The Loft Sets Spring & Summer Offerings

This spring heats up at the Loft with a diverse lineup of singer songwriters and world music acts. From playing major festivals like South by Southwest (SxSW) and the Newport Folk Festival, to being featured on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert Series, these acts are some of the hottest currently touring.

Following the popular Portsmouth Singer Songwriter Festival, the Loft will be hosting nine diverse singer songwriters as part of The District Restaurant Singer Songwriter Series. Starting with the critically acclaimed Great Lake Swimmers on Friday, May 1 and continuing with Luluc on May 9, as well as highly touted Alejandro Escovedo on May 30, this series truly has something for all musical tastes.

The Live @ the Loft series highlights music from around the world to around the corner. This spring the soulful Martha Redbone Project will appear on Friday, June 12. Her sound, a cross between the Neville Brothers and Aretha Franklin, is sure to make her a Loft fan favorite. On Sunday, June 28 the magnetic Las Cafeteras will bring what the LA Times calls their unique blend of "punk, hip-hop, beat music, cumbia and rock."

"The Loft is filled with great new discoveries and some long time favorites this summer," says Thérèse LaGamma, Deputy Director of Programming & Performing Arts Curator.

"Great Lake Swimmers make their Portsmouth debut touring behind a new album. Australian duo Luluc have been thrilling U.S. audiences since the release of their album Passerby and a recent appearance at South By Southwest Music Festival. This summer they will be bringing their magic to the Newport Folk Festival as well as to the Loft. Also on tap are two-time Juno Award winner Dan Mangan and Oklahoma native John Moreland. And don't miss the chance to hear heavy hitters Alejandro Escovedo, Martha Redbone Roots Project, and Kristen Hersh in the intimacy of our listening room at The Music Hall Loft-at affordable ticket prices!"

Friday, May 1, 2015 • Great Lake Swimmers • Tickets $24
With a surging rhythm section, razor sharp violin, and flourishing banjo and guitars, Tony Dekker and band mates have pushed their sound significantly, creating some of the most dynamic songs they've ever recorded. A Forest Of Arms is the sixth album from Dekker's Great Lake Swimmers and the follow up to 2012's New Wild Everywhere. Those familiar with the decade-long output of Great Lake Swimmers will recognize in their music the thematic threads of beauty in the natural world, environmental issues, and explorations of close personal ties that hold us together.

Saturday May 9, 2015 • Luluc • Tickets $15
Unadorned guitars and voices blend with well-placed piano, percussion, sax, trumpet, and trombone to create Luluc's signature sound. The indie-folk duo of Zoë Randall & Steve Hassett charm us with beautiful slow-burning melodies and delicate harmonies. Bob Boilen, Producer of NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts and host of NPR's All Songs Considered, called Luluc's album Passerby his favorite of 2014. They've toured with J Mascis and The National and they come to us after a run of packed performances at South by Southwest.

Saturday May 16, 2015 • Chris Trapper • Tickets $18
Boston based artist Chris Trapper began his career as the front man for late-90's alternative rock band The Push Stars. A respected songwriter of the highest caliber, Chris has written songs with/for Canadian band Great Big Sea, including their #1 single "Sea Of No Cares" from the certified-platinum Sea Of No Cares album. His music can best be described as lyrically driven roots-pop with a knack for telling everyday stories filled with extraordinary characters. Chris's on-stage persona is warm and inclusive and his organic understanding of classic pop melody is infectious.

Saturday May 30, 2015 • Alejandro Escovedo • Tickets $38
Alejandro Escovedo's authentic Austin sound has led him to national stardom and critical acclaim. His journey to legend has taken him from Texas to California to New York and back to Texas, encompassing a breadth of musical styles. In the 1970s, he surfaced on San Francisco's punk scene as a guitarist in the Nuns; as a member of Rank & File, he helped unite the worlds of punk and country in the 1980s; and in the band True Believers he combined all manner of Americana music. The latter was a harbinger of what was to come in Alejandro's solo career, beginning in 1992 with the album Gravity. Popmatters has this to say about Escovedo: "Music this rich and evocative should be heard by everyone, and one can only hope that more and more people will hear as he continues to write his own story."

Friday, June 5, 2015 • Dan Mangan • Tickets $16
Drawing inspiration from the music of Peter Gabriel and other progressive rockers as well as novelists like Margaret Atwood and Milan Kundera, Dan Mangan's music has been described by NPR as "wildly ambitious and thoroughly engrossing. A two-time Juno award winner and two-time Polaris Music Prize musician and songwriter, he is about to release his fourth full-length album, Club Meds. Mangan has shared stages or toured with: The Walkmen, Decemberists, Okkervil River, Broken Social Scene, Timber Timbre, Jeff Mangum, Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and tUnE-yArDs. He lives in British Columbia with his wife and son.

