Luna Star Events

PETE KRONOWITT

The demand for change in America is all around us, and no artist today makes that more clear than Pete Kronowitt, a seasoned singer/songwriter who is releasing his fourth album, A Lone Voice, in the summer of 2016. Pete’s emotive songs fuse acoustic pop and indie-folk while hearkening back to the days when musicians tackled injustice through their music, masterfully exploring themes ranging from family to socio-political struggles. His sound is a Steve Earle-Elvis Costello hybrid, a heap of alt-Americana influences.

A Lone Voice features a set of lyrical new songs spanning folk, pop, country, and acoustic-punk influences from the Ramones to Pete Seeger and John Mellencamp. Pete Kronowitt has created some upbeat music on his latest release that nonetheless faces uncomfortable truths and lifts the curtain to reveal the strings of political and media manipulation.  Audiences will bop and groove with the protest anthem ‘Got Guns?’ and sing along with the title track ‘Change Is Gonna Come’ (inspired from Sam Cooke’s iconic song). Through his music, Pete Kronowitt pokes fun at the absurdity of extremism and reminds us that the power of change is always here and now within ourselves.

A Lone Voice was recorded and produced in Nashville, Tennessee by Grammy-winning songwriter Phil Madeira, with backing musicians David Mansfield on guitars, mandolin and violin, Dennis Holt on drums and percussion, Chris Donohue on bass, and of course, Phil Madeira on guitars and keys.

Pete’s freshman project, Phases of the Heart, ranges from ‘acoustic pop-gressive’ to slow and earnest ballads. It was recorded in 1993 at Rutabaga Studios with John Alagia, whose production credits include the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, and Ben Folds Five. Kronowitt’s second and third albums, Threads and elements, were produced by Pete Snell, who toured extensively with Lyle Lovett. The songs from elements explore the full spectrum of relationships, from the first tug of the heartstring, to the first salvo of war, to saying “goodbye” reality TV-style. The album creates an interwoven narrative of friends and family with an emotional perspective on everyday struggles, and its centerpiece, ‘Now It’s We,’ is a wedding song that explores trust, respect, and friendship.

Pete Kronowitt has toured internationally in China, Japan, and Vietnam, and across the US in the last few years with long-time friend and collaborator bassist John David Coppola, including shows in Florida, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland. John has over 30 years of experience, including two years touring abroad with The Danny Morris Band, and was integral on Pete’s first album Phases of the Heart, where he played upright bass.

Pete Kronowitt’s music resonates with truth and an unwavering belief that people can use their voice to demand common sense solutions. The people of these great United States are bound by the many things we have in common, and must reject those manufactured issues which divide us. With his revolutionary new album, A Lone Voice, Pete Kronowitt has called for a rediscovery of the protest song…and not a moment too soon.

Special guest Len Seligman will join us:

“Len Seligman lights up the audience every time he takes our stage. He crafts wonderful songs that are often light and funny and always heartfelt and performed with perfection.” (WKDW 97.5 FM). His awards include First Place, Great American Song Contest, and 4 Washington Area Music Award (“Wammie”) nominations. His music videos (including Red Tide Rick) have over 50,000 views.

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

SHELLY PEIKEN 

Multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated songwriter Shelly Peiken grew up in Freeport, Long Island, lived in New York City, and now calls Los Angeles home. Best known for her #1 hits “What a Girl Wants” and “Come on Over Baby” recorded by Christina Aguilera and “Bitch” recorded by Meredith Brooks, which earned a Best Rock Song Grammy nomination in 1998, Peiken has written and co-written over 100 songs recorded by artists such as Britney Spears, Celine Dion, Cher, Gladys Knight, Brandy, NSYNC, Reba McEntire, Keith Urban, Backstreet Boys, Selena Gomez and the Scene, Miley Cyrus, Joe Cocker, Demi Lovato, Smash Mouth, and Meat Loaf.

Her book “Confessions of a Serial Songwriter” led to a second Grammy nomination, this time for Best Spoken Word Album in 2017. This memoir chronicles her songwriting journey from young girl to the woman she is today.

Recently, Peiken has been traveling the globe for her intimate Living Room Live performances where she shares stories of her life in the music business and sings some of her best loved songs.

