2007 FESTIVAL: BIOGRAPHIES (back)


Saturday, November 17, 7:30 p.m.
Dr. John, David Bromberg and the Angel Band at the Kent State Ballroom

Reserved tickets are $35, Gold Circle tickets are $50

It hasn’t always been easy to be Dr. John, but it hasn’t been dull either. The latest storm to sweep through his life, however, was the one we all know about. His album, Mercernary, was recorded at New Orleans’ Piety Street Studio in the spring of 2005, just a few months before Katrina, and in November 2005, he released Sippiana Hericane. Proceeds benefit the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, the Jazz Foundation of America and the Voice of the Wetlands.

Joining Dr. John is David Bromberg and the Angel Band, an ensemble that combines Bromberg’s eclectic musical mastery in blues, country, jazz, folk and classical with a stunning new vocal trio.

Bromberg, a singular performer, writer and arranger, has earned critical and popular acclaim since his advent in the 1960s Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene. His stage presence has only grown more powerful in those years; as The New York Times said, “He has such control of his audience that he can, at one moment, hold it in his hand with a tender, touching yet funny anecdotal song, and then set it romping and stomping with a raucous bit of raunch. He is electrifying.”

Bromberg now makes his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and The Angel Band emerged from his efforts to return live music to a café in that city’s struggling downtown. The trio includes Bromberg’s wife, Nancy Josephson, and Jen Schonwald and Kathleen Weber round out the seraphim. Together they have recorded their first CD, Beautiful Noise. Come and hear it on the last night of another memorable Kent State Folk Festival.