Antje Duvekot / Rachael Davis

Good timing? Perhaps! Only a matter of weeks ago, the Boston Music Awards were awarded to deserving local artists in a variety of different musical genres. The me&thee is thrilled to be presenting the 2006 winner of the Outstanding Folk Artist, Antje Duvkeot as well as the 2002 winner, Rachael Davis, on Friday, November 17 at 8:30 p.m.

In one of the nation’s top music markets, Antje has risen to the top of the folk scene in just over a year since moving to the Boston area. Earlier this summer, Antje won the coveted Kerrville (TX) “Best New Folk” award. This award is given to the nation’s top singer songwriters. Antje joins the ranks of past recipients such as Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle and Ellis Paul. She was also added to the prestigious Newport Folk Festival line-up in August as well, capitalizing on her newfound fame.

Antje moved to the United States from her native Germany in the 1990s when she was a teenager. As a way to get over the big adjustment and trauma of this move, she took up the guitar and discovered Bob Dylan, John Gorka, and Ani DiFranco. She made little tapes of them, and listened while she wandered through her strange new world. As she told the Boston Globe in 2005, “The only time I was truly happy as a teenager was walking around the neighborhood, listening to my folk tapes.” Antje learned English and how to express her feelings in finely crafted songs. “I like for my songs to be accessible,” she says. Indeed they are.

Her first big career break came when the Irish supergroup, Solas, included two of her songs on its 2002 CD, “The Edge of Silence.” Legendary producer Neil Dorfsman, who produced “Edge of Silence,” and CDs by Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, and Dire Straits, says, “Her songs are stunning paintings of color and shade, and always generate the heat and light that real art should.” Antje went on to record her own solo albums, “Little Peppermints” and “Boys, Flowers, Miles.”

“I think she’s going to be the next great American folk singer-songwriter,” says folk-pop star Ellis Paul, who has been introducing his audiences to Duvekot, and sings on her new CD. “She’s writing songs we need to hear right now. I feel like I’ve been waiting for her to come along and join the club of traveling musicians that I’m in because we need a fresh voice to shake things up for all of us.” Last winter, Ellis allowed Antje to open his me&thee show and Antje wowed the large crowd. Luckily, Antje was already booked for this November 2007 show — she’ll have a whole host of appreciative me&thee fans at this show for sure. Now Antje has a brand new CD called “Big Dream Boulevard” and many more tunes to enthrall her audience with.

Rachael Davis is another considerable talent who has also appeared on the me&thee stage in the past. She has been singing on stage since she was two years old. Born to parents who never intended to keep her very far from music for very long seems to have made all the difference in the world. Born in Michign, Davis has spent most of her life involved with music in one way or another. In lieu of her fourth year of high school, she attended Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan — which counts among its alumni Peter Yarrow, Anne Hills, and Jewel (Kilcher).

In the span of her young life, Rachael has shared the stage with Vance Gilbert, Claudia Schmidt, Sally Rogers, Robin and Linda Williams and has opened for Dar Williams, David Lindley, Chris Smither, Peter Mulvey, Eddie from Ohio and many others. Rachael moved to Boston in 2001 and within seven months she was awarded a Boston Music Award for Best New Singer-Songwriter.

Mary Lou Lord praises Rachael by saying: “She sings with the voice of the most beautiful color you’ve never seen.” Her latest CD is one that was recorded along with Brett Hartenbach in Bremen, Germany. One music critic says that this recording is “soul-on-your-sleeve acoustic music.” Rachael’s voice is a powerful tool and is mesmerizing and haunting in songs like “Grandma’s Hands” and “Me and that Train.” Ben Edmonds of the Detroit Free Press puts it this way: “Davis commands a voice older than her years, an instrument that is equally sure expressing strength and vulnerability. . . her songwriting is fearlessly eclectic.”

 

 

Antje Duvekot is Boston’s next great songwriter. . . my favorite new poet. . . the rare artist that can write about the social and the personal in the same breath. She is as understated as she is wise and her songs go down mentally as well as soulfully. ELLIS PAUL

Antje’s songs have a grace and sweep rarely witnessed in the modern-day canon. Her ability to render a tune harkens back to an earlier generation of songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, and the like, whose music was not just for then or now but for always. This music deserves attention. PETER LUBIN

This is a brilliant, brilliant album. As far as I can tell, she’s the whole package. I’ve had this reaction once in the past 10 years, and that was the first time I heard Patty Griffin. And the reasons are very, very similar: that package of terrific writer and singer, with the instincts to do things right, over and over and over. DAVE MARSH

. . .

With a voice that moving — we could listen to [Rachael] sing the alphabet all night and that would be enough. Eddie from Ohio

Davis is off to a faster start than any Boston-based songwriter in memory. Scott Alarik, Boston Globe

Rachael is a bold explorer in the undefined and powerful territory of her primary instrument — her human voice — and the stories that come through it. Claudia Schmidt