SHARING THE STAGE FOR AN EVENING OF SONG PATTY GRIFFIN HAYES CARLL LORI MCKENNA

Doors: 7PM | Show: 8PM

Patty Griffin, Hayes Carll, and Lori McKenna share the stage for an evening of song November 9th at the historic Kalamazoo State Theatre.  This unique night of music will feature all three singer-songwriters taking the stage together to perform each other’s songs, share stories, and more!

About Patty Griffin: Patty Griffin is among the most consequential singer-songwriters of her generation, a quintessentially American artist whose wide-ranging canon incisively explores the intimate moments and universal emotions that bind us together. Over the course of two decades, the GRAMMY® Award winner – and 7x nominee – has crafted a remarkable body of work in progress that prompted the New York Times to hail her for “writing cameo-carved songs that create complete emotional portraits of specific people…her songs have independent lives that continue in your head when the music ends.”

Widely regarded among the best pure songwriters of this or any other era, Griffin has had her work performed by a truly epic assortment of her fellow artists, among them Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Solomon Burke, Kelly Clarkson & Jeff Beck, Martina McBride, and Miranda Lambert, to name but a few. Her songs have also been showcased in a variety of film, TV, and theatre projects, with her original music and lyrics featured in the 2007 musical, 10 Million Miles, produced Off-Broadway by the Atlantic Theatre Company and directed by Tony Award-winner Michael Mayer. Griffin has also been joined in the studio by a veritable who’s-who of contemporary Americana, including Harris, Buddy & Julie Miller, Shawn Colvin, Jim Lauderdale, Raul Malo, Ian McLagen, JD Foster, and many others. As if her own remarkable career weren’t enough, Griffin has found time to collaborate with a wide range of like-minded artists, among them Joshua Radin, Todd Snider, Dierks Bentley, Robert Plant, Jack Ingram, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings.

About Hayes Carll: The country simplicity that imbues Hayes Carll’s songs can sometimes hide the social conscience and sharp humor that also runs through them, but if you want to find those things, they are there. In fact, Carll has spent over 20 years having a conversation about what it is we’re all doing here with anyone who will listen. He makes us laugh––but then he makes us cry. We judge a song’s protagonist, only for Carll to spin us around to commiserate with them.

The New York Times likened Carll’s ability to undergird humor with a weightier narrative to Bob Dylan. When Carll talks about the sounds that are in his own head, he mentions Randy Travis. That juxtaposition defines the singularity of Carll’s career: He exists in a space of his own, informed by John Prine, Tom Waits, and Dylan but also by Travis, Kenny Rogers, and Hank Williams, Jr.

Those influences may have made him hard to pigeonhole, but he’s still been embraced. Two Americana Music Awards, a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song, and multiple Austin Music Awards line his resumé́. He’s had the most-played record on Americana radio twice. His songs appear on the screen regularly and have been recorded by Kenny Chesney, Lee Ann Womack, and Brothers Osborne, to name a few.

About Lori McKenna: From her home base in Boston, Lori McKenna has carved out an enviable niche for herself as one of Nashville’s most in-demand songwriters, all while maintaining a prolific and remarkably

consistent career as a solo artist. The release of her anticipated album, 1988, adds to a series of landmark years for McKenna and follows three widely acclaimed albums: 2016’s The Bird & The Rifle, 2018’s The Tree and 2020’s The Balladeer, of which the Associated Press praised, “McKenna has by now long established herself as one of the best songwriters working in any genre. And she does it again and again,” while The Tennessean asserted, “one of the sharpest pens in modern country and folk songwriting.”

In addition to her career as a solo artist, McKenna continues to enjoy success as one of the music industry’s most in-demand songwriters. In 2023, she was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Song for co-writing “I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault),” performed by Taylor Swift. In 2017, McKenna became the first woman to win the Academy of Country Music’s Songwriter of the Year award and the first woman to win the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year award two years in a row. She also won back-to-back Grammys for Best Country Song: for “Girl Crush,” performed by Little Big Town, in 2016 and “Humble

and Kind,” performed by Tim McGraw, in 2017. In 2021, McKenna won her third Best Country Song Grammy for co-writing “Crowded Table,” performed by the Highwomen, with Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby. In addition to writing songs for a multitude of award-winning artists — including Hunter Hayes, Faith Hill, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, Reba McEntire, Tim McGraw and Carrie Underwood — McKenna also co-wrote “Always Remember Us This Way,” which was featured in the Oscar-winning 2018 film “A Star Is Born.”