The Rowan Brothers Return with Special Guest, Fiddle Champion Sue Cunningham !!!

Just Added....Opening for the Rowans will be Thea Hopkins on guitar & vocals accompanied by the "Amazing Henry" Nigro on guitar. (see below)

On Wednesday, August 5th  we are very excited & honored to welcome back The Rowan Brothers to Zorvino Vineyards !!! They will be joined by fiddle champion Sue Cunningham who will be adding her licks and vocals to the mix. The trio have been working hard on their new CD which will be available at the concert. Come see them before they head down to Woodstock to play at Levon (The Band) Helm's Midnight Ramble.

This show will be a General Admission event with first come, first served seating at tables in our post & beam facility and tickets at only $ 20 / pp ! The cash bar will be open and we will offer light appetizers along with your admission price. Doors will open promptly at 6:00 pm and the concert will run from 7:00 pm until 10:00 pm. This is a 21 & older concert only !!! Also, the winery will be open for tasting from 5 pm until 8:00 pm.

To make reservations, please reserve online at www.zorvino.com or call (603) 887-8463 in advance to order tickets.

See you at the winery !   

Check out the Rowans website at : www.rowanbrothers.com/index2.html or to hear some of their music, try http://www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.aspx?epk_id=18204&name=audio and click on the audio button.

More info below : 

The ROWAN BROTHERS

& SUE CUNNINGHAM

“The modern day Everly Brothers … with a Newgrass flare ...”

The Rowan Brothers and Sue Cunningham are now creating quite a stir in the acoustic music scene. The trio, working with guitars, mandolin and fiddle are creating unique sounds, which may be described as “the Everly Brothers and Beatles with a Newgrass flare.”

The Rowan Brothers and Sue first performed together at HickoryFest in August 2008 and immediately they knew that were onto something special. They next played the Magnolia Fest in Live Oak, Florida in October to rave reviews which opened the door for their current tour and a developing one in Europe in 2009.

Chris and Lorin’s soaring sibling harmonies are joined by Sue’s sultry vocals and all are spiced up by her scintillating newgrass/bluegrass fiddle work. All three are accomplished songwriters and their tunes pulse with originality and passion. They have created a sound which is so full and vibrant that it is hard to believe there are only three musicians on the stage.

Chris and Lorin Rowan were born and raised near Boston, Massachusetts where their more famous brother Peter was already making a name for himself in Earth Opera. All three brothers played in folk, bluegrass and pop bands. In the early ‘70s, through their brother’s connection, Chris and Lorin got hooked up with aspiring producer and instrumental wizard David Grisman. Before long, Chris and Lorin along with Grisman moved to “where it was happening” San Francisco, and they still reside there today.

Throughout the years Chris and Lorin and occasionally Peter have continued to play as The Rowans periodically. In 1999 they released the bluegrass-based Tree On the Hill (Sugar Hill Records) and in 2003 Crazy People (Evangeline). Both Chris and Lorin have also released independent albums and have various side music projects. Recently, Chris and Lorin have come full circle with the release of their new album "Now and Then" (BOS Music). The two-CD set contains 34 genre-jumping tracks that are laced with tight harmonies, haunting melodies and underscored by crisp guitar, mandolin and steel guitar picking. They offer a versatile and exciting mixture of bluegrass-flavored folk and Everly Brothers style rock and country.

Several of the Rowans songs have been recorded by national artists ranging from Jefferson Starship to most recently, the title track of country artist Ricky Skaggs' Grammy Award winning CD, "Soldier of the Cross", written by Lorin.

The Rowans have appeared at The Kerrville Folk Fest, TX, and Telluride Music Festival, toured extensively as The Rowan Brothers (sometimes with brother, Peter) in the U.S. Europe, and Japan. They’ve performed on shows with Shawn Colvin, James Taylor, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Randy Travis, Alison Krauss, Nanci Griffith and others, as well as on National Public Radio's Garrison Keilor's Prairie Home Companion. Most recently the brothers performed with Phil Lesh as members

of Phil Lesh & The Hepcats’ with Lorin on lead guitar/vocals and Chris on acoustic rhythm guitar/vocals.

