Two voices in the world of spoken word will share the stage at Charles and Myrtle’s Coffeehouse and bring the different parts and people of the South they write about to life. The coffeehouse is located inside Christ Unity Church at 105 McBrien Road. There is a $10 suggested donation at the door.
Review for Minton Sparks and Christian Collier:
Minton Sparks is a Grammy-nominated artist who has performed with such acts as John Prine, the Punch Brothers, and Ben Folds. In 2011, she became the first winner of the Fellowship of Southern Writers' Award for Spoken Word. Her website aptly says that by “fusing music, poetry, and her intoxicating gift for storytelling, Minton Sparks paints word pictures of the rural South that put you square in the middle of the people and the places she knows like the back of her hand.”
Christian J. Collier is an accomplished writer and musician who has performed with several members of HBO’s Def Poetry and legendary poet Ishmael Reed to name a few. In November of 2013, he released his debut EP Between Beauty & Bedlam and since 2009, he has sold close to 1,000 copies of his chapbook Ghosts & Echoes solely off the strength of his live performances. He has also been featured three times on the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel, which prides itself on featuring the best spoken word artists working today.
Rik Palieri will play at Charles and Myrtle's Coffeehouse on Saturday at 8 p.m. There is a $10 suggested donation at the door.
Review for Rik Palieri:
Cut from similar tattered cloth to elder hobo minstrels Seeger and Guthrie, Palieri has toured the world many times over. As “Totem Pole” Rik Palieri — a nickname that references both the instruments he “totes” around and his Polish heritage — he penned a book in 2003 chronicling his life and travels: The Road Is My Mistress: Tales of a Roustabout Songster.
Palieri has recorded six solo albums and is in regular rotation on folk-centric radio stations around the globe. He appeared on the compilation Singing Through the Hard Times: A Tribute to Utah Phillips, in honor of his old friend and mentor. The comp was nominated for a 2009 Grammy. Palieri keeps the paper certificate acknowledging that nomination on his living room wall, where it is crowded in by more interesting cultural knickknacks and memorabilia he’s picked up on his travels — photos, tribal jewelry and handmade instruments, almost all of them gifts.
“I guess they only give you the little statue when you win,” he jokes.
Since 1999, Palieri has hosted a cable access television show on Burlington’s Vermont Community Access Media, “The Songwriter’s Notebook.” There he interviews and performs with like-minded songsters, from locals to internationally known performers such as Seeger, Phillips, Tom Paxton and the Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Dom Flemons. The volumes of tapes and DVDs of that show were recently acquired by the American Folklife Center for permanent collection at the Library of Congress.