Sarah Jacob views songwriting as a catalyst to navigate through emotions and give them voice. Aided by her love for puns, double entendres and allusion, her songs transform the confusions and ambiguities of inner experience into a “language of the emotions.” Since 2012 Sarah, who composes on the piano, has teamed up with Darrell Arnold, baritone vocalist and guitarist, and Fred Napolitano, saxophonist, forming the Sarah Jacob Trio. The result–mixing hints of jazz, blues and folk into contemporary rock-ballads–is an original lyrical and musical blend. The trio combines a sense and sensibility that make for beautiful songs, offering a psychological expedition of the inner world.

Darrell Arnold

Darrell Arnold’s compositions are soulful folk-rock, with a twist of country blues.

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG
ARE Nancy Wagner (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Robert Hand (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Jamie Pflug (vocals, stand-up bass, guitar, banjo, dulcimer). They play a mix of original songs and their own acoustic versions of classics from the 60s and 70s folk-rock tradition. Featuring their distinctive three-part harmonies, WHP plays music that makes you feel good and think well.

MALCOLM HOLCOMBE

On the North Carolina side of the Southern Appalachians, the land still retains its secrets.

It’s a place of paradoxes, where poverty is handed down from one hardscrabble generation to the next in towns passed over by the New South progress that gives a city like Asheville its bourgeois charm. It’s a resilient pocket of wilderness where a small band of Cherokee once disappeared into the misty hollers to wait out the white man’s ire, back in the deep woods where old growth timber blocks out the sunlight and compass needles sometimes spin crazily and the trappings of civilization give way to things beyond human understanding.

On the cusp of releasing his 13^th studio album — “Come Hell or High Water,” out XXX on Singular Recordings — singer-songwriter Malcolm Holcombe is a both a part of and apart from those Blue Ridge hills, a Southern folk golem brought to life by the deeper mysteries that give these hills so much of their folklore.

His songs belong in the same Western North Carolina echelon of mysteries like the Brown Mountain Lights or the ghostly apparitions along Helen’s Bridge or the phantom choir of Roan Mountain — things that surpass conventional explanation but summon forth a combination of awe and primal longing, an ache to understand the great questions of the human condition.

Malcolm may not have the answers to those questions, but his songs are drawn from the same waters that begin as a trickle in the deep woods: wild, untamed, filled with the whispers and roars of all the mysteries and wonders those hills contain. And like the region’s otherworldly manifestations, they come from a place that transcends easy understanding, even by their creator.

“I don’t know, man; people ask me that stuff, and I can’t really tell you where it comes from,” Holcombe says. “I’m not really good at pulling a Houdini and getting the pencil to levitate. Getting my pencil to levitate is impossible; it’s not in my realm of being. Like my friend Eddie from up here in Swannanoa says, ‘If you like to get corn, you got to get out the hoe.’”

For “Come Hell or High Water,” he wields that hoe with a deft set of hands, gnarled fingers smelling of tobacco and fresh dirt and the resin from thousands of worn-out guitar strings. It’s his third record in as many years, but it’s a pointless endeavor to talk to him about his creative process, because Malcolm isn’t the sort of songwriter to poke those dark recesses of the mind to figure out where the words that bubble up there come from.

“It’s like a friend of mine said years ago — everything’s a miracle or nothing’s a miracle,” he says. “It’s just miraculous to be in this situation with some wonderful folks that I’ve been working with over the years, and to be supported by my wife and friends and fans.”

Two hundred years ago, early settlers might have visited a man like Malcolm in a cave cut into the side of a North Carolina mountain, hauling tobacco or hides through the Southern Appalachian woods to receive words of wisdom. Even with the contemporary trappings of internet songwriting and email and digital studio wizardry at his disposal, he’s not that far removed from that wild-eyed hermit who speaks in riddles and metaphors and delivers prophecies and portents of troubled times. If there’s one thing you can depend on Holcombe to deliver, it’s honesty — often searing, often painful, always with the sort of deft turn of phrase that has made ardent admirers out of his contemporaries.

“Malcolm Holcombe is an artist of deep mystery and high art; he is who I listen to, and have for over 20 years,” says Darrell Scott, one of Nashville’s premier sessions instrumentalists and a nationally respected singer-songwriter. “All the goods that I value in songs and artistry are in Malcolm.”

“I think for most songwriters, songs are like clothing. Malcolm’s songs are his skin,” writes fellow Nashville tunesmith David Olney. “They are a direct expression of who is as a man.”

