The Grass Widow EP Release: An Evening of Songs with eliza blue
Join Folk-singer and author Eliza Blue + composer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Bakken for music and stories from their new release The Grass Widow: Rough Drafts, a new release featuring songs from a folk opera-in-progress.
The performance will begin at 7:00PM at the YES! House with refreshments and appetizers provided!
Eliza Blue is a musician, writer, and rancher living on the short grass prairie of western Dakota. Her work has been featured in the New Times, the Guardian, and NPR’s All Song’s Considered. She currently host a traveling concert show for PBS called ‘Wish You We’re Here with Eliza Blue’ which just finished its 3rd season. She is the artistic director of the Kithship Collective, an organization devoted to innovative, ecosystem specific storytelling.
Jon Bakken is a classical cellist, jazz bassist, and elementary orchestra teacher from Brookings, South Dakota. Jon’s love of musical theater led him to compose multiple shows for children, including Vernon’s Drop (about a raindrop who is afraid of heights) and Cowboy Bill (about a rancher on a mission to cut Mount Rushmore’s hair). In 2002, Jon toured in the pit orchestra for Jeanine Tesori’s Violet to the Edinburgh (Scotland) Fringe Festival. For the summers of 2009 and 2010, Jon sang, danced and played a pig-shaped bass guitar at Valleyfair Amusement Park in a kid’s band called The Squiggles. Since 2020, Jon has been creating Tiger Meat, a zine and website about the best South Dakota albums (tigermeatmusic.com). At the start of 2023, Jon released his debut folk-rock album called Return to the City of Afterwall (afterwall.bandcamp.com).
Free to attend, and open to the public!
This event series is supported in part by grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council made possible by the voters of Minnesota, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.