We welcome Rose Polenzani with Session Americana along with opener Nicole Reynolds to our stage. The six musicians who make up Session Americana started as a Sunday residency at Toad where they brainstormed songs and jammed together. Swapping songs and spinning tales caught on and the band has been touring festivals, winning new fans and awards ever since. Rose Polenzani stopped by one evening and it was magic — she and the band just clicked and have performed off and on since, releasing a CD together. Nicole Reynolds, based in her native Western Pennsylvania, is winning over fans everywhere with her three independent CD releases and touring.

Rose Polenzani was first noticed for her 1998 unanimous win in the Chicago Lilith Fair competition, closely followed by her debut at the Newport Folk Festival. She spent several years touring and recording, moving from her native Chicago to California to Boston, where she has was recently nominated for Best Female Vocalist in the 2007 Boston Music Awards. Rose has released records both privately and on labels such as Rykodisc and Daemon Records.

Rose’s song “You Were Drunk” was named “Best New Song” at Mountain Stage New Song contest in 2008. Rose’s latest CD, When the River Meets the Sea (titled after a Paul Williams song which appears on the album) is collaboration with Boston phenomenon Session Americana. The six members of Session Americana made their name playing music around a small table at the back of a tiny bar in the Porter Square neighborhood of Cambridge. The band, comprised of “the cream of the Somerville/Cambridge roots music community” (says No Depression magazine), would play just about any song that came into their heads, and they would also invite whoever might squeeze in through the front door (it was always packed) to sit down at the table and have a spin. One night it was Rose Polenzani. From the first moment, it clicked between Rose and Session. They weren’t just her backing band and she wasn’t just sitting in. Out of the spontaneity (and joy!) they shared was born this CD. Not only was When the River Meets the Sea recorded live in the studio, but each of the songs captured on the album were introduced to the band and special guests no more than an hour before they were recorded. You can almost hear the arrangements’ organic emergence as the songs rise out of the sonic dust. All those present were free to play any of the studio’s instruments, from a grand piano to a toy piano to a vibraphone, and from over a dozen guitars. The resulting musical arrangements stand as unrepeatable works of chance, friendship, and artistry.

Session Americana (which consists of Jim Fitting, Jon Bistline, Sean Staples, Billy Beard, Dirty Child and Ry Cavanaugh) sit tightly around a small cafe table, ambient mics tuned to catch the whole sound of the voices and instruments. A suitcase drum kit, an old electric bass, a bunch of acoustic instruments, a field organ: This format feels very theatrical and though the musicians face each other, the audience feels drawn into the circle by the warmth, joy and camaraderie that emanate outwards by the all star cast of characters seated around the table. What keeps you coming back show after show is the same thing that any audience member longs for, great songs performed by a great band. The six core members of the band have brought enviable careers worth of experience to the “table,” featuring (current and former) members of Treat Her Right, Patty Griffin, Lori McKenna, The The, Dennis Brennan, Kris Delmhorst. The group has grown from a rag tag jam at a local pub to a regional institution, playing gigs from church coffeehouses to urban nightclubs to regional festival tents to large halls. The band’s latest CD, Diving for Gold, represents a big change for Session Americana as it features original material as opposed to previously using songs from its immediate community of friends and public domain material.

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Nicole Reynolds is a charming and playful singer/songwriter who lives and works on an organic sheep farm in western Pennsylvania. She has earned herself a deserved reputation for smart lyrics and subtly tackling big topics. Her latest release, Unordinary Mine, is a collection of songs released in the fall of 2008. In it are loggers, prostitutes, a congressman, taxmen, Indians, a girl who smokes, a girl who doesn’t a canary, a fireman, and some other mysterious figures. Nicole has toured throughout the United States, Germany, and Holland. She has performed shows either opening or sharing the stage with musicians such as Janis Ian, Tom Paxton, Melissa Ferrick, Ellis Paul, Dan Bern, Chris Pureka, Erin McKeon, Peter Mulvey, Edie Carey, Sarsaparilla, Jake Shimabukuro, among many others.

Like armchair travel through a newly-carved glacial valley, Rose Polenzani’s fourth solo album, August, has a hushed itinerant quality that throws wide open the world, yet mostly remains cosily in an intimate comfort zone. With the wow and flutter of her earlier work all but assuaged . . . August is Polenzani’s melodic nucleus come to fruition.

It’s somewhat redundant to say that this is Rose Polenzani’s most consistent album to date — all of them impress — but it is, and there’s a seemingly simple explanation. Having held her own whilst touring as a member of Voices On The Verge (alongside Erin McKeown, Jess Klein and Beth Amsel), in addition to her spiritual growth, the Rose Polenzani of August seems more confident. In her own quiet way, she sounds larger than ever before, cleverly trading off the value of understatement. It’s a neat and beautiful trick and one that demands recognition.

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Genius . . . Jaw-dropping vocals . . . Session Americana is blessed in this regard: . . . musicianship that sets the standard for the genre in Boston and vocals that do the same. NE Performer Magazine

No egos, no big production, just some great songs stripped down to their bare essentials and performed with a real genuineness of spirit and emotional authenticity. . . it’s beautiful. Brian Mosher, The Noise

An eclectic, swinging tour de force The Boston Globe

[This] local country-folk megagroup’s double CD is one of the most loose, spontaneous, warm, and homespun acts of community and decency since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken. The Boston Phoenix

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Nicole Reynolds unordinary mine
Singer-songwriter Nicole Reynolds’ third album is full of clever lyrics that are even more compelling thanks to Reynolds’ vocal delivery. Her fragile yet striking vocals have helped to build her reputation as an artist not to be missed. Reynolds is a tiny individual with a big presentation that’ll knock you right out. Just ask the packed crowd that she wowed at last August’s Third Thursday (WYEP’s local music happy hour) where she sold out of her new CD. 91.3fm wyep, pittsburg