“People like to say Malcolm Holcombe is a national treasure, and they got that right,” adds R.B. Morris, an East Tennessee singer-songwriter, playwright and the former poet laureate of the City of Knoxville. “He stands on all the old American music traditions and takes them his own way into a very individual music expression.”

“Come Hell or High Water” is trademark Malcolm: chiseled out of a life abundant in both hard times and sweet ones. He was born and raised in these hills, learned to play the flat-top guitar with a local folk group and woodshedded on stages at dance halls, county fairs and community centers throughout the region. He left for a spell, winding up in Nashville and signing a record deal with Geffen that exposed him to a wider audience, but ever since he came back home, he’s been content to do his own thing, earning admiration from contemporaries like Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris and drawing comparisons to everyone from the late Townes Van Zandt to Bruce Springsteen for the way he paints vivid portraits with his songs, turning them into haunting, brooding, moving affairs. There’s an ache of loveliness and loneliness, of torment and hope, threaded through each of the 13 tracks on his latest, all of them crafted with the celebrated roots-music couple Iris DeMent and Greg Brown.

As exquisite as both guests sound, however, it’s Malcolm’s roughhewn and ragged voice that “cuts through ya like a frozen butter knife,” to borrow a line from “Old North Side,” one of the new record’s easy-like-Sunday-morning grooves. It’s a song of snapshots as only Malcolm can take them — “gas-guzzling rustbucket” … “JFK on the stickhouse mantle” … “the old man’s porch” … images trumping narrative, a glimpse inside the flurried hurricane of the songwriter’s mind.

“This world is full of goodness and a lot of positivity, but it seems like I can relate to the underdog and the downtrodden, for obvious reasons,” he says. “Those types of songs seem to strike a nerve more deeply than the ‘Yellow Brick Road,’ because I think it’s a struggle for all of us to try to do the next right thing. Some people have the spiritual chemistry to be able to achieve that more easily than others, but I think we all struggle with getting up in the morning and trying to live in our own skin.”

“Feelin’ my age, feelin’ cynical and wrong, too scared to believe I belong anymore,” he ponders on “New Damnation Alley,” one of those vocal tangos with DeMent that takes “Come Hell or High Water” to a level umatched by his past catalog. When they channel the sweet ache of “I Don’t Wanna Disappear” or lift up the gospel-blues praises of “Gone By the Ol’ Sunrise” or send up a warning for the coming “rain and the dread” on “Black Bitter Moon,” Malcolm’s guttural growls and hissing lamentations are tempered by DeMent’s country drawl sweetness. And by the time the record fades into the final track — “Torn and Wrinkled,” a weary rumination on the passage of time and one man’s life’s work (“my conscience carries all the weight to help another’s heavy burden”) — it becomes clearer than ever that Holcombe’s voice deserves some sort of recognition by the state of North Carolina for its unique contribution to the art and tradition of the hill country he calls home.

It’s the groan of weathered timber from an abandoned mountain cabin during a spring storm, the lonesome bark of a coyote on the other side of a ridge or the whine of a locomotive cutting through Appalachian valleys in the dark of night. It’s a haunting and mysterious thing, and like most of the mysteries of these hills, the true beauty lies in the eyes — or in this case, the ears — of the beholder.

“It’s not for me to judge what people think or ascertain from the tunes; they get what they get out of them,” he says. “I try not to think about it or get too analytical about any of it. They’re just built through personal experiences and living my life with family and friends, and by the grace of the good Lord, I’m able to be of service and offer some stories.”

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

Arthur Cruz Jazz
Keyboard artist, singer and songwriter Arthur Cruz is an interpreter of jazz standards and his own original songs – melodic tunes with pensive lyrics that blend jazz, rock and pop influences from Cole Porter to the Beatles to Sting.

A hopeful romantic, with a distinctive voice and style of song, Arthur Cruz sings of longing to be your valentine, believing in fairy tales of love and holding on to each other through the dark night of the soul.

Along with Englishman Mike Wood on bass, and the energetic Elvis Taylor on drums, these three musicians produce a dynamic, syncopated sound.

The trio is often joined by accomplished jazz instrumentalists (Ted McDermott, Jack Siegel, Nestor Zurieta) and vocalists (Loye Hawkins, Von Henry) for an exciting evening of live, improvised music.

Arthur Cruz Jazz
Keyboard artist, singer and songwriter Arthur Cruz is an interpreter of jazz standards and his own original songs – melodic tunes with pensive lyrics that blend jazz, rock and pop influences from Cole Porter to the Beatles to Sting.

A hopeful romantic, with a distinctive voice and style of song, Arthur Cruz sings of longing to be your valentine, believing in fairy tales of love and holding on to each other through the dark night of the soul.

Along with Englishman Mike Wood on bass, and the energetic Elvis Taylor on drums, these three musicians produce a dynamic, syncopated sound.

The trio is often joined by accomplished jazz instrumentalists (Ted McDermott, Jack Siegel, Nestor Zurieta) and vocalists (Loye Hawkins, Von Henry) for an exciting evening of live, improvised music.

Rod MacDonald (born August 17, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter, novelist, and educator. He was a “big part of the 1980s folk revival in Greenwich Village clubs”, performing at the Speakeasy, Bottom Line, Folk City, and the Songwriter’s Exchange at the Cornelia Street Cafe for many years. He co-founded the Greenwich Village Folk Festival. He is perhaps best known for his songs “American Jerusalem”, about the “contrast between the rich and the poor in Manhattan” (Sing Out!), “A Sailor’s Prayer”, “Coming of the Snow”, “Every Living Thing”, and “My Neighbors in Delray”, a description of the September 11 hijackers’ last days in Delray Beach, Florida, where MacDonald has lived since 1995. His songs have been covered by Dave Van Ronk, Shawn Colvin, Four Bitchin’ Babes, Jonathan Edwards, Garnet Rogers, Joe Jencks, and others. His 1985 recording “White Buffalo” is dedicated to Lakota Sioux ceremonial chief and healer Frank Fools Crow, whom he visited in 1981 and 1985, and who appears with MacDonald in the cover photograph. Since 1995 MacDonald has lived in south Florida, where his cd, “Later that Night” was named “Best Local Cd of 2014” by The Palm Beach Post and reached the top ten in national folk music charts. His first novel, The Open Mike, about a young man in the open mike scene of Greenwich Village, was published on December 5, 2014, by Archway Publishing.

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

ALL THAT JAZZ
Come join Loye and Ted for an evening listening pleasure. Smooth jazz standards and ballads with a mix of blues and pops. Intermissions and last set opened for those who want to jam with us…
Free Free Free

SLIM GLASSES

Slim Glasses is a Miami-based band formed in September 2015 by Patricio Acevedo, Erik Anderson, Jose Ballon, and Christopher Myers. The band incorporates elements from its members’ diverse musical backgrounds – including pop, rock, folk, jazz, and classical music – and places a special emphasis on tight and engaging vocal harmonies. Above all, Slim Glasses aims to share a love for music with every crowd that they perform for.

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

NSAI South Florida Chapter Songwriter workshop

Bring an original song for critique on CD, or perform it live acoustically. Make sure to have 12 copies of your lyric sheet.

$5 for non-members/ FREE for members.

This workshop is affiliated with the Nashville Songwriters Association International. (nashvillesongwriters.com)

UFO MESSIAH

London Exchange

Christopher Phipps

SINGER+SONGWRITER+MUSICIAN+PRODUCER

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

MO MORGEN

MO MORGEN & Friends feat. percussionist Ezo Hernandez
“Local Legend” New Times “Best Jazz Duo” Sun-Post

Saxophonist/Vocalist/Keyboardist/presenter Mo Morgen
is always starting something- and now he’s starting to fill in
at our “next to last” Wednesday jazz nights on May 23.

Mo started the Jazzmania Society Loft in Manhattan,
then he came here in 1993 and started the MoJazz Cafe,
the music program at Cafe Del Mar, the music program
at Miami Shores Country Club Bar, the music programs
at Claire’s Farmers Markets, the music program at Veni Vidi Vici,
and most recently the MoJazz BackRoom at now-closed Panarea

His theme song is “This Could Be the Start of Something Big”
so come on out and help it kickstart !

