PUTNEY — Next Stage Arts Project will present an “extraordinary” triple bill with Pete Bernhard, MorganEve Swain, and O'Death, on Monday, June 13, at 7:30 p.m., according to a news release.
Bernhard is a guitarist and member of the band The Devil Makes Three. He hails from Putney, with a family rife with musicians. Immersed in music, he was drawn to older, traditional blues from a young age, and also studied the style and aesthetics of music traditions like New Orleans R&B and country while simultaneously getting caught up in punk rock.
He headed west as a young man, first to Nashville, then on to Washington State, where he formed a band with a childhood friend and hit the road. When they broke down one day in Santa Cruz, California, they stayed with a fellow Vermonter who was in school - and The Devil Makes Three was born. Pete independently released two solo albums, Things I Left Behind (2006) and Straight Line (2009), on Milan Records.
Swain performs as The Huntress and Holder of Hands. A multi-instrumental string player, vocalist, and songwriter, Swain is widely known as half of the music duo, Brown Bird, with her husband, Dave Lamb. The duo, who enjoyed national and international success, spent over six years performing and touring until Lamb's untimely passing, at age 36, from leukemia in April 2014.
That summer, Swain launched The Huntress and Holder of Hands, which began as a creative vessel for exploring both her grief and her growth. Her original songs were home-recorded and solo-performed using multi-layer tracks of voice and strings. Live, The Huntress and Holder of Hands is a band of six women, playing cello, upright bass, electric bass (sometimes two), and drums, with Swain on five-string viola.
Deeply rooted in Swain and Lamb's shared experience, The Huntress and Holder of Hands pulls creative energy from the same emotional place as Brown Bird, building unique harmony, string, and bass-driven pieces influenced by Eastern European, Americana, and Middle Eastern music, among other genres, and offering an intense musical and lyrical experience that explores love, loss, power, and strength.
O'Death is an American alternative country band originally from Brooklyn, N.Y. The sound combines elements of folk, bluegrass, punk, metal, and Americana music.
The band consists of Greg Jamie on guitar and vocals, Gabe Darling on electric guitar, ukulele, piano, and vocals, David Rogers-Berry on drums, Robert Pycior on violin, and Jesse Newman on bass. O'Death's newest album, Out Of Hands We Go, was released in October 2014 on Northern Spy Records.