Meeting House Presents

Unitarian Society of Hartford Concert Series since 2017

50 Bloomfield Avenue  Hartford, CT  06105

Free on-site parking

 

 

2024-25 Season

Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters  – Friday, February 21, 2025 7:00 pm

Mad Agnes – Friday, March 21, 2025 7:00 pm

Meetinghouse – Friday, April 18, 2025 7:00 pm

Soupeater! (Sue Hill & Peter Lendoff) – Friday, May 16, 2025 7:00 pm

John Gorka – Saturday, June 7, 2025 7:00 pm

 

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Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters  – Friday, February 21 7:00 pm $20

 

Amy Gallatin, born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, lived in several states before settling in the West, where she was raised. During her ten years in Idaho and Montana, she had had the good fortune of being able to work at two of her loves in life: horses and music; Amy helped to organize the horseback riding programs and was the featured entertainer at various guest ranches. Her performing background had been as a solo artist out West prior to her meeting some Connecticut musicians while wintering in New England in 1992. With that Connecticut connection came the opportunity to tour as a working unit, so Amy packed her guitar and moved east in the fall of 1993 to pursue her music.

Eight albums later–including a “Live in Europe” album and two projects recorded in Nashville with ace producer Rich Adler–Amy Gallatin and her band Stillwaters have taken the stage at some of the most prestigious venues in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, and Europe.Their recent tour of The Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Denmark–the band’s fifth–drew extremely enthusiastic crowds at house concerts, music clubs, theaters, country & bluegrass festivals. They have twice had the honor of representing the United States as the featured performers at the European World of Bluegrass convention in The Netherlands.

Amy is at home singing various musical styles — country, folk, bluegrass or western swing–branding each song with soulful sincerity. Her influences are diverse, ranging from old and contemporary cowboy tunes learned out West, to great country artists like Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, and the Everly Brothers.

Stillwaters is…

Roger Williams started playing the resophonic, Dobro style guitar in1963, when he was just a young teenager. Within the first year, he had already debuted with The Lilly Brothers and Don Stover at the Hillbilly Ranch in Boston, Mass. where they had performed for nearly two decades. 

Since then he has gone on to perform and/or record with many well respected bluegrass and folk acts on the national and international circuit, including Don Stover,White Mountain Bluegrass, Hazel Dickens, Joe Val, Bill Harrell, Wyatt Rice, Delia Bell & Bill Grant, Southern Rail, Ray Legere, Mark Schatz, Mac Wiseman,The New England Bluegrass Band, Salamander Crossing, Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters, Slavek Hanzlik, Mark Erelli, Hiro Arita and others. Career highlights include thirteen overseas tours with various artists, including a performance at the prestigious Dobro Festival in Slovakia, and teaching workshops during Bluegrass Week at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, WV. Roger has recorded three solo projects, Fireball, Rt. 2 To Amherst, and I Know This Road, as well as three collaborative efforts entitled River Of No Return (with long-time friend and musical associate Ray Legere), Williams Squared (with son JD Williams), and Something ‘Bout You in Nashville (with partner Amy Gallatin).

Roger has also been involved in CMH label’s ‘Pickin’ On’ series, where different musical genres are interpreted in the bluegrass vein. About Roger, Bluegrass Unlimited magazine has said: “Williams, like all great acoustic slide players, can be mellow and lingering or crisp and jaunty. He’s also a very fine singer (with) more than a little of Merle Haggard in voice and emotion.”

“Roger Williams is one bad-ass Dobro player.”–Jim Chapdelaine, Engineer/Composer/Producer/Guitarist

 

JD Williams grew up steeped in the Williams family musical tradition, learning multiple instruments at a very early age thanks to his dad Roger Williams’ influence. As an in-demand sideman and session player, JD has performed with various ensembles and musicians in Boston, New England and the greater New York City area, including the award-winning bluegrass band Southern Rail, the popular acoustic group The Hot Flashes, the acclaimed Syracuse songwriter duo The Cadleys, and Connecticut songwriter Nathan Day. Today this Berklee College of Music grad exhibits a youthful style all his own with jazz and blues influences, and the family on-stage chemistry is magic! He currently makes his home in Manhattan with his wife, Christine.

Bob Dick Northbridge, MA (bass, vocals) An alumnus of the prestigious Berklee School of music in Boston, Mass and founding member of the long-running Blackstone Valley Bluegrass Band, Bob has earned a reputation as being one of the most accomplished acoustic bass players in the field of bluegrass music. Early in his musical career, Bob performed with several leading regional bluegrass groups including Bear Acker and Billings Gap and Rabbit in a Log (with Rich Starkey and Skip Gorman). In 1991 he became a full time member of Sugar Hill recording artists Front Range, who went on to achieve national success. Bob has recorded six albums with them as well as touring all across the US and Europe. Founder of Appleland Recording Studios in Northbridge Mass., Bob has become a highly respected and sought after producer/engineer with several quality recordings to his credit including: the award-winning Front Range (Back To Red River, One Beautiful Day which was named IBMA’s Gospel Recording of the year in 1995), Southern Rail’s Glory Train, plus recordings by Blackstone Valley, Slo-Grass, The Crockets, Waystation, and Rick Lang & Friends.

