AMP Concerts - Albuquerque, New Mexico

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Two shows with Hungrytown

Thursday, February 18
The Tony Hillerman Library
8205 Apache NE (near Wyoming and Menaul)
Noon
FREE! Reservations required

- and -

Chroma Studios
600 1st Street NW
7:30 PM

Hungrytown is the new self-titled offering from celebrated musical duo Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson. Their deceptively simple compositions are rooted firmly in folk tradition; "in fact, Hungrytown's music offers such an aura of authenticity—in titles and in tunes—it could be easily mistaken for original trad transcripts," declared Lee Zimmerman of Performing Songwriter. "Hall channels the graceful, reassuring presence of Judy Collins and Sandy Denny, while Anderson's lithe arrangements provide spare but tasteful support."

The noon show is the latest in a monthly series of free events in collaboration with the Friends for the Public Library.

Mike Doughty: The Question Jar Show (an acoustic evening)
with Christina Courtin
Wednesday, February 24
The Cooperage
7220 Lomas Blvd NE
(Just east of Louisiana)
7:30 PM (Doors at 6:00 PM)
21 and over • Limited Seating

Mike will be on KUNM's Afternoon Freeform with DJ Lucio at 2:00 on February 23.

Mike Doughty may well be best known as the former frontman of Soul Coughing, but he has come a long way since they broke up in 2000. His new CD, Sad Man Happy Man, features songs about everything from relationship bust-ups (Doughty was going through one while he was recording it) to his astute observations about the American economy. Doughty's "Question Jar Show" offers fans a unique opportunity to interact with the musician.

Singer-songwriter Christina Courtin will open the show.

Greg Brown
Saturday, February 27
Lobo Theater
3013 Central Ave NE
8 PM

Sponsored by the Xeriscape Council of New Mexico

The New York Times called Greg Brown "just your ordinary itinerant Iowa Zen beatnik folkie, with a voice so deep, rutted and dark it seems as if it's slithered up out of some primordial ooze." Raved the Boston Globe: "Brown is to this country what Richard Thompson is to Britain: its most essential modern troubadour." He has recorded more than a dozen albums and received two Grammy Award nominations. His latest album, Dream City: Essential Recordings, 1997-2006, collects some of Greg's most-loved songs as well as previously unreleased songs and live tracks.

AMP Concerts & Art of the Song present
Janis Ian – in Concert and Conversation
Friday, March 5
National Hispanic Cultural Center's Bank of America Theatre
1701 4th St SW
7:30 PM

Join Grammy winning singer, songwriter, poet and author Janis Ian for a special live interview for Art of the Song—Creativity Radio followed by a full concert performance. Janis won her Grammy in 1975 for "At Seventeen" and has spent an entire career tackling subjects like race relations, domestic violence and homosexuality in both song and print. Janis is celebrating the paperback release of her autobiography Society's Child and the double-CD career retrospective The Essential Janis Ian.

Battlefield Band
Thursday, March 11
South Broadway Cultural Center
1025 Broadway SE
7:30 PM

Under the banner "Forward With Scotland's Past," Battlefield Band play Scottish music of rare passion and joy. Inspired by their rich heritage of Celtic music and fired by the strength of today's Scottish Cultural scene (which they themselves have done much to create and fuel), Battlefield Band mix the old songs with new self-penned material, and perform them on a unique fusion of ancient and modern instruments—bagpipe, fiddle, synthesiser, guitar, cittern, flute, bodhran and accordion.

Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill
Friday, March 19
The Cooperage
7220 Lomas Blvd NE
(Just east of Louisiana)
8 PM (Doors at 6:30 PM)
21 and over • Limited Seating

Martin Hayes epitomizes the fiddle music of County Clare for many people. He started playing when he was seven years old and, by the age of thirteen, was touring with the Tulla Ceili Band, arguably the most revered and famous ceili band in Ireland at the time. Martin left Clare for Chicago in the 1980s, and it was there he met his current musical partner, master guitarist Dennis Cahill. Folk Roots UK raved, "Dennis Cahill's symbiotic guitar accompaniment is a crucial foil for Hayes' deliciously subtle displays of charming brilliance."

Martin Hayes will also be offering an Irish fiddle master class at Apple Mountain Music on Saturday at 11 am!

