John McCutcheon, a multi-talented champion of folk music, will welcome virtual visitors to his home this Saturday for a livestream he calls “Jackpot! A Wild Card Show.” He will mix of some of the best-known songs of his 43-album career plus some songs, instruments, and stories that he has not featured in his previous online concerts presented in conjunction with our Pasadena Folk Music Society and other groups in the past two years.
If you caught any of those online shows, or any of his seven in-person concerts in Pasadena from 1990 to 2018, you know the fine quality of songwriting, singing, instrumental virtuosity and storytelling to expect. If you are not familiar with John McCutcheon, you can get a sense of his range from recorded performances of Forgotten, Riding my Bike, Doing My Job, a medley of fiddle tunes, and Vote, Dammit!
The “Jackpot!” livestream will begin at 4 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, May 13. Ticket-holders get access to unlimited replays within 48 hours after the live show, which could be handy for shifting the concert to a later hour or enjoying it a second time. Tickets are available at this link. Twenty dollars gets you a regular ticket. Other options for online tickets are discounts for students or unemployed people and premiums for a family/household ticket or music supporter ticket.
If you bought tickets to this show from the now-defunct streaming platform Mandolin, you should have received a note on April 20 assuring you that a link and a ticket code for the replacement streaming platform will be sent to you before the show. (The link appears to have been sent out this morning.) If you bought a ticket but did not receive such a message, please contact McCutcheon’s team at [email protected] to make sure that they have you on their list.
Other concerts this weekend
The Small Glories, a powerfully harmonious duo from the Canadian prairies, will perform two concerts in Los Angeles this weekend: Friday night in Westwood and Saturday night (after the McCutcheon livestream) in San Pedro. Check out the exuberant partnership of Cara Luft and JD Edwards on Oh My Love or Long Long Moon, and see if you can resist. Their concert tomorrow at 8 p.m. will be on the terrace of Royce Hall on the UCLA campus; more information is at this link. Their Saturday concert, also at 8 p.m., will be at the Grand Annex in San Pedro; more information is at this link.
Calendar information about folk-music events such as these Small Glories concerts is available on the Folkworks.org website. Even better: You can sign up for the Folkworks emails toward the bottom of this page, and donate to Folkworks here.
In another pair of concerts this weekend, The Caltech Jazz Band and The Caltech Wind Orchestra will perform on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. Both ensembles will perform at both concerts, in a program called “Bandorama,” in Caltech’s Ramo Auditorium in Pasadena. More information about these free concerts is available at this link for Friday and this link for Saturday.
“We Love It”
For those who enjoyed Garrison Keillor’s radio show, Prairie Home Companion, you can listen to the program he did from the the Pasadena Civic Auditorium back on May 13, 2000, including guests Randy Newman and Nickel Creek (bluegrass band featuring Chris Thile and Sara & Sean Watkins), for one week at this link. If you aren’t familiar with the show, this is a good one to sample. We can’t help sharing Newman’s video of I Love LA (not in the program), as it takes a good poke at our glamorous, but not-so-perfect culture here in the Southland.
Say “Hello” at Topanga
This is probably our last chance to plug the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival, just a week and a half away, on Sunday, May 21. We hope you will attend and drop by and say “Hello” to us at the booth we’ll be sharing with Folkworks at the Vendors and Exhibitors area.