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

Sarah Jacob views songwriting as a catalyst to navigate through emotions and give them voice. Aided by her love for puns, double entendres and allusion, her songs transform the confusions and ambiguities of inner experience into a “language of the emotions.” Since 2012 Sarah, who composes on the piano, has teamed up with Darrell Arnold, baritone vocalist and guitarist, and Fred Napolitano, saxophonist, forming the Sarah Jacob Trio. The result–mixing hints of jazz, blues and folk into contemporary rock-ballads–is an original lyrical and musical blend. The trio combines a sense and sensibility that make for beautiful songs, offering a psychological expedition of the inner world.

Darrell Arnold

Darrell Arnold’s compositions are soulful folk-rock, with a twist of country blues.

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG
ARE Nancy Wagner (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Robert Hand (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Jamie Pflug (vocals, stand-up bass, guitar, banjo, dulcimer). They play a mix of original songs and their own acoustic versions of classics from the 60s and 70s folk-rock tradition. Featuring their distinctive three-part harmonies, WHP plays music that makes you feel good and think well.

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

ALL THAT JAZZ
Come join Loye and Ted for an evening listening pleasure. Smooth jazz standards and ballads with a mix of blues and pops. Intermissions and last set opened for those who want to jam with us…
Free Free Free

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

NSAI South Florida Chapter Songwriter workshop

Bring an original song for critique on CD, or perform it live acoustically. Make sure to have 12 copies of your lyric sheet.

$5 for non-members/ FREE for members.

This workshop is affiliated with the Nashville Songwriters Association International. (nashvillesongwriters.com)

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

MO MORGEN

MO MORGEN & Friends feat. percussionist Ezo Hernandez
“Local Legend” New Times “Best Jazz Duo” Sun-Post

Saxophonist/Vocalist/Keyboardist/presenter Mo Morgen
is always starting something- and now he’s starting to fill in
at our “next to last” Wednesday jazz nights on May 23.

Mo started the Jazzmania Society Loft in Manhattan,
then he came here in 1993 and started the MoJazz Cafe,
the music program at Cafe Del Mar, the music program
at Miami Shores Country Club Bar, the music programs
at Claire’s Farmers Markets, the music program at Veni Vidi Vici,
and most recently the MoJazz BackRoom at now-closed Panarea

His theme song is “This Could Be the Start of Something Big”
so come on out and help it kickstart !

Bring your axe. Very laid back – a great way to meet some of the Café’s performers & regulars in a very low-pressure environment. Novices & pros are welcome to come on down & join the jam. Try out new material or just participate in some sing-alongs.

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG
ARE Nancy Wagner (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Robert Hand (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Jamie Pflug (vocals, stand-up bass, guitar, banjo, dulcimer). They play a mix of original songs and their own acoustic versions of classics from the 60s and 70s folk-rock tradition. Featuring their distinctive three-part harmonies, WHP plays music that makes you feel good and think well.

NSAI South Florida Chapter Songwriter workshop

Bring an original song for critique on CD, or perform it live acoustically. Make sure to have 12 copies of your lyric sheet.

$5 for non-members/ FREE for members.

This workshop is affiliated with the Nashville Songwriters Association International. (nashvillesongwriters.com)

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG
ARE Nancy Wagner (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Robert Hand (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Jamie Pflug (vocals, stand-up bass, guitar, banjo, dulcimer). They play a mix of original songs and their own acoustic versions of classics from the 60s and 70s folk-rock tradition. Featuring their distinctive three-part harmonies, WHP plays music that makes you feel good and think well.

NSAI South Florida Chapter Songwriter workshop

Bring an original song for critique on CD, or perform it live acoustically. Make sure to have 12 copies of your lyric sheet.

$5 for non-members/ FREE for members.

This workshop is affiliated with the Nashville Songwriters Association International. (nashvillesongwriters.com)

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG

WAGNER, HAND & PFLUG
ARE Nancy Wagner (vocals, guitar, mandolin), Robert Hand (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Jamie Pflug (vocals, stand-up bass, guitar, banjo, dulcimer). They play a mix of original songs and their own acoustic versions of classics from the 60s and 70s folk-rock tradition. Featuring their distinctive three-part harmonies, WHP plays music that makes you feel good and think well.

NSAI South Florida Chapter Songwriter workshop

Bring an original song for critique on CD, or perform it live acoustically. Make sure to have 12 copies of your lyric sheet.

$5 for non-members/ FREE for members.

This workshop is affiliated with the Nashville Songwriters Association International. (nashvillesongwriters.com)