Four Singer-Songwriters and a minivan: The Parlor Sessions Tour

Gallery

This gallery contains 35 photos.

Tomorrow night Eliot Bronson, Dean Fields, Jason Myles Goss and Andy Zipf will wrap up their 15-day, 15-city tour at The Evening Muse in Charlotte, NC. In five previous posts you can read about the tour and what was planned.  … Continue reading

Parlor Sessions Profile: Dean Fields

FB_profiles_DeanTonight’s profile is the last in the Parlor Sessions profiles, which means that the tour starts in just a couple days.  If you’re in or near Charlotte, Atlanta, Richmond, Wilmington, Asbury Park  Middletown, Cambridge, Philadelphia, DC, and especially the tour’s first stop in New York City, you probably need to get your tickets soon! The tour starts June 5, makes a stop a night for 10 nights, and then is over!

Now that I’ve introduced Andy, Jason and Eliot, three fantastic artists whose music I, myself, have just discovered, I’ll come clean now and say that the order of these profiles wasn’t 100% random. Because I’d stated this series of posts with questions for Dean Fields about the tour itself, it felt like it would give the series a sense of symmetry if I also ended with his interview, so I made a decision to do so early on.

Plus there was the fact that I knew his music and how good it is already. I’d even interviewed him before for this site, and knew that savvy readers could find that. So I wanted to get the word out about the Eliot, Jason and Andy. Now, though, let me introduce you to Dean Fields, the only guy I know who turn stepping in dog crap into a love song, or make telling a woman she takes too long get ready seem, like a compliment.
Continue reading

The Parlor Sessions: Coming Soon to Your Town

1343Something that’s been getting a lot of play on my iPod lately is the free 12-song sampler for The Parlor Sessions Tour featuring Dean Fields, Andy Zipf, Jason Myles Goss and Eliot Bronson. It’s a 12-song sampler by four young singer-songwriters who are heading out on tour together June 5-15, making stops along the East Coast from New Hampshire to Georgia.  I knew Dean Fields, who’s been profiled in this site, and am a big fan, but Eliot, Jason, and Andy were new, delightful discoveries for me.  I’m a sucker for a good song and, one after another these tracks pulled me in.

You can hear the artists for yourself over the course of the next four days. Each day I’ll be posting a brief profile of one of the artists, along with a track or two and a brief Q&A, or you can download the sampler yourself at any time.  Of course I’ll be at the show here in Boston, so look for a report on that, too.

In today’s post, however, we’ll look at the tour itself. The Parlor Sessions is a great name for a tour by this kind of singer-songwriter, playing these kinds of venues.  It evokes Continue reading

Concert Gallery: Dean Fields and Ari Hest Play Passim

Gallery

This gallery contains 30 photos.

I had a chance to chat with Dean Fields before his show at Club Passim last Friday, opening for Ari Hest.  I was excited to hear about his upcoming tour with Eliot Bronson, Jason Myles Goss, and Andy Zipf.  All … Continue reading

Dean Fields Talks about “Any Minute Now,” Arriving Tuesday

Cover artwork by Brian Thibodeau

Cover artwork by Brian Thibodeau

Any Minute Now is a new EP from Nashville-based singer-songwriter Dean Fields due to arrive… wait for it…. As much as I’d love to type “any minute now” at this point, there is a release date and it’s just days away, Tuesday August 13. The EP follows his 2011 EP Under A Searchlight Moon, a clever and wildly romantic selection of tunes that Fields wrote himself. On this collection all but one of the tracks were co-written with other artists, yet they are tracks that he felt strongly invested, and that he felt spoke for him as an artist. It was a big change for an songwriter who had always worked alone. It may seem odd to follow up an EP with another EP, and in fact, he had planned a full length album.  But a confluence of life circumstances and aesthetic considerations led to the decision to release this collection of songs now, saving the others for a later release. The songs seemed to belong together, and they were ready for release.

I learned about all of this and more in an August 1, 2013 interview with Fields in the Stratton Student Center at MIT, in the midst of a series of concerts in Cambridge, Boston and environs. Now based in Nashville, he grew up in Mechanicsville, VA, just outside of my hometown of Richmond, VA. I’ve been listening to his music for a while, but had not seen him perform. We talked the morning of his show at that institution of the Cambridge music scene, Club Passim. Of course the main topic of conversation was the new record Any Minute Now. Continue reading