Sun Dec 15
Roots Cafe Christmas Show with Karen Collins & Chris Ousley
5PM / $10 Get Tickets
Roots Cafe - Christmas Show 2019
Featuring Classic and Original Songs for the Winter Holidays
Country singer and coal miner’s daughter, Karen Collins writes exceptional songs that she delivers in a traditional style – Hazel Dickens meets Loretta Lynn. Karen stays busy writing songs and playing with her honky-tonk band, the Backroads Band, her Cajun/Zydeco band, Squeeze Bayou, and the acoustic country quartet, the Blue Moon Cowgirls in addition to doing solo shows. Karen’s most recent CD with the Backroads Band, “No Yodeling On The Radio,” HAS received airplay across the US and Europe and was #2 on the FAR (Freeform American Roots) Chart. Her song “She Dreams” was a top-five Country Winner in the 13th Annual Great American Song Contest, and several of her songs appeared on the NPR show, “Car Talk.” http://karencollins.net
Low-brow meets high-brow in the songcraft and storytelling of Chris Ousley. A student of folk traditions and histories, he brings together a breadth of narratives and a depth of sounds to his voice, fiddle, guitar, banjo and ukulele. Vulnerable confessionals, academic musings, and expositions of working-class struggle are pointedly punctuated by the well placed fart joke. You can hear Chris most often in his internationally touring ensemble, Bumper Jacksons. But you can also experience him slinging his musical wares in local bluegrass bands, folk ensembles, square dances, or at his home improvising jingles about potty training for his three young kids. https://www.bumperjacksons.com
Santa Claus is the legendary pioneer of Arctic-rock, which swept the northern latitudes in the 1960s. Borrowing elements of Chet Baker's “cool jazz” and Jerry Butler's “Ice Man” soul, Claus crafted a “snowbilly” sound of pounding piano, jangly “sleigh bell” guitar and “bipolar” bass. His singles for Midnight Sun Records, such as “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sled Dog,” “Great Balls of Snow” and “Don’t Step on My Blue Suede Mukluks,” were hits from Helsinki to Anchorage. His band, Santa and the Subordinate Clauses, put on famous live shows in matching red outfits lined with white fur and amplifiers painted in red-and-white candy-cane stripes. Claus himself would enter the stage in a sled pulled by four reindeer, jump from the sled onto the piano bench and begin every show with his signature tune, “I’m the Santa Claus of Love.” Claus has come out of retirement to make this special appearance.
Though best known as a music critic for the Washington Post, American Songwriter, Nashville Scene, Jazz Times, No Depression, Paste and many more,Geoffrey Himes is also a longtime singer-songwriter who has co-written songs with Si Kahn, Fred Koller, Walter Egan, Sonia Rutstein, Billy Kemp, Stephen Wade, Jim Patton, Tony Denikos, Alan MacEwan, Ed Pettersen, James von Lenz, Andrew Grimm, Bob Kannenberg and others. His songs have been recorded by Kemp, the Kinsey Report, Denikos, Koller, Mojo Filter, Patton and others.
Willem Elsevier is a trained violinist who has found success in both the classical and jazz worlds. He is best known, however, for his role in Love Riot, the Baltimore rock band that recorded with producer Eric Ambel and toured widely. Elsevier’s sophisticated solos helped the band beat out 2,500 other bands from around the globe to win the Yamaha Music Quest competition in Japan in 1994. Elsevier has also recorded with such acts as Billy Kemp and Milkshake. Since 2012, he has been performing and songwriter in a duo with Geoffrey Himes.
Tickets: $10 in advance/$13 at door/$10 full-time students with ID
5PM / $10 Get Tickets