve Morse, "has become a phenomenon," winning the new song competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival and the John Lennon Songwriting Award. "The songs on Duvekot's stunning debut record are often tinged with darkness... but she always writes from the heart and makes no apology for it."

$15 advance, $20 day of show.

Buy tickets on-line through Brown Paper Tickets
or by phone: 1-800-838-3006

Tickets are also available (cash only plus $2 surcharge) at:

4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW, 344-8139
Natural Sound, 3422 Central Ave. SE, 255-8295

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