BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. – Grant Peeples is darkly hilarious and dead serious, often at the same time. Fred Gillen Jr. is a globetrotting, truth-telling troubadour. Each takes a different path to the same destination.
Grant tours coast to coast and is a regular performer at The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, the 30A Songwriters Festival, and The Florida Folk Festival. He’s the recipient of the Focus Foundation Award for Creative Excellence, which cited the “humor, compassion, and wisdom of his songs,” and their “unflinching social insight and cultural acuity.” He’s credited with 11 studio albums. He’s published three books of poetry.
Tallahassee born and raised, life started mostly simple, and then got increasingly complicated. He started writing songs. He moved to Nashville. He left Nashville a year later. He got himself a nightclub and booked everyone from BB King to the Judds, The Temptations to George Straight, Jerry Lee Lewis to Dionne Warwick, Bonnie Raitt to Jerry Jeff Walker. He went broke in the nightclub business. He moved to a remote island in the Caribbean off the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua, and stayed there for more than a decade before getting the itch back. He got a $100 guitar, and he’s been playing every day and writing songs ever since. A self-described “tree-hugger that watches NASCAR,” Grant is known for his axe-sharp socio-political tunes, raucous humor, and heart-gigging ballads that keep an ever-critical eye on American culture and identity.
Fred Gillen Jr. has released 11 acclaimed full-length albums, and has performed all over the U.S. and Europe. His live performances are spontaneous and full of storytelling, and he enjoys audience participation. His songs have been featured on ABC’s “All My Children,” NPR’s “Car Talk,” and CMJ’s New Music Marathon Sampler. His version of Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home” was featured on “Pete Remembers Woody,” a collection of Pete Seeger’s spoken stories about Woody Guthrie. Besides playing with his heroes like Seeger, he’s opened for such artists as Merle Haggard, Todd Rundgren, and the David Bromberg Big Band. His songs incorporate elements of a huge swath of folk, rock, roots, and Americana music, and though he covers a wide variety of lyric topics, his overarching message is simple: “we’re all in this together.”
Grant Peeples and Fred Gillen Jr. will perform at Stage 33 Live, 33 Bridge Street in Bellows Falls, Vt., on Aug. 18, at 6 p.m. Tickets can be purchased in advance through www.stage33live.com, or at the door. Only 40 tickets will be sold; advance tickets guarantee entry. The event will be recorded and filmed.