BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro-born poet GennaRose Nethercott is recording an album of original ballads, each performed and co-written by a different acclaimed folk band - and for the month of September, the project is crowdfunding support on Kickstarter to help bring it to life.
After months spent studying traditional balladic forms and tropes, Nethercott composed a series of eight new, narrative poems that includes tales of shapeshifting sweethearts, lumberjack legends, carnivals and eclipses and murderous revenge. They are steeped in folklore, yet driven by modernity. Most importantly, they're here to tell you a good story.
After receiving an Iguana Grant from Cambridge's famous music venue, Club Passim, to get the ball rolling, Nethercott set to gathering collaborators and preparing to record.
Now, she's assembled a lineup of today's finest folk musicians to help bring these new ballads to life.
Each song will be co-written and performed by a different band, culminating in a full-length anthology album. Included in the lineup are Brattleboro favorites Lissa Schneckenburger (of Low Lily) and Corey DiMario (of Crooked Still), plus Peter Mulvey, Lonely Heartstring Band, Lula Wiles, Jefferson Hamer, Dietrich Strause, Rose Polenzani, and Arc Iris.
Nethercott is known in the area for her public Poems-to-Order project, for which she types poetry on demand for passersby on Main Street, all on a manual typewriter.
Her book Poems for Strangers (Honeybee Press, 2015) anthologized a number of these spontaneous compositions, and a collaborative book with Brattleboro artist Susan Osgood, entitled A Ghost of Water, is forthcoming this fall.
She holds a degree in writing and folklore from Hampshire College, and her work has been published widely in journals and anthologies. GennaRose's father, Michael Nethercott, is also a writer, best known for his mystery novels The Séance Society and Haunting Ballad.
For the album to be made, Nethercott and her team seek to raise $8,000 by early October. Through the Kickstarter campaign, backers can pledge any amount they wish, and in exchange receive a range of rewards - from a pre-released download of the album to a year's subscription of personalized poems to a live house reading by Nethercott herself.