Doors – 6:30 PM
Showtime – 7:00 PM
Tickets – $20 advance/$25 day of show
Songwriters in the Raw is an in-the-round concert series curated and hosted by Jessica Smucker. This show’s special guests are Tina Ross (NJ/NY) and Dan Pelletier (Maine).
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Tina Ross
“Tina Ross…combines evocative, inventive guitar playing with superb poetry that weaves colorful, emotional imagery around her beautifully sung, gorgeous melodies. Listening to her songs is a personal experience that I want to have again and again.” – Steve Seskin, Grammy-nominated songwriter
“Oh, my God. She sent me three recordings from the album she is working on and I have chills just thinking about them.” – Christine Lavin, singer-songwriter
“She’s the real deal!” – Dan Navarro, singer-songwriter
Tina Ross is a New York based singer-songwriter who combines her soaring, intimate voice and sonic-scaped guitar playing with songs that are like a timeless painting. A quiet, elegant fierceness runs through her songs, speaking to wonder, humility, doubt, defiance. While I’m Here, her debut album, was released on February 17, 2023. Tina is the winner of the prestigious 2023 FocusMusic Heyman Rising Artist Award. She’s been recognized by the UK Songwriting Contest, The International Acoustic Music Awards and The International Blues and Roots Radio Contest as a finalist, the UK Songwriting Contest as a semi-finalist, and the John Lennon and SolarFest Songwriting Contests as an Honorable Mention.
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Dan Pelletier
“Pelletier’s Passion will leave you breathless!”
– Marilyn Rea Beyer, WUMB Boston
“Dan Pelletier’s music is both gritty and sensuous. The perfect combination.”
– Sloane Wainwright, singer-songwriter
“A big, powerful, soulful voice…” – Vance Gilbert, singer-songwriter
“I’ll tattoo Dan Pelletier on my butt!” – Howard Stern, Uptown Coffee (Riverdale, NY)
Sit for an hour with Dan Pelletier and you’ll walk away chuckling, shaking your head, wanting a long, cool drink and the red, tender lips of someone to love. He will show you himself, yourself, your lover, your family and friends and quite a few characters you may not know, but will instantly recognize. They jump out of his songs full of beauty and blemishes, brilliance and foolishness, insanity, humor, intensity and tenderness.
Pelletier’s passionate performance of these songs make him a formidable force on the national folk scene. He has twice been a Southwest Regional Folk Alliance Main Stage Showcase Performer (2017, 2000), won the 2015 Towne Crier Open Mike Invitational First Prize, was a 2014 Rocky Mountain Folks Fest Songwriters Showcase Artist, 2003 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Showcase Artist, and many more. Pelletier’s brilliant “The Baddest of All” won the USA Songwriting Competition’s first prize for lyrics, out of more than 30,000 entries.
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Jessica Smucker
“Jessica Smucker is an original; a real artist with a cohesive message, a drop-dead gorgeous voice that is all her own. Her background in poetry gives her lyrics a specificity and depth. Each time I listen to ‘When I Was the Weather’ I hear something new, the way I do when I listen to Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan. She is that good.” – Nerissa Nields, singer/songwriter (The Nields)
Jessica Smucker believes that the best way to change the world is to channel our pain into connection. Her songs have a way of reaching deeply into people’s souls and inviting the kind of reflection that feels both reassuring and unsettling. Wrapped in catchy melodies, her lyrics appear simple and relatable on the surface, but each listen will uncover more hidden pockets of nuance. She’s the kind of writer and performer who can lull a noisy room into a hush with a single line.
Based in Lancaster, PA, Jessica was raised in the Mennonite faith tradition by a family full of storytellers, activists, adventurers, and pranksters. She has toured nationwide and performs regularly throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern U.S. Her discography spans from 2008-2022 and includes two EPs and three full-length albums. Between the summers of 2021-2022 she released five more singles, including synth-pop anthems “Dinosaurs,” “Rose of Jericho,” and “Phoenix,” and piano ballads “Stones to Throw” and “War of Attrition.” Her fourth studio album is planned for release in 2024.
Jessica has won or placed in several national songwriting contests including SolarFest’s Singer/Songwriter Showcase Competition, the Connecticut Folk Festival Song Competition, and the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest. In her life beyond music, Jessica is a published poet and essayist, a social justice warrior, a freakishly good Scrabble player, and mother to two of the smartest people she’s ever met in real life!
