Parsonsfield w/ Sawyer Fredericks with Sawyer Fredericks

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Hartford

DETAILS

Fri, November 02, 2018
Hartford, CT
Show: 8:30 PM

Ticket INFO

Member Presale: 7/9/18 06 AM
Public Onsale: 7/12/18 06 AM

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GENRE

Americana / Folk

Parsonsfield is coming to Hartford for an extra special performance this fall! This local folk
five-piece has truly built a home here with us at Infinity Hall and we are so excited and proud to have them
return. Joining them is winner of ‘The Voice’ – Sawyer Fredericks. This will make for a one of a kind type of
musical evening. Beautiful songwriting matched with incredible musicianship and harmonies. Get your tickets
now and don’t miss out!

Parsonsfield

Connect with this artist:

www.parsonsfield.com

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Artist Bio

Parsonsfield's journey first began back in 2014 with the release of Poor Old Shine, an ecstatic acoustic collection recorded in the rural Maine town from which the band drew its name. Hailed by Folk Alley as "the most jubilant and danceable indie roots music this side of the Carolinas," the album (and the group's accompanying live shows) established them as a raucous force of nature, with The New York Times praising them as "boisterously youthful yet deftly sentimental" and No Depression raving that they'll "give you rich five-part harmonies one minute [and] sound like bluegrass on steroids the next." They followed it up in 2016 with Blooming Through The Black, a slightly more experimental outing that earned the band glowing reviews alongside dates with everyone from Josh Ritter and The Jayhawks to Mandolin Orange and The New Pornographers. That same year, the group saw their music featured in the hit AMC> series "The Walking Dead" and teamed up with the prestigious FreshGrass Festival to compose a score for the 1922 silent classic Nanook of the North, which they performed live alongside the film at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

By the time Parsonsfield began work on Happy Hour On The Floor, the band clustered back together in New England like the early days. "We'd been spread out for so long," says Alcorn, who penned roughly half the LP with Freeman. "Just being physically close again had a big impact on our writing process."

When it came time to record, the band converted an old barn in rural Connecticut into a makeshift studio, working with Davis to fill the space with an eclectic array of instruments from pump organ and piano to mellotron and Moog. Due to the raw nature of the room, the band built each song from the ground up, layering instruments one-at-a-time to beautiful, tempo-setting tracks designed by Davis.

"Recording each instrument individually pushed us to strip the songs down to their most fundamental elements," says Freeman. "At the same time, it pushed us to play more melodically and make sure that every part we included was indispensable. It led us to this new sound that I think we've always been searching for."

That new sound is plain to hear from the opening seconds of the album, which begins with the rousing "Paper Floor." Like much of the record to come, the track is driven by an infectious groove and an intoxicating mix of organic and electronic sounds that leaves plenty of room for Freeman's airy voice to shine. The lilting "Til I Die" mixes crisp finger-picking and Celtic strings with intentionally lo-fi production and dense vocal choiring, while the spellbinding "Running River" builds from an a capella vocoder intro into a triumphant full band climax, and the hook-filled "Now That You're Gone" comes from experiments with bass ukulele run through radical effects pedals.

"When we started writing for this album, we decided to learn to play bass and split the duties depending on what each song called for," says Alcorn. "It turned out to really shape the way we wrote and recorded this album because we were all discovering the possibilities of this new instrument. Everything on the record feels groovier and more danceable than ever before."

And that's just the way Parsonsfield wants it. There's enough sadness and bad news in the world as it is, so they crafted Happy Hour On The Floor as an escape. The songs meditate on the little moments that define our day-to-day existence: the enchanting "River Town" finds joy in the simple things, while the breezy "Reykjavik Connection" celebrates the kind of bond that transcends time and distance, and the romantic "Sweet Dream" revels in the all-consuming power of love. It's perhaps the soaring "Emery," though, that captures the spirit of the album best. Beginning with a field recording of the birds that congregated outside the barn every day during the recording sessions, the track reflects on gratitude and perspective, on a definition of happiness and fulfillment that has nothing to with wealth or power or possessions.

"It's a song about the necessities in life, which, for the most part, aren't physical things at all," says Freeman. "It's about having nothing, but because of that, knowing that you have endless possibilities."

As Parsonsfield learned with Happy Hour On The Floor, sometimes less is more.

Sawyer Fredericks

Connect with this artist:

www.sawyerfredericks.com/

Sawyer Fredericks

19 year old Singer-songwriter Sawyer Fredericks, hailing from his family's farm in central New York State, is fast establishing himself as an authentic original, Americana artist with an old soul. His deep, beyond-his-years lyrics and melodies, raw, soulful vocals, and powerful live performances have attracted an ever growing number of devoted fans of all ages, selling out shows throughout the US. As a folk/blues singer-songwriter, who cut his teeth at local farmers markets, open mics, and iconic New York venues like Caffe Lena, the Towne Crier Cafe, and The Bitter End, Sawyer seemed an unlikely match for reality tv, but quickly won over broad audiences with his genuine delivery and unique arrangements of classic songs, going on to win season 8 of NBC's The Voice. Fresh from that whirlwind, Sawyer went forward with the release of his major label debut, A Good Storm, with Republic Records, an impressive blend of soulful Folk, blues, and rock, entirely written or co-written by Sawyer. His 2016 A Good Storm Tour included 62 shows across the US. For 2018, Sawyer has once again gone independent; the highly-anticipated Hide Your Ghost, entirely written and produced by Fredericks, sheds the high gloss major label treatment, and stays true to Fredericks’s honest and elegantly stripped down style, a self-described “free range folk”, incorporating elements of blues, roots rock, and jazz with live instrumental arrangements throughout. Considered one of the top ten Americana Albums of 2018 so far, Chris Griffy of AXS magazine calls Hide Your Ghost “a bluesy folk rocker with a no-frills production that relies on Fredericks' raw voice to carry the emotional weight.” Beginning in June, Fredericks embarks on an extensive tour throughout the US and Canada, in support of Hide Your Ghost. For a full tour schedule, please visit www.sawyerfredericks.com/tour