Music

Richard Shindell

Green Note

106 Parkway · and other venues

Thu 12 Nov · 19:30 · From £19

Music

About this event

** PLEASE NOTE: This show will take place at our alternative home for the evening: ST PANCRAS OLD CHURCH , Pancras Road, Camden Town, London NW1 1UL. Doors open 7.30pm. Music starts 8.15pm. ** ***NB: This show is mixed seating and standing. Seating is limited and available on a first come first served basis.*** RICHARD SHINDELL : Richard Shindell lives as both an immigrant and emigrant, crossing thresholds, that informs his illumination of the human experience through narrative song. Shindell has inhabited a Zen Buddhist monastery, busked in the streets of Paris, opened for Joan Baez (who covered several of his songs), and collaborated with Grammy-winner Larry Campbell (Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, Elvis Costello). Originally from New York, now living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Shindell is a writer whose songs paint pictures, tell stories, juxtapose ideas and images, inhabit characters, vividly evoking entire worlds along the way and expanding our sense of just what it is a song may be. Meticulously recorded over three years in New York and Buenos Aires, his most recent release, Careless, offered an ambitious, luxurious, full-length statement. Shindell immersed himself in the studio, allowing the time and latitude to explore, experiment, take risks—to play—as each of these eleven songs was given form and substance. While his signature acoustic guitar style is used to good effect, Careless also found Shindell plugging in more. “The wider sonic and dynamic range of the electric has been a real inspiration. Rejuvenating.” During the pandemic, Shindell stayed in Argentina, out on the wide open Pampa, reading, writing, taking walks, doing a little experimental recording, and tending the garden. He now returns to the road for a limited number of performances. Innovative, original and occasionally spiritual, Shindell’s songs weave tales that interchangeably champion the downtrodden, exalt the disaffected or wax empathetic to those lost to society's fringes. From lighthearted ballads and adulterous love songs, to dirges and diatribes that skillfully skewer politics, prejudice, war and religion, to the comic point-of-view of a cow stuck in a barbed wire fence, he has a unique ability to morph into the soul of the many and varied personalities he casts as narrators in certain songs—veritable novellas framed in haunting acoustic melodies. "Occasionally an artist has a night that makes even sceptics think, “O.K., maybe he is the best.” Richard Shindell achieved this." — Ann Powers, NY Times Support from Sara Milonovich & Greg Anderson Sara Milonovich is on tour celebrating the release of her new album of genre-spanning Americana roots music, Last Resort Motor Inn . It’s the sound of a songwriter taking stock - not just of a changing America, but of a lifetime spent navigating its back roads, small-town communities, music scenes, and contradictions. Raised on a family farm in rural upstate New York, Sara grew up surrounded by bluegrass, folk, old-school country, and the earthy sounds of an agrarian area that still relied on agriculture. Albums like her previous Northeast focused on those roots, chronicling the struggles of rural Americans weathered by geography and hard circumstances. Recorded alongside her band, Daisycutter, and longtime producer Greg Anderson, Last Resort Motor Inn unpacks those stories even further. She writes about gentrified mill towns losing their identities, farmers watching country culture become high-class fashion, resilient women surviving on the margins of society, and people searching for connection in fractured times. "There might not be a lot of hope in some of these songs," she admits, "but there's no quit in any of them." That resilience is the beating heart of Last Resort Motor Inn - a reminder that when you're a lifer, there's no such thing as throwing in the towel. "This record reflects every version of me for the last 25 years, from the bluegrass fiddle player to the singer/songwriter to the rock experimentalist," says Milonovich, who's spent decades balancing her solo work with countless opportunities as a session player, instrumentalist, road warrior, and cultural ambassador. "It feels like a culmination of all the years of experience and musical adventures I’ve been on, through so many different genres and scenes. This is the first time I've just done exactly what I wanted, and stopped worrying about making everything make sense on paper." Boldly progressive and forward-thinking, Last Resort Motor Inn pairs its more traditional material - honky-tonk rockers like "What We Did With The Place," waltzing ballads like the titular "Last Resort Motor Inn," and mandolin-driven love songs like "Planting and Harvest" - with sonic journeys that fall far outside the folk realm. An unexpected cover of King Crimson's "Starless" turns the prog-rock staple into an ambitious Americana anthem, featuring pedal steel from Larry Campbell, hurdy gurdy from Québécois legend Nicolas Boulerice, and overdriven fiddle riffs amplified by a full Marshall stack. There's an unplugged spin on American Aquarium's "Me + Mine," too, with banjos replacing the guitar-filled crescendoes of the original. "In The Field," one of the album's six originals, finds Milonovich mixing Woodstock references and newgrass textures into a combination she proudly calls "a jam-band-meets-'60s-pop song." If these eclectic sounds don't make sense on paper, they certainly make sense as the building blocks of an album that's every bit as diverse as its creator. Sara Milonovich has built her career across countless musical worlds: from Americana stages and tours to collaborations with folk and bluegrass royalty, as well as work on Broadway's Tony-winning Come From Away . With Last Resort Motor Inn , she funnels those worlds into a universe all her own.