Featuring: Deni Bonet & Chris Flynn, Emily Grove, Mary Lee Kortes, Heather Maloney, Jesse Terry
Deni Bonet and Chris Flynn are a New York-based Americana, folk-rock duo whose blend of voices, virtuoso violin, guitar, and humor have entertained and captivated audiences from Carnegie Hall to Mountain Stage to the White House.
“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. So it is with Deni Bonet & Chris Flynn. As individual artists, they have more than made their mark in music. As a duo, they have created something extra, engaging and extremely entertaining. Bonet’s voice and violin, and Flynn’s guitar and voice, have echoed through the United Nations and the White House, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Mountain Stage. They have shared stages with REM, Cyndi Lauper, Warren Zevon, Sarah McLachlan, and many others. Their audiences have ranged from festivalgoers, to Presidents and the FBI. They've performed their original music as soloists with several full symphony orchestras. For the last five years, they have melded that skill, experience and musicality on stages across Europe and America, from festivals to house concerts, libraries to radio stations. Their lively and humorous shows are full of self-penned songs and instrumentals, and the warm banter of two people completely at one on the stage. The new album, ‘Off The Record’ is due out in January 2024.
Audiences will be uplifted and captivated by profound musicianship, energetic performance, hilarious anecdotes and superbly-crafted compositions, bonded by the special chemistry that could only come from two such experienced and respected artists and close friends.
Emily Grove
Emily Grove has had a varied and exciting musical journey, from coffeehouses to attending Berklee College of Music, to national television and radio appearances, to tours in the UK and Europe as she continues to grow her artistry. She recently created her own tribute to Joni Mitchell called “Joni Jam” where she celebrated the her legendary catalogue with an incredible eight piece band and special guests. She is currently working on plans to take this show across the country in 2024. She has opened up for and performed with British artist David Ford on a two month tour of the UK, Ireland, US, and Canada and also had her own headlining tour in Germany, Bulgaria, and England.She regularly gets hired to sing backup for many artists for their live shows and recording sessions. She’s worked with David Ford, Glen Burtnik, Steve Forbert, and UK artist Jack Henderson, among many others. She’s been seen and heard with New Jersey’s own Williams Honor, and also with David Gray on the Today Show, and Social Distortion at the Stone Pony Summer Stage. She’s performed regularly with Glen Burtnik in his expansive productions, including his “The Summer of Love”, “British Invasion”, Beatles, and Last Waltz shows. As a solo act, she’s won awards for “Best Female Acoustic Act” at the 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 Asbury Music Awards, and won three Jersey Acoustic Music Awards (best female singer [2011 and 2012]/ female songwriter [2011]). Emily continues to perform everywhere showcasing her material. Her most recent EP, “Way Across the Sea” was produced by Jack Daley, and her first full length release, “Life of A Commoner,” was produced by Seventh Wave Studio. She is currently working on brand new music for 2024 release.
Mary Lee Kortes
“As a writer, you get in a zone. You get possessed by something. If you're lucky,” says Mary Lee Kortes. Kortes has found herself possessed by many different forces over the arc of her 25-year career, be it as the lauded front-woman of Mary Lee’s Corvette, a solo artist, author, or social worker. Sometimes the possession comes in the form of Bob Dylan, whose 1975 classic Blood on the Tracks she covered as a live album in 2002, and later revisited in her 2018 non-fiction collection, Dreaming of Dylan: 115 Dreams About Bob. Sometimes, as a short story writer and novelist, it’s by the way fiction roots itself in emotional truths. Other times it’s by music's ability to be used as a tool in an expressive arts therapy program she created. All of the acclaimed songwriter and performer’s endeavors find themselves connected by the same thread: a deeply empathetic understanding of, and belief in, the power of stories to bring people together.
Heather Maloney
The Massachusetts-based “writer song-singer” found music in the midst of three years at a meditation center, honing a sound moored in days of silent reflection and reverence for storytellers like Joni, Rilke and Ken Burns. On “Soil in the Sky,” she takes us to the midwest’s existential crisis, a barstool scooching against fate, a make-my-day reckoning with society’s old guard. They’re roads less traveled and she keeps good company. Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith lends a distinctive duet to “We Were Together,” a rare love song from Maloney that nods to a Walt Whitman poem; Maloney and Rachel Price form a harmonic Voltron on “Enigma,” a triumphant uppercut to oppressive power structures. The album is sonically rounded out by an all-star cast of players including longtime collaborator Ryan Hommel, Griffin Goldsmith, Jared Olevsky, Reed Sutherland, Dave Eggar and Jay Ungar.
In sound and sentiment, these 12 songs cover an immense amount of territory. But they’re all powered by the same source. There’s a spiritual thread throughout the record. That inspiration doesn’t necessarily come from above — Maloney has a patchwork metaphysical support system — but from all around: the glow of humanity gathered in the people and places that lap out in our wake. Heather has toured nationally as a headliner as well as in support of acts like Lake Street Dive, Shakey Graves, Gary Clark Jr., Colin Hay, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and many more. The New York Times called her music “utterly gorgeous, visceral” and SPIN Magazine described her as “stunning, breathy, and starkly memorable”.
Jesse Terry
The stage had been Jesse's home for a decade. He 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.
Though recorded in 2019, the songs off the new album click with fans online too. He and his band recorded When We Wander live in the studio, a first for his career. "I wanted to try that Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Neil Young approach to live recording, prioritizing emotion and raw performances over perfection. I loved that experience." Recorded live, the album resonates especially with the intimacy and community spirit of the online shows.
He also wrote all the music and lyrics this time, instead of working with collaborators, and took a very personal approach, including a look back. "In Spite of You" recalls his stay in a residential facility for behavior modification that traumatized him as a young teenager: "The sermons that you sold me all were fakes." Yet he emerged to earn a degree from Berklee College of Music, net a five-year staff writer gig on Nashville's Music Row penning material for major TV networks, and win prestigious songwriting awards. And then to become the singer-songwriter his countless fan know today, who (in the words of Music News Nashville) "bring[s] to mind iconic artist/poets like Paul Simon and Jackson Browne... [with] a performance that touches the heart like only a whisper can."
