Past Performance at Sacred Heart
Dar Williams
Saturday, March 24, 2012
7:30pm
$30/at door
Sacred Heart is very proud to present renowned singer songwriter Dar Williams.
On one level, the sizable body of work accumulated by celebrated writer/artist Dar Williams is a continuing narrative of her life — what she’s experienced and what she’s observed during her years of intensive touring. On another, it forms a detailed look at the course of modern-day existence in the decade and a half between 1993, when Williams released her debut album, The Honesty Room, and 2008, when her longtime label Razor & Tie released her seventh and most recent studio album, Promised Land. Throughout her career, Williams has employed a reporter’s keen eye and a fiction writer’s feel for nuance in the act of confronting what she’s described as “the big picture of how people approach life,” doing by examining and illuminating the minute details.
Williams’ growth as a person over her 18-year career has gone hand-in-hand with her evolution as an artist. Raised in Chappaqua, N.Y., and educated at Wesleyan University, Williams spent 10 years living in the thriving artistic community of Northampton, Mass., where she began to make the rounds on the coffeehouse circuit. Joan Baez, an early fan of her music, took Williams out on the road and recorded several of her songs. In 1995, two years after self-releasing The Honesty Room, she signed with Razor & Tie Entertainment, beginning a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Along with her six studio albums — also including The Green World (2000) and The Beauty of the Rain (2003), each amply represented on the balanced Many Great Companions — she’s also released the onstage document Out There Live (2001) and the DVD Live at Bearsville Theater (2007).
At the core of Williams’ work is a belief in the innate ability of people to make a better world, the product of countless observations in her travels and conversations with her fans. If anything, her optimism has intensified as she’s crisscrossed America during the tough times of recent years. “My big secret,” she says, with a twinkle in her eye, “is that we are gonna make it — but we’ll be the last to know.”
Dar will be releasing her first new studio album in four years, In The Time of Gods, on April 17. Concert goers will be treated to a special preview of this great new album.
Opening the show will be singer/ songwriter/choir director Sara Thomsen. Sara is a fan favorite in Duluth and always delivers a great performance of her positive and thoughtful songs.
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear one of America’s premier folk artists in the intimate confines of Sacred Heart.
