The Family Trade: Songs-in-Progress Live!
Saturday, June 20, 7:00-8:00pm
Location: Online (Facebook and Instagram Live) + Onsite (Granary Arts)
Granary Fellows Ashley Hanson and Brian Laidlaw, from the folk band The Family Trade, will be live-streaming an outdoor concert on Saturday night, playing some of their favorite old songs, and debuting some of the new songs they've been writing during their artist residency in Sanpete.
About the Fellows
Ashley Hanson is a social practice and theater artist, community organizer, entrepreneur and advocate for arts in rural areas. She is the Founder and Director of the Department of Public Transformation, an artist-led organization that collaborates with local artists and civic leaders in rural areas to develop creative strategies for community connection and civic participation. She is also the Founder and Director of PlaceBase Productions, a theater company that creates original, site-specific musicals celebrating small town life. She was recently named a 2018 Obama Foundation Fellow and a 2019 Bush Foundation Fellow for her work with rural communities. She is also a musician who plays with the folk-ensemble The Family Trade, and her recent solo album, The Kirkbride Sessions - recorded during a Springboard for the Arts Hinge Arts Residency, explores the hidden narratives of ruralness. She holds a BA in Performance and Social Change from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Applied Theater from the University of Manchester (UK) with an emphasis on the role of arts in rural community development. She is a firm believer in the power of people, places, play and exclamation points! www.publictransformation.org www.ashhanson.com
Brian Laidlaw is an author and songwriter who, after many years as a full-time touring folksinger and a stint on the songwriting faculty at McNally Smith College of Music, has just completed a Ph.D. in English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver. His books include THE STUNTMAN (Milkweed Editions, 2015) and THE MIRRORMAKER (Milkweed Editions, 2018), each of which was released with a companion album of original music, as well as the forthcoming SUMMER ERR: A JOHN MUIR ERASURE (Mount Vision Press, 2020). He has had lyrics in American Songwriter Magazine and Songwriting Consultant credits on multiple Grammy-Award- winning and -nominated albums, most recently Winterland by the Okee Dokee Brothers. A lifelong student of folk music, Brian’s collaborative songwriting practice uses the timeless simplicity of traditional forms to talk -- and sing -- about our decidedly complex experience of community and landscape in the modern American West. www.brianlaidlaw.com
Event is free and open to the public.