VIA - Grassroots Oasis Newsletter: Inside seating in the intimate setting of The Grassroots Oasis, located just west of Old Town San Diego with lots of free street parking and a few blocks walk from Old Town Transit Center.
Wine, beer, soft drinks and light snacks available with a donation basket.
You don't want to miss our mid-month celebration kicking off The GO's 2nd Year with 3 powerful women of song and story, PLUS the premiere of The GO Gratitude Wall by Listen Local SD impresario, and very talented artist, Cathryn Beeks!
Please reserve your seats NOW and support a 2nd year in this space for progressive culture and organizing.
Nena Anderson, Cindy Lee Berryhill and Kimm Rogers represent the fullness of lives lived with ache, beauty, humor and alchemy, reflected in words and music rendered honestly and artfully.
During our 1st Year Anniversary Month, the Grassroots Oasis is very pleased to present "An Enchanting Evening of Stories and Songs in the Round" with these amazing artists based here in San Diego.
NENA ANDERSON's voice is velvet, a rich contralto, smoothly able to change from a whisper in your ear to a howl soulful, sexy and intimate. Her phrasing and stage presence are reminiscent of jazz greats: bluesy, reserved, commanding you to watch and listen.
Currently Nena fronts her solo band as well as honky-tonk band, Brawley. In addition she is also a member of collaborative book/album/concert project, For The Sender, and occasionally tours with Johnny Cash Tribute, Cashd Out, as June Carter Cash. Performing nationally with various ensembles, her band projects have earned 13 San Diego Music Award nominations, in the categories of Best Jazz, Best Acoustic, Best Americana, Best Tribute and Best New Artist. Several of her recordings have been released internationally in Poland, Turkey, Russia, Greece, Germany, UK, Spain, Belgium, South Korea, and Asia.
Her first all-original album Beyond the Lights earned comparisons to early Lucinda Williams, Rickie Lee Jones and Bob Dylan with its accessible and deceptively uncomplicated lyrics and bluesy sound. From the moody, minor-keyed, driving swamp blues to rollicking 60's piano soul groove or catchy two-step country heartache of "I Fall In Love Too Fast," Nena proves she can write timeless songs for a modern audience.
Nena has shared stages as support or collaborated with Lucinda Williams, Gregg Allman, Raul Malo, Dave Alvin, Switchfoot, Dan Hicks, and Albert Lee.
CINDY LEE BERRYHILL, like Brenda Kahn, Paleface, Beck, Michelle Shocked and John S. Hall, was an early proponent of the New York City Anti-folk movement. She is featured in the documentary "Mariposa: Under a Stormy Sky" along with Emmylou Harris, The Violent Femmes, Daniel Lanois and others.
Her third album Garage Orchestra (Cargo/Earth) garnered a 4 star review in Rolling Stone. In 1995 her boyfriend and husband-to-be, rock writer Paul Williams (founder of Crawdaddy) suffered a brain injury.
In 1999, Berryhill's novel, Memoirs of A Female Messiah was released, along with a live album entitled Living Room 16. After the birth of Berryhill and Williams's son in 2001, she began a song cycle that included "Beloved Stranger", inspired by her experiences with her husband's brain injury and the awareness that many soldiers were coming home from war with similar injuries. In 2008 the album Beloved Stranger (Populuxe) was released.
In 2010, the iconic Van Dyke Parks wrote of CLB:
"A woman of Cindy Lee's capacity as a lyricist is unique, her insight and raw ability to articulate the human dilemma and articulate it in short order is peerless. She deserves a berth in any Hall of Fame, for the humanities she brings to the usual vanities of song-writing. Somehow I get the impression she knows her legacy will outlive her."
Berryhill currently lives in Encinitas, CA with her son, Alexander Berryhill-Williams. Before her husband died in 2013 from the early onset of dementia due to the brain injury sustained in a 1995 bicycle accident, he lived in a nearby nursing home. She is putting the finishing touches on her 7th album, which was completely funded by fans and friends on Kickstarter.
KIMM ROGERS grew up on Los Angeles' east side where she "fell in love with tacos ... kept looking for snow ... saw an ocean full of promise ... hopped trains to school with kids whose family members were in gang" and had a sister with cerebral palsy "who taught us about love."
In high school she got her first guitar, became enthralled by Joni Mitchell's Blue and the fifth Led Zeppelin album and "fell in love with words." With the help of her mother and Bob Dylan songbooks she mastered a few chords, started making up songs "and folks listened." On to Nashville, where she "got booed, got loved, got told 'go to la or new york.'"
Back in the City of Angels she met the band The Rave-Ups, fronted by the gifted Jimmer Podrasky, played on bills with the Williamses Lucinda and Victoria, had lightning strike with her song "Train to Nowhere" when Island signed her and then dropped her. Which sent her to, of all places, Idaho, "a good place to be after earthquakes and lost record deals and broken hearts," and on to college for five years.
Upon graduation more roaming ensued (a stint in AmeriCorps, teaching music to disabled artists, etc.), then back to California she went, where she was met by "family love," old friends and renewed vigor for her music. She was introduced to producer Julian Coryell and "it feels like I am home and in the presence of a genius, but most importantly we have the same hair. I think we might be kin." Where The Pavement Grows is the result of their hirsute union, "the record I have waited all my life to make."
Of Rogers' new album, David McGee in Deep Roots writes:
"Why Stereo Embers would rank her in the top tier of women in rock 'n' roll is evident in touches such as the chugging guitars in 'Twenty-Three,' the seemingly tongue-in-cheek synth-pop flourishes in 'Change,' the guitar-driven crunch of 'Eventually,' the synth underpinning and chiming guitar of 'Valentines Day' (the first few bars of which sound like a quote from The Cascades' Rhythm of the Rain). Why others would hear an affinity for country-rock can be explained by such phenomena as the country-inflected melody of 'As Good As It Gets,' which sounds, in the vocal's tenderness, in the sumptuousness of the harmonized chorus, in the lyrics' fatalism, like it could have been an early Judy Collins gem; the driving, southwestern flavor and slide howls of 'Star Filled Canopy'; and the thick-textured Dylan-like setting of 'Gravity.'"
This evening will be such an apt way to mark the First Year of The Grassroots Oasis, be sure you are part of it!
To see and hear more of each of these artists:
http://www.nenaanderson.com/http://www.cindyleeberryhill.com/
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