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Mad Agnes – Friday, March 21, 2025 7:00 pm $20

The genre-bending trio, Mad Agnes, delivers smart songwriting, passionate performances, and an ease with one another on stage that invites the audience into their world of human connection and spontaneous fun. They transport listeners with well crafted instrumentation, using guitars, mandolin, ukulele, piano, an inventive keyboard, and three-part harmonies as tight as jeans from the dryer.

Mad Agnes is mad – but only in the most endearing way.
And if you ask them what they’re mad about…
Why, they’re mad about you.

Mad Agnes has won hearts on two continents with their signature intricate harmonies, compelling songwriting, and passionate delivery.The genre-bending trio—Margo Hennebach, Adrienne Jones and Mark Saunders—creates an exciting, inclusive performance, delivering new original songs, selections from their thirteen album catalog, story telling and impromptu vocal improv.

In their current iteration, Mad Agnes uses primarily one microphone around which they form and re-form, early-radio style. Their ease with one another on stage invites the audience into their world of human connection and spontaneous fun. Well-crafted instrumentation – using guitars, mandolin, ukulele, piano, melodica, an inventive keyboard and three-part harmonies as tight as jeans from the dryer – enthralls audiences again and again. Mad Agnes’ latest recording, Likely Story, was released on Feb. 1, 2024, and is being nationally promoted from Feb-April. It is available NOW BY CLICKING HERE.

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Meetinghouse – Friday, April 18, 2025 7:00 pm $20

Meetinghouse is a folk/rock/bluegrass/r&b musical group that serendipitously happens to be made up of Unitarian Universalists from central Connecticut.

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Soupeater! (Sue Hill & Peter Lendoff) – Friday, May 16, 2025 7:00 pm $20

https://youtu.be/Y-XDkcBGMoQ

Sue Hill & Peter Lendoff  have always been interested in Tin Pan Alley era music — anything from the 1900s through the 40s. The category is pretty loose but songs like “Hello My Baby” or “Shine on Harvest Moon” come to mind. But there are newer songs that have similar chords and themes. And Peter loves jazz chords. They were singing many songs from that era and wanted to create a show that could be done for a library, senior center, or school as well as a traditional music venue. Their stage name, “Soupeater” is their names run together.

They also realized “Soupeater” will work for their “History of Funny Songs” show and for their regular folk and singer-songwriter and “Country Folk and Roots” shows. Their shows feature early folk and country songs (like the Carter Family or traditional songs), some history as well as some of Peter’s original songs.

SUE HILL is a multi-instrumeentalist who excels at getting people to sing-along and tap their feet.

PETER LEHNDORFF was once called skewed by the Springfield Union News. He considers that a compliment. He writes stand-up folk: humorous songs about everyday life. His off-beat songs poke fun at things we generally overlook: our cars, what we eat, where we live and the things that most normal people are too afraid to admit they are afraid of. His songs ‘East Longmeadow’ and ‘Love on the Line’ are crowd favorites.

“Imagine John Prine type songs played with a Leo Kottke delivery. Lehndorff’s songs are filled with the kind of wry humor that leaves you by turns, guffawing at life and nodding with recognition. Standouts are Yellow Datsun, featuring Dar Williams, and East Longmeadow, a suburban sendup that builds to a perfect punch-line. Paranoid will leave you saying “me too!” to at least some of the catalogue of fear.” – Music Matters Magazine, Smithtown, NY

 

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JOHN GORKA – Saturday, June 7, 2025 7:00 pm $25

“Gorka is widely heralded for the sophisticated intelligence and provocative originality of his songs.” – The Boston Globe

From New Jersey, John Gorka is a world-renowned singer-songwriter who got his start at a neighborhood coffeehouse in eastern Pennsylvania. Though small, Godfrey Daniels was and is one of the oldest and most venerable music institutions and has long been a hangout for music lovers and aspiring musicians. In the late 1970’s, John was was one of these aspiring musicians. Although his academic coursework at Moravian College lay in Philosophy and History, music began to offer paramount enticements. Soon he found himself living in the club’s basement and acting as resident MC and sound man, encountering legendary folk troubadours like Canadian singer-songwriter Stan Rogers, Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton and Claudia Schmidt. Their brand of folk-inspired acoustic music inspired him, and before long he was performing his own songs – mostly as an opener for visiting acts. Soon he started traveling to New York City, where Jack Hardy’s legendary Fast Folk circle (a breeding ground for many a major singer-songwriter) became a powerful source of education and encouragement. Folk meccas like Texas’ Kerrville Folk Festival (where he won the New Folk Award in 1984) and Boston followed, and his stunningly soulful baritone voice and original songwriting began turning heads. Those who had at one time inspired him – Suzanne Vega, Bill Morrissey, Nanci Griffith, Christine Lavin, Shawn Colvin – had become his peers.

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Reservations:  Send a message to MeetingHousePresents@gmail.com. Put “reservations and the performer’s name” in the subject line and tell us how many. Reservations can be held until 15 minutes before showtime.

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