Événement

RANI ARBO & DAISY MAYHEM AT SANDYWOODS

7 pm, doors open 6:30 pm
BYOB and food allowed
$12 advance, $15 at the door

You won't want to miss this wonderful evening of music performed by Rani Arbo (fiddle, guitar), Andrew Kinsey (bass, banjo, uke), Anand Nayak (electric and acoustic guitars) and Scott Kessel (percussion). Kessel's percussion rig is 95% recycled, featuring a cardboard box, tin cans, caulk tubes, and a vinyl suitcase in lieu of a bass drum. All the band members sing, and their four-part harmonies soar, whether on a haunting Appalachian ballad, a Springsteen rocker, or a Bahamian a capella song. Many of their songs plumb the human condition, with topics ranging from joy to death (a favorite), loss, aging, blackbirds, and red-haired boys. The band has jokingly dubbed itself an "agnostic gospel" revival show, but there's truth in it; the refrain they hear time and again from audiences all over the country is that their performances really do heal.

The band recycles - but tries hard not to reduce - 150 years of American music. They hang a Georgia Sea Islands song on a New Orleans groove. They write lyrics for an Irish fiddle tune and underpin it with an Afro-Cuban cajon. Leonard Cohen gets clawhammer banjo; Springsteen gets bluegrass harmonies. Their originals range from blues, to bluegrass, to Unitarian funk gospel, to crooner swing, to spooky folk-pop.

Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem celebrates America's past and takes it into the present. The band's newest album, Some Bright Morning, was just released on Signature Sounds in April 2012.