Concerts and Events
2023-2024 Concert Season
If you have questions about events, send email to concerts@fssgb.org or call Lynn at (781) 227-7500.
Upcoming FSSGB Concerts:
- Wednesday, Sept. 20: Steve Turner House Concert
- Sunday, Dec. 3: Martha Burns
- Sunday, Dec. 10: Holiday Singing Party (on Zoom)
- Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024: Mike Agranoff House Concert
- Sunday, March 3, 2024: Bound for Glory (Woody Guthrie Tribute Concert)
- Sunday, Apr. 7, 2024: Sara Grey and Kieron Means House Concert
Steve Turner House Concert
Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023, 7pmNewton, MA
General admission: $20
$5 for students
Reservations required: email HouseConcerts@fssgb.org for
reservations and directions.
Steve Turner is known as a pioneer of highly sophisticated English concertina song accompaniments, stretching the boundaries of traditional forms, with one of the best voices in the business. He is a multi-instrumentalist, who also accompanies himself on the cittern, and also plays mandolin and tenor banjo.
Steve began his career on the Manchester, UK folk scene at the end of the ‘60s, with the Geordie band "Canny Fettle", touring with them for eight years and making two albums with them.
In 1979 he won the UK Melody Maker’s national "Stars of the 80s" competition, which persuaded him to turn professional, and for the next 12 years he toured solo, nationally and internationally, releasing four albums with Fellside Records during this period (Out Stack, Jigging One Now, Eclogue and Braiding).
After 13 years away from the folk scene he made a welcome return in 2004 performing in folk clubs and festivals, and in 2008 producing his 5th album, the highly acclaimed "Whirligig of Time" which featured UK luminaries Martin Carthy, Nancy Kerr and Miranda Sykes.
Since then he has released further albums, "Rim of the Wheel" , "Spirit of the Game" and "Late Cut", and his latest much anticipated 9th album "Curious Times" featuring Martin Carthy will be released in Spring 2023.
COVID-19 rules:
- All attendees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. (We're using the honor system; no need to show vax card at the door.)
- Masks are optional.
- Please stay home if you feel unwell that day!
Martha Burns House Concert
Sunday, December 3, 3pm ETCambridge, MA
General admission: $20
$5 for students
Reservations required: email HouseConcerts@fssgb.org for
reservations and directions.
Martha grew up in Greenwich Village in the 1950s and sixties, during the height of the Folk Revival. The New Lost City Ramblers and the Friends of Old-Time Music were first bringing the greats of early country music to national attention. Harry Smith’s pioneering Anthology of American Folk Music, the first major re-issue of early folk music 78s, came out the year she was born—the New Lost City Ramblers Songbook, when Martha was twelve. Martha gained much of her education in folk music on Sunday afternoons in Washington Square Park. When Doc Watson played at the tiny Gaslight Café on Macdougal Street, Martha was there—with her mother.
Martha has since lived in many parts of the U.S.—Ann Arbor, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, and on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, where she's presently based. Her first move was in 1970 to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she went for college and stayed for a decade. Some of the songs on her 2014 album Old-Time Songs, she first began singing at the Ark Coffeehouse, then a celebrated hub for traditional music in the Midwest, and her own musical home through those years. During that period, she also played in the Argo Pond String Band. Others in the group included David Cahn and Bill Meyer, now both prominent west-coast musicians, and Craig Johnson, later revered for songs like “New Harmony,” that he wrote in Ann Arbor.
She began performing in the early 1970s, first regionally and then nationally. By the mid-eighties, she had played the Philadelphia Folk Festival, Pinewoods Folk Music Camp, and myriad folk clubs. In 1984 she completed a six-week British tour, which included a memorable concert on the Island of Guernsey.
In 1985 she paired up with fiddler Allan Block, now remembered for the Allan Block Sandal Shop in Greenwich Village, where he hosted legendary jam sessions throughout the 1960s. When Allan and she began performing together, she was living in Boston. Allan had since moved to New Hampshire and was a central figure in the New England folk music scene. Together Allan and she recorded an album on the Marimac label. Sadly, the unexpected death of Marimac’s president prevented its release.
Allan and she continued to play together through the early 1990s. Toward the end of that time, she scaled back on performing for a two-decades-long foray into academia. her field was American history, and she have published on subjects ranging from early American hymnody to female piano teachers before the Civil War.
Her return to music was consummated in 2014 with the release of "Old-Time Songs". Her first solo album, it was funded through a highly successful Kickstarter campaign—Kickstarter made the project a "Staff Pick" and featured it on the Kickstarter Blog. You can preview or purchase Old-TIme Songs here.
COVID-19 rules:
- All attendees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. (We're using the honor system; no need to show vax card at the door.)
- Masks are optional.
- Please stay home if you feel unwell that day!
Holiday Singing Party on Zoom
Sunday, December 10, 2023, 7pmJoin us for a holiday themed singing party on Zoom! Some FSSGB song leaders will get us started, and then we'll open up the floor for anyone to do a song.
Mike Agranoff House Concert
Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, 7pmLocation TBA
General admission: $20
$5 for students
Reservations required: email HouseConcerts@fssgb.org for
reservations and directions.
If you've been around the folk scene, you couldn't miss seeing Mike. Tall, ginger beard, and always around where the music is. He's been on the scene for many many years, listening to the fine details of what makes this genre of music so special to the soul, so able to make us laugh and cry and think. And lucky for us all, he got serious about having fun at it.
Less a singer-songwriter than a singer-songfinder, Mike takes great delight in discovering the little-known hidden gems, polishing them with his own distinctive style, and bringing them to the light of day where they sparkle. He will shift from beautifully contemplative, to uproariously funny, to instrumentally brilliant, to powerfully emotional in the space of a few minutes. Equally at home in the contemporary and traditional camps of the Folk world, he is a fine musician and storyteller. His prime instrument is the guitar, upon which he shines with intricate fingerstyle arrangements of anything from Tin Pan Alley tunes of the '20s to fiddle tunes to his own music. He also plays concertina, piano, banjo, or sings acapella. The man will capture your attention, and then your heart.
Not only a performer, Mike is involved in presenting folk music as well. He is one of the prime movers of The Folk Project, New Jersey's oldest and strongest folk music organization. For over two decades he has been chairman of that organization's Minstrel Coffeehouse, one of the longest lived and most respected folk venues in the country.
Bound for Glory (Woody Guthrie tribute show)
Sunday, March 3, 2024, 7:30pm ETParish Center for the Arts
10 Lincoln Street, Westford, MA
$10 Admission for all at the door
FSSGB is pleased to present "Bound for Glory", our Woody Guthrie Tribute show - back after a five-year hiatus! The show features many FSSGB members, many of whom have performed in past Woody shows going way back to the 60's, along with newer FSSGB members.
"Bound for Glory" is a performance of songs and stories about the life of Woodrow Wilson ("Woody") Guthrie, considered by many to be the founder of modern American folk music. Many wonderful songs written by Woody and performed by members of FSSGB are interspersed with short recitations from his autobiography. It is a funny, cynical, earthy and tragic account of his life in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, of the Depression that followed, and of his subsequent travels in, on, and under trains, in stolen cars and on his feet, round an America going rotten from the top downwards.
Chorus sheets are made available and the audience is encouragd to sing along.
Refreshments will be served at intermission.
Sara Grey and Kieron Means House Concert
Sunday, April 7, 1pmLocation TBA
General admission: $20
$5 for students
Reservations required: email HouseConcerts@fssgb.org for
reservations and directions.
Sara Grey is one of the most gifted and knowledgeable artists working in the field of traditional music. Sara's singing is both powerful and sweet, with a distinctive and lovely tremolo. It is a voice well suited to native American songs and ballads of Ireland and Scotland.
It is not Sara's lovely voice alone that makes her one of the most popular singers on the folk scene; on many of her songs Sara accompanies herself by frailing a five string banjo and, when playing dance tunes, it is obvious why she is regarded as one of the foremost exponents of the clawhammer style. As well as singing and playing, Sara is well known for her storytelling - specialising in stories from New England where she grew up learning many of her stories from her father.
Sara grew up in New Hampshire but has lived in North Carolina, Ohio, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wales, Scotland and England. As a youngster in North Carolina she developed a love for old time songs and banjo music. She cites Kyle Creed as the chief influence on her understated, syncopated clawhammer banjo style. She has now been performing professionally for more than 30 years.
- "She is one of a select band of performers who still breathe life into traditional ballads." Vic Smith, Folk Roots
- "Sara Grey has quietly and powerfully taken over the mantle of premier interpreter of American traditional music." Tor Jonassen, WRDV
Kieron Means is a singer primarily of traditional songs but also of contemporary songs and guitar player of great merit. He has a great rapport with an audience and has an exceptional professionalism for a young performer. His voice is as smooth as silk, rich and mellow and he sings to his audience not in spite of them.
Kieron is the son of the traditional singer Sara Grey and music journalist Andrew Means, one time writer for Melody Maker. He was born in the United States and grew up in Britain gaining a great love of the music of both traditions as well as the contemporary scene. He has become a performer of traditional songs from the US and from the UK and many of the contemporary songs he sings he has written himself.
He has toured in the States and often performed with Sara Grey. In 2000 he has performed at Whitby and Wadebridge festivals where he was received with much acclaim. His first CD has received much praise with air play on Travelling Folk and Mr Anderson's Fine Tunes both on radio Scotland. An article on him will shortly be appearing in Folk Roots magazine.
