Our Southern Souls presents Storytellers at the Frog Pond

Our Southern Souls presents Storytellers at the Frog Pond with Caroline Herring, Claire Holley, Grayson Capps, and Caitlyn Cannon. Claire, Grayson, and Caitlyn are some of the South’s best songwriters. At the beginning of the show, we will talk about growing up in Mississippi and Alabama and the influence that has on telling stories. This is a benefit for the Frog Pond at Blue Moon Farm. Tickets are a $40 donation per person. To get on the guest list and for more information about attending a show at the Frog Pond, email Cathe Steele at thefrogpondsundaysocial@gmail.com

Corky Hughes and Gram Rea are playing on the side.

About the songwriters…

Claire Holley
Singer/songwriter Claire Holley grew up listening to her Dad’s records and soaking up her grandmother’s jazz piano playing as a little girl in the deep south. She began writing songs in college, but it was while living in North Carolina that she started getting regular airplay on WUNC’s Back Porch Music and embraced a life in music. Claire’s songs are filled with “simple truths and timeless imagery that cannot be worn away with repeated listenings” says No Depression, and Huffington Post called Claire’s voice “achingly beautiful.” She lives in Los Angeles where she is developing a one-woman-show.

Caroline Herring
Caroline Herring is an American singer/songwriter who inspires audiences through her songs about injustice, hope and perseverance. Herring started her career in Austin TX when she won Best New Artist at the SXSW Austin Music Awards. Since that time, she has recorded eight albums and has toured throughout the United States and Europe for almost 20 years. Herring has appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition, BBC 4’s Front Row and A Prairie Home Companion. She co-founded Thacker Mountain Radio in 1997, a live-audience musical and literary broadcast which airs to this day each Saturday evening on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

Grayson Capps
Hailed by NPR’s Mountain Stage for his “unbridled energy and authenticity,” Capps first emerged as a solo artist in 2005 following stints in the New Orleans thrash folk band the House Levelers, which he joined while still a student studying theater at Tulane, and his subsequent blues-rock group, Stavin’ Chain. His proper debut release under his own name, ‘If You Knew My Mind,’ earned rave reviews, with the New Orleans Times Picayune writing that “his character-based narratives are guaranteed to make you ache and exult” and Exclaim! calling it “a Southern gothic tour de force.” After Hurricane Katrina forced Capps to relocate to Franklin, TN, he went on to release a string of similarly exalted albums that earned him devoted followings in both the US and Europe, including 2006’s ‘Wail & Ride,’ which JamBase said “hums with quiet wisdom and unforced momentum;” 2007’s ‘Songbones,’ described by All Music as “poetry filled with the bloody glory and taut acceptance of real life on the bottom;” and 2008’s ‘Rott & Roll,” an album that prompted American Songwriter to declare, “Take the poetry of Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt, combine with Steve Earle’s edgy attitude and stir with a little cup of the bayou-blues (think Howlin’ Wolf) and you start to get a taste of Capps’s scrumptious gothic gumbo.” He followed it up in 2011 by assembling a crew of Gulf Coast all stars to back him on ‘The Lost Cause Minstrels,’ a record which found him more than living up to the “Tennessee Williams-meets-Charles Bukowski” tag he’d earned from Blurt.

Caitlyn Cannon
According to Saving Country Music, Cannon’s “not a songwriter for the winners; she’s a songwriter for the broken, the downtrodden, the losers, the motherfuckers. She sings about real shit that most other songwriters don’t have the guts to broach. A crack pool player and a hilarious person on stage who could have a second career as a comedian, Caitlin Cannon is one of those country artists that slides so criminally under the radar; it angers the blood…”

About the Frog Pond…
The Frog Pond at Blue Moon Farm in Silverhill, Alabama is a private outdoor house concert in a private home. We are a Pro Member of The Folk Alliance International and many of the country’s best singer songwriters and musicians have graced our humble little “front porch”.

The venue is as distinctive as the performers. The Frog Pond itself, is an outdoor stage under a 200 year old Cedar tree on Blue Moon Farm, a property owned by Cathe Steele, who formerly managed the entertainment at Pirates Cove in Josephine, Alabama. Cathe, and her songwriter friend Grayson Capps, took inspiration for the Frog Pond house concerts series from the famed “Midnight Rambles” conducted by drummer Levon Helm. As she describes it, the core idea is to bring musicians and serious listeners together in an informal but respectful house concert setting on the farm where the focus is firmly on the music and community built through artists and listeners. It’s a magical place where music is brought back to it’s roots, in a true listening atmosphere where songwriters and musicians alike come together to “wood shed” and network. The Frog Pond offers each artist the opportunity to play with others that they would not normally have the opportunity to perform with, while sharing fan bases & introducing their music to new ears within an intimate venue of true music lovers. We are a not for profit house concert with original music by the performers. All proceeds go to our songwriters.

At Blue Moon Farm, patrons bring their own chairs and beverages and are encouraged to participate in a communal covered-dish dinner. Overnight camping is allowed for out of towners. The house concerts are intimate, unique, and you must be on the guest list to attend as it is not open to the public. Please feel free to contact us for details and an invite to experience the musical magic and community of The Frog Pond at Blue Moon Farm.