The Barn hosts a beautiful night of music with The Mammals and Sarah Lee Guthrie.
The Mammals are Ruth Ungar, Mike Merenda, and a cohort of compelling collaborators who form a touring quintet on the fiddle, banjo, guitar, organ, bass, and drums. Over the past 20 years they have quietly composed a canon of original songs that both reflect our culture and offer a vision of how the world might yet be. “These days we sing about what we’re for over what we’re against,” says singer/songwriter, Mike Merenda, and what they're for is "nothing short of sublime” according to (Americana UK).
A rough and tumble decade in the 00's forged The Mammals identity as "subversive acoustic traditionalists" or a "party band with a conscience." Re-emerging in 2017 from a hibernation period during-which the band's founders explored new songwriting terrain, The Mammals “don’t suffer from multiple genre syndrome, they celebrate it as if gleefully aware that the sound barriers separating old-timey music, vintage pop and contemporary folk are as permeable as cotton” (Washington Post). Their latest album, Nonet, "marshalls the defiant spirit needed to heal a damaged world" (No Depression).
In 2023 they’ll be releasing a series of singles recorded at their own Humble Abode Music, as well as issuing bonus material from 2020’s, Nonet.
You can also catch The Mammals semi-annually at The Hoot, a folk festival they curate and produce at The Ashokan Center in Olivebridge, NY.
Sarah Lee Guthrie’s lineage is undeniable. But if you close your eyes and forget that her last name is synonymous with the river-legacy of a widening current of Americana folk music, you’d still be drawn to the clarity and soul behind her voice. There is a gentle urgency to her interpretations of the songs she sings and the classic music of her heritage. It flows from the continuity of her family, her vital artistic life today, and the songs that have guided her to where she now stands. It’s been hinted at since she first stepped on the stages of Wolf Trap and Carnegie Hall as a teenager in 1993 singing Pete Seeger’s “Sailin’ Down My Golden River” for sold-out audiences. Decades down the road, Sarah Lee Guthrie is in full bloom. On 2009’s Go Waggaloo she created a family album of original songs (and a few with Woody’s lyrics) that won a Golden Medallion from The Parents' Choice Foundation. The tour that followed in 2010, The Guthrie Family Rides Again, brought it all together as she found herself surrounded by generations of family and friends all celebrating the music of her family.
Sarah Lee Guthrie now ventures on her own path, the rich culture of her family running through the warmth of her own bloodlines. In addition to her solo act, the singer-songwriter, now settled in Austin, TX, joined forces with her sister Cathy in the winter of 2021 to form Guthrie Girls, a 6-piece honky tonk band featuring some of Austin’s finest instrumentalists. In a few short months, local buzz and the strength of their debut EP First Season carried Guthrie Girls to prominent slots at HIPNIC, Kerrville Folk Festival, and Kate Wolf Music Festival, among others. Guthrie also performed solo at this year’s Newport Folk Festival and 30A Songwriters Festival.