Concerts and Events

2010-2011 Concert Season

To hear a recording of upcoming events, call (617) 623-1806.
Print out the latest concert postcard, and please help us spread the word by passing them out to your friends!

Tickets for concerts in Watertown (not house concerts or other events) can be purchased online at BrownPaperTickets.com. Use the code season51 to get member and student prices.

Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010: Finest Kind

Sat., Oct. 9-Mon., Oct. 11, 2010: Fall Getaway Weekend , Prindle Pond Camp & Conf Ctr, Charlton, MA
Fri., Nov. 5-Sun., Nov. 7, Eisteddfod Festival of Traditional Music in NY (FSSGB is a sponsoring organization)
Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010: Benefit concert featuring Kate Chadbourne and friends
Saturday, Nov. 13, 2010: Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur
Saturday, Dec. 4, 2010: Jean Redpath
Sunday, Dec. 5, 2010: Pub carol sing
Saturday, Apr. 9, 2011: Sparky and Rhonda Rucker

Finest Kind

Saturday, October 2, 2010, 8pm
First Parish of Watertown
35 Church Street, Watertown
$15.00 general admission, $10.00 FSSGB members and students
All children 17 and under free
(See map and calculate directions on MapQuest)
For public transportation, check the MBTA web site.
This venue is handicap accessible

Purchase tickets online at BrownPaperTickets.com. Use the code season51 to get member & student prices.

Finest Kind is the remarkable folk trio from Ottawa, Canada whose exquisite harmony singing and brilliant vocal arrangements are bringing a fresh sense of excitement and discovery to the performance of old songs. The trio's glorious sound, served up with easy-going humor, has won a devoted following across North America. Thrills and Chills...Finest Kind's vocal arrangements are a creative tour de force. Tradition-based yet curiously modern, the trio's harmonies are an enchanting feast of opulent chords and ever changing textures. The trio's amazing vocal blend has been called "molecular bonding" by one reviewer: "Any closer," he says, "and they wouldn't be allowed to do it in public." Audiences invariably mention "goosebumps."

Finest Kind was formed in Ottawa, Canada, in 1991 by Ian Robb, Ann Downey, and Shelley Posen. Ian, originally from London, England, is renowned as one of North America's most gifted performers of British folksong, a concertina player extraordinaire, charter member of Toronto's Friends of Fiddler's Green, and composer of folk standards such as "The Old Rose and Crown." Ann, who hails from the southwestern U.S., plays guitar, banjo, and bass, and has performed in bands playing old-time and cowboy music, bluegrass, klezmer, jazz, and swing in North America and Europe. Shelley, a professional folklorist from Toronto, is a versatile singer and multi instrumentalist who has spent a lifetime researching, teaching, writing about, performing, and sometimes composing songs. Shelley and Ian were both columnists for Sing Out! magazine for many years.

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Benefit concert with Kate Chadbourne and Friends

Saturday, October 30, 2010, 8pm
First Parish of Watertown
35 Church Street, Watertown
$15.00 general admission, $10.00 FSSGB members and students
All children 17 and under free
(See map and calculate directions on MapQuest)
For public transportation, check the MBTA web site.
This venue is handicap accessible

Purchase tickets online at BrownPaperTickets.com. Use the code season51 to get member and student prices.

Kate Chadbourne is a singer, storyteller, and poet whose performances combine traditional tales with music for voice, harp, flutes, and piano. She holds a Ph.D. in Celtic Languages and Literatures from Harvard where she teaches courses in Irish language and folklore - but the heart of her understanding of Irish folk tradition comes from encounters with singers, storytellers, and great talkers in Ireland.

She has been a "tradition bearer" in the Revels Salon series and in the Gaelic Roots Concert Series at Boston College. Her music was featured recently on NPR's programs, "Cartalk" and "All Songs Considered," and songs from her latest CD, The Irishy Girl, are played on Irish radio programs throughout the country. The Harp-Boat, a collection of poems about her father, a Maine lobsterman, won the Kulupi Press 2007 Sense of Place Chapbook Contest and was published in 2008. Whether she is singing, telling stories, teaching, or sharing a poem, she aims to leave her audiences moved, enlivened, and eager for their own adventures.

Kate will be performing with special guests, TBA.

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Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur

Saturday, November 13, 2010, 8pm
St. John's United Methodist Church
80 Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown
$25 in advance ($22 for FSSGB members and students); $28 at the door for all
All children 17 and under free
(See map and calculate directions on MapQuest)
For public transportation, check the MBTA web site.
This venue is handicap accessible

Purchase tickets online at BrownPaperTickets.com. Use the code season51 to get member & student prices.

We strongly suggest that you purchase tickets in advance for this concert. Advance tickets will be available on BrownPaperTickets.com, at the Minor Chord in Littleton and at Sandy's Music in Cambridge. You can also purchase advance tickets by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope and a check payable to FSSGB, Inc., to FSSGB Tickets, c/o Lori Fassman, 17 Faulkner Hill Road, Acton, MA 01720. Please indicate how many member and non-member tickets you are requesting.

Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur are back at it, playing gigs and bringing knowing smiles to the faces of their fans. As founding members in the 1960s of the nationally popular, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band, they helped to create a new style in American musical culture. Jerry Garcia's first band (Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, a forerunner to The Grateful Dead), was formed after Jerry and Bob Weir heard the Kweskin Band's first album. They not only went for its music but also its look . . . no more matching striped T-shirts and rehearsed jokes for these guys. It was finally okay to wear street clothes and be natural on stage. John Sebastian, after playing in the Even Dozen Jug Band in New York, formed the legendary Lovin' Spoonful to carry on the carefree spirit of his Cambridge heroes. It was the Kweskin Band's jug player, Fritz Richmond, who gave the Lovin' Spoonful their name. Fritz also brought his hipster persona to the folk and folk-rock scenes for all to emulate - his granny glasses becoming the look for The Birds, John Lennon and many others.

Although Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band appeared to have a laid back, spontaneous approach, the group was not an easy one to copy. Their music seemed simple, but it was often complex. The other jug bands of the day dropped out one by one. Aside from Fritz Richmond's nonpareil jug and washtub bass playing, two of the most distinctive qualities of the band were Jim Kweskin's clean, rhythmic finger picking and Geoff Muldaur's emotional, quavering voice. To this day, no one plays guitar like Jim Kweskin and no one sings like Geoff Muldaur. They are singular artists.

Jim and Geoff were brought back together in 2006 for a Fritz Richmond memorial concert in Tokyo and their chemistry was instantly re-activated. They've been doing select dates together ever since. Jim has honed his dazzling picking skills, developing new arrangements of American folk and jazz material. His singing is as joyous as ever (no one can sing "Rag Mama" like Jim). Geoff returned to full-time performing in the late nineties with his much-heralded album, The Secret Handshake. Since then he has traveled the world, playing his guitar and singing his heart out.

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Saturday, December 4, 2010, 8pm
First Parish of Watertown
35 Church Street, Watertown
$15.00 general admission, $10.00 FSSGB members and students
All children 17 and under free
(See map and calculate directions on MapQuest)
For public transportation, check the MBTA web site.
This venue is handicap accessible

Purchase tickets online at BrownPaperTickets.com. Use the code season51 to get member member and student prices.

Jean Redpath is recognized as the foremost interpreter and champion of traditional Scottish music. Making her home near Edinburgh, Ms. Redpath is known today as one of the few exponents of Scottish music, and the recognized world authority. She is equally well known to millions of Americans as a radio personality through her appearances on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, and Robert J. Lurtsema's Morning Pro Musica.

Her songs and ballads come from the oral tradition of Scotland and reflect the stoic lovable qualities of the Scottish character. She has devoted a large portion of her professional life to the songs of Scotland's national bard, Robert Burns. Her work with the late Serge Hovey, who researched and arranged over 300 of Burns' songs has produced seven recordings which have won critical acclaim. Four more recordings made in Scotland are sung mostly a capella.

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Pub Carol Sing

Sunday, December 5th, 2010, 1-4pm
in the back room at Doyle's Café
3484 Washington St, Jamaica Plain, MA
Free! (You can purchase food and drinks there.)

Sponsored by the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston and the West Gallery Quire

Carols from the Sheffield, West Gallery, and Sacred Harp traditions (as well as some standard favorites). Music will be available

Email Suzanne Mrozak (suzanne AT smrozak DOT com) for more information.

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Sparky and Rhonda Rucker

Saturday, April 9, 2011, 8pm
First Parish of Watertown
35 Church Street, Watertown
$15.00 general admission, $10.00 FSSGB members and students
All children 17 and under free
(See map and calculate directions on MapQuest)
For public transportation, check the MBTA web site.
This venue is handicap accessible

Purchase tickets online at BrownPaperTickets.com. Use the code season51 to get member and student prices.

Sparky and Rhonda Rucker perform throughout the U.S. as well as overseas, singing songs and telling stories from the American folk tradition. Sparky Rucker has been performing over forty years and is internationally recognized as a leading folklorist, musician, historian, storyteller, and author. He accompanies himself with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, banjo, and spoons. Rhonda Rucker is an accomplished harmonica, piano, banjo, and bones player, and also adds vocal harmonies to their songs.

Sparky and Rhonda are sure to deliver an uplifting presentation of toe-tapping music spiced with humor, history, and tall tales. They take their audience on an educational and emotional journey that ranges from poignant stories of slavery and war to an amusing rendition of a Brer Rabbit tale or their witty commentaries on current events. Their music includes a variety of old-time blues, slave songs, Appalachian music, spirituals, ballads, work songs, Civil War music, cowboy music, railroad songs, and a few of their own original compositions.

Sparky and Rhonda weave their music into captivating stories that the history books don't always tell, and they share this knowledge in many schools and colleges. Their educational programs span over three centuries of African-American history, including slavery, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, the westward migration, the birth of blues music, and the civil rights Movement. Each era is interspersed with stories and popular songs from the time period, celebrating the diversity of the nation's history.

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