On Sunday, December 11th at 7pm (EST) Kid Pan Alley’s Because We Have Music livestream concert series features Pamela Means, Jonathan Byrd and hosts Paul and Cheryl Reisler. The concert is a benefit for KPA's songwriting programs for children.
Pamela Means is an Easthampton MA-based Out(spoken), Biracial, independent artist whose “kamikaze guitar style” and punchy provocative songs have worn a hole in two of her acoustic guitars. Armed with the razor wit of a stand-up comic, engaging presence, elegant poetry, and irresistible charm, Pamela Means’s “stark, defiant songs” (New York Times) set the status quo and the stage afire.
Pamela’s commitment to interrogating social ills was fostered by her unique childhood. “As the adopted daughter of a white mother and black father, I learned about dismantling systems of oppression from the inside out.” Pamela received her first guitar at the age of fourteen, just after her mother died of cancer, and it soon became Pamela’s primary vehicle for expression. It would also serve as a passport out of a life that consisted of poverty, foster homes, and the inner city life of hyper-segregated Milwaukee WI.
Pamela Means relocated to Boston, busked in the city subway and famed Harvard Square, founded her own record label and began touring. Pamela has since performed on three continents and across the country, gaining fans and rave reviews from Anchorage to Amsterdam, Sydney to Stockholm, San Francisco to Honolulu to New York, breaking album sales records at national festivals and sharing stages with Pete Seeger, Neil Young, Shawn Colvin, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Gil Scott-Heron, Adrian Belew, Violent Femmes, Holly Near and more. Means has also been the recipient of several nominations and music awards in multiple categories.
Pamela Means “exhibits a rare emotional fire in today’s folk world,” (Seven Days, Burlington VT) so much so that Ani DiFranco exclaimed, “you’ve got such a deep, deep groove, I can’t get out. And, I wouldn’t want to.” With Truth as ammunition, Pamela Means brings the fight for social justice and human dignity to the forefront of a new generation.
Jonathan Byrd is a preacher’s kid, Gulf War veteran, and award-winning songwriter with a near-cult following. With twenty plus years of touring and over a dozen albums, Byrd’s deceptively simple, working-class songs have become campfire standards and crowd favorites for artists like Sam Bush and Tim O’Brien. A Jonathan Byrd show will take audiences on a journey from hell-raising sing-alongs to heart-wrenching ballads and back across the backroads of his native North Carolina.
A lifelong collaborator and innovator, Jonathan Byrd’s latest project is Song Miners, a project to not only write and release new songs, but also to teach others how it’s done. Leading powerful online songwriting workshops and creating free songwriting education for social media, Byrd seems on a mission to fill the world with great songs- not least, his own. Not to be missed.
Paul Reisler has been performing, writing, and teaching for the last 45 years with Trapezoid, A Thousand Questions, Three Good Reasons and with his Kid Pan Alley songwriting project. He's the founder and artistic director of Kid Pan Alley. He’ll be joined by vocalist Cheryl Reisler.
Join us in the intimate atmosphere of a house concert to celebrate these stories and songs on December 11th. RSVP for a seat in the Zoom living room: https://k-dec11.eventbrite.com
Calendar listing-- Because We Have Music December 11th
Join Kid Pan Alley for another in their Because We Have Music free livestream series on Sunday, December 11th at 7pm EST featuring Pamela Means, Jonathan Byrd, and KPA hosts Cheryl and Paul Reisler.
According to Curve Magazine, “Singer-songwriter and demigod, Pamela Means, is one of the fiercest guitar players and politically rooted singer-songwriters in the music industry today…Means takes her rightful place among contemporary superstar jazz vocalists such as Cassandra Wilson and Norah Jones.”
The Chicago Tribune called Byrd, “…one of the top 50 songwriters of the past 50 years." The songs are deep, the songs are real. Performing Songwriter Magazine wrote, “Jonathan Byrd doesn't sing songs; he sings truth.”
This concert is a fundraiser for Kid Pan Alley’s songwriting programs for children. All donations are matched by the KPA board of directors. Reserve your space in their Zoom living room at www.bit.ly/k-bwhm.
