Chris Porter News

Due to the growing threat posed by the Delta Variant of COVID-19, The Town and the City Festival organizers have made the tough decision to postpone the 2021 festival until April 8 and 9, 2022.

Porter Productions announced that The Town And The City Festival will return in its intended form, live and in person, on Friday, October 22 and Saturday, October 23, 2021 at venues across downtown Lowell.

Other platforms may be added at a later time and all releases will eventually be made available for licensing.

The Town and The City Festival will be presenting a special online program for 2020, bringing more than a dozen acts together for the third year of the festival. 

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, one of the largest, free, and beloved music festivals in the country celebrating American roots music, announces its first participants in this year’s Let The Music Play On.

Singer and comedienne, Liza Pulman has teamed up with the legendary million-selling German artist, Max Raabe to duet on his song, Willst Du Bei Mir Bleiben (Will You Stay Beside Me).

Porter Productions, the organizers of The Town and The City Festival, has officially postponed the 2020 festival.

Exactly two months after Jermyn Street Theatre's doors closed, its Artistic Director, Tom Littler, today announced a series of new online projects joining its Brave New World Season, featuring actors including Rachel Pickup, Ian Hallard, Issy van Randwyck, Rob Mountford and Jack Klaff alongside new graduates.

Fresh from her sell-out run of Fascinating Aida, singer and comedienne Liza Pulman has announced details of her rescheduled dates in London and released an EP featuring tracks from her forthcoming album.

Americana duo The Mastersons, aka Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore, address the current state of the nation with their new song 'Spellbound,' premiering today with Billboard. They discuss the sentiments behind the track in an exclusive Billboard interview.

Singer-songwriters/multi-instrumentalists The Mastersons are premiering the first single from their upcoming Red House album, NO TIME FOR LOVE SONGS, today with The Bluegrass Situation. When they're not touring the world as valued longtime members of Steve Earle's band the Dukes, the musical and marital twosome of Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore make inspired albums of their own emotionally vivid, deeply humanistic songs. The duo recorded the song, 'Eyes Open Wide,' at L.A.'s legendary Sunset Sound Recorders with Shooter Jennings and it was engineered and mixed by five-time Grammy Award-winning engineer, Ryan Freeland.

With her two self-penned plays, Rosalind Blessed returns to the stage with a family affair as she performs alongside her mother, Hildegard Neil, with her father, Brian Blessed, as executive producer. Shedding light on what we often keep hidden from the world, The Delights of Dogs and the Problems of People and Lullabies for the Lost will be performed in rep throughout January at the Old Red Lion Theatre.

The Mastersons are singer-songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore. When they're not touring the world as valued longtime members of Steve Earle's band the Dukes, the musical and marital twosome make inspired albums of their own emotionally vivid, deeply humanistic songs. The duo's fourth set of original compositions is the appropriately titled NO TIME FOR LOVE SONGS, out March 6, 2019 on Red House Records. 

With her two self-penned plays, Rosalind Blessed returns to the stage with a family affair as she performs alongside her mother, Hildegard Neil, with her father, Brian Blessed, as executive producer. Shedding light on what we often keep hidden from the world, The Delights of Dogs and the Problems of People and Lullabies for the Lost will be performed in rep throughout January at the Old Red Lion Theatre.

Chris Porter performs stand-up from Jimmy Kimmel's Comedy club in Las Vegas.

Audience members traverse memories, dreams, emotional and real battlefields, coming in contact with a multitude of characters from Dalton Trumbo's life and novel, as we re-visit Johnny's childhood loves, family members, war room generals, soldiers, nurses, and even major religious figures, each performed to perfection while maintaining the ability to guide and interact with audience members who are often asked to participate and/or share comments during each scene. Soon it becomes apparent in THE JOHNNY CYCLE that each character, whether intentional or not, has sent Johnny to his destiny as he desperately struggles to be heard, trapped between the living and the dead without a voice. Immersive theater at its best!

Over dozen new acts have been added to the extensive list of performers for The Town and The City Festival taking place in Lowell, Massachusetts on Friday, October 18th and Saturday, October 19th, 2019.

For the past 18 years, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has brought hundreds of thousands of die-hard live music fans from around the world to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park each October. This year, onOctober 4-6, Hardly Strictly will celebrate its 19th year with performances by celebrated acoustic duo The Milk Carton Kids, the unique collaboration ofCalexico and Iron & Wine, Ukraine's heralded folk-music group Dakhabrakha, Texas troubadour Hayes Carll, Bay Area golden boy Jackie Greene, cowpunk heroes Meat Puppets, powerhouse soul spirit Bettye LaVette, country-music renaissance woman Margo Price, songwriting legend Steve Earle, and British-Irish folk-rockers The Waterboys. “To me, this lineup reflects our event's legacy while looking ahead to the future,” says Hardly Strictly's talent buyer Chris Porter. “Steve Earle has been celebrating with us since 2002 and artists like Margo Price and Dahkabrahka are making their first Hardly Strictly Bluegrass appearances.” This first round of artists was announced today after Hardly Strictly fans were treated to what the festival calls an “artist medley”—a sneak-peak audio clip of soon to be announced artists—on the festival's social media accounts. The first lineup announce coincides with the 85th birthday of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass founder Warren Hellman who created the festival in 2001 as a gift to the people of San Francisco and the world, celebrating American “roots” music and its many outgrowths.

Tickets are now on sale for the much anticipated production The Johnny Cycle by The Speakeasy Society. 

Celebrating the adventurous spirit of Lowell native author Jack Kerouac, the line-up for the Second Annual The Town and The City Festival, will bring together more than 50 locally-based and national touring acts for performances throughout multiple venues in downtown Lowell, MA.