The Suitcase Junket must be seen to be believed!

The me&thee presents a very special performer on Friday, April 29. Artist, tinkerer, tunesmith, swamp Yankee, Matt Lorenz aka The Suitcase Junket is a one man salvage specialist singing into the hollow of a Dumpster guitar, slipping a broken bottleneck onto the slide finger, railing on a box of twisted forks and bones, rocking till every sound is ragged at its edges, till the house is singing back. Then, unplugging all the amps and letting one mountain ballad soar over the raw strings on that guitar. Wishbone Zoe, the auditory / visual avant-indie project of Saera K based out of western Massachusetts opens the show. Doors open at 7:30 PM for this 8:00 PM show at the me&thee coffeehouse which is located at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead at 28 Mugford Street.

“I aim to write good songs and sing them honestly” says Lorenz. He does that and more. The Suitcase Junket’s artistic vision is one of salvaged and repurposed objects, images and emotions. His innovative junk-percussion constructions, original album art featuring inanimate objects with wings, and the high craft of his songwriting all combine to create a unique and engaging entity with a force and style all its own. Lorenz’s self-taught throat-singing adds a fascinating edge to the overall sound. “I’m interested in the hidden voices that reside within things: the songs stuck inside instruments, the story behind the object, the mysterious weight of a word, the harmonic sequence that’s in every note waiting to be broken as light through a prism.”

Lorenz tours The Suitcase Junket nationally playing on festival stages and city street corners, in concert halls and dive bars, in living rooms and listening rooms. The sound isn’t easy to pin into a genre, but The SuitcaseJunket is often likened to Tom Waits, The Black Keys and Andrew Bird. Lorenz’s songwriting is unexpected, powerful and poignant, drawing from the deep well of the American musical traditions of folk, rock, blues and storytelling, all sharpened with a keen pop sensibility. With masterful command over instruments of his own creation, he silences a room with the first notes of his throat singing and holds the crowd until the final chords of his guitar. When he plays you get the sense that he is truly playing and that he’d be doing it just as joyfully with or without an audience.

Lorenz has released four recordings as The Suitcase Junket Sever and Lift (2009) and Knock It Down (2011) and Make Time (2015) and most recently Dying Star (2016). “The band” is built around a resurrected dumpster-diamond guitar, an old oversized suitcase, a hi-hat, a gas-can baby-shoe foot-drum, a cookpot-soupcan-tambourine foot-drum, a circular-saw-blade bell and a box of bones and silverware that operate much like a hi-hat. He pounds out rhythms with his feet and his twang-and-buzz guitar growls through a couple of old tube amps. On top of all this is the ethereal edge of his overtone throat-singing. This act is unique and not to be missed.

Wishbone Zoe’s show has been described as “anti-boring” and has been known to both deeply resonate with and/or bamboozle people of all ages. A girl with a quiet voice, she traverses the world with a rotating show of humans and dancing coyote people, or as a one-lady band that has the capacity to create a presence and sound as full and commanding as any three or four-piece.

In the past, she's shared bills with the likes of The Suitcase Junket, Arc Iris, And The Kids, Bella's Bartok, Heather Maloney, Rushad Eggleston, Peter Mulvey, and Lydia Loveless. Wishbone Zoe has played regionally and nationally since 2011 at rooms such as Club Passim, Signature Sounds' Parlor Room, the Vanilla Bean and Melodica Fest. She released her first album and companion graphic libretto All of These Oddities in 2014 and is currently working on a second one to be released soon. Saera is working to establish herself as a working visual artist as well and has hung shows in Florence, Northampton and Greenfield, MA.

Tickets for the performance by The Suitcase Junket with Wishbone Zoe opening are $15 in advance and $18 at the door. Tickets are available online at www.meanthee.org and can be purchased in person in Marblehead at either the Spirit of ’76 Bookstore or the Arnould Gallery As at all me & thee coffeehouse events, refreshments are available, including homemade pastries, coffee, and teas. The me & thee has a handicapped-accessible entrance and an accessible bathroom, is a smoke-free environment, and is easily reached by MBTA bus. The me & thee is the oldest continually running acoustic coffeehouse in New England, and probably the country. The me & thee has been and will always be a volunteer, non-profit organization sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead. For information and directions, call 781-631-8987 or check the websitewww.meandthee.org.

Next concert: May 6: Two extraordinary singer-songwriters—Bill Staines and David Roth