An Intimate Evening with Bettye LaVette

ft Ed Alstrom on keyboards

Landmark on Main Street | Saturday, Dec. 16th | 8 PM

Bettye LaVette is no mere singer. She is an interpreter of the highest order. Whether the song originated as country, rock, pop, or blues, when she gets through with it, it is pure R&B. She gets inside a song and shapes and twists it to convey all of the emotion that can be wrought from the lyric.

Bettye LaVette is one of very few of her contemporaries who were recording during the birth of soul music in the 1960s and is still creating vital recordings today.

Her career began in 1962, at the age of 16, in Detroit, Michigan. Her first single "My Man - He's a Loving Man", was released on Atlantic Records. She recorded for numerous labels, including Atco, Epic, and Motown, and worked alongside Charles "Honi" Coles, and Cab Calloway in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Bubbling Brown Sugar.

The 2000's started what she calls her "Fifth Career". Her CD, A Woman Like Me, won the W.C. Handy Award in 2004 for "Comeback Blues Album of the Year". She was also given a prestigious Pioneer Award by The Rhythm & Blues Foundation. She recorded 4 CDs for hipster indie label ANTI- Records over the course of 8 years, 2 of which received Grammy nominations.

She has received the Blues Music Award for Best Contemporary Female Blues Singer and performed at The Kennedy Center Honors in a tribute to The Who. She then performed "A Change Is Gonna Come" with Jon Bon Jovi for President-elect Barack Obama on HBO's telecast of the kick-off Inaugural Celebratory concert, We Are One.

2012 marked her 50th year in show business and she also released her no-holds-barred autobiography, A Woman Like Me. In 2016, her most recent CD, Worthy, garnered her a third Grammy nomination. She also received the Blues Music Award for Best Soul Blues Female Artist.

This intimate show allows her voice to be the complete center of attention. Bettye performs songs from throughout her 55-year career, including songs that she used to perform in small Detroit clubs before her 21st Century resurgence began.

Bettye has always said that just a voice and one instrument is all you need to sell a song. Hearing Bettye in this setting, stripped down to just her voice and a piano, is a very intense and moving experience.

Joan Osborn Sings the Songs of Bob Dylan

06.23 | 8 PM | Landmark on Main Street

SOLD OUT

Joan Osborne has rightfully earned a reputation as one of the great voices of her generation — both a commanding, passionate performer and a frank, emotionally evocative songwriter. A multi-platinum selling recording artist and seven-time Grammy nominee, the soulful vocalist is a highly sought-after collaborator and guest performer who has performed alongside many notable artists, including Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Luciano Pavarotti, Emmylou Harris, Taj Mahal, and Mavis Staples, to name a few.

Counting such legendary artists as Etta James and Ray Charles as influences, Osborne has released several acclaimed albums and continues to tour extensively in various configurations -- with her own band, as Joan Osborne's Soul Revue, and as an acoustic duo and trio. In 2003, Osborne joined forces with the surviving members of The Grateful Dead when they regrouped to tour as The Dead. In addition to her own solo shows and frequent guest appearances, Osborne currently also tours as a member of the rock/soul super group Trigger Hippy, founded by Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman and built from each musician’s shared love of R&B and soul. The band’s self- titled debut album arrived in 2014.     

Osborne has showcased her far-ranging talent during three residencies in 2016 at the Cotton Club in Tokyo, Japan; the Blue Note in Honolulu, Hawaii; and Cafe Carlyle at The Carlyle Hotel in New York City. The latter, titled Joan Osborne Sings The Songs of Bob Dylan, received critical acclaim from outlets such as The New York Times ("At every point in the evening, you had a sense of Ms. Osborne as an artist who knew exactly what she was doing") and the Huffington Post ("Her set was magic...the evening was a rediscovery of familiar Dylan, re- mined for new riches...hearing Osborne singing and dancing the Dylan greats was further testament to their versatility, beauty, and his genius"). Osborne felt this would be a great chance to work out an idea she had of doing a "Songbook Series" of albums -- the way Ella Fitzgerald did in recording the songs of Gershwin, Cole Porter, and others -- but with the songs of more recent writers. Dylan was an obvious choice.

Osborne is widely known for her live performances in the GRAMMY Award- winning documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown. She has produced two albums for Americana stalwarts the Holmes Brothers, and co-produced her last two critically acclaimed solo records, Love And Hate, and Bring It On Home, with talented producer/multi-instrumentalist Jack Petruzzelli. Bring It On Home, which found Osborne tackling vintage songs by Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, Al Green, Ike and Tina Turner, and Sonny Boy Williamson, among others, and treating them with respect while giving them some interesting twists in tempo, key and feeling, garnered a Best Blues Album nomination at the 2013 GRAMMY Awards.      

 Osborne continues to enjoy a long and storied career that was jump-started with the great success of her major-label debut album, Relish, which wove together strands of American roots music, poetic lyrics and impassioned vocals, and produced the massive MTV and international radio smash, "One of Us.” The song occupied the number one spot on the U.S. singles chart for two weeks, Relish eventually racked up sales of over three million copies, and Osborne found a large and appreciative audience, particularly during touring as part of Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair tour.

Although the Kentucky native grew up with a passion for music, when she arrived in New York City in the late 1980s, it was to attend New York University's prestigious film school. But she couldn't resist the pull of the city's live music scene for long, and soon she was performing her own songs in downtown rock clubs and emerging as a popular presence in a vibrant scene of rootsy new acts that included such then-unknowns as Jeff Buckley, Chris Whitley, Blues Traveler and the Spin Doctors. In 1992, Osborne launched her own indie label, Womanly Hips, and released the live Soul Show: Live at Delta 88 and the studio EP Blue Million Miles. Becoming a regional success led her to the signing of a major label deal and the success of Relish. But Osborne quickly made it clear that she was more interested in musical integrity and creative longevity than transient pop success, and she made that point repeatedly with such subsequent albums as 2000's Righteous Love, 2002's How Sweet It Is, 2005’s Christmas Means Love,

"I'm getting better at what I do," Osborne observes. "I can look at the songs on Love and Hate and realize that it's better than I could have done 15 or 20 years ago. I have an audience that I've built up over time, and I feel like they're with me. And because of that, I don't feel any pressure to fit myself into anyone else's idea of what I should be doing. So I feel like I can write my own rules at this point. That can be scary, but it's also liberating, and it's an exciting place to be."

Mavis Staples at Landmark on Main Street

June 4th | 7 PM

Mavis Staples is living, breathing history. She is an alchemist of American music, having continuously crossed genre lines like no musician since Ray Charles. Weaving herself into the very fabric of gospel, soul, folk, pop, R&B, blues, rock, and hip hop over the last 60 years, this iconic singer has seen and sung through so many changes.

Now in her seventh decade, with the release of her new album Livin' on a High Note (ANTI-), she is only gaining momentum.

"I think about this album as a new beginning in my career," says Mavis. "I'm living on a high note, I'm floating on air. I know I don't have as much time on this Earth as I've already had, but I see it as saying, 'Mavis has been here, y'all.' Before I move on, I just want to leave some Mavis with you that you're not used to hearing. I want to leave you with some joy and love, and some don't-forget-me songs."

She has embraced her evolution, absorbing new sounds and ideas, rising to meet the challenges of longevity and bringing her message of hope and positivity to new listeners, song after song, show after show.

Mavis Staples received Kennedy Center honors in December 2016.

Special guest Nicole Atkins is one of the premier female rock vocalists touring today. Her newest album, Slow Phaser, is Nicole Atkins at her confident and unpredictable best - spirited, sexy, and determinedly forward thinking.

Ben Sollee Live at Naked Soul - 3/3/17

Known for his thrilling cello playing that incorporates new techniques to create a unique mix of folk, bluegrass, jazz and R&B, Ben Sollee possesses rough, smooth, smoky vocal stylings and a knack for intricate arrangements. Sollee shares himself completely with his audience, whether it be by personal lyrics, or his commitment to the environment. In 2012, Sollee self-released his fourth album, Half-Made Man, a revealing, deeply moving album that explores a man trying to figure himself out, just as we all are. Sollee first gained major notice with his 2008 debut, Learning to Bend, which led NPR’s Morning Edition to call him one of the “Top Ten Great Unknown Artists” of the year. Later, All Things Considered called his debut “an inspired collection of acoustic, folk and jazz-flavored songs, filled with hope and the earnest belief that the world is good.”