Sophie B. Hawkins, AHI, Kiltro and more on Mountain Stage

1900 Kanawha Blvd E,Charleston , WV WV 25301

02 October, 2022

Description

Sophie B. Hawkins, AHI, Kiltro and more on Mountain Stage With Host Kathy Mattea ALL AGES Sophie B. Hawkins, AHI, Kiltro Mountain Stage plans to tape this episode at 100% capacity. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to [email protected].  Ticket Info All tickets to this show are e-tickets, and will be emailed to you upon purchase. Open up the pdf and the QR code on your ticket will be scanned at the door. This event will also be offered as a live stream. Watch the Livestream! Mountain Stage livestreams are free, however there are some incredible folks out there who’d like to show their support through a donation-based, pay what you want ”ticket” for the livestream. This is a donation-based “ticket” to show some love for the program and is not a ticket to the live event. You’ll be able to catch the show from the comfort of your home (or wherever you wish) Sunday, October 2,  at 7 PM ET at mountainstage.org. AHI“Does anybody say what they mean anymore?/ Talk so cheap everybody can afford/ But my silence is golden, every word carefully chosen/ So lend me your ears and I’ll say what you need.” No matter his material, the Canadian musician AHI (pronounced “EYE”) has one unbreakable rule for his songwriting: he has to be able to see himself—and some truth—in his songs. “When it comes to songwriting, my stuff has to be honest, and I have to feel like the song I sing can be spoken to someone or said to someone in a conversation,” AHI says. “I have to be able to see myself in the narrator’s seat, and even if it’s not my specific story there has to be something in the song that’s coming from my voice and persona.” It is after the Ontario-based artist’s insistence upon truth-telling and his innate knack for storytelling that all else in his repertoire follows. In fact, while AHI himself prefers the familiar tag “singer-songwriter” to be reversed when describing his music, he may be better served to be labeled a “singer-storyteller.” At any rate, when considering his talents, it’s a shame that one of those descriptors must come after the hyphen, but a single glimmer of AHI’s voice—best described as “gravel on silk”—will leave no doubt why “singer” should still lead the charge. And while it’s undeniable that AHI’s voice could easily steal any show, on his second album, In Our Time, he has learned to harness his instrument’s power by balancing its range across a colorful landscape of tightly-crafted lyrics, driving rhythms, and catchy melodies. The result is a sublime collection of modern-day folk-rock set off by its singular, soulful sire, a group of eleven tracks as earnest and emotive as anything being recorded today, and one sure to bring AHI to the forefront of his scene. Leading with his heart as much as with his head, AHI is an emotional yet discerning lyricist who would rather demonstrate love than use the word itself. He allows his light to shine inward but only to a degree, admitting to some autobiography on In Our Time but as glimpsed through an imaginative lens. While his music possesses a quality of timelessness, the sounds here reveal a broad spectrum of influence and also toe the line between retro and revelatory. None of that is by accident: the album, like its 2016 predecessor, We Made It Through the Wreckage, was recorded in Nashville—a place AHI finds attractive for its sound and skilled studio hands rather than its glitzy polish—and this time on analog-to-tape with flourishes of digital technology. “Feel is everything to me,” AHI says. “I wanted to write music I wasn’t hearing, music that was appealing to something I felt deep down inside. It’s all me in the songs, but a curated version of myself. I’m not a dark person, but I do write songs with darker elements I can relate to. I’m a simple guy and I like to believe my songs are simple. I don’t ever want to appear as something other than how I am in my songs.” The sentiment is an unabashed expression of honesty from a singer unafraid to bare it all, and the notion is echoed in his work all across In Our Time. It is an album complicit in its sense of balance and existence on the cusp—sonically, thematically, emotionally, aesthetically. Even the album’s most hopeful and optimistic songs still bear themes of struggle and overcoming odds; similarly, there is beauty in its darkness. AHI deftly weaves each of these threads together to give listeners an open and unfettered look into his life. Opener “Breakin’ Ground” introduces both the album and the artist, telling a succinct version of AHI’s own saga and how his call was realized. With its upbeat and uplifting chorus and snappy, steady groove, the song glides along, tethered by his raspy refrain. “‘Breakin’ Ground’ is me telling my story,” he says. “The line goes, ‘I’ve been told I’m worthless so much that it gave me purpose’—so many people can make you feel like you’re not qualified for something, and it gave me conviction to keep going.” “Made It Home” is the second chapter to AHI’s personal story. The first song written for the album, it details both a series of actual returns as well as the creation of a family nest. A native of the small Ontario town of Brampton, AHI spent his early 20’s taking a series of backpacking trips—across his father’s home nation of Trinidad, Ethiopia, Ontario itself—and for him, the idea of home he felt then translates directly to the life he has created today with his wife and their three children. “Home is a big theme for me,” AHI says. “The song is very simple and familiar but I felt like my perspective makes it different—I’ve walked so many miles that I respect and appreciate the idea of home. And my wife has been there for every step of my career.” One song on the album that stands out as a little different in both its creation and its vibe is the closer, “Penny,” a tune that AHI says came to him while everyone else in his house was asleep. Instead of being seated at his desk, he was on the floor in a corner of his writing room, something he had rarely tried. The change of scenery inspired him, and “Penny” holds its own as a psychedelia-tinged piece of rock, replete with a fiery guitar solo. Elsewhere, “Straight Ahead” adds AHI’s colorful vocal nuances and perspective to its familiar stomp-and-response, his voice and guitar serving as an anchor while the refrain floats and bobs. “Five Butterflies” jangles and glitters with a fresh energy while AHI howls its sentiment of “it won’t be long.” And “The Architect’s Hand” pulls some of its sense of exotic people and places from a true, transient origin story