STRINGS ATTACHED COLLABORATION SERIES SEASON FIVE FEATURING DAR WILLIAMS Friday, August 19, 2005 STRINGS ATTACHED Will Taylor – viola, violin, arrangements Steve Zirkel – bass, trumpet Charles Prewitt – cello Martin Norgaard – violin Chris Searles – drums Eddy Hobizal – Piano The Program Fool on the Hill Are You Out There As Cool As I Am Blue Light of the Flame Comfortably Numb Echoes February Iowa So Close to My Heart Teen for God You Rise and Meet the Day The River The Hudson Irish Melody Gospel Medley Dragonfly There will be a 20 min intermission tonight Enter the raffle tonight for a chance to win: Signed CDs from the Artists Free Intelli-Seat from Intellibed of Austin We recommend you fill out the raffle ticket as you wait for the show to begin. There will be a raffle just after the intermission. The bookshop downstairs will be open tonight to sell tickets to our next concert. Thanks to Tony Kyle for photographing our concerts. See his photos at ChanceImages.photoreflect.com or reach him at 997-9174. Photos from Season One of the Strings Attached Collaboration Series taken by Robert McGee are at our website StringsAttached.org If you used a credit card tonight, please note that it will appear on your bill as "Will Taylor Music". Thanks to Longhorn Collision! Longhorn Collision Center is a full-service collision repair facility located at 1607 South Lamar, just 1 mile south of Town Lake. Look for the blue roof. It is locally owned and operated by Larry Seiler, one of the Strings Attached volun- teers. Longhorn Collision provides free wireless internet access so you can check your email or surf the web while you wait for an estimate, a rental car pickup, or a quick repair. Our work is covered by a Limited Lifetime Warranty. So if you have a fender bender, call 441-DENT. We'll straighten things out! Dar Williams was born in Mount Kisco, N.Y., but raised in Chappaqua the daughter of medical writer/editor Gray Williams and Marian Ferry, an active figure in Planned Parenthood. Her parents were educated at Yale and Vassar respectively. Raised in a decidedly liberal arts atmosphere, Williams began studying guitar at age nine and wrote her first song at eleven. In high school she was interested in athletics, but an ankle injury led her to audition for the musical Godspell. She became active in drama and by her senior year, after composing more music and writing plays, considered herself a playwright. She blames an 'Existential Crises' at age 16 for her creativity and sharp sense of humor. In her sophomore year at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Williams spent a few months in Berkeley, CA, where she wrote songs and performed at the Starry Plough. After earning a B.A., with a double-major in theatre and religion, she moved to Boston in 1990 to find a career in the theatre where she dabbled in everything from directing plays and operas to performing. She became the stage manager for the Opera Company of Boston and began taking voice lessons with, Jeannie Diva, who encouraged Williams to try the coffeehouse circuit. Dar recorded two early tapes, All My Heroes are Dead and I Have No History. Things didn't exactly take off, and in 1993, Dar left Boston for the relaxed, artsy atmosphere of Northampton, Mass. Things turned around and in 1993, she released The Honesty Room under her own label, Burning Fields Music. It was later picked up by Andrew Calhoun's "wonderful sanctuary for singer/songwriters, Waterbug Records," and in 1995 re-released, with two new tracks, by Razor and Tie. And she's made believers out of a lot of other people in the years since her first album, The Honesty Room, hit the national airplay charts. Here are a few of those believers: Richard Thompson and Bruce Cockburn, who toured with Dar as "Real Life Songs". Joan Baez, who has recorded three of Dar's songs and toured with her in the U.S. and Europe. Ani DiFranco, who toured Australia with Dar earlier in 1998. Pete Seeger - who did the Conan O'Brien show with Dar - The Indigo Girls, with whom Dar played a now-legendary show at Alcatraz to benefit the prisoner-rights group Bread and Roses. and Sara McLachlan, who brought Dar on two years' worth of the Lilith Fair. In 1996, she released Mortal City, which many fans say is her best album. With songs real and moving. But also full of humour and understanding of the nature of the human spirit. "As Cool As I Am" is about overcoming the power struggles in personal relationships. The holiday gathering in the "Christians and the Pagans" is a lesson to us all. Dar has brought the idea of "folk" music to a new