John Doe + Penelope Houston & Tom Heyman

Schedule

Sun Oct 17 2021 at 04:00 pm to 07:00 pm

Location

Ivy Room & Fireside Lounge presents | Alameda, CA

Tiny Towns Outdoor Concert Series
About this Event

WEAD, Ivy Room & Fireside Lounge Present


Tiny Towns Outdoor Concert SeriesJohn Doe
Penelope Houston
Tom Heyman

DOORS - 3PM / SHOW - 4PM - ALL AGES!


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John Doe (of X / The Sadies)

Website

John Doe was born in 1977 when he arrived in Los Angeles. His previous life in Tennessee, Wisconsin & Baltimore was a great & fertile time but new music and social changes led him to events that created a life in art. He graduated from Antioch College in Baltimore in 1975, worked as a roofer, aluminum siding mechanic, and ran a poetry reading series. Ms. Meyers was his landlord in the rural black community of Simpsonville , MD.

John met Exene Cervenka at the Venice poetry workshop Nov 1976 and he started working with Billy Zoom around the same time. When DJ Bonebrake joined X in mid-1977 the line up was complete. They released six studio records, five or six singles and one live record from 1978-1993. Five of X’s records have been re-issued along with two compilations. The Unheard Music documents their lives and progress as a band from 1980-83. In 2009 the film was included in the Sundance UCLA Archive of greatest films of all time. They appeared several times on American Bandstand, Solid Gold and David Letterman. As one of the last original punk rock bands standing, they continue to tour. The day that X played a free noontime concert in Fullerton, CA, they caused Orange County’s greatest high school truancy rate to date.

In 1988 John started a family and lived in the Tehachapi Mountains, near the “Grapevine” of Highway 5, which separates southern and central California. He has recorded 8 solo records w/ numerous renowned singers and players, more recently including Patty Griffin, Dan Auerbach, Aimee Mann, Don Was, Kathleen Edwards and Greg Liesz. He has appeared in over 50 films and television productions, with some of his most notable roles in Road House, Georgia, Roadside Prophets, Great Balls of Fire, Pure Country and Roswell. He continues to act these days but more sporadically as his touring schedule has become more demanding.

Other musical side projects include work with the Knitters, Jill Sobule and The Sadies. He continues to write poetry and has even taught workshops from time to time. He currently lives in Austin, TX.


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Penelope Houston

Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp

The first thing you’ll read in any overview of Penelope Houston’s career is that she fronted the seminal San Francisco punk band, The Avengers. While her involvement in that band and the power of the music she helped create with them should never be diminished, it seems odd that the two short years she spent in a band while barely out of her teens could overshadow a long, award-winning career as a pioneering singer-songwriter. Any serious examination of her work should not put the emphasis on the fact that she was in the Avengers, but instead on why she was in the Avengers. Her fearlessness made her willing to take the creative plunge into the nascent and exciting world of punk rock in the late 70’s without much experience as a writer or performer. The subsequent series of battles, successes and disappointments would provide her with the courage to take risks in everything she’s produced since.

In the early 80’s while clusters of bands were peddling a tired rehash of the original punk scene, Penelope had already moved on. After spending time abroad in the wake of the Avengers break-up, Penelope returned to San Francisco with the experimental and singular acoustic styles of artists like Tom Waits and the Violent Femmes pulling her further away from the world of punk and electric rock music. She was also able to access the influence of her youthful fascination with great English folk-rock icons such as Pentangle, Fairport Convention, and The Incredible String Band. As exciting as this progression was for Penelope, she was taking an artistic leap at a time when the music underground was still very guarded and conservative. The folk traditionalists weren't accepting of her angsty vision of what folk music could be and the alternative clubs weren’t interested in sheltering some quiet folkie with jazz and country flourishes regardless of how much punk attitude Penelope still brought to her music.

Despite the travails, Penelope was at the forefront of an impassioned female singer-songwriter movement as the decade progressed. Starting in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, she would enjoy a large following in Germany and be anointed with (the almost rudely limiting) "Queen of Neo-Folk" tag. Along with the likes of Michelle Shocked and Suzanne Vega, she helped pioneer a sound that would reach its commercial peak with the Lilith Fair set in the late-90s. By that point most of her contemporaries had either flamed out or shifted into creative cruise control, but Penelope refused to choke out her muse.

