Years before Americana music earned its own category at the Grammy Awards, Steve Forbert helped pioneer the genre’s mix of folk, roots-rock, and richly delivered storytelling. He’s been a torchbearer of that sound for more than four decades since, navigating the twists and turns of an acclaimed career that’s taken him from gold records to Grammy nominations, from New York City’s CBGB to Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, from his 1978 debut album to 2022’s vital and versatile Moving Through America.

For more info CLICK HERE

Based outside of Philadelphia, CABIN DOGS blends original American country roots with 70’s grooves. Led by twin brothers, Rich and Rob, who shaped their musical ideas while playing wiffle ball and listening to Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead tapes, CABIN DOGS has released five records (including two under the Kwait Brothers Band moniker) and have played stages that include Newport Folk Festival, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Apple Farm Arts and Music Festival and most of the Philadelphia area dive bars and coffee houses. They are a Bryn Mawr local favorite 😊. The band’s new record is set for release later this year.

For more info CLICK HERE

Stephen Kellogg…

There have been some flattering quotes over the years, but the largest publication to offer up a humdinger was Rolling Stone, who in 2019, said I was like, “John Prine fronting the Heartbreakers.” My grandfather taught me not to believe my own propaganda, but I still work hard to fulfill the promise of such heady praise.

For more info CLICK HERE

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

She started out singing in Chicago folk music clubs as a teenager. Then, barely out of high school, Lucy Kaplansky took off for New York City. There she found a fertile community of songwriters and performers—Suzanne Vega, Steve Forbert, The Roches, and others. With a beautiful flair for harmony, Lucy was everyone’s favorite singing partner, but most often she found herself singing as a duo with Shawn Colvin. People envisioned big things for them; in fact, The New York Times said it was “easy to predict stardom for her.” But then Lucy dropped it all.

Convinced that her calling was in another direction, Lucy left the musical fast track to pursue a doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Upon completing her degree, Dr. Kaplansky took a job at a New York hospital working with chronically mentally ill adults, and also started a private practice. Yet she continued to sing. Lucy was often pulled back into the studio by her friends, (who now had contracts with record labels) wanting her to sing on their albums. She harmonized on Colvin’s Grammy-winning “Steady On,” and on Nanci Griffith’s “Lone Star State of Mind” and “Little Love Affairs.” She also landed soundtrack credits, singing with Suzanne Vega on “Pretty in Pink” and with Griffith on “The Firm,” and several commercial credits as well—including “The Heartbeat of America” for Chevrolet.

For more info CLICK HERE

An Evening with Roger McGuinn

As the founder of The Byrds, Roger McGuinn is firmly established as an indisputable industry icon. From his signature 12 string Rickenbacker sound, to his instantly recognizable vocals on hits like “Turn,Turn,Turn”, “Eight Miles High”and “Mr. Tambourine Man”, McGuinn didn’t just make music; he made history.

That feeling continues today as Roger offers shows that are as mesmerizing and magical as ever. He delivers the gift of an evening with a master, that is as intimate as it is spellbinding. He guides his audience along a journey of story and song, populated by the “old friends” they expect to hear, as well as some new acquaintances from the folk music that Roger so passionately embraces.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFO

David Uosikkinen’s In The Pocket

featuring members of: The Hooters, The Soul Survivors, The A’s and Tommy Conwell

David Uosikkinen, is one of the founding members of Philadelphia’s own, The Hooters. In 2010, David formed his own band, David Uosikkinen’s In The Pocket to bring awareness to music education and to pay homage to all of the great music that has come out of Philadelphia. In The Pocket brings together all-star Philly musicians to cover classic Philadelphia tunes featuring members of The Hooters, The Soul Survivors, Tommy Conwell, The A’s and more!

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

For more info CLICK HERE

The Psychedelic Furs may not have invented rock & roll per se, but their influence since arriving on the post-punk scorchedearth landscape four decades ago has reverberated and resonated among all those who cherish the sweet-and-sour spot where rawness and romanticism meet.“ From its exhilarating opening bars, Made Of Rain -the first  Psychedelic Furs album in 29 years – sounds like them and  them alone. It’s a joy to hear again, fresher than ever, that unique mesh of sounds and layers, that  fusion of smooth and stark, of restraint and abandon, of melancholy and rage, of  optimism and nihilism, of tough and tender.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFO

If David Byrne is one of the geniuses of modern times, then Start Making Sense is a tribute to genius. The musicians in this 7-10 piece Talking Heads Tribute take pride in faithfully recreating the music of Talking Heads entire career. Together they bring much of the Heads’ unique live show to the stage, with frontman Jon Braun as a spot-on David Byrne, giving you a “once in a lifetime” experience. Prepare yourself for a rockin’, funkin’, danceable celebration of the new-wave art punk you loved from the 80s!!!

