Événement

Peter Stampfel + Catherine Irwin

This year we are incredibly excited to have confirmed an extraordinary double-header of Peter Stampfel and Catherine Irwin playing 8 PM Saturday evening at the Elk Creek Café on Nov 13 and then joining us again the next day for the Harry Smith Festival, Sunday Nov 14.

Peter Stampfel and Catherine Irwin are (tragically, in our opinion) not exactly household names, at least in the typical household, but they are truly significant figures in American music, rural or otherwise.

Peter Stampfel was one of the original members of The Fugs whose first album was actually produced by Harry Smith. Peter went on to found and play for years with the legendary act The Holy Modal Rounders, true musical visionaries who turned old time rural music psychedelic and punk before the existence of psychedelic and punk music. Here's a clip of these guys from Laugh In in 1968: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkjJs5gKtFs

And here's a great interview with Peter from some years ago from Perfect Sound Forever: http://www.furious.com/perfect/stampfel.html. Peter's latest project has been work with Baby Gramps, with a CD in the can just recorded a few months ago.

And Catherine Irwin, in our opinion, is simply one of the very best living country music singer/songwriters. Along with Janet Bean, she formed the band Freakwater around 2 decades ago and has put out nearly a dozen records with Freakwater, solo, in compilations (including a great recent one of Tompkins Square Records featuring the songs of E.C. Ball) and playing with others like Will Oldham and Califone. She'll be accompanied by Steve Dorocke who has accompanied and played with The Handsome Family, Freakwater and others.

Suffice to say, Catherine and Peter are both total heroes of ours.