Grocery on Home & Eddie's Attic host: Jim White & Minton Sparks - Live at Eddie's Attic!

Doors open at 6:30 pm. Tickets will be $25 at the door.

It’s mighty hard to envision singular performances by a poet and short story author, a character actor and a songwriter being offered on a single bill. That is, until one MINTON SPARKS takes the stage. For she is all three, a lean, literate livewire in a flower print church dress who balances writerly, theatrical and musical gifts as easily as she balances the prop pocketbook on her slender wrist.

There was no existing script for what Sparks does, which can’t be said of too many artistic ventures in the Twenty-first Century, so she’s written one herself these past ten years or so and come up with a name for her role to boot: speaker-songwriter. A speaker-songwriter in action—Sparks being the only one—is a sight to behold. She writes flesh-and-blood vignettes about smalltown southern family members, teasing out the complexity below the surfaces of people’s lives in ways that tickle the sense of humor, prick the conscience and lodge in the soul. She delivers words in beelines of bluesy rhythm and worries the hooks—and there are hooks—backed solely by the nimble acoustic guitar work of John Jackson, who’s perhaps best known for having played with Bob Dylan. And she inhabits each character in full-bodied fashion; now buckdancing, now chicken strutting, now delivering gossip with a self-righteous shrug.

The reception Sparks has gotten in the separate spheres of literature, storytelling and music ought to say something about the quality of all three elements in her work. She’s performed in the American Songbook Series at the Lincoln Center, appeared at the venerable Old Towne School of Folk Music, served as teller-in-residence at the Jonesborough National Storytelling Festival, gotten invited to the prestigious Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, shared the stage with the likes of Rodney Crowell, John Prine and Nanci Griffith, gone over like gangbusters at the Tennessee Prison for Women and received some of the highest possible praise for a southern writer — being called the lovechild of Flannery O’Connor and Hank Williams — by Marshall Chapman, herself a songwriting force of nature. These are no insignificant accomplishments.

Along the way, Sparks has documented the captivating evolution of her work with albums (2001’s Middlin’ Sisters, 2003’s This Dress and 2005’s Sin Sick), books (2007’s Desperate Ransom: Setting Her Family Free and 2008’s White Lightning) and a performance film (2006’s Open Casket). The first of those albums boasts the contributions of no less than Waylon Jennings and multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott, the next Irish siren Maura O’Connell and bluesman Keb’ Mo’, and the third Grammy-winning acoustic producer Gary Paczosa and players including John Jackson, blues pianist Steve Conn, mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile and clawhammer banjo stylist Abigail Washburn. All of which is to say, musicians of stature from all corners of the roots world dig Sparks’ unorthodox work.

Considering the effect Sparks has in-character in-person, the latest addition to her catalog is the most natural thing in the world: an album that captures her and Jackson performing 13 memorable story-songs in front of an audience. And not just any audience. Live at the Station Inn was recorded at Nashville’s storied no-frills bluegrass club on the hottest day of the summer before a hometown crowd. More than a few of her kin were there. And, from the sound of things, everybody was laughing, hollering, listening intently and just getting generally caught up in the moments she creates. Sparks has that effect on people.

Singer songwriter, JIM WHITE, has a habit of snatching meaning from thin air. His critically acclaimed debut album, The Mysterious Tale of How I Shouted Wrong-Eyed Jesus, tapped into the zeitgeist of what would soon blossom into the lo-fi Americana movement. "Back then (1997) there was maybe twenty of us doing it---Wilco and 16 Horsepower, of course Lucinda and Steve Earle and The Jayhawks. Now, hell, there's a million lonesome geniuses out there, each one singing their heart out sadder than the next." Where It Hits You is Jim's chance to sing his heart out---and sing he does---no small feat, considering the heart that's singing was badly broken during the making of the record.

"Midway through it my wife left me. Just walked out the door...into the arms of younger man. We have kids, you know? Lord, what a mess. I was...well, what's a word lower than devastated? I was sub-devastated. Many of the songs on this record I wrote for her. So what do you do? I had to finish it, but singing those songs, hearing those words over and over, it was quite a trial."

As is often the case with cathartic upheaval, sometimes tribulation forces buried treasure to the surface. This holds true with Where It Hits You, as rich and diverse a record as Jim has ever produced. From the brooding dreamlike opener, “Chase The Dark Away,” to the wild eyed stomp of “Here We Go,” to the Beefheartesque “Infinite Mind,” to the Harvest-era Neil Young ringer “My Brother's Keeper,” Where It Hits You finds Jim in full musical stride, effortlessly blending genres and approaches in ways that sometimes boggle the mind. But as White's work has shown over the arc of his career, despite the experimental extremes he recklessly embraces, there's always a cohesive, singular identity that holds the divergent influences together.

Making sense of the challenges that life presents to an outsider seems to be an obsession with the Athens, Georgia resident, and in some ways explains his cult status among deep thinkers. Known primarily for both his genre bending records like his 2001 break out album No Such Place and 2007's Transnormal Skiperoo, as well as his memorable role as narrator/guide of the award winning BBC documentary film Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus, Jim's an eternally restless soul. His musical output is diverse and considerable---five full length records, numerous side projects including last year's much lauded Sounds of the Americans (4 stars UK Uncut), which was the offshoot of a wildly eclectic score Jim wrote for a theater production of Sam Shepherd's works staged by the legendary Julliard Drama School.

Beyond the musical sphere Jim's an accomplished fiction writer, publishing short stories in both the US and abroad. His essay The Bottom will be a featured article in the premier edition of new west coast music mag, The Fixer. He's served as a literary commentator alongside luminaries Edward Albee and Pico Iyer for the National Endowment of the Arts. Not content to let any aesthetic avenue go unexplored, Jim's a fine art photographer (he does his own album covers!) and visual artist as well, having mounted shows at the prestigious Douglas Hyde Gallery at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland and Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston/Salem. Having split from long time label Luaka Bop, Jim took the reins of Where It Hits You, producing and financing it himself. "It was liberating in some ways. But damn, I miss the extraordinary guidance and insights David (Byrne) and Yale (Evelev) always offered. It was tough. Those folks at Luaka Bop are like family to me, but we all understood it was time for me to move on."

Buoyed by the success of helming Where It Hits You, Jim decided to delve further into producing, working on several other artists records in 2010, most notably the debut album of the upstart Belgian Americana outfit Stanton, (featuring G.C Hellings, who Jim describes as "The best guitar player I ever heard. Good as Doug Pettibone...at least.") as well as eccentric songsmith Dare Dukes and west coast folk darling Haroula Rose.