Text Box: Michael Johnathon Saturday June 14 Text Box: O Susanna Concerts THAT BOOKSTORE IN BLYTHEVILLE Text Box: James Talley Friday June 27 Text Box: James Talley is an Oklahoma born folk-country-blues singer/songwriter, whose career now spans nearly forty years. His name has been mentioned alongside Woody Guthrie, Merle Haggard and Bob Dylan, and praised for the quality of his songwriting and wise, expressive voice. Noted author and music critic, Peter Guralnick has said of James' work, "There are few singer-songwriters who could produce a collection of such magnitude coupled at the same time with such lightness, beauty, and all-out social conscience. Woody Guthrie never wrote a more direct or affecting song than "Richland, Washington"; Bruce Springsteen never wrote a more powerful one than "Tryin' Like the Devil. As a youth, his family moved from their home state of Oklahoma to the state of Washington, where his father worked as a chemical operator in the now infamous Hanford plutonium factory. After five years in Richland, Washington, and realizing the hazards his fathers employment presented, the family relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the rich tri-cultured environment of the Southwest.After graduating from the University of New Mexico with a degree in fine arts, James, after encouragement from Pete Seeger, began to write songs that drew upon the culture of the Southwest that he experienced growing up. These early songs eventually became The Road To Torrẹn, a saga of life and death in the Chicano villages of northern New Mexico. These powerful songs sat on the shelf in Nashville until the German Bear Family Records finally released the project in a beautiful box set edition in 1992, over twenty years after it was originally written. It is a moving collaboration of photography and music, akin to James Agee and Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with a photographic essay by James' lifelong friend, renowned photographer Cavalliere Ketchum. Although never released in the United States, it is still available as an import at Amazon.com.The late John Hammond, Sr. at Columbia Records in New York was his first mentor, and championed his writing in the early 1970s, as he had the careers of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen. When Hammond could not get James' more country-flavored sound signed at Columbia in New York, he sent him to Jerry Wexler, whose Atlantic Records was starting a new Country division in Nashville at the time. Wexler signed James to his first recording contract at Atlantic Records in 1972 along with Doug Sahm and Willie Nelson. Atlantic's Nashville operation, however, did not do well at the time and Atlantic closed its Nashville office. James then moved to Capitol Records where he released four now legendary albums during the mid-1970s: Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love (1975); Tryin' Like The Devil (1976); Blackjack Choir (1977) and Ain't It Somthin' (1977). ROLLING STONE, and other music publications, have declared these albums American classics.James performed twice at The White House for President Jimmy Carter, and at the Smithsonian Institution, and in other concert venues around the United States and in Europe. B.B. King played guitar on James third album, Blackjack Choir, in 1976, marking the first time the legendary bluesman had ever recorded in Nashville. Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck, Alan Jackson, Hazel Dickens, the late Gene Clark, and most recently Moby, among others, have recorded his songs. James tours on a limited basis and we are thrilled to present James Talley at That Bookstore in Blytheville for one his rare appearances! Tickets are $15.00 at the door. Text Box: ALL SHOWS START AT 7:00pm Text Box: Presents Text Box: Summer 2008 Text Box: 2008 Text Box: "Michael Johnathon is a folksinger, songwriter, concert performer, author ... and now playwright ... who has a worldwide radio audience approaching a million listeners each week." He also created the world's first multi-camera weekly series broadcast on the Internet. This 'Woody Guthrie in a Cyber World' grew up in upstate New York along the shores of the Hudson River. At 19 years old, he moved to the Mexican border town of Laredo, Texas and found a job working as a late night DJ on KLAR-FM. One night, he played Turn, Turn, Turn by the 60's folkrock group The Byrds. As the song played, he recalled seeing Pete Seeger and Harry Chapin performing in his Dutchess County hometown in New York. By the time the song ended, he decided to pursue a career as a folksinger. Two months later, he bought a guitar and a banjo and settled into the isolated mountain hamlet of Mousie, Kentucky. For the next three years, he traveled up and down the hollers of the Appalachian mountains knocking on doors and learning the music of the mountain people. Michael experienced hundreds of front porch hootenannies throughout Appalachia where folks would pull out their banjos and fiddles, sit on their front porches with him and play the old songs that their grandparents taught them. Soon enough, he began performing concerts at hundreds of colleges, schools and fairs. He performed two thousand Earth Concerts, plus benefits for the homeless, farm families, and shelters helping battered women and children. In all, he sang to over two million people in one four-year stretch. Billboard Magazine headlined him as an "UnSung Hero." He has been featured on CNN, TNN, CMT, AP, Headline News, NPR, Bravo and the BBC ..." His syndicated live audience radio show airs on 489 radio stations worldwide. The show also airs on PBS-TV stations from LA to Orlando, plus it airs each week on XM Satellite Radio.