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Steve Earle & City Winery Present: The 10th Annual John Henry's Friends Benefit Featuring: Steve Earle, Jackson Browne, Margaret Glaspy and Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams (Ultimate VIP Pass)
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Includes a pair of VIP tickets to the show at Town Hall on November 4th, access to rehearsals at City Winery and admission to the rehearsal show at The Loft at City Winery Pier 57 on November 3rd, access to soundcheck and backstage at Town Hall on November 4th, signed poster by all of the artists and admission to the after party at City Winery immediately following the show on November 4th. ($5,000)
General Admission tickets are on sale 9/13
On November 4th, 2024, City Winery and Steve Earle will host the 10th annual John Henry's Friends Benefit to raise funds for children and young adults diagnosed with autism. Joining Steve Earle will be Jackson Browne, who was the very first guest in the inaugural benefit show, Margaret Glaspy and Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams. Each guest will each join with short sets of their own, making an unforgettable night of amazing music. All net ticket proceeds will be donated to The Keswell School, an educational program for children and young adults with autism. Founded on the belief that children diagnosed with ASD can live full and productive lives as integrated members of their communities, The Keswell School provides educational, therapeutic and supportive services for children diagnosed with ASD and their families. This is a topic dear to Steve, as his son, John Henry, attends the school.
About the Artists:
STEVE EARLE
Steve Earle is one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters of his generation. A protege of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, he quickly became a master storyteller in his own right, with his songs being recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, The Pretenders, and countless others. 1986 saw the release of his record, Guitar Town, which shot to number one on the country charts and is now regarded as a classic of the Americana genre. Most recently, Earle’s 1988 hit Copperhead Road was made an official state song of Tennessee in 2023.
Subsequent releases like The Revolution Starts...Now (2004), Washington Square Serenade (2007), and TOWNES (2009) received consecutive GRAMMY® Awards. His most recent album, Jerry Jeff (2022) consisted of Earle’s versions of songs written by Jerry Jeff Walker, one of his mentors.
Earle has published both a novel I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011) and Dog House Roses, a collection of short stories (Houghton Mifflin 2003).
Earle produced albums for other artists such as Joan Baez (Day After Tomorrow) and Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels on A Gravel Road)
As an actor, Earle has appeared in several films and had recurring roles in the HBO series The Wire and Tremé. In 2009, Earle appeared in the off-Broadway play Samara, for which he also wrote a score that The New York Times described as “exquisitely subliminal.” Earle wrote music for and appeared in Coal Country, for which he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Earle is the host of the weekly show Hard Core Troubadour on Sirius Radio’s Outlaw Country channel.
In 2020, Earle was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. And in 2023, Steve was honored by the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music. On July 12th, 2024, Steve released his highly anticipated live album, “Alone Again (Live).
JACKSON BROWNE
Over the course of more than five decades, Jackson Browne has written and performed some of the most literate and moving songs in popular music. With classic albums including Late For The Sky, The Pretender, Running On Empty and For Everyman, Browne has defined a genre of songwriting that is charged with honesty, emotion and personal politics. Along the way, he has touched the hearts and minds of millions worldwide.
A member of both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Browne emerged from the Laurel Canyon music scene in the early 1970s and became a regular performer at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. He recorded his now-iconic, self-titled debut for David Geffen’s Asylum Records in 1972 — which found him collaborating with David Crosby and Graham Nash on “Doctor My Eyes,” his first Top 10 single. Forming a tight-knit musical partnership with David Lindley the following year, they would go on to create some of the most beloved releases of the decade — including Browne’s Jon Landau-produced 1976 fan-favorite The Pretender, and its seven-time Platinum-selling follow-up Running On Empty.
In all, Browne has released 15 studio albums and four collections of live performances, and has sold more than 22 million albums worldwide. His highest-charting single, 1982’s “Somebody’s Baby,” was closely followed by the full-length Lives In The Balance — named one of the “Greatest Albums of the 1980s” by Rolling Stone. Subsequent releases deftly examine topics like social and political struggle (World In Motion), matters of the heart (I’m Alive), personal growth and the interconnectedness of the world around us (Looking East). He has been nominated for seven GRAMMYs, including recent nominations for Solo Acoustic, Vol 1 (2005), Love Is Strange: En Vivo Con Tino (2010) and his latest album Downhill From Everywhere (2021). As a producer for other artists, his work includes David Lindley’s debut El Rayo-X as well as Warren Zevon’s self-titled release and Excitable Boy.
