Next Stage Arts and Twilight Music present roots and folk/rock quintet Session Americana with Eleanor Buckland, plus singer/songwriter Sam Robbins at Next Stage on Saturday, April 20 at 7:30 pm.
Session Americana is a rock band in a tea cup, or possibly a folk band in a whiskey bottle. The Boston-based band/collective of musician’s musicians craft a musical experience unlike any other. On stage is a collapsible bar table wired with microphones, a vintage suitcase recast as a kick drum, an old Estey field organ, a pre-war parlor guitar, a mandocello and all of its smaller siblings, a harmonica case fire damaged when Jack’s bar went up in flames and graffitied by Depeche Mode roadies, and an assortment of other instruments that get passed around as the quintet trades off lead vocals and shares songwriting credits in this freewheeling modern hootenanny. The anything-could-happen feel of a Session Americana show depends on craft that’s not accidental or easily won; they bring a kind of ease and genuineness to this timeless music, sometimes presenting the latest batch of original songs, sometimes reaching back into depths of the American “song bag.” Eleanor Buckland has been one-third of the Boston-based folk/rock trio Lula Wiles since 2014.
Late one Sunday night in October 2003, Session Americana had its first jam around a table in the back of the club Toad in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since then, the group has had a natural, almost inevitable evolution from a loose bunch of friends sitting around swapping songs in a bar, to a hot-ticket weekly residency, to a touring collective. Along the way down a quirky and joyful path through the music world, the band has made nine records, played clubs and festivals across the U.S. and Europe, and developed deep collaborative bonds with a wide community of musicians. Since last October, Session Americana has celebrated that two-decade journey with joyous anniversary shows in some of their beloved venues around the Northeast, with a 20-year retrospective album of some of the band’s most popular songs in hand.
Sam Robbins is often described as an old soul singer/songwriter. A Nashville-based guitarist whose music evokes classic 70’s singer/songwriters like James Taylor and Neil Young, Sam adds a modern, upbeat edge to the storyteller troubadour persona. Since moving to Nashville in 2019 following his graduation from Berklee College of Music, Sam has toured extensively, appeared on NBC’s “The Voice,” and won the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk and Eddie’s Attic Songwriter’s competitions.
Next Stage is located at 15 Kimball Hill in downtown Putney, VT. Tickets are $22 Advance / $25 At the Door / $10 Livestream. Advance tickets are available at nextstagearts.org. Next Stage will provide a beer, wine, and cocktail cash bar. For information, call 802-387-0102 or visit nextstagearts.org.
