Where:
Club Passim
47 Palmer Street,
Cambridge, MA 02138
Admission:
$18.00-20.00
Categories:
Music
Event website:
https://www.passim.org/live-music/events/molly-venter-goodnight-moonshine/
When you first hear Goodnight Moonshine it brings a wave of nostalgia, conjuring teenage heartache- then perhaps a similar sensation to falling deeply in love. As the music fades you’re left grappling with what it is to stay in love with something both beautiful and flawed. Courageous unveiling and depth of experience make the collaboration between married couple Molly Venter and Eben Pariser addictively captivating.
Molly Venter’s voice bends from a sweet moan to a gritty shout and back into a playful run in the space of a few bars and “it all goes down like silk,” writes American Songwriter Magazine – “few singers turn first time listeners into eternal fanatics as effortlessly as Molly Venter.” The emotional potency of her voice is surrounded and supported by a lush landscape of harmonies and minimalist orchestrations conceived by Eben, on vocals and electric guitar. Co-writing often, the couple uses the creative process to explore a healthy authentic relationship. Both wholesome and irreverent, they sing of grief and joy in equal measure; Molly gives smooth delivery to Eben’s assertions while Eben gives form and focus to Molly’s raw passion. Their music encourages listeners to embrace opposing desires, to challenge as well as support each other through inspiration and dissolution, and hopefully to share this journey with their larger communities.
Consummate performers, Molly and Eben have also appeared nationally and internationally, 100+ shows a year, with their respective bands Red Molly and Roosevelt Dime. Goodnight Moonshine tours with upright bassist Adam Chilenski and their two-year old son Otis.
Korby Lenker is a sneaky-good songwriter. And singer. And multi-instrumentalist.
An abbreviated list of Lenker’s achievements so far includes: a significant amount of airplay on the legendary Seattle indie rock station KEXP; a BBC 2 interview with Bob Harris, which is only about the highest honor a rootsy singer-songwriter touring the U.K. can get; opening slots for acts ranging from Willie Nelson to Ray LaMontagne, Nickel Creek, Keith Urban, Susan Tedeschi and Tristan Prettyman; a successful run with one of the hottest young West Coast bluegrass bands of the aughts; and wins in the Merlefest folk songwriting contest as well as the Kerrville Folk Festival’s elite New Folk songwriting competition.
Lenker returned to the Pacific Northwest inspired by his Appalachian adventures and fully immersed himself in the region’s bluegrass scene, forming a band called The Barbed Wire Cutters that proved to be an immediate hit in those parts. And he found ways to apply his pop-honed sensibilities to that tradition.
All this time, Lenker was also making solo albums, and that became his primary focus with the folk-leaning Bellingham, which went over wonderfully in the U.K. and landed him on Bob Harris’s BBC Radio 4 show. After a move to Seattle, he got the urge to plug in again, hooked up with Candlebox drummer Scott Mercado and made a nimble modern rock record called King of Hearts that got lots of spins on KEXP and a 4 star review in UK mainstay MOJO magazine.
Toward the end of the last decade, Lenker followed his muse down to his present home of Nashville where he’s not only continued to hone his own unique artistic voice, but launched a stripped-down series of performance videos dubbed Wigby, spotlighting kindred musical spirits he’s found.
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