generation - she has a fanatical following at colleges and schools in the U.S. and Canada. Dar Williams has hit a wellspring of support with her post-modern humanity. "Wisdom flows through her songs in delirious, wordy rushes of truth," says The New York Times. In 1998, Dar's song "What Do You Hear In These Sounds" (her ode to therapy) charted on MTV's cutting edge channel M2; she filled Queen Elizabeth Hall in London; and in the States she became on of the Top 50 Grossing touring acts. She's sold well over a quarter-million records. Dar was the highest-charting independent artist on Triple-A radio for her 1997 album End of the Summer. And her concert appearances are routinely standing-room-only. Dar's collaboration with highly-regarded singer/songwriters Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky, Cry Cry Cry - a collection of cover songs by contemporary singer/songwriters - has received rave reviews from the press. Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-, calling it an "eclectic, unrushed trasure trove of gorgeous acoustic covers stripped to their folk essence." Robert Earl Keen, whose "Shades of Gray" appears on the disc, called it "the best cover anybody's ever done of a song of mine." Dar says she draws inspiration from her home community. Her love of the folk scene stems from her admiration of its integrity toward honesty and real emotion, and a creative freedom not found in more popular music genres. She loves trying to use traditional methods to express the realities and foibles of contemporary life. Dar writes about what life is like, really like. She doesn't fake it. She doesn't pose; she doesn't preen; she doesn't take on and put off attitude like a change of clothes. People believe Dar Williams because she tells the truth. It's hard to figure when she has the time to do it, but Dar has published two editions of The Tofu Tollbooth, her directory of natural-food store for travellers. As well, she donates her time and efforts to causes she believes in, such as a solar-powered music festival in Vermont; The Nature Conservancy and Clearwater for whom she is doing a series of benefit concerts along the Hudson River, and the movement to legalize industrial hemp (her song, "Play the Greed" is the lead single for the fund-raising cd Hempilation 2: Free the Weed, featuring artists as diverse as George Clinton, Fun Lovin' Criminals, and Willie Nelson). As the Seattle Rocket put it, "There were Deadheads and now there are Darheads. This is NOT your father's folk music." - - - Lyrically MY BETTER SELF is a political album, in the most personal way. It combines songs of love and hate with tales that illustrate some of the many social and environmental issues that Dar Williams holds dear to her heart. "I'm thinking about where we are right now in history," Williams says."The other common theme to this record is that the songs all put stuff I find important out on the table. Less metaphor and more me. As to the album's name," she goes on, "it's best illustrated by the image on the cover, that your better self is not always the one you plan out or even motivate yourself to be." "As much as I love to control what I write and perform, I know my better self is not an intentional construction," Williams explains. "It's a spontaneous creation that I stumble across while I try to tell the truth," she candidly admits. "I hope my audiences have seen that. I try to keep a window open in performance and in recording just as I do in songwriting." Intelli-Bed Gel Mattress Store & Sleep Lab Revolutionary, patented gel technology that provides an unique sleep environment that reduces pressure while maintaining superior support. Come to our store for a FREE personal pressure mapping of your body on all the leading sleep surfaces. 10710 Research Blvd, Suite 320 Next to Brick Oven in the Arboretum area – call 306-1833 for directions Dar took a new approach in the recording of this album. "I wanted to bring in members of my touring band who I have never recorded with before, along with the team I'd worked with on my last two albums," Williams explains. Featured are Ben Butler (guitars), Steuart Smith (guitars - currently with The Eagles), Steve Holley (drums/percussion), Julie Wolf (keyboards), Mike Visceglia (bass) and Rob Hyman (keyboards). "They each had their own ideas of how to go about recording this album so my role was to stay out of their way as much as possible. When I got home from the studio and listened to it," Williams continues, "I heard all these little things they had added to make a song come together and build momentum.