August 01, 2009
8:00 PM
Admission:
$15.00
Pete and Maura Kennedy’s personal and professional relationship is now in its second decade. After a chance meeting in Austin that immediately sparked a songwriting collaboration, there was a first date at Buddy Holly’s grave, an enduring romance, and a creative partnership that radiates warmth, positive energy, and captivating music.
“The folk-rocking husband/wife team of Pete and Maura Kennedy have created a cohesive, often infectious and sometimes poignant song cycle inspired by dreams: the dreams that come in the night, and dreams of a better world. (5 stars)” –Mike Regenstreif, Montreal Gazette
“With songs inspired by their dreams, Pete and Maura Kennedy meld ’60s rock, folk, and country into a stunning concept album that takes the listener from the footloose frolic of not-so-long-ago into a world of abridged civil liberties, before concluding on an upbeat note with a bracing appeal for peace. The optimistic, go-for-it counsel of the stomping opener, ‘Breathe,’ mutates seamlessly into the frothy, sunny, power pop of ‘Speed of Soul,’ with its energetic, chanting girl-group chorus and jaunty banjo and mandolin lines – it’s all so 9/10. But the melancholy folk ballad ‘No Mornings’ suggests the persistence of an unsettling dream, which in turn becomes reality with a rough-edged, Creedence-tinged country rocker, ‘Give Me Back My Country,’ that finds Maura crying out, ‘…give me back my country / and the sweet breath of freedom from the Bill of Rights.’ Fully referencing a post-9/11 world now, the Kennedys lay it on in ‘American Wish,’ speaking truth to power in restrained, acoustic-driven fury and twang as Maura bemoans ‘the voice of the people silenced by the powerful few.’ … Yet daybreak looms, and with it hope, articulated so sweetly in the beautiful, if somewhat bleak, country ballad ‘Light My Way,’ in the jubilant reconciliation of ‘In My Dreams,’ and in the spiritual solace of the Eastern-tinged meditation ‘Kindred Spirits’ and the ethereal instrumental coda, ‘Pacé.’ What have dreams wrought? Some kind of masterpiece.” –David McGee, BarnesAndNoble.com Editorial Review
Artist Website:
http://kennedysmusic.com/
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