As influential and enduring as his music is, Browne’s legacy as an advocate for social and environmental justice has been equally central to his career. Browne has been the recipient of Duke University’s LEAF Award for a Lifetime of Environmental Achievement in Fine Arts, the NARM Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award and The John Steinbeck Award — given to artists whose works exemplify the environmental and social values that were essential to the great California-born author. He has also been honored with the Gandhi Peace Award, the GRAMMY Museum Jane Ortner Education Award and the We Are Family Humanitarian Award. In 1979, Browne co-founded Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE), and was
instrumental in organizing the legendary “No Nukes Concerts” at Madison Square Garden. Empathy has been at the core of his work for more than 50 years and he has regularly threaded activism into his life and songs, raising funds and awareness for many social, political and environmental efforts.
“Racial, economic and environmental justice are at the root of all the issues we’re facing now,” says Browne. “Dignity and justice are the bedrock of everything that matters in this life.”
MARGARET GLASPY
Originally from Northern California, Margaret Glaspy first started writing songs at age 15 and soon began honing the potent balance of sensitivity and incisiveness that we know and love. She is a product of the New York Music scene spanning the last 15 years, and has put out three
full length albums with ATO records, toured the world over, and shared the stage with the likes of Spoon, Wilco, Sara Bareilles, and Norah Jones, to name a few. Carrying a rare gift for rendering the most nuanced aspects of the human experience with equal parts primal emotionality and bracing intelligence, she cites influences including Tom Waits, Sonic Youth, Vivienne Westwood, and Aretha Franklin. Of her most recent full length record “Echo The Diamond,” Past Magazine called it “a revelation of intimacy and confidence,” and Rolling Stone called her “one of the more relatable songwriters in recent years.” Glaspy says, “I want my songs to reveal life for what it is, and to show that it’s that way for everyone.”
LARRY CAMPBELL & TERSEA WILLIAMS
Love always. Love forever. Love until the end of time. The Great Cosmic Playlist is testimony to the endurance of an emotion that is easy to conjure but hard to maintain. But for Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, who have been coupled consciously since 1986, love is more than a pop song; they are the bards of the long term committed relationship.
``As soon as I saw her, I knew she was the one,’’ says Larry. That epiphany occurred in a Manhattan rehearsal studio. Teresa, an actress and vocalist not long removed from Peckerwood Point, TN, had been pulled into a singing contest. Larry, the New York City native with a burgeoning reputation for his virtuosity on any instrument with strings, was brought in to play pedal steel guitar. ``For me, it was love at first note,’’ she says. Together they went on to capture a greater prize.
From the beginning, they shared a musical sensibility; Larry courted her with a Louvin Brothers mix tape. The more they played together, the deeper it grew. Whether it was Larry joining in on the music with Teresa’s family and neighbors under the tree where they were married (``Larry melded perfectly,’’ says Teresa), or Teresa belting bluegrass songs on the bus with Larry and the rest of Bob Dylan’s band as they traveled between gigs (``It was very fulfilling,’’ recalls Larry) , the couple’s rapport grew richer. ``I found a connection I had never experienced before,’’ says Larry. When Dylan’s manager, Jeff Kramer, suggested that they make hay with this natural duo, he expressed a thought that had been already brewing in Larry’s head. But Larry wasn’t ready. ``I had to start seeing myself as a singer and songwriter before I could take that step.’’ The couple took another decade, much spent playing with Levon Helm and his band at his legendary Midnight Rambles in Woodstock, before Larry and Teresa elevated their rapport to the next level.
All This Time is the couple’s fourth album since taking that leap, following Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams (2015), Contraband Love (2017), and Live at Levon’s (2023). All This Time , says Larry, ``feels more intuitive to me than the earlier records, less experimental, evidence that we’ve grown more aware of who we are and what we have to offer.’’ What they offer, evidently, is an intensely romantic album. Songs like Desert Island Dreams, Ride With Me, The Way You Make Me Feel, and I Love You fairly burst with the joy of love, while others recognize love’s humbling power. ``All I want, all I need, is right in front of me,’’ testifies one song. ``I still tremble at your name,’’ says another.
It's not hard to recognize All This Time as a post-Covid album. Larry and Teresa had a hard pandemic. Before Teresa left for remote Tennessee to nurse her father through his last illness, Larry came down with a double-barreled blast of Covid, and Teresa was quarantined. Isolated in Woodstock before treatments had been developed, Larry struggled. ``Teresa pulled me through,’’ he says. ``I held his hand over the phone,” she offers. Teresa says Larry’s lyrics often help her decipher what’s on his mind, but it doesn’t always take a codebreaker to recognize the songs on this album as love letters sprouted in a harsh spring. ``When you told me that you need me/ After all we've been through/ I still think about the love we have to give/ I think about you.’’
Keswell School Mission
All net proceeds raised by ticket sales will be donated to The Keswell School (formerly known as The McCarton School), an educational program for children and young adults with Autism. Founded on the belief that children diagnosed with ASD can live full and productive lives as integrated members of their communities, The Keswell School provides educational, therapeutic and supportive services for children diagnosed with ASD and their families.