Jake Blount (pronounced: blunt) is an award-winning musician and scholar based in Providence, RI. He is half of the internationally touring duo Tui, a 2020 recipient of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize, and a two-time winner of the Appalachian String Band Music Festival (better known as Clifftop). A specialist in the early folk music of Black Americans, Blount is a skilled performer of spirituals, blues and string band repertoire. Blount has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Newport Folk Festival, NPR's Tiny Desk, and numerous other venues across and beyond the United States. He has presented his scholarly work at museums and universities including the Smithsonian Institution, Berklee College of Music and Yale University. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, No Depression, and NPR. His most recent album, The New Faith, is the latest installment of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings' African American Legacy Series.

Blount's latest record, The New Faith, was released on September 23, 2022 as part of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings' African American Legacy Series, in collaboration with the National Museum of African American History and Culture. An Afrofuturist concept album, The New Faith explores traditional Black religious music as it might exist post-climate crisis. The album represents a significant progression in Blount's sound, utilizing his formidable skills as an acoustic musician as well as newfound affinities for electric guitar, looping, and digital processing. The album received widespread critical acclaim, garnering five-star reviews from The Telegraph, Songlines and Financial Times and receiving positive coverage from outlets including NPR, Bandcamp, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times and more. It appeared on "Best of 2022" lists from Rolling Stone, NPR, PopMatters, Songlines, Folk Alley, The Guardian and more. He also released an NPR Tiny Desk Concert in January of 2023. Most recently, Blount has been nominated for Artist of the Year at the 2023 International Folk Music Awards.

Opening the concert: John & Ida Mae Specker

Since he came of age in the 1960s, fiddle icon John Specker has dedicated his life single-mindedly to the art of playing old-time traditional American fiddle music. To this folk idiom he dared to fuse his own highly personal, idiosyncratically forged Queens, New York, musical sensibility.

Specker’s improbably athletic performance style is characterized by simultaneous foot tapping, singing and virtuoso bowing, featuring nearly constant double and triple stops. A force of nature, he pushes at the boundaries of the possible. Specker’s fans are never satisfied with less, once they have experienced the all-consuming vortex of his musical cannon.

Specker’s discography includes the definitive Specker Library, a sixteen hour long, eleven-disc set of his complete life’s work, recorded solo. It includes over 160 different traditional American fiddle tunes.

John earned the title “Father of the Ithaca Sound” honing his art with the genre bending Correctone String Band in early 1970’s Ithaca, New York. But he has made rural Vermont his home for over forty years now. He performs solo, as well as with his daughter Ida Mae Specker, who inherited dear old dad’s hard driving, primal approach to fiddle music. The Speckers are renowned for “playing a rambunctious version of old-time music that owes as much to punk rock as Appalachia, at least in attitude.” (Seven Days VT). Vermont Public’s Robert Resnik calls the Specker family "Vermont Folk Heroes."

Ida Mae Specker is an original song stylist as well as an accomplished traditional fiddle player and vocalist. She has released multiple EPs and fronts her own band, all the while performing with family bands Terrible Mountain String Band and The Speckers. In November 2024, Ida Mae was awarded the New England Music Award for “Rising Star” in the state of Vermont. Ida Mae is also a recurring guest host of Vermont Public Radio's folk and world music show 'All The Traditions."

As a rare father/daughter duo, The Speckers play fiddle and sing with technical proficiency yet total abandon. The result is a singular take on old-time, anchored in tradition, audacious in originality, straight from the heart of Terrible Mountain in Andover, Vermont. When asked where the music comes from, John’s reply is that “it comes from the trees.” A perfect nor’easter indeed.

more information at www.idamaespecker.com and www.johnspecker.com

While our standard price ticket to cover costs for this concert is $30, we have set 'Pay What You Can' pricing in an effort to be inclusive to music lovers in different financial situations. Please evaluate which ticket price is best aligned with your ability to support this artist and our organization...and enjoy the show!