Media contact: Alicia Rohan
Discover and get to know up and coming artists in a new original concert series, “Sessions.”
Presented by the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, this series will showcase the best singer-songwriters this area has to offer. Genres will range, but the stories will linger.
Nora Jane StruthersThe first “Sessions” is set for Friday, June 22, featuring Nora Jane Struthers, and Saturday, June 23, featuring Lindsay Lou. Join the Alys Stephens Center for cocktails, small bites and inspiring performances in the intimate setting of the center’s “black box” Odess Theatre. Seating will be limited. The music starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20, $10 for students. Call 205-975-2787 or visit AlysStephens.org.
Friday, June 22: Nora Jane Struthers
Struthers is “remarkable,” says Ann Powers of NPR Music, and writes music that is “as powerful as anything Jason Isbell released this year.” The songs that last decades and weave themselves into the fabric of listeners’ lives are usually the ones in which an artist lays her soul bare for the world to hear. Struthers’ new album “Champion,” released at the close of 2017, is built on these kinds of songs. Struthers wrote and recorded the album with her longtime road band the Party Line, and the chemistry between her and the other players is palpable. “Champion” is the follow-up to 2015’s “Wake” and earned Struthers acclaim from major outlets like NPR’s “Fresh Air,” Rolling Stone, and Vice/Noisey, who raved that “Nora Jane Struthers and her band sound ready to take over Americana completely … bringing a fuller, harder sound to the table.”
Saturday, June 23: Lindsay Lou
Touring behind the release of their most recent record, “Ionia,” Lindsay Lou and The Flatbellys have been featured in the lineup of The Shetland Island Folk Festival and Celtic Connections in Scotland, Stagecoach Music Festival in California (boasting around 55,000 attendees) and The Bluegrass Jamboree in Germany. They’ve also been featured in a number of the best acoustic music festivals in the United States, including Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado, Merlefest in North Carolina, Wheatland Music Festival in Michigan, GreyFox in New York, Strawberry Music Festival in California, Redwing Roots Festival in Virginia, ROMP in Kentucky and Pagosa Springs Folk Festival in Colorado. They were named one of NPR Music’s 12 best live performance sessions of 2015 by “Mountain Stage with Larry Groce,” a program which has featured acts like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Amos Lee, Joan Baez, Regina Spektor, Norah Jones and PHISH.