MIGHTY POPLAR
Featuring: Noam Pikelny & Chris Eldridge (Punch Brothers), Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse), and Greg Garrison (Leftover Salmon)
Thursday, September 14, 2023, 8:00pm
Tickets: $30
Traditional bluegrass from new acoustic stalwarts
At its heart, bluegrass music is about what happens when you commit to the moment. The joy of improvisation keeps the music fresh, and the fun of crafting ideas on the fly keeps the musicians on their toes. This true spirit of bluegrass infuses the self-titled record from Mighty Poplar, a new all-star roots project featuring Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse, Noam Pikelny and Chris Eldridge of Punch Brothers, and bassist Greg Garrison (Leftover Salmon). Though Pikelny, Eldridge, Garrison all knew each other from their early work with Punch Brothers, impromptu backstage jams with Marlin at festivals across the country were the key that unlocked the project. A lifelong song collector, Marlin selected and sang lead on most of the songs here, bringing classics as well as deep cuts from greats like Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, John Hartford, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Norman Blake. The playing is just about as amazing as you would expect given the group’s membership, but it’s never overstated or showy. This is a bluegrass supergroup that has been tearing up stages all over the place since the release of their self-titled debut album at the end of March, and we are excited to welcome them for their first Ark show!
https://www.mightypoplar.com/
LUCY KAPLANSKY
Friday, September 15, 2023, 8:00pm Tickets: $25
“Utterly beautiful and affecting, Lucy sings songs from her life that have resonance in ours.”—Scott Simon, NPR
The daughter of the famed Polish-Canadian mathematician Irving Kaplansky (who once wrote a song based on the first 14 digits of pi that his daughter has been known to perform), Lucy Kaplansky started out singing in Chicago bars. Then, barely out of high school, she took off for New York City. There she found a fertile community of songwriters and performers— Suzanne Vega, John Gorka, Bill Morrissey, Cliff Eberhardt, and others—where she fit right in— and kept on singing after earning a degree and working in the field of clinical psychology. She’s a singer-songwriter with an extraordinary feel for the range of human emotion. Lucy puts her own spin on contemporary songwriter folk with warm, powerful vocals and guitar playing that draws guitar gods (or geeks) to talk shop with her. Lucy Kaplansky, says the Boston Globe, “is becoming the troubadour laureate of modern city folk.” Her CD “Ten Year Night” is the all-time best-selling album in the catalog of the folk label Red House Records. Lucy comes to Michigan with a wonderful new album, “Last Days of Summer.”
https://lucykaplansky.com/
CHRIS SMITHER w/sg PAUL CEBAR
Sunday, September 17, 7:30pm
Tickets: $35
Blues- and R&B-flavored classics
It’s as if the blues met modern poetry and got infused with Zen calm. Chris Smither takes the blues in a direction all his own, offering stoic, existential ruminations sung in a weathered blues moan and set to quietly virtuosic guitar. A New Orleans-to-Boston transplant, Smither has enjoyed a real meeting of the minds with Ark audiences in his shows here over the last few years–they’ve been equally extraordinary for audience and artist. Check it out for yourself! Or just take it from the pros—Chris has won Folk Alliance Awards for both Song of the Year and Contemporary Artist of the Year. Come by and pick up a copy of Chris’s latest, the rootsy “More from the Levee.”
Tonight’s special guest is Paul Cebar, who cut his teeth musically in the coffeehouse folk scene of the mid-’70s in Milwaukee. Upon graduation from New College in Sarasota, Florida, Paul spent substantial amounts of time testing the waters out New York way while exploring band dynamics with a soul and New Orleans-minded crew called the R&B Cadets back home.
After that he formed a band called the Milwaukeeans which reflected Paul’s ongoing and deepening fascination with African, Latin American, and Caribbean rhythm & blues analogues. With an ever-deepening appreciation for the funk and the polyglot rhythmic conception that is their trademark, Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound is spreading the word with their headlong, insouciant, and totally funky music.
https://smither.com/ https://paulcebar.com/