involving a mysterious foreigner on a train and a commissioned arrangement. Threads of Michael Kiwanuka, The Head and the Heart, Shakey Graves and Alabama Shakes can be felt throughout In Our Time, though AHI’s pantheon points to a dearly departed yet disparate trio, each of whom possessed an earnestness that still rings true today: Bob Marley, 2Pac, and Michael Jackson. “Those were all honest guys who had a vulnerability that transcended their music,” he says. “People feel that honesty in my music, which is how it helps connect.” To put it even more simply: Lend AHI your ears and he’ll say what you need Sophie B. Hawkins burst onto the international music scene with her 1992 platinum-selling debut album, Tongues and Tails, which included the indelible hit song Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover, and earned her a Best New Artist Grammy nomination. The last three decades have brought multiple awards, sold out concerts, appearances on film and television, performances with some of the best known names in the business, a documentary feature, a critically-lauded tour-de-force performance as Janis Joplin in the nationally-touring play Room 105, songs appearing in hit films and TV shows, and five more albums, including Whaler, which featured the record-breaking longest-running single in Billboard Adult Contemporary chart history, the Number One hit, As I Lay Me Down. Much more than just a singer, Sophie writes all of her own songs, is a multi-instrumentalist, and has been fully involved in every aspect of the production of her records herself, from background vocals and playing her own instruments, to engineering and production of her albums. She has proved an enduring artist with a fierce commitment to artistic integrity while both constantly evolving, and remaining steadfastly true to her own authentic history and experience which connects her to her fans at the very deepest levels. “The passions, strength, and spiritual beauty that your music and performance possess is something I respect deeply, look up to, and after my 29-year long journey of survival in darkness, I am so grateful for your own courage, strength, and honesty which helps those of us who are battling our own ghosts and demons from the past.” - Shanda, Massachusetts, USA I listen to your music whenever I feel I am alone because you make me feel like I am not. I listen to your music when I feel I need to be strong because you make me feel strong. – Jill, Michigan, USA Sophie’s interest in music started as a four-year-old obsessed with drums. Her love of music and the need to connect with and through it came into her consciousness as early as second grade. “I really remember this moment so well,” Sophie reminisces. “I was living in New York, listening to Bob Dylan and I put on my father’s dark sunglasses and I started to cry underneath them. I said to myself, ‘I want to be that,’ and “that” was a song. I wanted to be a song. I didn't want to be Bob Dylan. I didn't want to be the voice or the instrument. I wanted to be the song, the need and the depth and the whole story of a song. It's strange that I would say that now because I still feel like I'm living life as stories.” At fourteen, Sophie’s early desire to learn drums returned with great urgency. “I knew I had to play African drums – I found an African drum teacher and then from that moment on I practiced as much as I could every day and I never stopped. The thing is, I never even thought becoming a songwriter would be part of my journey.” Music: Sophie B. Hawkins has been tugging at heartstrings for decades with her powerful storytelling, crafting dizzying tunes that idle between the potently forlorn and the strangely comforting. Born and raised in New York City, Sophie has always been an artist at heart. After attending Manhattan School of Music as a percussionist, Sophie left to pursue a professional music career. She started singing her own songs from her drum set in various bands, playing in legendary New York City venues like Kenny’s Castaways and CBGB. She got her first professional gig playing percussion for Bryan Ferry. After that job ended, while working in the coat check at a popular Manhattan restaurant, she handed a cassette full of demos she had written to a patron who loved her speaking voice. That tape made it into the hands of a producer at JSM Music and it included what would be the hit single Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover. “I got to the point of being [Roxy Music’s] Bryan Ferry’s percussionist,” Sophie says, “which is a huge gig for a young female in New York City. But then at a certain point during rehearsals he said, ‘Look, you’ve done all these beautiful arrangements of vibraphone and marimba, but what I really need on the road is a Cuban percussion player – and you’re not that.’ So he fired me. Life said to me: ‘You can try as hard as you want but you’ll never be a Cuban percussionist. You’ll never be something you didn’t grow up as. But you are an artist, so be an artist.’ And then I wrote Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover, so I consider that a milestone. And it wasn’t like I wrote it to make a hit, I wrote it from my heart. I’d written many songs before and I knew when I wrote Damn I had arrived where I needed to be. I knew it was big, I felt it. Years after that I got a record deal. I was a coat-check in Joe Allen’s Restaurant at 46th Street, and Mark Cohn walked in and said, ‘You have such a beautiful speaking voice I bet you’re a singer.’ And I said: ‘I’m a crappy singer, but I have about 1,000 songs. Do you want to hear any?’ And he took my demo tape and left it at a studio and somebody picked it up and the next thing you know, I had literally seven record companies fighting over me.” KiltroCreatures of Habit, the debut album from Denver-based, Chilean-folk rock band Kiltro, has put the emerging trio on the musical map. Seamlessly weaving ambient textures and looping guitars, Andean folk with flashes of shoegaze and lively percussion, Kiltro has created a fascinating world, somewhere both familiar and foreign. Kiltro’s story, as it were, requires more than a modicum of globe-trotting. Frontman Chris Bowers Castillo was born to a Chilean mother and American father and raised in a Spanish-speaking home in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. He spent childhood summers with his mother’s family in Santiago, and later moved to San Pedro de Atacama, a small town in northeast Chile near the Bolivian border. While there he lived in a dorm and worked in a five-star hotel, traipsing back and forth between the two spots through the desert at the hottest and coldest times of day.