Abbie Gardner/Jesse Terry w/ Brooke Annibale

Songwriters in The Round

Tickets are $12 in advance, and $15 at the door.

Doors are at 8 PM. Show is at 9 PM.

Abbie Gardner

Abbie Gardner, the fiery Dobro player with an infectious smile has been touring with Americana darlings Red Molly for the past eleven years. After gracing stages from Denver to Denmark, from Australia to Austin, the band decided to take an indefinite hiatus in 2015, so Abbie is striking out on her own!

"Abbie Gardner shows her prodigious writing chops in her album, Hope. Tales of love and loss, both gritty and sweet, ride the back of her by-now familiar, formidable slide guitar licks. She channels Lucinda and Bonnie, but remains pure Abbie."

— Richard Cuccaro, Publisher, Acoustic Live

Her background is as varied as the songs she writes.  Abbie has listened to the sweet sound of high lonesome harmonies since her first bluegrass festival at the age of three. Her father, Herb Gardner, is a swing jazz and stride pianist and dixieland trombonist. Watching him laugh as he went off to "work" every day was her first introduction to the joy of being a musician. Abbie's first full-length recording, My Craziest Dream (2004) is an album of jazz standards featuring her father on piano. It earned her an entry in the 2009 Hal Leonard book "The Jazz Singers: The Ultimate Guide." Abbie studied classical flute growing up, but once she started playing Dobro in 2004 she found her main instrument. She traveled to Lyons, CO and Nashville, TN to study with Rob Ickes and Sally Van Meter. Always keen on following the vocal part and trying to find the one really perfect note, instead of a dozen okay ones, Abbie is quickly compiling an extensive discography of recording credits. Her own CDs include Honey on My Grave (2006), Bad Nights/Better Days (2008, with Anthony da Costa), and Hope (2011), which features three different kinds of slide guitar (dobro, lap steel and National bottleneck). Abbie has been recognized as an award-winning songwriter, with such accolades as; 2006 Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Songwriter Showcase (2nd place), 2008 Lennon Award Winner (folk) for "The Mind of a Soldier" and 2008 American Songwriter Magazine Grand Prize Lyric Winner for "I'd Rather Be." "The Mind of a Soldier" was also featured on Lufthansa Airlines in 2010. Abbie has had the honor of being part of the songwriting faculty at the 2010 and 2011 Swannanoa Gatherings and assisting at Reso Summit, Nashville's Resonator Conference, for the past several years. She wrote and released a song per week for a year as part of the 2013 Real Women Real Songs project and is excited to tour as a solo act in 2016.

WWW.ABBIEGARDNER.COM

Jesse Terry

Jesse Terry is a singer/songwriter with an uncanny ability to weave tales of travel and homecoming, of sorrow and of redemption, into songs that are simultaneously timeless and fresh. Home is now the coastal village of Stonington, Connecticut, but Terry’s music reflects an amalgam of influences, from Nashville to Laurel Canyon. His melodic and lyrically-driven Americana fits naturally on a playlist between cuts from Josh Ritter, Jackson Browne, Ryan Adams and Neil Young.

Jesse is fresh off an appearance at Bonnaroo where he shared the stage with the likes of Gregory Alan Isakov, Bear’s Den and Guster. Bonnaroo also featured Terry on their 2015 NoiseTrade Mixtape alongside artists such as Brandi Carlile, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and Benjamin Booker. In August, Jesse performed four times at the legendary Philadelphia Folk Festival, whose headliners included Lyle Lovett, Arlo Guthrie and North Mississippi All Stars. Terry's music was also recently included on Birdstone Records' "Independent Celebration, Vol. 1" accompanied by songs from Ben Taylor, Rachael Yamagata and Grant-Lee Phillips. 

"I think I always needed music," Terry explains. That simple truth encapsulates the style of an artist whose lyrical depth has garnered multiple songwriting accolades. The buzz over Jesse Terry continues to build, with tours bringing him from coast to coast and across oceans to the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. His music has appeared in CW's Hart of Dixie and PBS's Roadtrip Nation. Earlier this year, ABC used "Stay Here With Me" for its series "Forever.”  

Terry's star is on the rise, and it's no surprise. Through the course of four releases, The Runner (2009), Empty Seat On a Plane (2012), Stay Here With Me (2013), and The Calm & The Storm (2015), Terry draws from a wellspring of emotional depth and combines it with performance skills honed over hundreds of shows and hundreds of thousands of miles on the road. The result is a palette ranging from poetic ballads to uptempo, rootsy pieces, always beautifully crafted and displaying sweet wistfulness and heartache. This is music that explores the contrast of light and dark, with a core that is timeless and authentic. Jesse Terry's superlative new EP, The Calm & The Storm, captures both the intimacy of his live performances and his thoughtful compositional style, with choice layers of harmonies and instrumentation that evoke the landscapes and faces of the road, the trials and the joys of a traveling troubadour. 

