Grammy Winners Janis Ian & Tom Paxton Play Patchogue Theatre Tonight

Tonight, March 7, at 8p.m., American folk singer-songwriter duo Janis Ian & Tom Paxton will perform together at Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts (PTPA) for the first time in the New York metropolitan area since concluding their "Together At Last" tour of the United Kingdom. Ian and Paxton will headline the Sixth Annual Patchogue Folk Festival. Two of America's greatest songwriters will share the stage for an evening of stories and songs at this year's Patchogue Folk Festival. Together, Janis Ian and Tom Paxton are a powerful and irresistible set. Each with ties of the classic Greenwich Village folk scene, Tom Paxton and Janis Ian are nearly a generation apart yet share a slew of folk influences as well as an affinity for fearlessly tackling controversial issues. Janis Ian and Tom Paxton wrapped up their "Together At Last" U.K. tour last spring.

"It's going to be very different from what people might expect. It's not your generic split bill. We take the stage together and we stay onstage together most of the time, singing on one another's songs," said Tom Paxton about their "Together At Last" show. Janis Ian is a tour de force. She is a songwriter, singer, musician, columnist and science fiction author. Ian first entered the folk music scene while still a teenager in the mid-1960s. Most active musically in that decade and the 1970s, she has continued recording new material into the 21st century. Ian has become one of the first "indie artists," resurfacing in 1993, with the release of "Breaking Silence." She released "Folk Is The New Black" in 2006, which was her first album in over 20 years to feature her own songwriting entirely. Ian has won two GRAMMY Awards, the first in 1975 for her song "At Seventeen," and the second in 2013 for Best Spoken Word Album, for her autobiography, "Society's Child."

Tom Paxton has become a voice of his generation. Paxton emerged in the days of hootenannies and wrote his share of what were then called protest songs, but he also wrote songs about love, humor, and for kids. Many became off-covered standards, including "Bottle of Wine," "Ramblin' Boy" and "The Last Thing on My Mind." In 2009, Paxton received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy during the 51st Annual GRAMMY Awards. He was nominated for a GRAMMY for "Comedians and Angels" in 2007, and "Live in the U.K." in 2006. Paxton has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London. Janis Ian and Tom Paxton's "Together At Last" show will headline this year's Patchogue Folk Festival. In its sixth year, the Patchogue Folk Festival is a showcase of the vibrant original music scene that is flourishing in Patchogue, N.Y. In keeping with the folk festival tradition, there will be a free "Live in the Lobby" show at 2 p.m. featuring nine Long Island singer-songwriters: Hank Stone Band, He-Bird She-Bird, Grand Folk Railroad, Anne Crean, Leah Kay, Bill Shuren, Chris Carlozzo, EVT Band and Sim Urivetzky.