GUILFORD-On a 2017 YouTube video, the popular, multistyled, genre-molding English singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran calls Luke Concannon his "childhood hero."
"I grew up listening to him, I went on tour with him, doing guitar checking and learning everything there is to know about performing, writing songs, singing, playing guitar," Sheeran says. "So I owe a large amount of my career to him."
Since those days, Concannon and his wife and music partner, vocalist Stephanie Hollenberg, have settled in Guilford, entering the area music scene with open arms.
This Saturday, they will offer "Song Seeds: A Joyful Songwriting and Singing Retreat." The day will culminate in an evening performance anchored by the duo, joined by any workshop participants game to share songs written that day.
In a recent interview with The Commons, Concannon says the 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. songwriting day is "intended to meet people where they're at, at all levels."
"If people are primarily instrumentalists and want to work on composing, or if they want to pair up with someone who's really a word-based poet, then that can happen," he says. "If people love words, but they've never written a melody for their words, here's an opportunity to play with that."
Some, Concannon says, might start with a melody; for others, the process might start with words. And others might just have the desire and no starting point.
It's "a chance to begin a journey as a community of songwriters, learning, growing, and being coached," he says.
The couple wants to create "a really safe, welcoming place for people" to play, explore, experiment with song writing. Limiting enrollment to 20 or so, Hollenberg explains, lets the couple have one-on-one time with people.
The duo will provide content and guidance, "where that feels appropriate and desired," Concannon adds, "but we also just want to give people a space to write as well. And for anyone who wants to collaborate, to collaborate, too."
Hollenberg adds they'll make time for participants to share, "so that there's cross-fertilization."
Explaining the day's title, she adds, "for us, this is a season of planting seeds in many ways; [...] this is a season of transformation. We're aware that, in a day-long workshop, there is perhaps only so much ground you can cover, right? But we're inviting people to plant the seeds they're wanting to plant [with hopes] that those seeds of inspiration and creativity will flourish."
"And when you have a group, when you have community to do that with," Concannon adds, "and a time to do it, then it can be magic. You're all daring to be bold and play."
Top of the charts
Of his background, Concannon says, "I've been doing community music in a way all my life, because I grew up in an Irish family in [the Midlands of] England, and so my dad played the pipes, and uncle played ballads and sang, and Auntie danced and sang, and Mum danced - so that magic of music and parties and community has just always been there."
That environment is "just so good for you," he says.
"We grew up in the folk sessions, playing in the pubs with family and friends, fiddle tunes and Irish ballads and things," Concannon says.
Then he and his early music partners "really went into underground American hip-hop - drum and bass and stuff. And so when we wrote songs, it would be, like, balladic and from all these folk influences."
A singer, instrumentalist, and coach with deep experience in independent-label music production, Concannon has been writing songs for over 30 years, starting with Nizlopi, the folk duo that he had with John Parker.
Concannon has seen some songs make it all the way to top of the charts.
In an interview with The Guardian earlier this year, he explains that Nizlopi put "JCB," a song inspired by his father, on their 2004 debut album (Half These Songs Are About You) and soon began producing its music video which led to a demand: "People keep asking if they can buy it."
"It was No. 1 [on U.K. charts] just before Christmas 2005," Concannon told The Guardian. "In late January, we played a sold-out show at Shepherd's Bush Empire in London. And it turns out, Ed Sheeran was there. Ed would have been about 14 then. He just kept writing to us: 'Could I do work experience with you?' He was very intense."
On an altogether different path, Hollenberg came East from Indiana 10 years ago after undergraduate school to earn a master's degree in vocal performance at Longy School of Music of Bard College. Coming, as she says, from a religious background, she earned a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School in 2024.
As described on her website, Hollenberg is "comfortable in opera theaters, musical theater stages, folk festivals, church leadership, and the teaching studio."
Her experience is augmented by "years of vocal training with master teachers, and a rootedness in spiritual practice and chaplaincy experience." Hollenberg says she shares "a keen understanding of how the voice and body work technically, as well as the intimate connection between voice, body, and spirit."
The couple met at a retreat on the Scottish island of Iona, led by Alastair McIntosh, who integrates "depth psychology and the spiritual" in what's called a "Pilgrimage of Life."
It's there the duo took McIntosh's wisdom to heart: "I'd never want to learn something without also teaching it. We get these gifts, but you've got to keep sharing."
"Stephanie was volunteering there," Concannon recalls. "And yeah, I fell in love."
As did she - "and there you go," he says.
Hollenberg was singing professionally and "auditioning and auditioning in the Boston area," she recalls, when Concannon joined her there eight years ago to carry on with the robust career he'd established in England.
"I had to figure things out," he says. "Like, I have a community, a constituency, an audience there. And then here, it was like starting again. I booked a house concert tour and started writing, recording, and connecting with local musicians."
Tired of living in the city, they moved to Guilford in 2019, staying first with Chuck and Mary Collins, whom Concannon had met through a mutual Irish friend.
Soon, they bought land nearby, erected a yurt, and are now expecting a child in December. And they play on: teaching, touring, facilitating master workshops, playing gigs, earning from royalties and the sale of "merch," and recording.
Concannon's 2021 album Ecstatic Bird in the Burning, got a No. 7 single here in the folk music charts and a No. 12 album, he reports.
Of the album - which includes vocals by and is dedicated to Hollenberg - Sheeran said: "It's a fantastic record. Luke is one of the reasons that I make music and am inspired to do gigs and write songs: He's a fantastic bloke, a fantastic performer, and fantastic songwriter."
The 'heart of life'
The greater community is welcome at 7 p.m. on Saturday for the culminating concert.
"We will have created this beautiful little experience together, an intimate experience with songwriters" who will be invited to "share in whatever form it is, if it's unfinished or finished or polished or unpolished, to share what they've been working on that day."
The duo will end the evening with a set of their music, self-described as "spiritual, revolutionary, folk, hip-hop."
Concannon and Hollenberg are clearly mission driven as they create opportunities for others through workshops such as Saturday's.
Hollenberg says that over the past few years, she's been circling back to the concept of relationships, which she says "are the heart of life, you know?"
"I think that's one reason that I felt moved to move out of the city, just because it was so busy and so overstimulating that I was losing relationships," she says.
Here, in Guilford, that's no longer the case for the couple.
"We're just looking for re-centering [...] and the quality of kindness," Hollenberg says.
Both the workshop and the concert will take place at Broad Brook Community Center, 3940 Guilford Center Rd., Guilford. For more workshop information and to register, visit lukeconcannon.com/workshops. Registration includes a hot dinner and the evening concert. The public will be asked to contribute $10 to $20 each for the concert, though no one will be turned away, Concannon and Hollenberg say.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.