Hard Luck Cafe
LONESOME TRAVELER + BILL LAUTER
Presented with the Folk Music Society of Huntington (FMSH)
Wednesday, January 15th at 7 PM
$20 Public | $15 Members
Lonesome Traveler — a narrative musical
about legendary folk groups The Weavers and The Almanac Singers and featuring
the songs of iconic folk singers Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger — will
be performed by Long Islanders Ira Perlman and Denise
Romas during the monthly Hard Luck Café concert
series. Huntington-based singer and guitarist Bill Lauter will
perform a short opening set featuring his renditions of songs from that era. An
open mic, for which sign-up is at 6:30pm, precedes the concert.
Hays, Guthrie and Seeger performed together with The Almanac
Singers beginning in the 1940s. Their songs were part of the musical soundtrack
for the American labor movement and the struggles for social justice,
influenced generations of other musicians, and have been popularized and taught
in public schools throughout the country. In Lonesome Traveler,
you’ll hear and might even sing along to such classics as “Goodnight Irene,”
“If I Had a Hammer,” “Talking Union Blues,” “Tzena, Tzena,” and “Union Maid.”
The songs will be interspersed with narrative based on/excerpted from Doris
Willens’ biography of Lee Hays entitled Lonesome Traveler, which
was also Hays’ theme song.
A past president of the Folk Music Society of Huntington,
Ira Perlman has appeared at numerous Long Island folk venues performing both
well-known and obscure folk songs. Denise Romas — who immersed herself in the
music of Peter, Paul and Mary and Joan Baez at an early age — performs a
repertoire of original songs and covers at venues across Long Island.