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

Bakithi Kumalo is a South African bassist, composer, and vocalist. He is most known for his fretless bass playing for Paul Simon for over 30 years and on the 1986 album Graceland, in particular, the bass run on “You Can Call Me Al”. Mr. Kumalo is going on tour in 2022 performing with The Graceland Experience. This unique show will feature Bakithi performing the entire Graceland record, one of Paul Simon’s biggest, along with a selection of world music as well.

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

For more info CLICK HERE

Philadelphia Blues Society Welcomes: The Jimmy Vivino Band (The Fab Faux bandleader) with Jackson Taylor

For more info CLICK HERE

Last year, 10,000 Maniacs celebrated their 40th Anniversary. The band has covered plenty of ground in its 40+ years, from cult stardom to international stardom, to their current status as a cornerstone alternative band. But the sound and spirit of 10,000 Maniacs remains consistent. The live shows embrace their entire catalog, and the lineup is still anchored by four of the six original members. Drew, guitarist John Lombardo, and bassist Steven Gustafson cofounded the band in 1981. Drummer Jerome Augustyniak joined in 1982, solidifying the rhythm section. And the two “new” members have long been part of the family: Mary Ramsey toured and recorded with the Maniacs as a viola player and backup singer beginning in 1991 before stepping into the front woman’s role 27 years ago. And the new guy Jeff Erickson, the lead guitarist for a mere 19 years, came in at the behest of his friend and mentor, the late Rob Buck.

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

For more info CLICK HERE

Hezekiah Jones is a collection of Philadelphia-area artists orbiting around the songwriting talents of Raphael Cutrufello.

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

For more info CLICK HERE

For more info CLICK HERE

Jon Lovitz has been one of the best known comedians for the last thirty five years. Nominated for an Emmy his first two years on “Saturday Night Live”, he became known for his characters “Tommy Flanagan of the Pathological Liars Anonymous” (“Yea, that’s the ticket”), “Master Thespian”, “Hanukkah Harry”, and “the Devil”. He has appeared in 11 feature films, including “Big”, “The Wedding Singer”, “Three Amigos”, “Rat Race”, “The Producers, and possibly his most notable performance as a baseball scout in “A League of Their Own”. He starred as Jay Sherman in the prime time animated series The Critic, appeared in 20 episodes of The Simpsons as well as appearances on “Friends” and “Seinfeld” along with recurring roles on “Hot in Cleveland”, “Las Vegas”, “Two and a Half Men”, “Hawaii Five-O”, and “New Girl”. For the past 20 years Jon has been headlining stand-up comedy shows at nightclubs, theaters and casinos across the country. We’re very excited to have Jon coming to the Colonial on Saturday August 13th.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFO

With a career spanning two decades and soon to be five solo albums, Philly-raised punk troubadour Dave Hause carries on in the voice and tradition of classic American songwriters by tackling topics of hope, depression, global warming, a crumbling democracy, and growing old. His songs have always been a quest for personal survival – about pushing through against the odds – and these complex notions weave together with a joyous sing-along cadence that creates a soundtrack for the broken American dream.

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

Steal Your Peach is a mixture of some of the hardest working musicians in the Philadelphia area, specializing in a mashup concept that fuses the music of The Allman Brothers Band and The Grateful Dead. The band members all have multiple projects currently both original and not, and have formed a bond around these two iconic bands. ABB and The Dead are some of SYP’s favorite and most influential music, and they honor that music by paying close attention to details to the original material and adding their own improv style to the mix, making each show unique and exciting, and creating a very tangible symbiotic experience between the band and the listeners. Steal Your Peach has toured all over the region and their 50th Anniversary Celebration of “Eat A Peach” and “Europe ’72” is a must-see show this summer!

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

Growing up in Philadelphia on a steady diet of R&B, hip-hop, rock, blues, and soul music, Gilfillian gravitated to records that ignited his mind while making his body move. For him, listening to the towering icons of his musician father’s era—Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, The Temptations—was just as formative and exciting as discovering the new sounds of his own generation, and the beats and rhymes made by rising rap stars like Wu-Tang Clan, Kanye West, Notorious B.I.G., and Jay-Z inspired him in new ways. He began to recognize a connective thread in the sounds he loved best: from the golden throwbacks sampled by the hip-hop beat makers to the raw, emotional vocal deliveries of the Motown greats, for Gilfillian the key ingredient seemed to be the “soul”—not simply the genre, but the feeling and vibe.