Two shows with Miss Tess & The Bon Ton Parade

Tuesday, March 23
N4^th Theater
4904 Fourth Street NW
12:30 PM
FREE! Reservations required

- and -

Low Spirits Bar & Stage
2823 2nd Street NW
8 PM (Doors at 7)

Miss Tess is a soon-to-be New York-based songwriter and performing musician, who tours regularly with her band, as "Miss Tess & The Bon Ton Parade". After nationally touring for the last five years, Miss Tess has just released her anticipated fifth album, Darling, oh Darling. The album presents an ecclectic array of originals, all stemming from roots in jazz, swing, blues, and folk. Miss Tess draws comparisons to artists such as Jolie Holland, Madeleine Peyroux, Regina Spektor, or Ella Fitzgerald, but maintains a style all of her own.

Asylum Street Spankers
Friday, March 26
The Cooperage
7220 Lomas Blvd NE
(Just east of Louisiana)
8 PM (Doors at 6:30 PM)
21 and over • Limited Seating

THE SALVATION AND SIN TOUR! A completely new Asylum Street Spankers show, with tons of songs never played on tour before and lots of unrecorded new songs, including music from the brand new album God's Favorite Band plus material from the next album, due in late 2010. This two part show starts with a set of music that will take you to heaven, followed by a set of songs that will teach you how to sin more effectively!

T-Model Ford
Sunday, March 28
The Cooperage
7220 Lomas Blvd NE
(Just east of Louisiana)
7:30 PM (Doors at 6:00 PM)
21 and over • Limited Seating

Blues singer and guitarist T-Model Ford was born as James Lewis Carter Ford in 1924 in the small rural town of Forest, Mississippi. He has recorded four fabulously lowdown rough and dirty albums for Fat Possum Records. With his savage moan of a ragged voice and gritty guitar playing style, Ford brings a gloriously raw and blunt ferocity to Mississippi Delta blues music that's both passionate and powerful in equal measure.

T-Model's backing band Gravel Road will open the show.

Two shows with Walter Strauss & Mamadou Sidibe

Tuesday, March 30
The Main Library
501 Copper NW
Noon
FREE! Reservations required

- and -

Chroma Studios
600 1st Street NW
7:30 PM

When American guitarist Walter Strauss and Malian kamal'ngoni master Mamadou Sidibe engage in a musical interplay of finger-style guitar and West African hunter's harp, the result is a deep, soulful music that is simultaneously ancient and fresh. These two unique musicians from distant origins create an intoxicating blend of music in which they gracefully complement each other through intertwining melodic grooves and spirited improvisation.

The noon show is the latest in a monthly series of free events in collaboration with the Friends for the Public Library.

AMP Concerts & Fan Man Productions present
Arlo Guthrie: The Guthrie Family Rides Again
Saturday, April 3
National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th St SW
8 PM

Arlo Guthrie's career exploded in 1967 with the release of "Alice's Restaurant," which became nothing less than an anthem of an entire age. His stock in trade comes in the form of classically styled folk songs intermingled with clever storytelling, always reminding one and all of Guthrie's father, the beloved singer/writer/philosopher Woody Guthrie. Now Arlo gathers three generations together on one stage with The Guthrie Family Rides Again, in which the entire clan performs favorite songs, Arlo's standards, and a selection of unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics put to music by friends and family.

Peppino D'Agostino
Thursday, April 22
The Cooperage
7220 Lomas Blvd NE
(Just east of Louisiana)
7:30 PM (Doors at 6:00 PM)
21 and over • Limited Seating

Peppino D'Agostino is a Renaissance man. This is not just because he was born in Italy. Everything about the longtime California resident and his art—virtuoso acoustic guitarist, composer, singer, teacher and all-around entertainer—is rooted in his heritage. It's fitting then that his new CD is titled Made in Italy. "This CD is like a little portrait of Italy," said D'Agostino, who was voted Best Acoustic Guitarist by the readers of Guitar Player magazine in 2007. "It's my thoughts and personal impressions of my native country. This music is for people who really want to sit down and listen."

Two shows with Steve Smith & Chris Sanders

Saturday, April 24
Library TBA
11 AM

- and -

Taylor Ranch Library
5700 Bogart NW
3 PM

Both shows are FREE! Reservations required

Sponsored by Zoukfest

Steve Smith (mandolin, vocals, guitar) and Chris Sanders (guitar, vocals) have been performing together for five years as a duo and in the Las Cruces based group Steve Smith and Hard Road. Their award winning song writing has landed them both best gospel and best instrumental at the New Mexico Music Awards.

