Dom Flemons & Amythyst Kiah at The Ridgefield Playhouse

From The Ridgefield Playhouse: A proficient player of the banjo, fife, guitar, harmonica, percussion, quills, and rhythm bones Grammy Award-winner, two-time Emmy Award nominee and founding member of The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dom Flemons is known as “The American Songster.” A professed Southern Gothic, alt-country blues singer/songwriter, Amythyst Kiah opened the sold-out Rhiannon Giddens show at The Playhouse last year and is part of Giddens’ Smithsonian Folkways supergroup, Our Native Daughters. Flemons brings songs from his latest album, Black Cowboys and Kiah her deeply moving, hypnotic sound that stirs echoes of a distant and restless past to The Ridgefield Playhouse on an enticing double bill Thursday, November 14 at 8pm, part of Mountain Dew Country & Bluegrass Series. Media partner for this event is WFUV, The Real Alternative.

Dom Flemons repertoire of music covers nearly 100 years of American folklore, ballads, and tunes. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona and currently living in the Washington, D.C. area, Flemons is a music scholar, historian, record collector, and a multi-instrumentalist. Flemons tells NPR he first learned about black cowboys who helped settle the American West after the Civil War from a book called The Negro Cowboys by Phillip Durham.

“Being an African-American person that's half-African-American, half-Mexican-American from the Southwest, I just found that to be a fascinating story,“ he says.

The album titled Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys was released in 2018 on the Smithsonian Folkways label and received a Grammy Award Nomination for Best Folk Album at the 61st Grammy Awards in 2019. The Black Cowboysalbum peaked at #5 on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts and Flemons was nominated for 2018 Artist of The Year at the International Folk Music Awards, Best Acoustic Album at the 2019 Blues Music Awards, Best Folk Album at the 2019 A2IM Liberia Awards, and has won a 2019 WAMMIE Award for Best Folk Album.

In 2018, Flemons had his major solo debut at the Grand Ole Opry, on a night that included Carrie Underwood and Old Crow Medicine Show, and has been included in the 2018 class of American Currents at the Country Music Hall of Fame Exhibit alongside Reba McEntire, Jeannie Seely, Chris Stapleton, Molly Tuttle, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Kane Brown, Dan Auerbach, Dan + Shay, John Prine and more. Flemons was nominated for two Emmys at the 2018 National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Mid-America Awards for PBS Episode: “Songcraft Presents Dom Flemons” and for the co-written song “Good Ole Days” with songwriter Ben Arthur.

He was the first Artist-in-Residence at the “Making American Music Internship Program” at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in the summer of 2018. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Folk Alliance International, Music Maker Relief Foundation and is an Advisor to the Washington, D.C Chapter of the Recording Academy. In 2005, Flemons co-founded the Carolina Chocolate Drops who won a Grammy for “Best Traditional Folk Album” in 2010 and were nominated for “Best Folk Album” in 2012. He left the group to pursue his solo career in 2014.

In 2016 the Carolina Chocolate Drops were inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame and are featured in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her commanding stage presence is only matched by her raw and powerful vocals — “One of roots music’s most exciting emerging talents,” according to Rolling Stone Magazine, Amythyst Kiah was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Accompanied interchangeably with banjo, acoustic guitar, or a full band, her eclectic influences span decades, finding inspiration in old time music, alternative rock, folk, country, and blues. Our Native Daughters, her recent collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell (Birds of Chicago), has delivered a full-length album produced by Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell, Songs of Our Native Daughters (out now on Smithsonian Folkways).

NPR described the opening track, “Black Myself,” written by Kiah, as "the simmering defiance of self-respect in the face of racism.” The supergroup hit the road in July with a series of special dates that included performances at Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian Museum of African American History & Culture and Newport Folk Festival. Most recently, the group has been nominated for Duo/Group of the Year at the 2019 Americana Honors & Awards. Kiah regularly tours the United Kingdom and has performed at Celtic Connections, Southern Fried Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, and SummerTyne Americana Festival. She is a crowd favorite at Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion in the U.S. and has shined at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, Winnipeg Folk Festival, and opening for artists such as the Indigo Girls, Rhiannon Giddens, Old Crow Medicine Show, First Aid Kit, Darrell Scott, and Tim O'Brien. Provocative and fierce, Kiah’s ability to cross boundaries is groundbreaking and simply unforgettable.

This press release was produced by The Ridgefield Playhouse. The views expressed here are the author's own.