The next show announcement for the 2016 Lowell Summer Music Series is a big one! Patty Griffin will be making her first appearance at the Series and opening the 2016 season on Friday, June 10th!

“The first quiet piano notes of the title track of Patty Griffin’s new album, Servant Of Love evoke a sense of mystery.  “I want to live by your ocean/Moved by the waves/No one can see.”  Go further into this haunting, jazz-steeped meditation, and that sense turns into a spell.  With lulling piano, fathoms-deep bowed bass and improvisational trumpet floating above like a swooping gull, Griffin conjures the call of the depths in literal and metaphorical terms (“words from the deep, calling to me…”) and invites us on her odyssey to answer that call. 

Patty Griffin (Official Photo)

“In the tradition of mystical poets like Rumi and Rilke, Patty Griffin grounds her themes of love and mystery in the experience and rhythms of the everyday, the stuff of life.  Servant Of Love takes on big ideas, but does so in the vernacular of folk tales, blues cants and jazz gestures. Griffin’s characteristic expressive vocals – equal measures passion and poignancy – and her potent songwriting blur the lines between the personal, the spiritual and the political.  These songs move and persuade while they dive deep.

Over nine albums, Patty Griffin has proven herself a writer of uncommon perception, with a genius for character-driven story-telling.  On this, her tenth, she brings that genius to bear on her over-arching themes. The same transmigrated soul seems to inhabit the characters in these songs, all different, yet all walking the same beat, speaking from the same source:  the storyteller herself, of course, but also, the album suggests, a greater source.  A source we reject at our peril.  That melting polar ice cap in “You Never Asked Me”?  That’s no metaphor.  That’s the real world consequence of our spiritual deficit.”

Tickets for the Patty Griffin show are priced at $41 in advance (fee-free!), $45 on the day of the show (if available) and children 12 and under are always free courtesy of Eastern Bank. There are also premium seats – beach chairs are provided by the Series – set in two rows directly in front of the stage for $141. Tickets are on sale now through Lowell Summer Music Series.

For those of you who are unaware of the  Series, or if you are aware of it but have never attended a show there, it is an outdoor (weather permitting) concert series held on National Park Service grounds in Lowell, Massachusetts. The Series is not-for-profit, which helps keep the ticket prices reasonable.

Surrounding Boarding House Park are old mill buildings, part of the Lowell National Historical Park, which you can tour if you arrive early enough. They provide an unusual setting for an evening of great music and ambiance.

The Series generally runs from late June to early September.

This Series is dear to my heart. I have been a season pass holder since 2007 and it is one of the highlights of the year (and of summer in particular) for me. Many lasting friendships have been made there. I expect this will be another excellent year!

I will post additional announcements for the Series as they are made.

Shows announced to date are:

June 10 (Friday) – Patty Griffin

June 11 (Saturday) – Guster

July 16 (Saturday) – Colin Hay

August 13 (Saturday) – Dr. Dog

September 1 (Thursday) – ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic

September 3 (Saturday) – The B-52s