BEGIN:VCALENDAR METHOD:PUBLISH VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:-//NONSGML Sandhills Development\, LLC//NONSGML Sugar Calendar Fe eds v3.4.0//EN X-WR-CALNAME:Dead Gowns &\; Eliza Edens w/ Isa Burke X-WR-CALDESC:Portland Downtown X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20230312T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20230312T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Dead Gowns &\; Eliza Edens w/ Isa Burke DESCRIPTION:Dead Gowns is the project of Portland-Maine singer-songwrite r Geneviève Beaudoin. Her latest collection\, the HOW EP\, is a confide nt declaration of self-acceptance. First penned during the recording ses sions of a separate Dead Gowns full length in January 2021\, these four songs — urgent\, necessary and assuming a life of their own — rose t o the surface. When a recording opportunity emerged\, thanks to a grant offered by Portland\, ME studio Prism Analog\, the new collection became a reality. The ensuing record boasts a cast of good friends/collaborato rs\, including Luke Kalloch\, Peter McLaughlin\, Nat Baldwin\, Alex Mill an\, Aisha Burns\, and Brett DesChenes. It is a decisive statement from a band comfortably growing to meet its potential.\n\nIdeas of shedding\, and the power and tenderness required to do so\, are evoked again and a gain over the course of this collection. ‘Renter Not a Buyer’ is the cheekiest of the tracks\, but also the most indelible. The chorus is a veritable earworm\, as catchy as it is damning. It’s a multi-faceted e xploration of the shells we inhabit\, the work involved in preserving th em\, and how they so often fail us. The narrator\, hungover and late to work\, tumbles down the stairs from an apartment too drafty to be habita ble. Bleeding from the mouth\, she tries to kiss her date goodbye\, avoi ding a larger reality in her body. Beaudoin’s own experiences with end ometriosis inform this exploration: she sets concealed pain in direct op position to the demands of saving face. This process is invariably fraug ht with contradictions and she is the first to recognize the absurdity o f trying at all.\n\nThe rest of the EP is less fixated on the pitfalls o f how one presents to the world. Though Beaudoin first wrote these songs as unspoken dialogues\, she sees them now as affirmations intended for herself. ‘How You Act’ is a reclamation of agency\, empowering the n arrator to forgive and accept: “Yeah it’s messy\, grow up your heart ” elucidates this revelation\, with Beaudoin’s voice ringing out una ccompanied for a brief moment of quiet triumph.” ‘Change Your Mind is a moving celebration of this new life\, emerging with gusto from th e past. Set atop swelling strings and the warm swagger of a Fender Rhode s\, this affirmation feels earned and regal. But it’s the final track\ , ‘Real Life\,’ – a later addition to the EP – that reminds Beau doin that there’s no fixed point here. She must make peace with the fa ct that her desire for change will always run alongside a past that won t entirely stay past.\n\nThroughout the four songs that make up the HO W EP\, Beaudoin deftly traces the molting process from the darkly comic wriggling of the larval state to the transcendence of uncalloused being. \n\nOn Eliza Edens’ sophomore album We’ll Become the Flowers\, she s eeks to understand what happens after the end. Whether grappling with he artache or a loved one’s mortality\, the Brooklyn-based songwriter rei magines endings not as finite events but as devotional experiences that give way to new beginnings. Edens takes inspiration from folk luminaries such as Nick Drake\, Karen Dalton and Elizabeth Cotten\, sowing her com positions with introspection born from her own grief. What emerges is a glowing collection of songs that serve as a map through tumult\, toward hope.\n\nEdens sings and writes with an equally tender reverie as in her 2020 debut album Time Away From Time. But where We’ll Become the Flow ers diverges\, is in its narrative vulnerability. Each song is bursting: with sorrow\, with anger\, with the miracle of existence. “I wrote th is album out of emotional necessity\,” Edens says. “I had just gone through a breakup. And around the same time\, my mother was diagnosed wi th a neurodegenerative disease. I was spending a lot of my time trying t o understand what it means to watch the hopeful person who raised me see m to slowly fade away before my eyes.” As the pandemic loomed\, Edens turned to music: “This project was a rope I used to pull myself out of misery\, to view the despair I was feeling from a different angle. It w as also my escape.”\n\nAfter a successful crowdfunding campaign\, Eden s recorded We’ll Become the Flowers during a two-week session in July 2021 in a Minneapolis attic. She worked with her trusted friends and col laborators – co-producer and bassist Pat Keen\, audio engineer and gui tarist Dexter Wolfe\, and drummer Shane Leonard. Going into each session \, they envisioned an atmosphere of experimentation which led them to re conceptualize many of Edens’ songs. “I Needed You\,” for example\, changed from “a glum breakup waltz” into “a song that’s feeling good about feeling bad\,” Edens says\, recalling Leonard’s words af ter he suggested changing the time signature.