Back to the Land: A Musical Benefit for the new BC History Center this Saturday, May 19

Tickets are available for “Back to the Land”, a benefit concert for the new Brown County History Center. It will be a great night for lovers of American traditional folk music. The evening will be filled with talent, musical inspiration, and living history – with the emphasis on “living” – when these phenomenal performers come together:

Jon Kay is a nationally known dulcimer-player, who began his musical journey singing a cappella hymns at church in southern Brown County. While in high school, he began playing guitar at the Daily Grind, a local coffeehouse. He learned banjo and dulcimer while working for an instrument builder in his hometown of Nashville. An academically trained folklorist, Kay directed the Florida Folk Festival, before returning to Indiana to work at Indiana University, where serves as the director of Traditional Arts Indiana, Indiana’s state folk life program.

Brown County citizens and friends will recognize Dillon Bustin, the author of “If You Don’t Outdie Me” (Indiana University Press, 1983), a volume that has reached iconic places of distinction on coffee tables and family bookshelves. Bustin’s first album as a songwriter, Dillon Bustin’s “Almanac” (June Appal Recordings, 1983), chronicled the back-to-the land movement in southern Indiana during the 1970s. His most recent album for adults, recorded to benefit Musketaquid Arts and Environment Program at Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts, is “Willow of the Wilderness: Emersonian Songs” (2003). He also wrote an introduction to “The Lotus Dickey Songbook” (Indiana University Press, 1996, 2005). He contributed entries on musical topics to the “Encyclopedia of Appalachia” (University of Tennessee Press, 2006). Currently, he is an essayist for “Wild Apples: A Journal of Nature, Art, and Inquiry”, published in Harvard, Massachusetts. Bustin is also a well known filmmaker and playwright. His most recent publication is a children’s book based on one of the Tidebook songs. “Thirty Dirty Sailors, and the Little Girl Who Went a-Whaling” is illustrated by Susan Foltz (Vineyard Stories, 2007). Playing with Bustin will be Grey Larsen and Bob Lucas.

Grey Larsen is one of America’s finest players of the Irish flute and tin whistle, as well as an accomplished singer and concertina, fiddle, piano and harmonium player. Grey’s playing has been called “positively spellbinding” (The New Mexico Daily, Albuquerque, NM) and “exceptionally exceptional” (The Spectator, Raleigh Durham, NC). Larsen has authored “The Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle” and “The Essential Tin Whistle Toolbox”.

Bob Lucas is a songwriter, actor, singer & multi-instrumentalist. He has lived in Logan County, Ohio for the last 15 years working for the locally known as well as nationally famous Mad River Theater Works where he holds the position of music director and songwriter in residence. While at Mad River he has written music for and performed in 25 original plays. His debut solo album, “The Dancer Inside You” received a four star rating from Downbeat Magazine. Recently two more of his songs have been released on the award winning Alison Krauss and Union Station album “New Favorite”. He released a CD of his music called Rushsylvania, named after the town he lived in for more than 10 years and was just re-released in 2005.

The concert will take place in the Brown County Playhouse in the center of Nashville at 7:30 p.m. on the evening of Saturday, May 19.

Tickets are available at the Playhouse, the Brown County Visitors Center, and the Brown County Historical Society office at the Traditional Arts Building at 46 East Gould Street for $25 per person.

For those who would like to meet the performers after the show and share refreshments, a special patron ticket is available for $50 per person.

For more information, phone the Brown County Historical Society at 812-988-2899.