Jesse Terry's "melodies ring with instant accessibility and a clear connection, conveying a brilliance and clarity that most veteran artists still strive for" (No Depression). His "well-crafted songs rank right there with Ryan Adams, Rhett Miller and other masters of alt-country" (WFUV-NYC). A gentle warmth runs through Terry’s voice, and his lyrics, while grounded in gritty wisdom acquired through years on the road, offer up hope for a kinder tomorrow. Arranged around acoustic guitar and subtly augmented by strings, piano, percussion and achingly beautiful harmonies, Terry's music is elegantly spare, capturing the eternal tug-of-war between head and heart, the pull of the road and the longing for return.

Terry has an undeniable talent for connecting with his audience - to share stories that are personal, yet utterly relatable – to create a sense of home, even among the strangers he meets on the road. And that is the gift of Terry’s music -- in a song, he gives us a promise of a place to call our own.

Brooke Annibale

Indie singer/songwriter, Brooke Annibale’s evocative musicianship, nurtured by her family’s music store, is driven by an enduring passion for songwriting.  Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, Brooke’s maternal grandfather opened a music retail and live-sound business in the 1960’s, that is still family-run today. Also an accomplished player, he encouraged Annibale to take an interest in the guitar.  Music was ever-present in her life because of the store, where she started taking lessons at age 14. “I felt a natural inclination to play guitar because it was always in my family,” Annibale says. “My dad was a live sound engineer for the family business and that’s how he met my mom. Neither of my parents are musicians, but the love and respect for music in my family runs really deep.” 

As a guitar player, Annibale stands out with her deep groove and interesting stylistic choices reminiscent of an early Josh Rouse and inspiration by John Mayer. Guitar aside, it’s her magnetic voice, that smoldering and irresistible delivery, that draws you in, making you think of names like Lisa Hannigan, Norah Jones and Sarah McLachlan. Over the course of developing her dynamic sound, Annibale finds influence from musicians like Kathleen Edwards, The Swell Season and Brandi Carlile, who push boundaries and redefine what it means to be a singer/songwriter in modern times, while remaining timeless.

When it comes to songwriting, Annibale started young, writing as a 3rd grader, but really began taking music seriously as a teenager. This led to her picking up the guitar to compliment her writing. Inspired by deep, meaningful lyricists like Elliott Smith, of the songwriting craft, she states; “I don’t think there’s really any better way to express myself or relate to other people than through music. It’s just really powerful.” Annibale took that passion for songwriting and performing to Nashville, where she earned her degree in Music Business at Belmont University. Not wanting to be boxed in by a traditional music program, she was drawn to a more business oriented major that aligned with her entrepreneurial spirit.

Brooke spent about six years living and making music in Nashville, in the winter of 2014, she officially moved back to Pittsburgh. Both cities had a lot to offer and have equally inspired Annibale’s music. Nashville’s musical amenities are incomparable to most cities, but Pittsburgh provides a sort of life balance that Music City could not. However, she has taken advantage of the resources in Nashville by way of recording two full albums and an EP at The Smoakstack along with producer Paul Moak (Silence Worth Breaking in 2011) and Engineer/Producer Justin March (Words In Your Eyes EP in 2013, The Simple Fear in 2015).

It’s ironic how Brooke Annibale’s fearlessness and eloquence exudes on an album titled The Simple Fear. Annibale had experienced a bout of writer’s block after releasing her 2013 Words In Your Eyes EP. After months of not being able to complete a single song, she wrote and demoed “Remind Me” all in the same day. The rest of the songs came like a flood during major life changes; including a move from Nashville back to her hometown of Pittsburgh. While writing the rest of the album, Annibale was contemplating basic life expectations as well as the fear that those expectations might not be met. “I had to deal with the fear of the unknown future and the struggle of letting go of the past. Those two conflicting feelings are woven throughout these songs: letting go and moving forward,” says Annibale. “Fear is always complicated, but it’s simple in the sense that we all have certain fears in common at some point in our lives.”

Recorded over the course of 2014 and 2015 at the Smoakstack Studios in Nashville, The Simple Fear, picks up where the likes of Kathleen Edwards and The Swell Season’s last records left off. Producer Justin March boldly showcases Annibale’s songs in a relevant, subtly experimental, and yet timeless offering. It progresses what it means to be labeled a “singer-songwriter” or to have the word “folk” attached to a descriptor. This album’s centerpiece lays in Annibale’s subtle groove along with meaningful lyrics delivered in smoldering vocals, encased in layers of beautiful strings, guitar, piano and percussion. The persistence and musical affinity between March and Annibale resonates strongly even on first listen