Venues
Events
VideoMusic
Dar Williams’ In the Time Of Gods
Sings From Her New Album At The Bell House
With a concert scheduled for the day after Christmas, one artist says she hopes her upcoming performance will leave the audience with a message of: “Congratulations – you survived the holiday.”
Pop-folk singer and songwriter Dar Williams will return for her second performance at The Bell House in Brooklyn on Monday, Dec. 26, and is already looking ahead to the New Year.
“There’s a kind of Christmas exhaustion that people experience at this time of the year, and there’s something about this concert that just celebrates the beginning of the New Year a few days early,” she says.
Williams will sing some of her seasonal songs, as well as pieces from past albums. In addition, she will perform selections from her newest CD, “In the Time of Gods,” to be released in April 2012.
Over the course of her career, Williams has transitioned from her first appearances in coffeehouses in the Northeast to performances and recordings with famed artists including Patty Griffin and Ani DiFranco. Her most recent album, “Many Great Companions,” released in 2010, features collaborations with notable musical talents such as Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Sean and Sara Watkins of “Nickel Creek.”
Williams has been lauded for using “a reporter’s keen eye and a fiction writer’s feel for nuance” to describe “the big picture of how people approach life.” Her songs contain themes of religion, family, sexuality and politics – concepts that many listeners can relate to on one level or another – and convey her stories through a mix of fiction and her own personal memories.
The theme that emerged for her upcoming album “In the Time of Gods” was power, Williams says. She drew inspiration from stories she’s read or people she’s known personally who have taken risks in their lives, saved lives or transformed their communities – people who “experience what it is to have power and to do something about it,” she says.
Williams’ talents are not limited to just music. She has written two children’s books, and community service is also an important part of her life. She supports eco-friendly initiatives, local food movements and children’s arts outreach programs.
“I was raised to believe that if you take everything good in your life and funnel it into … your own material excesses, something very bad would happen to you,” she explains. “So the question is if you’re happy, and you’re solvent and you have a microphone, why not do a fundraiser or two for people who are not solvent, and who don’t have a chance to amplify their voices?”
For ticket information, visit: http://www.thebellhouseny.com/calendar.php