MeAnyone who has been in Nevada County long has come to expect announcements that John McCutcheon will play in the area and help raise funds for KVMR Radio. Here is the announcement! And we can thank the late Utah Phillips for consistently bringing McCutcheon to our local venues over the past few decades. Activist, prolific musician. He will perform at his Center for the Arts on Saturday, January 7th to help raise money for a public radio station called KVMR-FM.
McCutcheon credits his introduction to public radio stations with Phillips for creating a friendship.
“I first started doing things like that around 1990 or so,” he said. We were sick of seeing each other so infrequently at music festivals (where musicians tend to see each other). So I came there and just fell in love with the area and the radio station, especially after he can’t go out on the road anymore. It was a perfect opportunity to meet my friend Yuta.
McCutcheon, which has become an almost annual pilgrimage, has held fundraisers, mostly in January, for decades. He said it seemed to work.
“It’s a good time for everyone,” he said. “I just started coming out so I didn’t have to go back to the East Coast and deal with a snowy concert. (McCutcheon lives in Georgia). became part of the stop.
This concert is the first January date since 2019. We had a postponed concert (due to COVID) last summer.
The January fundraiser has become part of a much-anticipated standard.
“Doing it in January just got really Pavlovian,” McCutcheon said. “People just got into the habit of saying it’s January. It’s the first concert in the new year. It’s McCutcheon. So people started looking for it, so it didn’t need as much publicity.”
Supporting KVMR is a win-win for both musicians and radio stations, McCutcheon explained, as it goes beyond music and information.
“Community radio is more than entertainment,” he said. “What community radio does is help both create and maintain communities. It’s part of your information system It’s part of your entertainment world It’s where you turn when the times get weird It’s your world to find out what you need to know And once I start building relationships with the community, it becomes more than an interesting way to spend a few hours away once a year. , is part of the information system.”
As a storyteller and entertainer, and perhaps as an inspiration, he informs and gives as much as he gets in a variety of ways.
“It’s not a one-way street,” McCutcheon said. “I need this kind of sustenance, too. To go back. It’s become a family reunion of sorts and very isolating in so many ways, especially in this pandemic time.”
He said it feels like a community again when people come together for the show.
McCutcheon spent a lot of time doing online concerts during the pandemic. He says he has found very creative time and has released several albums full of new material, but he is delaying his travels.
“I’m touring about half as much as I did pre-pandemic,” he said. “I’m 70 now. I still feel healthier and more creative than I’ve ever been in my life.”
Storyteller and multi-instrumentalist, he plays guitar, hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, banjo, autoharp, fiddle and piano.
The repertoire for this concert will include introductions to familiar material as well as some new material, but McCutcheon doesn’t use setlists, so he can’t say specifically what he’ll be playing on Saturday night. However, he recently released a new album (in addition to two new releases last summer).
“So I’m going to do some things from the new album. There were some things that came out in the news that made me brush off some things I thought had a short shelf life, but the world is what it is: breathe new life into them.”
McCutcheon promises some old favorites, says he’ll take requests during the break and will do his best to honor those requests.
“People come back based on what they’ve experienced before. It could have been a particular song, it could have been a particular way of putting the songs together, 400 strangers, or I felt like I was in a room with 400 neighbors, I don’t know exactly what to play other than the first song.
Regarding audience interaction, he said: Music was a transmission system for ideas, and emotional experience was the real purpose. ”
The prolific artist is looking forward to returning to Northern California, is pleased to continue providing support for public radio broadcasts, and looks forward to engaging with attendees, he said. rice field.
“People are so excited to go out. The fact that people were happy to watch live concerts on their phones shows how much they missed it.”
Know & Go WHO: strings concert presents what: John McCutcheon — Annual KVMR fundraiser when: Saturday, January 7, 7:00 p.m. where: Center for the Arts, 314 W. Main Street, Grass Valley, CA tickets: Reserved seats — $30 and $40 at thecenterforthearts.org or https://ci.ovationtix.com/35565/production/1143341
COVER John McCutcheon is a bit of a Renaissance man, storyteller, author, activist and prolific musician. | | Photo credit: {span class=”dig-Text dig-Text–variant-paragraph dig-Text–size-standard dig-Text–color-standard dig-Text–isBold”}John Taber{/span } {related_content_uuid }b1fbd231-94ff-4556-8f45-ea299acbb79b{/related_content_uuid}
