DAR WILLIAMS
with support act Spencer LaJoye
DOORS: 6:00PM SHOW: 7:30 AGES: 13+
“It’s a highway, filled with deep, exotic colors and beautiful delicate things as well as the perils that come from moving so fast,” says Dar Williams, describing modern life. On her 13th album, Hummingbird Highway, out September 12 on Righteous Babe Records, Williams celebrates the colors she glimpses from her vantage as a touring musician. “I was a kid from the suburbs who listened when her hippie teachers said to get out in the world,” Williams muses. Hummingbird Highway is the latest chapter in a richly unfolding story. Drawing on her experience as a playwright, Williams populates her latest album with nuanced characters that come alive in the space of a few minutes.
Since 2013, Williams has been leading songwriting workshops where she teaches students to let songs find their own trajectories. While writing the breezy bossa nova “Tu Sais Le Printemps,” (single release 7/29/25) Williams questioned why she was writing a light, flirty song amidst many gloomy news stories. “I was having coffee with some of my fellow retreat leaders and Beth Nielsen Chapman, telling them about my ‘frilly’ song, and Beth said, ‘That’s just what I want to hear right now!’ It was a nice moment to follow my own advice and let the song find its way.”
As hummingbirds and folk singers fly, they gain perspective and not just distance. She finds that wise perch on “Olive Tree,” a single out on August 26. With production of stirring percussion and twinkling keys, she considers everything that’s led up to our current moment. Williams observes “all of these strangers and friends” talking about world events at parties and dinner gatherings and thinks back to all the iterations of those conversations from Aristotle on. In a moving verse, she conjures a time in 1913 when California Berkeley scientists planted an olive grove in the United States and imagined the generations who would meet in the olive trees’ shade for “over one thousand years.” When Williams promises “I’ll meet you here under an olive tree,” we all know that both she and we will, wherever and whenever we continue to foster olive trees and a human-scale, deeply-rooted democratic society.
Longtime listeners know that Williams and her music are always up for those kinds of conversations that glimpse the brightest colors, woven into the larger context of time. “As I’ve gotten older, I feel more comfortable holding a lot of different threads in my hand to create more complicated patterns. Time has given me a better ability to hold a bunch of colors and temperaments and see what happens, where they become interesting new stories and also where I need to stop and untangle the themes and characters. It’s daunting, and I’ve learned that, you know, daunting is fine, just keep going.”
SPENCER LaJOYE
Spencer LaJoye is making queer indie folk music for everyone. They are a coast-to-coast singer/songwriter and vocal loop artist with Midwest roots, a classically-trained violinist with an inner theater kid’s love of group choreography, and a student of Americana music with a theology degree hanging in their studio. The 2021 Kerrville Songwriting Competition winner and 2024 Songwriter Serenade winner has been writing and touring their autobiographical folk songs for over a decade, but their viral 2021 anthem “Plowshare Prayer” secured them a permanent place in hearts and households across the world, as well as a peculiar career as a veracious songsmith with an unshakeable pastoral presence. Charming and banter-heavy, Spencer’s performances keep audiences laughing one moment and weeping the next.
Spencer LaJoye is making queer indie folk music for everyone. They are a coast-to-coast singer/songwriter and vocal loop artist with Midwest roots, a classically-trained violinist with an inner theater kid’s love of group choreography, and a student of Americana music with a theology degree hanging in their studio. The 2021 Kerrville Songwriting Competition winner and 2024 Songwriter Serenade winner has been writing and touring their autobiographical folk songs for over a decade, but their viral 2021 anthem “Plowshare Prayer” secured them a permanent place in hearts and households across the world, as well as a peculiar career as a veracious songsmith with an unshakeable pastoral presence. Charming and banter-heavy, Spencer’s performances keep audiences laughing one moment and weeping the next.
Presented by The Flying Monkey
ADDRESS
39 Main St
Plymouth, NH 03264
EVENT INFORMATION
Phone: 603-536-2551
TICKET INFORMATION
Phone: 603-536-2551