AMP Concerts & the National Hispanic Cultural Center present
Bachata Roja Legends
with Puerto Plata
Sunday, April 25
National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th St SW
7:30 PM

The Buena Vista Social Club of the Dominican Republic!

In celebration of the dazzling CD Bachata Roja—Acoustic Bachata from the Cabaret Era that showcases classic Dominican Bachata stars from the 60s-80s, we are thrilled to present this special concert by a few of the enduring legends who appear on the album. These unsung heroes, charted the course of bachata's rise to international popularity as they struggled to create one of the greatest Afro-Caribbean dance styles in spite of decades of censorship. Rediscover the early icons that pioneered romantic, guitar-driven ballads and irresistible dance rhythms, and discover emerging bachatero stars from today's younger generation.

We are particularly happy to welcome back Puerto Plata—one of the hits of ¡Globalquerque! 2007.

King Sunny Adé & His African Beats
Wednesday, April 28
Albuquerque Museum Amphitheater
2000 Mountain Rd NW
7 PM (Doors at 6 PM)

King Sunny Adé is by far the most popular performer of Nigerian Juju music, a thrilling hybrid of Western pop and traditional African music that incorporates electric guitars and synthesisers with such indigenous instruments as talking drums. With his band, King Sunny Adé and His African Beats, he became an international star across Africa during the mid-1980s, touring and gaining a significant audience in the United States and Europe as well. His breakthrough recordings Juju Music and Synchro System helped introduce instruments such as pedal steel, clavinet and synthesizer into African pop. Dirty Linen writes that anyone who sees him live "will see the master at work, mesmerizing attendees with [his] contagious grooves."

Baby Dee
Monday, May 3
Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale SE
7:30 PM

Performance artist, songwriter, classically trained harpist and circus sideshow veteran Baby Dee is an active member of Current 93 and Marc Almond's touring band. She has collaborated with Antony & the Johnsons, and her 2008 release Safe Inside the Day features Will Oldham, Matt Sweeney, and Andrew W.K. Drag City will release Baby Dee's Book of Songs for Anne Marie in February 2010. John Contreras (Current 93, etc.) and fellow cellist Matthew Robinson will be joining Dee for this concert.

AMP Concerts & Art of the Song present
The Handsome Family – in Concert and Conversation
Sunday, May 23
Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale SE
7:30 PM

Husband-and-wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks (aka The Handsome Family) have been labeled both alt-country and traditionalist, but truthfully their often-dark music lies in a unique space somewhere in between, blending the sounds of traditional country and bluegrass (and, especially, murder ballads) into a more modern scenery. Join Brett and Rennie for a special live interview for Art of the Song—Creativity Radio followed by a full concert performance. (Full page with videos coming soon!)

Tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets

Two shows with Claude Bourbon

Wednesday, May 26
The Main Library
501 Copper NW
Noon

- and -

Tony Hillerman Library
8205 Apache NE (near Wyoming and Menaul)
6 PM

Both shows are FREE! Reservations required

Born in France in the early 60s, Claude Bourbon grew up in Switzerland, where he was classically trained for many years. This finger picking guitarist has performed and studied all over the world; he has crafted an unbelievable fusion of classical and jazz, with ethereal Eastern influences, Spanish and Latin elements with strains of Western folk. Claude's inimitable style incorporates all five digits on each hand dancing independently but in unison, plucking, picking and strumming at such speed and precision that his fingers often seem to melt into a blur.

Two shows with Ted Ramirez

Saturday, June 5
South Valley Library
3904 Isleta SW
11 AM

- and -

East Mountain Library
1 Old Tijeras Rd.
3 PM

Both shows are FREE! Reservations required

Songs and Stories of the Old Southwest

Ted Ramirez is world-recognized Southwestern performer, the founder of the Santa Cruz River Band and a true native son of the Southwest. His illustrious Southwestern family history includes both indigenous and European roots. Ted's new solo show blends his powerful style of Southwestern Folk Music with insightful historical stories about the people, places and events of his beloved Sonoran Desert.

¡Globalquerque!
September 24-25
National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th St SW

New Mexico's Annual Celebration of World Music and Culture will return to the NHCC in September! Our sixth annual show, produced in partnership with Avokado Artists, will feature a brand-new lineup of great artists from all over the world! Don't miss it!

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Photo of Lyle Lovett by Michael Wilson. Photos of the Guerrilla Girls, Suzanne Vega, Cowboy Junkies, Po Girl, Wagogo and Sam Bush by Alan Mitchell.