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Community Corner

Heather Maloney Band and special guests Darlingside

On Friday, November 1, the me & thee features two acts from Western Massachusetts. Two-time me & thee veteran and singer-songwriter Heather Maloney returns this time with a band and a new self-titled album. Indie folk and string rock quartet Darlingside opens. Doors open at 7:30 PM for this 8:00 PM show. The me & thee coffeehouse is located at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead at 28 Mugford Street.

 In September of 2009, at one of her first public shows at a small coffee shop in Northampton, Massachusetts, Heather Maloney was so nervous that she had to be prodded onstage. By July of 2011, she was performing at the Calvin Theater in front of 1,500 fans of the Grammy Award winning artist Jonny Lang, and bringing them to their feet in applause. Maloney has since shared the stage with Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriquez, Mike & Ruthy, Vance Gilbert, Dala, Devil Makes Three, Caravan of Thieves, Jeffrey Gaines, Jill Sobule, Meg Hutchinson, Cliff Eberhardt and many others. Her work has won praise from the Huffington Post for “lyrics that cut to the chase,” DigBoston writes Maloney “deserves the type of cult following that has allowed the likes of Aimee Mann and Ani DiFranco that long standing success and influence they have had.”

 If there’s a typical path to becoming a songwriter, Heather Maloney didn’t follow it. Although she went to school for music and had done plenty of singing, she only began writing tunes a few years ago, after living and working for three years as a vegetarian cook at the Insight Meditation Society, a Buddhist silent retreat center in central Massachusetts. It was there, Maloney says, that she found her passion and inspiration for songwriting and her desire to perform. “The biggest motivating factor in writing was probably the experiences that I was having here in my meditation practice,” she says. “There was the difficulty of it, the suffering of it, and wanting to channel that into something creative.” By fusing her newfound insights into her songwriting, Maloney says, she gained the confidence to get up on stage. “I don’t really want to be seen,” Maloney says, “but if I have something to say, it’s like I have something to stand behind.” She says her song ideas usually begin as a “feeling like something needs to happen.”

 Maloney’s newest album, Heather Maloney, released in March on Signature Sounds, is her third. Maloney had performed mostly solo in concert while making her first two albums (Cozy Razor’s Edge, 2009 and Time & Pocket Change, 2011). Finding that the recorded songs didn’t sound the way they did when she played them live, Maloney decided to road-test material on her new album with Ken Maiuri (Mark Mulcahy, the Young at Heart Chorus) on bass and J.J. O’Connell on drums, fine-tuning her songs as she performed them in front of audiences before heading into the studio. “I love playing with a band,” says Maloney. “It’s become an integral part of the music.”

 Darlingside is a Massachusetts-based indie folk quartet. With four distinct voices clustered around a single microphone, their tightly-arranged tunes draw from the unexpected, featuring strains of bluegrass, classical, and barbershop. Accompanied by an arsenal of classical strings, guitars, mandolin, and percussion, these four close friends swap instruments from song to song, keeping audiences across the country on the edge of their seats. The band recently released their debut full-length album, Pilot Machines, and is currently shaking rafters along the eastern seaboard with its vibrant live shows. Darlingside’s sound is characterized by multiple lead-vocalists, dreamy four-part harmonies, dominating cello and violin interjections, and a dynamic rock engine at the core.

Tickets for the performance by Heather Maloney Band with special guests Darlingside are $18 in advance and $21 at the door. Tickets are available online at www.meandthee.org and can be purchased in person at the Spirit of ’76 Bookstore or the Arnould Gallery in Marblehead. The Landing Restaurant at 81 Front Street, Marblehead offers a 10%  discount on dinner if you show your ticket or receipt.  Enjoy a meal before the show! As at all me & thee coffeehouse events, refreshments are available, including homemade pastries, coffee, and teas. The me & thee has a handicapped-accessible entrance and an accessible bathroom, is a smoke-free environment, and is easily reached by MBTA bus. 

 The me & thee is one of the oldest continually running acoustic coffeehouses in New England, and probably the country. It has been and will always be a volunteer, non-profit organization sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead.  For information and directions, call 781-631-8987 or check the website at www.meandthee.org.

 

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