Winter concert brings human touch

Featuring the unique qualities of three individual voices was the key to the musical mix at the third and final show in the Sisters Folk Festival's Winter Concert Series.

Johnsmith, Laura Kemp and Keith Greeninger came together to perform at Sisters High School auditorium on Friday evening, February 2. The trio's music touched the more than 200 who were in attendance.

"Greeninger, Johnsmith and Kemp have an uncanny ability to connect well with people through their song .... They have a real humanist kind of perspective in their music, as well as the way they present themselves ...," said Brad Tisdel, the Americana Project's Executive Director and Founder.

Friday was the first time the group has played together as a trio. All three, as individuals, have performed at the Sisters Folk Festival. The evening's program featured a mini set by each artist coupled with the in-the-round segment when each musician took a turn singing his composition with backup from the other two. This architecture proved perfect for the trio who had little time before Friday to practice together.

The songwriter-in-the-round format tends to be quite improvisational.

"You never know exactly what is going to happen," said Tisdel. "I thought that they handled that really well."

Tisdel added that the format demands that each artist incorporate the other artists into his or her songs and requires the artists to be respectful of one another.

Kemp is from Eugene. Greeninger resides in Santa Cruz, California, and Johnsmith lives in Wisconsin. Sisters was one stop on Johnsmith's current 11-stop, 11-night tour that is taking him to Grants Pass, Eugene, Bend, Seattle and Portland.

On Friday afternoon the trio conducted a workshop for the high school's Americana students. The threesome had nothing but positive impressions of the students. They were inspired by the insight reflected in the students' questions.

A student asked how an artist develops his or her voice.

"We talked about that - how you practice and feel free with your voice and stretch it and sing other styles that you are not used to," Johnsmith said.

Greeninger added that a singer should start by emulating people he or she likes and push on from there.

"I always like hearing the questions from the kids and then hearing how the other songwriters answer the questions because I feel like I learn a lot, too," Kemp added.

As an outgrowth of the workshop the artists invited the Americana Project students to perform with them at Friday evening's concert.

"Including the kids is always a very gracious thing for the performers to do, which they certainly didn't need to do," said Tisdel.

Americana Project students who joined the trio on stage were: Jena Rickards; Austin Erlandson; Travis Ehrenstrom; Slater Smith; and Drew Harrison. The students seemed to truly connect with the three musicians' music.

"Their music is cool enough for the kids to like, but they bridge the generations really well," Tisdel said.

"Johnsmith and Greeninger especially have been in our community enough that they really have become a part of our family of sorts. They know a lot of people in the community and a lot of people in the community know them, and so its neat to work with people like that because they understand sort of what we are doing, and we have a great respect for what they do."

Sisters is not just another gig for Greeninger.

"It is a real supportive community for the arts, just by the programs they are doing in the schools. It's been very inspiring. As we travel around, we definitely find spots - it's kind of like hot spots - where people really support this kind of stuff, understand what it's worth, kind of want to bring it to the kids," he said.

Kemp loves Sisters.

"It just seems like such a sweet community. I drove up here, and the first thing I did was go to Angeline's Bakery...." She said she had some tea and a muffin, then "chilled out."

Being from the Midwest, just coming to the West and especially to Sisters is euphoric for Johnsmith. He appreciates how well educated the community is about "music and taste." Johnsmith feels that Sisters is way above average in culture and in the level of respect it holds for the arts.

"It's nurtured more than most places. And so that feels good, and that draws me back," he said.