(WOODBRIDGE, NJ) -- The Woodbridge Wednesdays Concert Series at Parker Press Park presents Mary Fahl (co-founder of October Project) with opener Jesse Terry on Wednesday, August 21, 2024 at 7:30pm. Admission is free.
The park is located at 400 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge, New Jersey. Bring the whole family! Dogs on leash are welcome. All Woodbridge parks are smoke free. The park is barrier free for wheelchair users. Free parking is available in the adjacent NJ Transit parking lots.
With “a voice for the gods that can transport listeners to other realms” (Boston Globe), Mary Fahl is an expressive, emotional singer/songwriter who first achieved fame as lead singer and co-founder of the mid-1990s NYC- based chamber-pop group October Project, a band known for their lush harmonies, sweeping melodies and Fahl’s unique and powerful vocals. After two records on Epic, Fahl went onto pursue her own muse, whether that meant writing and recording songs for movies (including the theme for the Civil War epic “Gods and Generals”), singing arias and medieval Spanish songs for Sony Classical or releasing a unique album-length take on “Dark Side of the Moon.”
Fahl’s music has a timeless quality that she conveys with earthy, viscerally powerful contralto that bridges the generational gap between Fairport Convention’s Sandy Denny and London Grammar’s Hannah Reid. Her elegant, cinematic songs have a hauntingly gothic romanticism that inspired renowned writer Anne Rice to portray Mary’s voice emanating from a dead woman’s room in her 2013 novel “The Wolves of Midwinter.”
Over the past few years, she’s been touring and recording on her own label, Rimar Records, and her recent releases have garnered awards including an Indie Acoustic Award for Best Live Album for “Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House” (filmed for PBS) and a 2020 Independent Music Award for her recent holiday album, “Winter Songs and Carols”. Her latest release, a Blu-ray 5.1 surround DVD, “From the Dark Side of the Moon,” brilliantly mixed by Bob Clearmountain, won the 2021 Immersive Album Audio Listener’s Choice award and was named “Immersive Album of the Year” by Life in Surround.
Fahl's newest release, “Can’t Get It Out of My Head,” is a collection of songs that she calls “essential” to her development as an artist … “With all the madness that was happening in the world, I was grappling with the loss of my mother and sister this past year and was feeling completely rootless. In an effort to find an anchor, a link to the past, a sense of home, I began to immerse myself in the comfort of music from my youth. These were such essential songs for me… like old friends… my musical home in many ways. I fell in love with each of them at the quintessential coming-of-age moment when music goes straight into your heart with no filter and these songs became part of my musical DNA… I learned to play guitar with several of them – especially the early Neil Young songs. Most of these covers come from the first albums I ever bought using one of those Columbia House ‘get 12 free albums for a $1’ mail order programs. I played these records endlessly… and the lyrics on many of these songs still have a powerful resonance for me.”
Opener Jesse Terry plays around 150 shows a year, from Bonnaroo to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the 30A Songwriters Festival to AmericanaFest. When the pandemic canceled concerts and delayed the album's release, he pivoted to performing online and found a strong new connection to his fans, who had helped fund his albums all along. "My musical tribe has always been there for me," he says with gratitude.
In the words of Music News Nashville "he brings to mind iconic artist/poets like Paul Simon and Jackson Browne... [with] a performance that touches the heart like only a whisper can."
Woodbridge Wednesdays is an eclectic free concert series sponsored by Woodbridge Township and generous local businesses.
