Kirk Ridge presents: A Celebration of North Carolina Songwriting

217 South White Street,Wake Forest NC 27587

22 October, 2021

Description

A Celebration of North Carolina Songwriting with Kirk Ridge, Alice Gerrard, Bruce Piephoff and Tommy Edwards About the performers: Kirk Ridge performs original music with full band, small combo, & solo. Produces music stages at major NC festivals, conducts songwriting seminars, & hosts live music radio show on WHUP. Previous bands: Black Dog Syndrome and Tubby Ridge. "Kirk Ridge is a festival superstar" NC-NPR Two time finalist in American Songwriter Magazine lyric contest Featured in 2020 Tiny Desk showcase on WUNC's "The State of Things" Winner of Celtic Roots Radio competition - Belfast, Ireland Lead-in song on NPR's "Car Talk" First place in Macromedia Innovation Awards Contest Composed music for Cary Playwrights Forum productions Finalist in Austin, TX Songwriters competition ----------------------------- Simply put, Alice Gerrard is a talent of legendary status. In a career spanning some 50 years, she has known, learned from, and performed with many of the old-time and bluegrass greats and has in turn earned worldwide respect for her own important contributions to the music. She is particularly known for her groundbreaking collaboration with Appalachian singer Hazel Dickens during the 1960s and ’70s. The duo produced four classic LPs (recently reissued by Rounder on CD) and influenced scores of young women singers — even The Judds acknowledge Hazel and Alice as an important early inspiration. A tireless advocate of traditional music, Alice has won numerous honors, including an International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Distinguished Achievement Award, a Virginia Arts Commission Award, the North Carolina Folklore Society’s Tommy Jarrell Award, and an Indy Award. In 2017 Alice was inducted into the IBMA Hall of Fame along with Hazel Dickens. A film about her life and music ("You Gave Me a Song") was shown at the Full Frame Festival in Durham, NC, at the Mill Valley Film Festival, and several others. It is slated for distribution around March, 2020. ----------------------------- “Bruce Piephoff is a delightful poet and musician with a talent for composing poetry of fine clarity and immediate appeal; his art is cheerful and open and he has a real feeling for his subject matter. He is of admirable personal character and has been courageous in pursuit of his genuine vision.” – Fred Chappell (Poet Laureate of North Carolina; 1997-2002) He has been writing and performing songs and poetry for over 40 years. Firmly a part of the Appalachian tradition of story-songs and character portraits, it’s his versatility that makes his music so fascinating. Easily touching both the shores of folk music and poetry with simple, compelling imagery and subtle depth, Piephoff’s unassuming voice, ringing with wit and sincerity, steals the show. Bruce has shared the stage with Steve Forbert, Riders In The Sky, Greg Allman, Chuck Brodsky, Tom Paxton, and others, and has played everywhere from Merlefest to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. ------------------------------ Siler City native Tommy Edwards was raised in a musical family. His mom was a piano player and his father played harmonica and ukulele and sang in choirs and quartets. Even though he is "as old as bluegrass"--having been born in 1945, the year that Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys--Edwards listened to rock and roll and R&B as a child, and doesn't remember listening to much country music in his home. But the folk revival hit just as he was a teenager, and he followed the sounds of the banjo from the Kingston Trio to Earl Scruggs and finally discovered Bill Monroe, a life-changing experience that also had important implications for Piedmont music history. Edwards formed the The Bluegrass Experience in 1971 with the Beane brothers and friends Snuffy Smith, Charles Lee Conard, and "Fiddlin' Al" McCanless. The band joined fellow Chapel Hill musicians like Mike Cross and the Red Clay Ramblers to carve their own place in the local traditional music scene as accomplished players and singers, anchored by Edwards' original songs. For all the attention Edwards gets as a distinctive instrumentalist, he feels that he is at his best as a songwriter. "I love the creative part and I love to tell a story," he says. He finds that inspiration can arrive in a matter of moments or take years to hone, and that songwriting allows him to tap into a more cerebral process that can be very rewarding. "It differs from being an instrumentalist in that one has to find the words that tell the story and put them together in a cohesive (and often rhyming) manner in order to tell that story, to get a certain point across or to weave a particular spell."