Catie Curtis finds silver lining in life’s dark clouds – Colonial Aug. 7

Catie Curtis appears at the Colonial Theatre on August 7, 2010.

The headlines might depict the roiling clouds of politics, but singer-songwriter Catie Curtis wants you to try to look at the silver lining. And Jonatha Brooke helps bring back the simpler times of Woody Guthrie.

It’s not all that hard to find a musician willing and able to offer a guided tour of life’s dark clouds—but making the acquaintance of someone able to hone in on the silver lining, well, that’s an altogether rarer occurrence. It’s an experience to savor.

You never know what Catie Curtis is going to sing or say at a performance. And Jonatha Brooke is right there behind her. At a show at New York City’s the Bottom Line at which Stephen Holden of the New York Times was in attendance, Curtis noted that where she grew up in Maine, rural and similar to the Berkshires, her neighbors were afraid of three things: “people who moved in from somewhere else, people who were planning to move out and anybody who was weird.” Growing up, she played both the trombone and drums before picking up acoustic guitar in her teens.

IN A NUTSHELL: Catie Curtis and Jonatha Brooke will be at the Colonial on August 7 at 8PM. Tickets are $35 and $25 and can be purchased in person at the Colonial Ticket Office at 111 South Street Monday-Friday 10AM-5PM, performance Saturdays 10AM-2PM, by calling (413) 997-4444 or online at www.thecolonialtheatre.org.

Of course, Catie’s honest and open lyrics have won her a huge following over the years, but perhaps none more loyal than the LGBT crowd which has honored her three times with GLAMA awards for her recordings.

But there is nothing like hearing Curtis in person. Her compelling voice and honest lyrics touch you as few others can. The same can be said of Brooke. When the two come together on August 7, 2010, it promises to be quite an evening at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield.

For her ninth studio album, Sweet Life, this out lesbian folksinger headed to Nashville to create a big, warm sound to accompany the new album’s positive vibe. But that isn’t all this award-winning musician has been up to. On the day Sweet Life was released, Curtis awarded several low-income children their very own guitars as part of her Aspire to Inspire initiative.

“With a clear, deceptively gentle voice, Curtis can turn on a dime and thrill the listener with unforeseen power and emotion.”–RollingStone.com

“Folk-rock goddess”–The New Yorker

Catie Curtis’ ability to lift up the listener radiates from virtually every groove of her appropriately-titled ninth studio album, Sweet Life. Curtis has been a fan favorite on the acoustic music scene for a number of years now. Her well-deserved reputation as one of our very best singer/songwriters has followed her through nine critically-acclaimed recordings. With her tenth and newest project, Hello Stranger, released in August 2009, she gifts her loyal fan base and entices new listeners with a recording that captures some of the magic of her live performances. With the help of her Nashville-based record label, Compass Records, she selected a few of Nashville’s best musicians to make an album featuring fiddle, mandolin and banjo as well as acoustic guitar.

Catie Curtis and her producer, Garry West, put a fresh spin on some of Curtis’s best-loved songs as well as several handpicked classics. The supporting musicians, Alison Brown and Stuart Duncan, along with Gary Marinelli (acoustic guitars, mandolin and resophonic guitar), Kenny Malone (drums and percussion) and Todd Phillips (acoustic bass) deliver these tunes with a pop, sizzle and shine. But most of all, the music is fun to listen to again and again. Country meets Catie in style!

Curtis has created a dedicated following that has grown steadily over the course of her 15-year career. With her live shows, film and tv placements, the 2006 International Songwriting Competition Grand Prize, and now the Hello Stranger string-band project, Curtis has proven that she’s the real deal: a musician with the kind of raw talent and artistic maturity that makes her a force to be reckoned with, albeit a sweet force.

Jonatha Brooke appears with Catie Curtis at the Colonial Theatre, August 7, 2010.

“The folk-pop singer’s new album seamlessly pairs her original music with previously unreleased Woody Guthrie lyrics. Brooke reigns supreme.” –People

“…some of her best work yet…Guthrie’s long-lost lyrics could hardly have found a better interpreter than Brooke.” –The Washington Post

Jonatha Brooke merges elements of folk, rock and pop with poignant lyrics and complex harmonies. Her seventh solo album, The Works, features the previously unpublished lyrics of Woody Guthrie.

Brooke’s musical career began in the late ’80s with fellow songwriter Jennifer Kimball while at college. The pair later formed the band The Story, and after writing their debut album Grace in Gravity the pair became signed to the label Elektra Records in the early ’90s. The music at this point was predominantly Folk fused with Pop, but when Jonatha and Jennifer went their separate ways in 1994, Brooke started writing more commercially styled songs.

She released a steady stream of albums throughout the ’90s (Plumb, 10 Cent Wings, Steady Pull). Jonatha has also become well known in the music she contributed to, and played in the Disney film Return to Never Land. In the film she covered the song “Second Star to the Right” and contributed to the song “I’ll Try.” Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon chose Brooke’s “What You Don’t Know” to be the theme song for the TV series Dollhouse starring Eliza Dushku.

Jonatha Brooke borrowed the title of her latest album, The Works, from a Woody Guthrie lyric she came across in a notebook stored at the Guthrie archives – “I am the WORKS, the whole WORKS,” the American folk legend had scribbled, “The saint, the sinner, the drinker, the thinker….” Placing hitherto unseen Guthrie lyrics in contemporary musical settings to create brand-new songs, Brooke, backed by a small combo of stellar jazz and rock players, indeed offers us the works—an extraordinarily intimate, emotionally revealing portrait of an American folk legend and an album that’s very much her own.

Others have pored through Guthrie’s writings to find material for new songs, most notably Billy Bragg and Wilco on the Grammy-nominated Mermaid Avenue. But Brooke is the first female artist offered unfettered access to the archives for that purpose. The image of Guthrie that Brooke creates by piecing together the contents of file cabinets and folders is one of a man both brash and tender, morally outraged and spiritually longing, a dreamer, sensualist, prankster, husband, lover, wanderer, troubadour. Says Brooke,” I started finding these really personal lyrics—searching, spiritual ones—and this gorgeous, sexy poetry, and it was fascinating. It drew me in and made me think I could do something really cool with this material.”