Thursday, June 18, 2015 • The Secret Sisters • Tickets $18
Vocalists Laura and Lydia Rogers are a traditional American country music duo. Their love of music comes from growing up with a zeal for country music while learning to harmonize through singing a cappella at their hometown church in Florence, Alabama-located just outside of the legendary music mecca Muscle Shoals. Their second full-length album, Put Your Needle Down, produced by the legendary T Bone Burnett, embraces a myriad of styles and focuses on original songwriting.

Saturday, June 27, 2015 • Kristin Hersh (solo) • Tickets $20
This prolific American singer-songwriter and post-punk pioneer is the founder, lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist of Throwing Muses. From that launching pad, Kristin Hersh also performs and records as a solo artist and with her hardcore punk-influenced power trio 50 Foot Wave. Known for creative chord chemistry, hypnotic sonic treatments, and a vocal style ranging from softly melodic singing to impassioned screaming, her signature contributions to popular music include addressing the complexities of marriage and motherhood through impressionistic, sometimes hallucinatory lyrics about everyday feelings and varying mental states. Last year, Penguin Books released her memoir Rat Girl to critical acclaim.

Thursday, July 9, 2015 • Ben Caplan (solo) • Tickets: $8
Rugged, raspy, and roaring with charisma, Ben Caplan's voice is to song as smoke is to bourbon: perfectly coupled. He is a songwriter and performer who is bold in both range and ferocity. The music is fuelled by a quality of melodrama and powerful lyricism that sets Caplan apart from his peers. Either solo or backed by his band, The Casual Smokers, Ben Caplan has captured the attention of music fans and media across Canada, Australia, and throughout Europe.

Thursday, July 23, 2015 • John Moreland (solo) • Tickets $10
A highly praised singer-songwriter with tunes on several episodes of the television series Sons of Anarchy and a devoted fan base across the country, John Moreland was recently touted by Yahoo! Music as an "electrifying" guitarist/vocalist and a "major talent." With the release of his highly anticipated third album, High on Tulsa Heat, he offers a more spare, stripped-down version of the lyrics-first, gorgeously plaintive songs that have earned him kudos as an emotionally powerful performer.

Live @ the Loft June 2015.

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Friday June 12, 2015 • Martha Redbone Roots Project • Tickets $32
Kentucky-born, Brooklyn-raised and of Cherokee, Choctaw and African-American descent, Martha Redbone and her music inhabit the crossroads of the American experience-"part Neville Brothers, part Aretha Franklin, part tribal pow-wow," writes Performing Songwriter. Leading a great band of roots-acoustic players, she wraps her "supremely soulful" (Mojo) voice around songs that blend Native American elements with funk, Appalachian folk, and Piedmont blues.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015 • New Breed Brass Band • Tickets $22
New Breed Brass Band lives and breathes the culture of New Orleans; infusing funk, rock, jazz, and hip-hop into a custom-made enhancement of second-line brass band tradition. "That's what we came up under," says snare-drummer Jenard Andrews of second-line bands like the ReBirth, Dirty Dozen and Lil' Rascals Brass Bands. "Now we're trying to take that sound and bring in some new stuff and expand it. We bring outside influences like Earth Wind & Fire and Brass Construction, trying to interpret a different song for every genre, and make it all our own sound."

Sunday June 28, 2015 • Las Cafeteras • Tickets $25
Born in the streets of Los Angeles, Las Cafeteras are immigrant children who are remixing roots music and telling modern day stories with what LA Times has called a "uniquely Angeleno mishmash of punk, hip-hop, beat music, cumbia and rock ... Live, they're magnetic." They have taken the music scene by storm with their infectious live performances and have crossed-genre and musical borders, playing with bands such as Mexican icons Caifanes, Lila Downs, Colombian superstar Juanes, Los Angeles legends Ozomatli, folk/indie favorites Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and most recently with Talib Kweli. The sound of Las Cafeteras is brought to life by their eclectic instrumentation, which includes jarana's, requinto, a donkey jawbone, a West African bass instrument called the Marimbol, cajón, and a wooden platform called the Tarima used to dance Zapateado.

Tickets can be purchased at The Music Hall box office in the Historic Theater, 28 Chestnut Street, Portsmouth, over the phone at (603)-436-2400, or on our website www.TheMusicHall.org.