Megan Burtt & John Statz - Live in London!

Presented by: The Harrison

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0	LONDON: The Harrison
P	Tuesday 23rd October, 2018
N	7:30pm

Event information

WINNER 2015 Best Singer/Songwriter Westword Music Awards

Rocky Mountain raised Singer-Songwriter Megan Burtt says “I’ve always written songs . “I took piano lessons when I was young, but when I picked up my dad’s old classical guitar, things took off.” Inspired by Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Burtt taught herself to play, dreaming of a musical career. “I didn’t know any girls who played music, but Blue, Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time and the women on the MTV videos I saw, let me know it was possible.” Megan now splits her time between Brooklyn, NY, Denver, CO and on the road.

After high school, she moved to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music. There she made two EPs she calls her “practice records.” She formed her first band, further developed her musical ear, honed her songwriting chops, guitar playing, and became a confident bandleader and live performer. At graduation, Megan was awarded the prestigious excellence in songwriting award, being the only non-songwriting major in her class to receive this recognition.

Upon graduation, Burtt moved to Mississippi to investigate the roots of American blues music. After a stint there, she played music in Vietnam for a couple of months, then returned to the States to record It Ain’t Love, a 12 song collection she made with the friends Louis Cato (of Jon Batiste and Stay Human, house band for Stephen Colbert), guitarist Adam Tressler, and James Williams. Following the release, Megan quickly gained notoriety winning the 2010 Rocky Mountain Folk Festival, the 2011 Kerrville New Folk Competition, and SW Region 2011 Mountain NewSong Competition.

In 2013, Burtt began writing and preproduction on the songs that would become her second album The Bargain, which charts her recovery from a serious illness with songs that move from darkness to light.

December 2017 marked the 6th year Megan performed throughout the Pennsylvania prison system with her band. “The maximum security inmates we play for are some of my favorite audiences. It’s incredible to perform for people who are truly grateful you’re there.”

Megan has toured nationally and abroad as a headlining artist, and as support for acts including Gregory Alan Isakov, Mark Cohen, Brett Dennen, Glenn Phillips of Toad The Wet Sprocket, Lissie, and Leanne Rimes. In 2015 she collaborated with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, as a featured artist.

In late 2017 Megan began a collaboration with four fellow red heads to form an Americana-Roots band called Gingerbomb. In addition to this new project, Megan is currently in the studio working on her third full-length solo record, slated for a Fall 2018 release.

“John Statz writes songs you can’t shake. They follow you around all day and run through your head at 3 a.m. Open hearted, horizon-line songs.” – Jeffrey Foucault

The truth is that John Statz got his heart broken in 2017. And another truth is that he did it to himself. Unpacking the pain and understanding the reasons behind a failed relationship led the Denver-based singer-songwriter to record his most intimate album to date, tracked in his living room with some of his closest friends. Ernest Hemingway once gave the advice that one should, “write hard and clear about what hurts”, and so John did. John takes us into the steep terrain of desire, hope, and longing that sometimes lingers beyond the defined end of a relationship. We retrace our steps. We look at what we thought we knew. We ultimately discover and face the truth under the stories we told ourselves along the way. Darkness on the San Juans is a pause for reflection, and then it is an open road back to oneself.

One of the more prolific young songwriters working in the Folk/Americana genre today, John Statz has released eight studio albums and performed all over North America (including Canada and Mexico) and Europe, all in just twelve years’ time. The Boston Globe has called John’s music electric, urgent folk; aching, sweet country-rock while American Songwriter has said that he writes the kind of songs that float through your mind and stay nestled in your thoughts long after listening. On his last three albums John worked with some of the best producers in the genre: Bo Ramsey (Lucinda Williams, Greg Brown), Jeffrey Foucault, and Megan Burtt. For this go around, John invited Nathan Edwards—a former college buddy who is now a recording technology professor at their alma mater, The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh—to co-produce an elemental, heartfelt acoustic record.

John Statz was given a guitar by his grandmother when he was 15, which turned out to be perfectly timed for a teenager who, after ten years of piano lessons, had lost interest in classical music and had taken to learning John Lennon and Elton John tunes. It wasn’t until Statz was 19 and attending university in Oshkosh that he began writing songs. The spark lit after attending a show at the storied Café Carpe in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin featuring Jeffrey Foucault and Peter Mulvey, who quickly became heroes, and, later on, friends and collaborators. The first record, Dusk Came Slow, was engineered by the very same Nathan Edwards who co-produced Darkness on the San Juans, completing a circle of sorts between past and present. John moved to Denver in 2010 where he casually gardens in his backyard, cooks almost entirely in cast-iron cookware, and reads presidential biographies in chronological order.