Sue Cunningham was raised in a musical family and has been involved with music since she was five years old. Through her performances and recordings with the international touring band Hickory Project and others, combined with her unique education in classical music, Sue has gained national recognition as a fiddler and fiddle instructor. She was an eight-year member of the South Ocean String Band (West Palm Beach, FL), a former member of the White Sands Panhandle Band (Pensacola, FL), prior to founding Hickory Project in January 2000. She is a three-time Florida Bluegrass Fiddle Champion and has co-written many of the Hickory Project’s songs.

Sue has performed at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, RockyGrass, Magnolia Festival, Suwannee Springfest, Walnut Valley Festival (Winfield, KS), Winterhawk, Augusta Heritage (Bluegrass Week), in addition to many other festivals and important venues across the country. With her band Hickory Project, Sue performed with Vassar Clements and their twin fiddles delighted audiences at festivals, concerts, and workshops around the country.

In addition to performances in the US, with the Hickory Project she completed two tours of Australia, performed in Ireland on numerous occasions, and completed four tours in Europe. In addition to performances and recordings, Sue owns and promotes the HickoryFest music festival in Wellsboro, PA, now in its eighth year, bringing great bluegrass and acoustic music to the northern tier of Pennsylvania every August.

Critically acclaimed Cambridge singer- songwriter Thea Hopkins calls her music American Short Story Folk: concise, striking narratives, they tell of American romance and tragedy in modern terms. In 2004, folk icons Peter, Paul & Mary recorded one of her songs, "Jesus Is On The Wire" on their album “In These Times,” and described the song as a "compelling composition with a riveting story-telling style. This is one of the most important songs we have sung in recent years." Thea's composition is the only new song to be performed in its entirety in P,P & M's most recent PBS-TV special, the career retrospective "Carry It On."

Her new album, “Chickasaw,” has just been released. It contains the instrumental work of pianist Tim Ray (Lyle Lovett, Jane Siberry), guitarist David Goodrich (Chris Smither, Peter Mulvey), bassist Richard Gates (Suzanne Vega, Patty Larkin), cellist Natalie Haas (Alasdair Fraser, Mark O’Connor), and guitarists Bob Metzger (Leonard Cohen) and Steve Sadler (Kerri Powers, The Swinging Steaks). Drummer Kathi Taylor, fiddler Ian Kennedy, and harmony vocalist Chris Thompson complete the extraordinary sound. The album was engineered by Gerry Bellegarde and Larry Luddecke, mixed by Chris Rival and mastered by Ian Kennedy.

“Thea Hopkins is one of the most literate, poetic and emotionally moving of the new singer-songwriters to arrive on the scene in the last few years. Her song, 'Jesus Is On the Wire,' is a compelling composition with a riveting story-telling style. This is one of the most important songs we have sung in recent years."– Peter, Paul & Mary 

“Thea Hopkins possesses a voice and style that are so unique and brilliant that you wonder why the rest of the world has not yet caught on. She is sultry and sensuous, serious and playful, mysterious and fascinating all at once. She is reminiscent of the great torch singers, but also has a modern and contemporary sound which she shares with the likes of Sarah McLaughlin and Natalie Merchant. The bottom line is that she knows how to take an audience on a ride that touches the full range of human emotions. The beauty of Thea's voice is matched by the brilliance of her lyrics.”  -– Robert B. Schwartz, The Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange

 "Chickasaw" - one of the  ten best CDs for 2007" -- Howard Jack, folk & blues music director, WRPI

w/the Amazing Henry
Joining her is  singer/ songwriter /guitarist the "Amazing Henry" Nigro, who has been performing for 35 years in Massachusetts, New England, and up and down the East Coast of the USA.  A master of many different styles of guitar (including classical, folk, blues, rock, disco, funk, rockabilly, country, and bluegrass), Henry has worked as a side-man guitarist for most of his life. His original music has also prevailed though musical associations with singers like Spider Joh Koerner, Pam Bricker, Patty Unaitis, Shorty Johnson,  Ellis Hall, Roxanne Hardy & Eva Devine, and many others since 1976. 

http://www.myspace.com/theahopkins 

http://www.theahopkins.com/ 

Thea Hopkins' debut album, "Birds of Mystery," was named one of the Top Ten local albums of the year by the Boston Herald. "A gorgeous dusky voice wraps itself like mist around country-folk songs of tenderness and substance," wrote Herald staff-writer Sarah Rodman.