Willy Porter and Ryan Fitzsimmons

WILLY PORTER is often at his strongest as a solo act. Porter honed his chops the natural way, busking across Europe and playing every little coffeehouse and dive bar on both sides of the Mississippi. He’s a veteran performer who takes his audiences with him on the journey. He elicits a rare kind of communication between artist and audience, mostly because he’s able to read his audiences so well.

Puremusic.com describes Willy Porter in this way: “Willy Porter is perhaps best known as a down tuned six string wonder, but as a singer and a writer, and as a showman, he merits equal regard.” Ryan Fitzsimmons, who opens the show, has steadily built a reputation as one of the Northeast’s most compelling songwriters. His latest release, Cold Sky, has received excellent reviews.

WILLY PORTER is often at his strongest as a solo act. Porter honed his chops the natural way, busking across Europe and playing every little coffeehouse and dive bar on both sides of the Mississippi. He’s a veteran performer who takes his audiences with him on the journey. He elicits a rare kind of communication between artist and audience, mostly because he’s able to read his audiences so well.

 Porter was raised near Milwaukee, and his first big breaks were playing theater-sized shows there and in Madison. As could be expected from someone from this part of the country, there’s an element of blues in Porter’s singing and songwriting and in most of his live shows, although he’s best thought of as a contemporary singer/songwriter, straight out of the world of folk music. He began playing viola, a notoriously difficult instrument to master, in his youth, but found he lacked the discipline for classical music as a career path. He had a revelation in his teens when he found Leo Kottke’s album, 6 & 12 String Guitar. Kottke’s playing opened up new vistas for Porter, who began playing guitar after dropping his viola studies.

In the ’90s, Porter went through a period of being a rising star, but he has since settled back comfortably into the role of independent musician, recording for small labels and selling his recordings at gigs. Among the breaks he caught in the ’90s were opening slots for the likes of Jeff Beck, Rickie Lee Jones, Tori Amos, Paul Simon, the Cranberries, and other pop and rock stars. He’s been joined on subsequent recordings under his own name by the likes of Ian Anderson and Martin Barre from Jethro Tull, who Porter opened for on a tour in Europe. Porter’s discography numbers upwards of eight albums

Over the past 10 years Ryan Fitzsimmons has woven his way throughout New England, creating a strong presence in a number of the local music scenes. When he lived in Providence, RI, the Providence Phoenix awarded him the title of Best Male Vocalist. Ryan was also the founder of the AS220 Sunday Songwriters Series, which continues to this day.

Upon relocating to the Boston area, Ryan has become a fixture in the Americana scene with regular appearances at venerable Cambridge venues such as Club Passim, the Lizard Lounge and Toad. This all has proven to be fertile ground for his latest release, Cold Sky, produced by David “Goody” Goodrich (Chris Smither, Peter Mulvey). He is now poised to let the rest of the country in on a secret his loyal New England following has known for quite some time: that Ryan Fitzsimmons shows are a powerhouse event, compelling, and genre defying as his songwriting.