\n\nIn We’ll Become the F lowers\, Edens’ voice rings out sweet yet sorrowful\; playful yet cert ain\; hers is a voice capable of embodying emotion in all its complexity . When Edens asks\, in the record’s opener\, “How do I get there?” she stretches out the last word as if to emphasize its infinite possibi lities. Yet Edens never remains in the abstract\; instead\, she takes us along on her emotional journey\, speaking honestly\, intimately\, and s pecifically about her process: “I tried to start by weeding through th e trauma in my bones\,” she sings in the next verse of “How.” “T o rearrange the memories / Forgive and not keep score.” In “Tom and Jerry\,” Edens’ songwriting becomes more whimsical. “Oh it’s get ting so hard to choose / And I’m chewing on all the alternate routes\, ” Edens sings\, using a playful rhyme with alliterative echo.\n\nIn I Needed You\,” Edens uses the repetition of her hook to convey how h er feelings toward her former lover have shifted over time. The first ti me she sings\, “I needed you\,” her voice is steeped in nostalgia\, romanticizing the lover’s “flannel shirt and calming words.” But t he final time Edens sings\, “I needed you\,” her tone has shifted: s he’s harsher\, irreverent even – and as if in response to rememberin g how much she thought she needed them\, she breaks into laughter. But E dens’ conviction as a songwriter comes across most clearly in “For t he Song.” “And when the rage comes around\,” she sings\, “And ev ery critic’s tearing up her ground / The truth becomes power.” In th is last phrase\, her voice is as direct and unwavering as her words.\n\n Creating We’ll Become the Flowers started as a way for Edens to plant her grief. What took root\, however\, is a series of offerings. These co me in the form of scenes that are both familiar yet deeply personal to E dens: singing loudly on the highway\, wandering a graveyard\, dancing in the wilderness\, watching her mother plant flowers\, wishing to create her own shine\, reminding herself that the only seed worth planting is h ope. Through Edens’ words\, we glimpse the possibility of change\, of forgiveness\, of acceptance and\, in numinous spurts\, joy. If we see Ed ens’ album as a conversation—between Edens and herself and between E dens and the listener—then the conversation opens with a question that she poses in the first song\, “But how do I get there?” In the albu m’s denouement\, “Julia\,” Edens returns to this question\, change d\, and with a final offering: “The pen is in your hand\,” she remin ds us. “And the key is in your certainty.”\n\nIsa Burke is a multi-i nstrumentalist\, singer\, songwriter\, and producer based in Portland\, Maine. Using electric and acoustic guitars\, fiddle\, banjo\, voice\, an d sometimes other instruments\, she creates music that draws from tradit ional folk\, modern indie-rock\, and beyond.\n\nRaised in a musical fami ly in Maine\, Isa came up through the Northeast’s thriving folk music community. She studied at Berklee College of Music\, where she was award ed the 2014 Fletcher Bright Scholarship\, given annually to an outstandi ng fiddler\, and studied with Darol Anger\, Bruce Molsky\, and Bonnie Ha yes. Meanwhile\, she began paying her dues and building her performance chops playing tons of shows in tiny basement clubs throughout Boston and Cambridge.\n\nShe spent the first years of her music career as one-thir d of the band Lula Wiles\, which released 3 albums and an EP on Smithson ian Folkways Recordings and toured internationally\, appearing at Newpor t Folk Festival and winning acclaim from NPR Music\, Rolling Stone\, WNY C\, and Paste Magazine. Their third album\, Shame and Sedition\, promine ntly features Isa’s sonic sensibilities and electric guitar work.\n\nS ince fall 2021\, Isa has been touring internationally as a member of Gra mmy-winning singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan’s Age of Apathy Band\, including appearances at the Kennedy Center\, NPR’s Tiny Desk\, Jimmy Kimmel Live\, CBS Saturday Morning\, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival \, and Telluride Bluegrass Festival.\n\nIsa is a versatile and in-demand collaborator. Whether singing\, playing electric guitar in a rock band\ , playing traditional fiddle tunes\, or some combination of the above\, she brings a voracious musical appetite and a diverse sonic palette to a vast array of projects. As a side musician\, she has toured and recorde d with artists from across the folk/roots/Americana spectrum (Jake Bloun t\, Mipso\, Rosier\, Kris Delmhorst\, Sam Moss\, Stash Wyslouch\, Caroly n Kendrick\, Session Americana). In large part due to her work with Aoif e O’Donovan\, Isa is currently a nominee for Instrumentalist of the Ye ar at the 2023 Americana Music Awards. Isa also served as producer for N ashville singer-songwriter Liv Greene’s debut record Every Bright Penn y and has additional production projects forthcoming in 2023. A bandmate at heart\, she enjoys nothing more than the interlocking of harmony voc als\, of guitar and drums\, of banjo and fiddle. Isa is also an experien ced educator\, teaching classes and workshops in various instruments\, e nsemble playing\, music theory\, and songwriting.\n\nAlso\, there will b e an Isa Burke solo project soon. URL;VALUE=URI:https://portlandmaine.com/events/dead-gowns-eliza-edens-w- isa-burke/ UID:urn:uuid:539c45ff-f24a-4771-9650-cd51dfadc9a9 STATUS:CONFIRMED ORGANIZER: DTSTAMP:20260731T125441Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230708T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230708T230000 LOCATION:181 State St\, Portland\, Maine 04101\, US END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR