On Sunday, January 15, 2023, at 4 p.m. in Hesston, Lindsay Lou returns to the Dyck Arboretum of the Plains, launching the second half of the Prairie Window Concert Series (PWCS) 2022-23 season. The concert will take place in the Prairie Pavilion at the arboretum overlooking the lake.
Tickets are by reservation at https://dyckarboretum.org/arboretum-event/lindsay-lou-2/ or by calling 620-327-8127. Cost of tickets is $35 for adults and $25 for children, plus tax. Proceeds benefit the arboretum’s mission to cultivate transformative relationships between people and the land.
Lindsay Lou has been making soulful, poignant music for the last decade. An undeniable powerhouse, Lou’s remarkable gifts as a singer, songwriter, musician and performer demand the listener’s attention. Her singing floats over the masterful playing and deep groove of her band with both a fierce intensity and a tender intimacy.
The daughter of a coal miner and the granddaughter of a Rainbow Gathering healer, Lindsay Lou grew up with room in her heart for both blue collar grit and mystical mind expansion. She describes her family as a group of close knit creatives, their lives influenced heavily by her maternal grandmother’s radical ideals and zest for life. Surrounded by the Great Lakes and her musical family, she naturally rooted herself in the Michigan music community.
Raised with this sense of community, Lou recalls always being surrounded by music. So when the time came for her to join a band, for Lou, it felt like finding a home away from home. Her career, like her life, has been full of great moments of kismet. Growing up, Lou built her repertoire by practicing her vocals, and she picked up the guitar so she could play with her Uncle Stuckey. The skills she honed during the days of learning to sing and play with her family led to a wide variety of musical opportunities, singing in choir in high school, attending an elite summer program at Interlochen on scholarship and winning awards for her talents. Before long Lou began to tour the world with a band of her own, The Flatbellys, and later The Sweet Water Warblers. The siren songbird and her band flew down South to take their place among friends in Nashville, Tenn.
The move prompted Lindsay Lou’s fourth album, Southland (released April 2018), which is a transformative and heart-wrenching ten-song stunner. Lou’s voice and its unique ability to create an expansive, almost physically tangible soundscape carries each song on Southland forward. Produced by Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Lake Street Dive, Elephant Revival), Southland expanded on her 2015 crossover album, Ionia, which had staked her unique sound apart from the more bluegrass stylings of her earlier releases.
Today, touring nationally and internationally year round, Lindsay Lou and her band continue to collect a mass of friends and fans along the way. Notable U.S. festival plays include Telluride Bluegrass festival, Merlefest, Stagecoach, Redwing, ROMP, GreyFox and a slew of others. Abroad, they have appeared at Scotland’s Shetland Island Folk Fest and the Celtic Connections tour, Australia’s National Folk Festival and others. Of the live show, Roots Magazine reviewed “…(Lindsay Lou is) the most affectingly expressive singer since Amy Winehouse, backed by the new Punch Brothers.” The Boot, who featured Lindsay Lou Band as a “Can’t Miss Act” at AmericanaFest 2018, says “…Lou brings introspection and masterful vocal work to her live show.”
A trailblazer in the music community, Lou’s recent set of singles, The Suite Sweets, make it clear that she can’t be pigeon-holed into any prefabricated formula.
In addition to high quality acoustic music, this concert will feature delicious savory and sweet food options for sale during intermission, with a menu provided by Crust and Crumb Company. The menu for January 15 includes sweet options – galette des rois, lemon drop kouign amann – as well as savory – chicken salad on croissant and brie and mango on walnut wheatberry sourdough. All menu items are $5 each.