(MONTCLAIR, NJ) -- Outpost in the Burbs presents Lucy Kaplansky on Saturday, December 3rd at 8:00pm with special guest, Jesse Ruben. Lucy Kaplansky is an acclaimed singer-songwriter of rare talent, “a truly gifted performer with a bag full of enchanting songs” (The New Yorker) and “the troubadour laureate of modern city folk” (The Boston Globe). She's touring in support of her recently release album, Last Days of Summer on Lucyricky Records.
Ranging from folk to rock to bluegrass, the album features a stellar band: Duke Levine (Bonnie Raitt, Mary Chapin Carpenter), on acoustic and electric guitars, National guitar, mandolin and mandola; Mike Rivard (Shawn Colvin, Aimee Mann) on bass; and Lucy’s longtime producer and drummer Ben Wittman (Sting, Paula Cole) on drums and percussion. John Gorka and Richard Shindell add gorgeous harmonies.
The songs on Last Days of Summer, co-written with Lucy’s husband Rick Litvin, weave themes of family, community, and loss, as well as reflections on our times as reflected in the evolving story of New York City. Most of the songs were penned during the pandemic when their family left their home in New York City for many months. “Elmhurst Queens Mother’s Day,” is a meditation on the catastrophe that befell New York early on in the pandemic as they watched from afar. The title track “Last Days of Summer,” is a bittersweet reflection on the experience of watching a child prepare to leave home for college. “Song of the Exiled” is a tribute to the powerful stories of immigrant New York City taxi drivers who are seeking a better life for their families. And “Mary’s Window,” a politically charged folk-rock anthem, was completed in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, and expresses hope that the pernicious divisions in our country can be overpowered by community and by the goodness of average Americans.
There are also four covers: Jackson Browne’s “These Days,” which Lucy sang for the first time at a campfire the previous summer when her friend Rep. Jamie Raskin asked her to sing it; “Ford Econoline” by the late Nanci Griffith, with whom Lucy sang many times over the years; a bluegrass song Lucy sang at her wedding, A.P. Carter’s “Gold Watch and Chain;” and “These Boots are Made for Walking,” a fan favorite from her live shows..
As with her last release, Everyday Street, Lucy has chosen to make her new album available only through her website and at shows, and not on any streaming services. She finds this approach more empowering for a musician, affording greater control over the commercial aspect of her work, notwithstanding twelve million Spotify streams of her recording of Roxy Music’s “More Than This.” While streaming services make music widely available, there is virtually no financial compensation for the artist, and Lucy believes all people should be paid for their work.
Tickets for the Outpost in the Burbs show are $33 and available for purchase online. The show takes place at the First Congregational Church of Montclair (40 S Fullerton Ave) in Montclair, New Jersey.
Lucy Kaplansky has released many critically acclaimed CDs, two of which were awarded Best Pop Album of the year by the Association for Independent Music. National Public Radio described her 2012 album Reunion as “a master class in making the personal universal,” and Everyday Street was been dubbed “spare and luminous” and “remarkable.”
Lucy was part of folk supergroup Cry Cry Cry with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell (which The New Yorker dubbed “a collection of lovely harmonizing and pure emotion”). Their album was an astonishing success in stores and on radio resulting in a national tour of sold-out concerts, as well as a national sold-out reunion tour in 2018.
The message that Brooklyn singer/songwriter Jesse Ruben has been spreading through his music is simple and direct. I can. You can. We Can. When Jesse originally wrote his song "We Can", he had just run the NYC Marathon and hoped to inspire people to start running. As it turns out, his message was meant to be much more universal. A few months after he released the track, a Vancouver elementary school reached out, saying they had been playing it to inspire their students. They asked Jesse to fly in and perform the song for their school, and so began "The We Can Project", which now spreads across North America. Jesse began touring the country, visiting schools and helping students come up with personal goals and ways to give back to their community. Amazing things began to happen. Playgrounds were built. Gardens planted. Cancer walks organized.
Just as things were taking off, life threw a curveball. Jesse had just headlined and sold out his entire East Coast tour and was writing new music when he became incredibly ill. It took 9 months and more than a dozen doctors before he got his diagnosis: Lyme Disease. Jesse was so sick, he didn't think he would ever play music or lead a normal life again. Suddenly, the message he had been spreading to students over the past year rang truer than ever before. I can do this. It took two full years to rebuild his health. It's an experience Jesse won't easily forget.
In fact, it's changed his perspective on life and writing. Jesse had always wanted to inspire people through his music, but now has a mission and an even bigger message: No matter what you are going through, you're not alone, and it will get better. Now, he is healthy and more motivated than ever to build his career and pursue his dreams. One big dream came to fruition this year, as "The We Can Project" received national news coverage with a live performance by Jesse on The Today Show. And the dreaming doesn't stop there.
Next year, Jesse will release his EP A Reply to Violence. The title is inspired by a Leonard Bernstein quote he stumbled upon on the side of a school while walking through the East Village: "This will be our reply to violence, that we make music more intensely, more beautifully, and more devotedly than ever before."
Outpost in the Burbs, located in Montclair, is unique in northern New Jersey. It's a place to enjoy live music on Friday and Saturday nights during the fall, winter and spring, and it's an organization that offers opportunities to serve others in the community. And all of this takes place thanks to our volunteers, about 100 of them.
Since its inception in 1987, the Outpost has produced more than 500 concerts by internationally known folk artists—Judy Collins, Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, Richie Havens, J.D. Souther, Dar Williams—and more than 50,000 people have attended. Outpost volunteers have donated more than 35,000 hours of their time through our programs affiliated with Habitat for Humanity, Toys for Tots, Human Needs Food Pantry of Montclair, MESH, Community Food Bank of N.J., Dress for Success and the soup kitchen staffed by Outpost volunteers at Christ Episcopal Church in East Orange that feeds some 75 people twice a month.
