Laurelyn Dossett
listen now children a story I’ll tell …

Hello friends … after a road trip that took me from an Alabama lake week with the extended Dossett family to the swashbuckling pirate shows in Manteo and Cary with the NC Symphony, I am safely ensconced in North Carolina and looking forward to some shows closer to home.

Good things are in the works, read on …

Tuesdays at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen are going strong! Here are the next few weeks:

• Tuesday, July 19 — Laurelyn with Scott Manring
• Tuesday July 26 –Laurelyn with Scott Manring
• Tuesday August 2 — Molly McGinn

August

Appalachian String Band Festival
I am off to get my annual fix of old-time music at the Appalachian String Band Festival in Clifftop, WV (so much for being safely ensconced in NC).

August 1 – 4
Clifftop, WV

The Best of Our State
Check out this weekend package of performances and presenters at the historic
Carolina Inn for The Best of Our State. I’ll be singing with Scott Manring on Friday night.

August 5-7
Pinehurst, NC

November and “The Gathering”

Much to my delight and wonder, the North Carolina Symphony has commissioned me to write and perform a set of songs for the November 25-26 Holiday Pops concerts.

I have finished the song cycle, called “The Gathering,” and arranger Aaron Grad is finalizing the score for symphony and string band.

Joining me will be Rhiannon Giddens Laffan on vocals and fiddle, Joe Newberry on banjo and vocals, and Mike Compton on mandolin and vocals.

Tickets for these three performances will go on sale August 8.

Recording in the studio

In preparing for the symphony shows, the four of us decided to go ahead and record a string band version of these songs, as well as other original and traditional winter holiday songs.

We record with Joe (“JoeBass”) DeJarnette in August; I’ll keep you posted.

CD or DVD copies

Levon Helm’s Ramble at the Ryman, recently released on cd and dvd, has a great live rendition of “Anna Lee,” a song I wrote for Triad Stage’s Brother Wolf about a hundred years ago. If you are a Levon fan, a music fan, you will love this recording.

It’s on sale here.

Photo by Andrew Rein

One could never accuse me of being overly linear about my musical career.

But if I were to have one guiding principle it would be this: When people who do good work ask you to work with them, say “yes.”

That is what I said 5 years ago when Preston Lane asked if I might want to write some songs for a play, that he had not yet written, based on an epic poem I’d never read. The result was Brother Wolf, an Appalachian version of Beowulf.

Since that first “yes” we have written 4 plays-with-music together – Brother Wolf, Beautiful Star, Bloody Blackbeard, and the upcoming world premiere of Providence Gap.

It might seem that writing songs for plays would be confining, but it turns out those constraints of time, place and story end up taking my songwriting to places I would not have gone to otherwise.

And while Preston is a single-minded visionary, he is also a generous collaborator.  Triad Stage is a courageous supporter of our new works  — it’s almost unheard of in regional theatre.  I don’t think North Carolinians realize how fortunate they are to have Triad Stage, but I know how lucky I am.

Laurelyn Dossett and Scott Manring, by Andrew Rein

Speaking of luck, our next play, Providence Gap, is all about luck, chance, providence – and love.  It opens June 6th and we are having a blast working on it.

In the meantime Preston and I will head up to Minnesota on February 13 to see Brother Wolf at St. Olaf College; we’ll have a little talk-back with the audience afterward.

If you happen to be in the Minneapolis area, say yes, and come on over.