Tickets will be held at the door the night of the show.
Arts Council of Tamworth is excited to present The Appleseed Collective, all the way from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in concert at The Barnstormers Theatre in Tamworth, NH on Friday, October 23 at 7:30 PM. Americana UK calls their music “dashed with Dixie ragtime, bluegrass, gypsy folk, and swing blues”—Americana rooted in traditions from all over the world and every decade. Tickets are available at artstamworth.org and at the door. Choose Your Own Ticket Price, $5 to $30 for adults, $0 to $5 for youth to 18. Ticket revenues help support free workshops and diverse performances in school and community—please invite your friends! Tickets purchased online will be held at the door. Make an evening of it with hot tunes and local food and drink in Tamworth Village. Enjoy a local foods supper at The Other Store in Tamworth before the show (call 323-8872 for menu and reservations) and sample the fine locally-produced spirits at Tamworth Distillery from 5:00-7:30—they’ll donate 10% of sales during that time to Arts Council of Tamworth.
Each part of The Appleseed Collective comes together to form an amalgam of complementary and contrasting elements. With a Motown session musician for a father, guitarist Andrew Brown was exposed to pre-World War II jazz on a trip to New Orleans. Shortly afterwards a chance meeting introduced him to Brandon Smith, violinist, mandolinist and improvisatory magician who grew up playing old time fiddle music. Vince Russo, multi-percussionist and van-packing savant, blends influences of funk, jazz and rock n’ roll on the washboard. Eric Dawe comes from a background of choral singing and studies in Indian classical music and provides the bottom end on the upright bass. The whole band sings in harmony.
No Americana sound could ring so true without miles of highway to back it up—2014 saw Appleseed travel coast to coast in support of their two studio albums, Baby to Beast (2012) and Young Love (January 2014). "I figured out sort of a mathematical equation last night—it's like Satch plus Django plus Joplin plus Bob Wills plus a little Bill Monroe, but the sum is actually greater than the parts," said Jason Marck of WBEZ Chicago's Morning Shift, introducing the band for a live segment in November 2014.
The band's latest release is Live At The Ark (December 2014), recorded in one night in their hometown. The energy is palpable, the crowd ready to receive, and the band primed to deliver. With a mix of new and old material, as well as a few specially requested covers, Appleseed does just that. The album balances barn burners, old soul jazz, and sparse mood pieces, all suspended above a room hungry for more. The album feels at once electric and intimate, glamorous and genuine, or as Joshua Pickard at Beats Per Minute put it, "music best served alongside a roaring campfire but that also has the ability to challenge the rafters of any grand arena." You get to hear them beneath the lovely old rafters of The Barnstormers.
Thank you to generous business sponsors The Other Store and BEAM Construction Associates, Inc., media sponsors The Conway Daily Sun, 93.5 WMWV and Magic104FM, and to The Barnstormers Theatre and Tamworth Distilling.