SAXTONS RIVER — Main Street Arts presents a contemporary folk and bluegrass twin bill featuring Antje Duvekot and The Stockwell Brothers Band at Main Street Arts on Saturday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m.
Duvekot is a German-born, American-raised singer/songwriter whose songs have been critically praised for their “hard-won wisdom, dark-eyed realism, and street-smart romanticism,” according to a news release.
Her bicultural upbringing and relative newness to English have helped shape Duvekot's unique way with song, giving her a “startlingly original” poetic palette. She has won top songwriting awards including the Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Competition, the Kerrville Folk Festival Best New Folk Award, and the Boston Music Award for Outstanding Folk Act.
Since the release of her debut studio CD, Big Dream Boulevard, she has toured extensively, crisscrossing the U.S. and Europe. She is a compelling live performer and has played at major festivals, including Newport, Mountain Stage, Philadelphia, Falcon Ridge, Great Waters, and Kerrville. Her second CD, The Near Demise of the High Wire Dancer, was voted top album of 2009 by Boston folk station WUMB.
Bruce, Barry, Alan, and Kelly Stockwell's music spans traditional and progressive styles, but their trademark acoustic sound features contemporary singer/songwriter material recast with banjo, alternative rhythms, and three-part harmonies.
They cover straight-ahead bluegrass songs, finger-picked acoustic guitar ballads, full-tilt breakdowns and traditional mandolin tunes mixed with more-unusual fare - Americana melodies riding world-beat grooves and Celtic, jazzy, and even neo-classical instrumentals.
Featuring 2005 Merlefest bluegrass banjo contest winner Bruce Stockwell, The Stockwell Brothers have performed alongside artists from Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, and Earl Scruggs to Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Jonathan Edwards, and Asleep At The Wheel, recorded with Mike Auldridge and Phil Rosenthal of the bluegrass supergroup The Seldom Scene, and toured throughout the U.S. and in Canada and Europe.