• Jill Sobule with Vance Gilbert - 2/22
• 6:00pm Seating / 8:00pm Show

ABOUT JILL SOBULE

Jill Sobule belongs to a rare breed of artists. Her work is at once deeply personal and socially conscious, seriously funny and derisively tragic. Over five albums and a decade of recording, the Denver-born songwriter/guitarist/singer has tackled such topics as the death penalty, anorexia, shoplifting, reproduction, the French resistance movement, adolescence, and the Christian right. Did we mention love? Love found, love lost, love wished for and love taken away.

While her songs cover a huge amount of ground, they all have benefit greatly from Jill's subtle intelligence and skillful light-handedness. No sloganeering flag-and-fist waving here, but rather story songs about human beings, real and imagined, which allow us to step back from the issue, be it personal or social, and relate to it as we would a close friend.

To see Jill live and in concert is a rare treat. It is on stage that she is most comfortable, most powerful, and where the delicacy and range of her work can be best appreciated. She entertains, amuses, provokes, and more often then not, takes her audiences on an emotional roller coaster, from comedy to pathos in a few bars of music.

Jill began playing guitar when she joined the Junior High School band. She never learned to read music, though, and faked her way through rehearsals and performances by playing by ear. As she began writing songs, it was very clear to Jill this was becoming more than a teenage hobby. Music was serious stuff. She played in a variety of funk and rock bands in Colorado, and eventually made her first, Todd Rundgren-produced, album for MCA, Things Here Are Different.

But success did not knock on her door until three years later, when Atlantic Records released her MTV staple and national top 20 hit, I Kissed A Girl. "That song was a double-edged sword for me," Jill Says. "It was perceived as a novelty hit, but on the other hand it was the first song with an overtly gay topic to be aired on Top 40 radio. I am quite proud of that." The self-titled album also yielded another hit song, Supermodel, included in the Clueless soundtrack.

The song also jumpstarted her live music career in a big way, and since then she's had the honor to induct Neil Diamond in the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, to share the stage with the likes of Neil Young (at his yearly Bridge School benefit concerts), fellow activists Billy Bragg & Steve Earle, and Waren Zevon. Quite the serious guitar player, she even toured the world as lead guitarist in Lloyd Cole's band a few years back.

Since then, she has made four more critically acclaimed albums, "Happy Town", "Pink Pearl", "Underdog Victorious", and 2009's "California Years", which Jill released on her own record label, Pinko Records, after collecting over $85,000 from fans who funded the project.

A veritable gypsy, Jill divides her time between a busy touring schedule and a variety of other projects. She has played the role of political troubadour for NPR stations across the country and for Air America Radio. She also served as songwriter/composer for the hit Nickelodeon network show Unfabulous during that show's three-season run. She composed the music for the off-Broadway show Prozak and the Platypus and co-starred in the Eric Schaeffer film Mind the Gap.

In the words of New York Times pop music critic Jon Pareles - "Jill Sobule can claim her place among the stellar New York singer-songwriters of the last decade. Topical, funny and more than a little poignant ... grown-up music for an adolescent age."

ABOUT VANCE GILBERT

Vance Gilbert burst onto the singer/songwriter scene in the early 90's when the buzz started spreading in the folk clubs of Boston about an ex-multicultural arts teacher who was knocking 'em dead at open mikes.

The word spread of this Philadelphia-area born and raised performer to New York; Shawn Colvin invited Vance Gilbert to be a special guest on her Fat City tour. Gilbert took audiences across the country by storm ("With the voice of an angel, the wit of a devil, and the guitar playing of a god, it was enough to earn him that rarity: an encore for an opener" wrote the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in its review of a show from that tour.) Gilbert's three albums for the Rounder/Philo label EDGEWISE (1994), FUGITIVES (1995), and the celebrated, arrestingly sparse SHAKING OFF GRAVITY (1998) - are all essential additions to the American singer-songwriter collection. With guests as varied as Tuck and Patti, Jonatha Brooke, Patty Larkin, Vinx, and Jane Siberry, all three albums found significant niches on NAC (New Adult Contemporary) and Non-Commercial A3 (Adult Album Alternative) radio.
These discs were followed by the self-released SOMERVILLE LIVE (2000), his live recording lionized by the Boston Globe as the disc "young songwriters should study the way law students cram for bar exams," and ONE THRU FOURTEEN (2002), a stylistically varied offering that New York's Town and Village calls "lively, eclectic, electrifying and transcending." Follow that with SIDE OF THE ROAD (2003), a duo album with Ellis Paul, lauded as "haunting, artful, and lovely" by Boston Magazine and nominated for a 2004 Boston Music Award. UNFAMILIAR MOON (2005) successfully follows. “The songwriter’s most compelling work; literate, heartfelt, rippling…emotionally resonant songs” says the Boston Globe, placing the album in its’ Top 10 CDs of the year (#4). On ANGELS, CASTLES, COVERS writes Roberta Schwartz of FAME, “Gilbert's choice of an album of covers seems both fitting and fearless. …he displays his vocal virtuosity with some unexpected choices from the late 20th century songbook. From the sounds of Motown, through the R&B of Al Green to classic Joni Mitchell and Shawn Colvin,… He makes each and every tune sound fresh and new.

Then came a year and a half as support for George Carlin, and exciting chapter in Gilbert’s varied and successful performance history, leading up to the creation and recording of UP ON ROCKFIELD, a tour de force of borrowed styles showcasing classic Vance Gilbert original songwriting at its most timeless, compelling best. Gilbert unflinchingly renders blame and absolution, trapped hearts and free-riders, class and station, uncertainty and resolution, the spiritual and the visceral, the forever and the now. His is a presentation steeped in deep humanism and bravery, stunning artistry and soul, and unbridled joy. No great surprise to the learned acoustic listener. This is Vance Gilbert, after all...