September 2011 Weekend Concerts & Jams

We are kicking off our month long 10th Anniversary celebration with this awesome combination of one of The Crimson Moon Café’s most returning and successful artists, Jonathan Byrd, and Jason Kenney,  one of the newest performing artists whose career was significantly nurtured by playing at The Crimson Moon Café! Our longest standing sound engineer, John Grimm, who also owns a music shop/sound studio -and plays in several bands himself- will join them on fiddle to make for an incredibly unique evening of entertainment on the last day of the 10th year of The Crimson Moon Café! Advance reservations are highly suggested for this not to be missed performance!

More About Jason Kenney:  Jason Kenney has been teaching and performing music for over 10 years. Originally from Dahlonega, Jason began playing bluegrass guitar at the age of 14. Jason left his hometown and toured throughout the country playing lead guitar with Corey Smith from 2004 to 2006. During this time he released a solo album in 2005 "Without Sidewalks" as well as collaborated on two of Smith's albums "The Good Life" and "In The Mood". At the end of 2006, he returned to Dahlonega and started a duo group with his wife, Lara Polangco, called "The Family Honor". During the next four years Jason learned how to play the mandolin and banjo with proficiency and began honing his skills as a singer/songwriter. In 2010, Jason was a founding member of the progressive folk band, HomeGrown Revival which recorded a highly acclaimed original album "Leaving Wynfield Station". HomeGrown Revival performed in sold out venues throughout Georgia. Jason has also enjoyed the privilege of teaching children and adults around north Georgia for the last 5 years including a two year position at GA Pick and Bow. He is currently teaching guitar, mandolin, banjo, music theory, and songwriting at the Holly Theater in downtown Dahlonega.

More About Jonathan Byrd:  I started touring full-time in 2000, realizing that I could do it as a solo performer and actually make a living. Of course, that's what every other singer/songwriter in America was doing, too, but I didn't even know what a singer/songwriter was, so that didn't bother me. I thought I was a folk musician. Over time, I realized that folk got cross-dressed and don't mean what it used to mean anymore. I think my friend Aengus Finnan said it better than anybody I've heard yet, "It's a style of presentation." So that's just it, as long as you don't put on the razzle-dazzle and shake your ass in a sequin skirt, you can be a folk musician. Sit there on a stool and play your tuba, tell a story once in a while and wear some Birckenstocks. Everybody will think you're a folk musician.
In 2002, I went to the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, where there are lots of these folk musicians, only mostly songwriters. I wandered around for a week looking for the dance tent and the fiddle bands before I realized what I've already said about the word "folk." It ended up being an amazing and inspiring experience and I've been for all 18 days every year since. At the 2003 festival, I won the New Folk competition and got hired on as a performer for the next three years. I never took to Birckenstocks and my friend Anais Mitchell helped me find a great pair of boots in Austin. They're Fryes.

In 2004, Dromedary and I recorded an album together called "The Sea and the Sky," which brings beautiful instruments from all over the world into my sound and songwriting. I've toured in Europe and the US with them, including a return to Kerrville and two consecutive years at the Moab Folk Festival in gorgeous Moab, Utah. If you're not familiar with Dromedary, I highly recommend you go to dromedarymusic.com right now- well, after you read the rest of this, anyway. Their music is magic, like the voice of Emmylou Harris, an instant drop in the shoulders, a glaze on the eyes, a trip back to childhood. I'm honored to be friends with them and occasionally share the three-man funk in a rental car.

The next album was a rock 'n' roll album called "This Is The New That." Rock 'n' roll, because I just didn't know how else to play these songs. They're rock 'n' roll songs. It leads off with a revision of "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Dromedary came back into the studio with me and played electric guitars. Rock 'n' Roll Hall-of-Famer and Muscle Shoals session guitarist Will McFarlane sits in on a few. It was amazing to watch him work, a blue-eyed gent in a kilt ripping the

 blues from stem to stern. When the first take was done, there were no questions and nothing left to be done but get the cat off the ceiling. What a pro.
Texas is a huge influence on my writing. "The Law and the Lonesome" is what might have happened if Townes Van Zandt had made a record with Doc Watson. Tamara Kater of Canada's venerable folk mag Penguin Eggs called "The Law and the Lonesome" her "album of the decade." Co-produced by the brilliant Chris Bartos in Toronto, "The Law and the Lonesome" features a couple of co-writes with my friend Corin Raymond. We wrote the title track together, which was featured in a songwriting class at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

"Cackalack" is my newest. I beat "Radio Soul" and recorded "Cackalack" in six hours with a handful of the best musicians in Toronto. Ken Whitely, who has gold and platinum records to his name, engineered the record in his converted garage with Nik Tjelios. As of this writing, mid-January 2011, "Cackalack" is #1 on Roots Music Reports folk radio chart. It's the best thing I've ever done. I might not beat it. But I'm damn sure gonna try.