As she moved her music into the new century, her lyrics remained edgier and more thought provoking than anything in the singer-songwriter realm. She’s never been afraid to present her own cynical worldview, yet can offer hope when the world is in its bleakest state or deliver realism when the world has lost its mind. Stylistically, her sound has rarely stayed the same. To appreciate what ten years of an unchained muse sounds like, compare the raw folk-rock of her 1987 debut, Birdboys, with its mandolins and spare percussion, to the offbeat glam-pop and literate balladry of 1999’s Tongue. Juxtapose the aggression and earnestness of 1993’s The Whole World to the sophistication and insouciant cool of 2004’s The Pale Green Girl and admire an artist who’s not afraid to gamble on a persona switch or two. She’d also gained fuller command of her voice, turning it into a lascivious, knowing mix of protest singer angst and sex-kitten come-on, which often times was more Julie London than Shawn Colvin. Ultimately, her restlessness serves a purpose. She strives for a pinnacle of songwriting, performance and fidelity that secures her place in the hearts of her fans and music lovers around the world. And she won’t pause until that goal is achieved.

Shortly after the release of Pale Green Girl, Houston embarked on a successful tour of the US and Europe with an Avengers 2.0. But in her typical fashion, Penelope could not just stop creating new music. The artist that Ira Robbins proclaimed as "the archetypal indomitable rock'n'roll woman” needed to make some new statements through song.

The past several years have provided tons of vital source material for her art: poisoned marriages, divorce, independence, lawsuits, a return to university, and nine Avengers tours. A new chapter has opened for her and she has continued to sharpen her message in songs that demand declaration.

On a recent summer break, Penelope booked time at the Berkeley’s prestigious Fantasy Studios and gathered a team of musical accomplices familiar with her vision. It was there that her latest offering, On Market Street, was born.

Penelope and her co-producer Jeffrey Wood (Luka Bloom, Giant Sand) worked closely with longtime collaborator and guitarist, Pat Johnson, to shape these personal songs into epic musical narratives. With the rock solid foundation of drummer Dawn Richardson (Loud Family, Tracy Chapman) and the gilding Hammond B3 organ of Danny Eisenberg (Tift Merritt, Ryan Adams, Jonathan Richman), they created sweeping backdrops for "If You're Willing," "You Reel Me In," "Missouri Lounge" and Johnson's hymn to forgiveness "Come Back to the Fountain." These tracks make up On Market Street's folk-rock backbone with natural reflections of The Band, Let it Bleed-era Stones, and an Americana edge recalling Lucinda Williams by way of Memphis.

Penelope enlisted the stalwart Steven Strauss to compose Van Dyke Parks-esque string parts to burnish the poignant "Meet Me in France" and "Winter Coats." Confronting Penelope’s sometimes-unorthodox musical structures, he adds grace to these dark, poetic and complex heartbreakers. The album also provides some lighter moments with the frisky "Scrap" and "USSA," a humorous wordplay on Cold War era consumerism. Lastly, On Market Street’s title track is a moving ballad of social injustice. Bare and haunting with an eerie bed of Mellotron, the song spotlights her voice, now life-honed to an instrument of strength and fragility

Penelope Houston is often thought of as one of the pioneering women of American punk, but delving into the music she’s created over the past two decades one wonders why she isn’t simply considered to be one of the most pioneering women in music, period. There’s never been a better time to catch up with what she’s done in the past, but only if you’ll always be willing to join her in moving forward.


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Tom Heyman

Website / Facebook / Instagram / Soundcloud / Twitter

Singer-songwriter and multi instrumentalist Tom Heyman is a 20-year San Francisco Mission District resident. He has numerous recordings under his own name, and has also worked as a sideman to a diverse group of folks from Alejandro Escovedo to the late Roy Loney of the Flamin’ Groovies.

His songs have appeared in films and TV shows such as True Blood and Justified. While he often works in a band context, Heyman primarily considers himself a folksinger whose job is to tell stories that draw the listener in to his world.



We are excited to be able to bring you live music again!

***All tickets are will call only. ***

Children 4 and under are free - Make sure to check out the kid zone!

Merch plus food and drinks will be available for purchase.

First come first serve seating and based on your table purchase. General Admission tickets are standing room only. Table purchase needed for a seated ticket.

We welcome well behaved dogs.

Bring a hat for the sun and layers for the bay breeze.

Event is rain or shine.

Live performances end by 8pm.

Enjoy the show!

From your friends at Ivy Room and Fireside Lounge

Sponsored by Deep Eddy


Tiny Towns Concert Series is supported by Alameda nonprofit West End Arts District (WEAD). Founded in 2015, WEAD presents a wide range of arts programming as well as providing fiscal sponsorship, advocacy and operational support to artists wanting to present work locally. Head over to https://www.westendartsdistrict.org/ to see more and sign up to our mailing list.


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Where is it happening?

Ivy Room & Fireside Lounge presents, 1435 Webster St., Alameda, United States
Tickets

USD 30.00 to USD 180.00

Ivy Room

Host or Publisher Ivy Room

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