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jeremy messersmith Visits Bemidji

Twin Cities singer-songwriter, jeremy messersmith, comes back to Bemidji at the end of August. Headwaters Music & Arts hosts jeremy in a series of workshops and performances around Bemidji August 25-26.

Ukulele Workshop: Obscenely Optimistic Class for Beginning Ukulele Players with jeremy messersmith
4:00-5:00 pm Thursday, August 25 held at Headwaters Music & Arts Performance Hall
The event for ages 12-adult is free thanks to funding from Minnesota State Arts Board. Please RSVP to info@headwatersmusicandarts.orgjeremy is known in the ukulele community for a clever micro-folk album that is accessible to new players and engaging to players of all abilities. Includes a free copy of jeremy’s songbook, 11 Obscenely Optimistic Songs for Ukulele. Don't forget your uke!

jeremy messersmith House Concert Fundraiser for Headwaters Music & Arts
7:00 pm Thursday, August 25 held at a the private residence of David and Julie Hanson
An intimate concert and conversation with jeremy messsmith. Beverages and appetizers provided. The cost to attend is $30 per person and tickets can be purchased here.

Pop up concert at Paul and Babe at Bemidji Waterfront
Noon Friday, August 26
This concert is free and open to the public thanks to funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Invite a friend and bring a lawn chair!

Jam Session with jeremy messersmith
4:00-5:00 Friday, August 26 held at Headwaters Music & Arts Performance Hall (519 MN Ave NW, Bemidji)
During this ukulele performance and jam session, jeremy will play some songs, share stories, and lead players in a strum-along and singalong. Casual, and open to players of all ages and abilities! Bring your uke, or any other string instrument. This event is free thanks to funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board.  Please RSVP to info@headwatersmusicandarts.org.

jeremy messersmith in Concert

7 pm Friday, August 26 held at Headwaters Music & Arts Performance Hall (519 MN Ave NW, Bemidji)
$10 advance admission (free for students and seniors) and tickets can be purchased here.

jeremy messersmith is an indie pop singer-songwriter and one of Minnesota’s most recognized and celebrated artists, praised by The New York Times, NPR, USA Today, Paste Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Spin, and Rolling Stone among many others. A thoughtful, clever lyricist with a tender voice, the Minneapolis-based troubadour crafts songs that are catchy and relatable, and span the emotional gamut from poignancy to whimsy. jeremy is one of those rare artists who can break your heart one minute, and then put those fragile pieces back together again the next.

 

 

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Augmeanted holds it’s “Life, twice” Album Release this Thursday – proceeds to benefit Headwaters Music & Arts

7 pm, August 18
Historic Carnegie Library
426 Bemidji Ave N, Bemidji MN
$8 per person ($4 for seniors & ages youth 16 and younger)

Augmeanted’s debut album, Life, twice, was released June 21, 2022. Life, twice, takes its name from the Anais Nin quote, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” The 10-track recording, produced at Bemidji’s Supple Studios, is a mix of vocally-driven meditations on moments that leave us speechless, and violin-driven improvisations saying what’s impossible to say. The album was made possible in part by a Region 2 Arts Council Individual Artist grant with funding from the McKnight Foundation.


Augmeanted invites you closer to the transcendent power of living music with our distinctive classical rock vibe, crafting tales and tunes cut free by the saw waves of our sound.

Taking our cue from Victor Hugo, we write music to “express that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent,” giving voice to moments best carried along the heart’s strings.

As we spiderwalk the strings and sing through heart and keys, we hope you’ll find yourself feathered by the wings of the crescent moonrise, embraced by the concert hall’s symphonic swirl, or rib-tickled by Appalachian fireflies.

Though Augmeanted is new musical collaboration for us as cousins, we are both established musicians. Geoffrey Taylor orchestrates the strings of his fiddles, mandolin, and ukes in Missoula, Montana and Mary Overlie sings through her heart and keys in Mudsong, based in Bemidji, Minnesota.

In addition to our first album, we are also at work on a theatrical tale about the birthday festivities for a scrap of yet-to-be-born song.


You can purchase tickets for Thursday nights fundraiser here and also listen to an interview about the music done by Jazz88, the jazz radio station of the Twin Cities, here.

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A Note From a Violin Student

To live a life with no regrets is what first brought me through the doors of Headwaters Music & Arts. I had previously received eight years of violin lessons starting at the age of eight, but after I turned sixteen, my teacher moved away, and life became very busy. Over the years, I never found another violin teacher and my practice time dwindled away. As a young teenager, I had been given an old violin by some very dear friends, Don and Vera. Over the past 20 years, as life crowded out the time to play my violin, Don would ask me when I was going to start taking lessons again. He would lament that the old violin was not getting played like it had been before, and that it could sound so good if I took lessons and started practicing again.

I always had something that kept me too busy; school, work, etc., but finally, after all these years; I realized time was running down. With Don and Vera now in their nineties, if I wanted them to be able to hear the old violin sing again, I needed to make the time for lessons and practice. At the time, my old violin had broken strings since I had not picked it up or played it for so long. After getting a new set of strings, and then proceeding to break a few of them with my inexperienced tuning, I was on my way again with Julia as my instructor.

Now, seven months later with lessons and practice, Don and Vera can hear the old violin sing again. It was a challenge resuming lessons as an adult student. Some things take longer to learn than they did when I was a youngster. I also feel a bit more stiff and sore after playing than I remember; however, the joy of fulfilling that long-time wish for my very dear friends has made every minute worthwhile. I will never have to look back in years to come and wish they could have heard me play again. Now they can hear me all the time thanks to Headwaters Music & Arts’ recordings of my playing for their ease of viewing. Thank you, Headwaters Music & Arts! I am eternally grateful and look forward to many more years of music ahead.