2 March 2018
An Evening with Dom Flemons: The American Songster
SHOW CANCELED DUE TO WEATHER On Friday, March 2, the me&thee welcomes Grammy-award winning artist Dom Flemons. He was the co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops who won that aforementioned Grammy for Best Traditional Folk album in 2010. For the past couple of years Dom has been traveling the world playing his own unique takes on traditional folk.
Concert starts at 8:00 pm
Dom Flemons is known as “The American Songster” since his repertoire of music covers nearly 100 years of American folklore, ballads, and tunes. Flemons is a music scholar, historian, record collector and a multi-instrumentalist. He is considered an expert player on the banjo, fife, guitar, harmonica, percussion, quills, and rhythm bones. He has performed with leading musicians, such as Mike Seeger, Joe Thompson, Martin Simpson, Taj Mahal, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Guy Davis. He has been a professional touring musician for the past ten years and has traveled around the nation and the world presenting traditional folk and roots music to diverse audiences.
Flemons has performed as a soloist at prestigious venues, such as Carnegie Hall, Cecil Sharp House, the Grand Ole Opry, the Opening Ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Newport Folk Festival and represented the United States at the 2017 Rainforest World Music Festival in Kuching, Malaysia.
In 2017 Flemons was featured on David Holt’s State of Music on PBS and performed as bluesman Joe Hill Louis on CMT’s original hit television show “Sun Records.” In 2016, Flemons released a duo album with British musician Martin Simpson titled Ever Popular Favourites. He launched a podcast, American Songster Radio, on WUNC Public Radio and filmed two instructional DVD’s through Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop. In 2014, Flemons released a critically acclaimed solo album, Prospect Hill, through Music Maker Relief Foundation.
In 2018 Flemons will release an album titled Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys on Smithsonian Folkways. This recording is part of the African American Legacy Recordings series, co-produced with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
The me&thee and Newport Festivals Foundation are sponsoring a special visit by Dom for the children of the fourth and fifth grades in Marblehead. The Newport Festivals Foundation and the me&thee both believe that children should be exposed to artists and their crafts.
- When Dom Flemons, his round glasses sliding down his nose beneath his flat-brim hat, starts twirling his banjo between bursts of notes and sings about the “Viper Man” or that “Short Dress Gal” with a sly mischievousness, it doesn’t matter that these songs come from the long-forgotten corners of African-American music — the tunes could have been written yesterday they’re so compelling. Paste Magazine
- He’s a fascinating person, after all, one part consummate performer, one part perfect gentlemen, one part scholarly archivist, and one part shrewd businessman. It’s quite the package, and the more I talk to him, the more I realize how much of the genius behind the Carolina Chocolate Drops was owed to Dom. Onstage he’s an absolute blast, charming and funny, full of energy! No Depression
- Most folk artists go by “singer-songwriter” or simply “musician.” But “American songster” speaks to a greater truth about the work Flemons, a multi-instrumentalist, has accomplished as a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and now, since leaving that group last year, as a solo artist. Boston Globe