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

For more info CLICK HERE

Brett Dennen is telling us to get out and see the world at a time when we need it more than ever. Flame-haired, six-foot-five, and with a singular gift for meditating on life’s most meaningful subjects with equal parts innocence and razor-sharp wit, you know Dennen from his decade-plus career as a singer/songwriter. With a successful string of albums and four Top Ten AAA singles like“Make You Crazy,” “Wild Child,” and 2018’s “Already Gone,” which achieved his highest chart position yet, Dennen has cemented himself as a fixture in American folk music. What you may not know about Brett is that he did not set out to be a professional musician. It is a surprising revelation for someone who embodies the best of songwriting: singular storytelling, singability, and the unique capacity to hold up a mirror to our lives, our society, and the greater world.

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

With his 1971 self-titled Columbia Records release, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter David Bromberg emerged as a wunderkind of American roots music. The disc’s blend of traditional and original material, virtuosic musicianship and iconic cover art trumpeted the arrival of a new artist of audacious vision. Over the course of seven more albums for Columbia & Fantasy Records and through associations with Bob Dylan, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Hartford, George Harrison, the Grateful Dead, Emmylou Harris, and Bonnie Raitt, Bromberg’s reputation and following grew exponentially. However, the incessant demands of touring finally brought the recordings and shows to an end in the early 1980s.

A twenty-two-year drought ended in 2006 with the release of the Grammy-nominated solo effort Try Me One More Time. In 2011 David followed up with Use Me, a typically unorthodox Bromberg-ian effort, partnering him with Linda Ronstadt, Vince Gill, Los Lobos, Dr. John, Keb’ Mo, John Hiatt, Levon Helm and others as David asked them to either write or choose songs and then produce him performing them.

With David’s band settling into its current lineup: Mark Cosgrove (guitar, mandolin, vocals), Nate Grower (fiddle, mandolin, guitar, vocals), Josh Kanusky (drums, vocals) and newest member, Suavek Zaniesienko (bass, vocals), they entered the studio in mid-2019 for a different approach to record-making. The resulting album, Big Road, gives Bromberg fans the most intimate portrait to date of David and his band, musically and visually. Featuring twelve new recordings, five hi-def performance videos and a mini-documentary detailing the album’s creation, the content-rich album was released on Compass/Red House Records as a CD/DVD combo pack and gatefold vinyl album.

CLICK HERE for tickets and more info

THE SIXTIES SHOW is a cross generational crowd pleaser known for spot on, note for note re-creations of the hits, the B-sides and the deep album cuts from 1960’s. This multi -media, Broadway type production, is powerfully dramatized by a combination of time travel special effects and  60’s archival audio and newsreel footage. A high energy trip back in time it reminds the audience how uniquely inspirational, entertaining, and historically significant the music and events of the 1960’s were.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFO

Appropriate for all ages JEFF ALLEN’s rapid-fire humor, which centers on marriage and family, is a hit with all ages. A live comedy favorite, Jeff has appeared on Dry Bar Comedy, Netflix, Amazon, Huckabee, Pureflix, Showtime, Comedy Central, VH1, and more. He starred in the critically acclaimed film, Apostles of Comedy, the syndicated comedy series, Bananas, his own one-hour comedy special, Happy Wife, Happy Life, and the Warner Bros. comedy film, Thou Shalt Laugh. Jeff has been featured at Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival and HBO’s Comedy Arts Festival. Jeff’s Dry Bar Comedy videos have amassed over 200 million views on social media and other platforms. The America I Grew Up In, drives home the humor in everyday family life, the ups and downs of marriage, the challenge of raising children, the bliss of the empty nest (followed by the unexpected returns to said nest) and the joys of being a grandparent…along with how our country has changed since his formative years in the sixties.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFO

Formed in the UK in 1993, Killer Queen played their first public shows at London University where Queen themselves had played their first shows 21 years earlier. Lead singer Patrick Myers said “It’s been an amazing journey. We thought our band would last maybe a summer at the most but the concerts grew and grew and we’ve ended up playing and selling out the same arenas that Queen played at their peak.” Their success has continued here in the states as well, with prestigious venues such as Austin City Limits and Red Rocks in Colorado regular stops on their US tours.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFO