A tour dubbed Decembersongs, featuring four singer-songwriters (with a couple of Grammy nominations and awards among them), will be making its way across the Northeast, Midwest, South, and Mid-Atlantic regions with eleven stops during the month of December (see full tour schedule below). Decembersongs is the brainchild of one of the four performers, Amy Speace, who had the idea for the tour following separate showcases last February at the Folk Alliance International Conference in Memphis with Sally Barris, Jon Vezner and Dan Navarro. “The showcases were just magical,” says Speace. “Imagining all of us together was simply extraordinary.”
After a round of different ideas and configurations, Speace landed on the current line-up by deciding that two men and two women would make for an interesting dynamic. “I envisioned it like a Bluebird Café-style show, with four high-level songwriters playing on each others’ stuff. We all bring something different to the table.” The line-up includes Nashville-based Speace, LA-based Dan Navarro (one half of the well-known folk duo Lowen & Navarro), and two fellow Nashville-based performers – Grammy-nominated Sally Barris and Grammy winner Jon Vezner (see “Decembersongs is…” below for more information on each of them).
The group plans to play in-the-round, with mostly original holiday songs penned by the group being performed. A disc of these holiday songs by the quartet, entitled “Decembersongs,” will be available for sale at all of the shows, as well as online at iTunes and Amazon.com. The set list will also include traditional holiday favorites and some of the artists’ non-holiday material. Says Speace, “I thought putting together a show that didn’t just rework old classics but one that featured really great songwriters who could mostly present new original songs for the holidays – and selling a CD of those new songs at the shows – would really play well in December in great listening rooms.”
DECEMBERSONGS 2010 TOUR DATES:
Wednesday, December 8 Nashville, TN / Bluebird Cafe
Friday, December 10 Zumbrota, MN / Crossings At Carnegie
Saturday, December 11 Mequon, WI / Wisconsin Singer-Songwriter Series
Sunday, December 12 Chicago, IL / Old Town School of Folk Music
Monday, December 13 E. Lansing, MI / Pump House
Tuesday, December 14 Ann Arbor, MI / The Ark
Wednesday, December 15 Pittsburgh, PA / Calliope Folk Music Society at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
Thursday, December 16 Vienna, VA / Jammin’ Java
Friday, December 17 Phoenixville, PA / Steel City Coffeehouse
Saturday, December 18 New York, NY / The Living Room
Sunday, December 19 Cambridge, MA / Club Passim