Events downtown

Sep 08

Lucy Kaplansky w/ Larry John McNally
Location: 181 State St, Portland, Maine 04101, US
7:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Event website

Lucy Kaplansky is an acclaimed singer-songwriter of rare talent, “a truly gifted performer with a bag full of enchanting songs” (The New Yorker) and “the troubadour laureate of modern city folk” (The Boston Globe). She has released eight critically acclaimed CDs, two of which were awarded Best Pop Album of the year by the Association for Independent Music. National Public Radio described her 2012 album “Reunion” as “a master class in making the personal universal,” and her most recent album “Everyday Street” has been dubbed“ spare and luminous” and
“remarkable.”

Lucy was part of folk supergroup Cry Cry Cry with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell (which The New Yorker dubbed “a collection of lovely harmonizing and pure emotion”). Their album was an astonishing success in stores and on radio resulting in a national tour of sold-out concerts, as well as a national sold-out reunion tour in 2018.

Her recording of Roxy Music’s “More than This” has over 12 million streams on Spotify, and she has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, and Morning Edition as well as BBC Radio 2 and 4, and CBS Sunday Morning, and has sung harmony on albums by Suzanne Vega, Bryan Ferry, Nanci Griffith and Shawn Colvin. Her song “Guilty as Sin” was featured in the NBC television show “Ed,” and her vocals were featured in the Tom Cruise film “The Firm.” She will be releasing her latest album, “Last Days of Summer,” written and recorded
during the pandemic, in Spring 2022.

Larry John McNally’s songs have been recorded by some of the greatest recording artists of all time, including The Eagles, Aaron Neville, Bonnie Raitt, Mavis Staples, Rod Stewart and more. His lyrics are literary yet conversational and his guitar playing has been described as “folk-Hendrix.”

The past few years, he has performed all over the world; including in Argentina, Japan, the UK, Portugal, and Holland both as a solo artist and as half of the duo McNally Waters with keyboardist Harry Waters.

Bonnie Raitt says, “Nobody’s Girl” is a masterpiece. Some of my favorite songs I’ve ever recorded are written by men – men who are highly conscious of what modern men could be. The song has a complexity in the lyric that is so artful. Larry John McNally is one of my favorite writers ever. He’s an undersung, underrated brilliant artist, and is constantly putting out records. He should be appreciated more than he is.”