Culture
April 9 Mountain Stage with Larry Groce at Peoples Bank Theatre in Marietta
By: Emily Votaw
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Sunday, April 8 marks the first ever live recording of Mountain Stage with Larry Groce at the relatively recently renovated Peoples Bank Theatre in Marietta. The stunning line-up for the show includes the likes of Bridget Kearney (of retro-pop outfit Lake Street Dive), acclaimed blues vocalist Shemekia Copeland, the delightful West Coast-based folk trio the T Sisters, modern soul singer John Németh and his Blue Dreamers, and rock ‘n’ roll veteran Edward David Anderson.
The T Sisters, based out of Oakland, CA, have been making art together from a very young age. Chloe, Erika, and Rachel Tietjen are daughters to a couple who met in the musical theater scene in San Francisco in the latter part of the twentieth century.
In a recent interview with WOUB Public Media, Chloe said that the trio has been churning out charming folk for about six or seven years, following their collaboration on Rachel’s art school thesis project.
“We wrote a musical, based on the Hans Christian Anderson story The Little Mermaid and we had a really successful performance of it in Baltimore,” said Chloe, who said that that performance led to a residency to perform the show in San Francisco and ultimately performing in front of larger and larger audiences.
The outfit released their self-titled sophomore effort in October of last year, and they’re hitting the live performance circuit pretty heavily this summer in support of that record.
“With our second album, we were reaching for something a little more contemporary and a little less throwback,” said Chloe. “We were thinking about sounds that we like to hear in modern recordings that we’re fond of – as opposed to reaching for an older sound.”
Last year Shemekia Copeland, daughter of blues guitarist legend Johnny Clyde Copeland, released her critically acclaimed album On the Outskirts of Love, which was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Blues Recording category.
Copeland said that while the album examines the experience of the outsider, of the person living on the other side of a traumatic or powerful experience, she herself has just begun a new chapter of her own life, having given birth to her son, Johnny Lee Copeland-Schutlz, on Christmas Eve of last year.
“When I do a record, everything is picked for a reason. On my latest record, it was all about people on the outskirts – whether that’s on the outskirts of love or social injustice,” said Copeland. “I picked the covers on the albums that I did because they reflect the experience of someone once the battle is over.”
Some of those covers include ZZ Top’s “Jesus Just Left Chicago,” Jesse Winchester’s “Isn’t That So,” Albert King’s “Wrapped Up In love Again,” her father’s “Devil’s Hand,” and more.
Bridget Kearney, the bassist for the heavily Motown and Beatles inspired indie pop group Lake Street Dive, has just released her first solo album, Won’t Let You Down, which came together as a result of several years of accumulating appropriate material.
“This record kind of unfolded before my eyes,” said Kearney, who said that the album was crafted over about 10 years. “When I’m writing songs, I try not to be too genre specific. I try to cast the net wide and let in whatever ideas are coming to me. There are parts of the record that sound very dream pop, or maybe like Cydi Lauper or George Michael – and that’s inspired by the studio because the studio itself is always an instrument and this one happened to have a bunch of cool sounding ‘80s synthesizers in it.”
Tickets for the event are available now, for $20 to $32.