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Aoife O’Donovan & Hawktail Play All My Friends Out August 16
Acoustic Digital-Only EP Reimagines Six Songs from O’Donovan’s Acclaimed Album Inspired by 19th Amendment
O’Donovan and Bonny Light Horseman To Perform with the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall October 22
22-Date Summer and Fall Tour Begins July 12
Listen/Share: “America, Come”
GRAMMY Award-winning artist Aoife O’Donovan today announces the August 16 release of Aoife O’Donovan & Hawktail Play All My Friends, an acoustic EP that reimagines six songs from her self-produced critically acclaimed fourth solo album, All My Friends.
“When I decided to take All My Friends on the road,” says O’Donovan, “I knew I needed to have a small ensemble that would be able to get inside the heart and soul of the songs. Hawktail was a natural choice. Reuniting with my Crooked Still bandmate Brittany Haas, along with my comrades Paul Kowert on bass and Jordan Tice on guitar, has been sheer joy. Together, we took these songs apart and put them back together again with new life and different shades of meaning. The arrangements themselves took time to present themselves. We realized early on that it didn’t make sense to try and replicate the grand orchestration or choir parts from the album. As we found our way around the music, new sections and grooves emerged. We also resurrected an old song of mine from 2004, one that I had recorded in the Hudson Valley with my old band Sometymes Why. Brittany wrote a gorgeous fiddle tune to go with it, and it became “Middle/The River that Runs Both Ways”. It’s the perfect addition to the five songs from “All My Friends.”
Produced by Aoife O’Donovan and Darren Schneider, the EP was recorded and mixed by Darren Schneider at the Audio Temple at Full Sail in Winter Park, FL, mastered by Paul Blakemore, with additional recording by Gary Paczosa at Minutia in Nashville, TN. With Aoife O'Donovan on vocals and acoustic guitar, she was joined in the studio by Hawktail – Brittany Haas (fiddle, vocals), Jordan Tice (acoustic guitar, vocals), and Paul Kowert (double bass).
On July 12, O’Donovan launches her summer and fall tour with a sold-out show at the Lime Kiln Theater in Lexington, VA. The 22-date run includes performances with Hawktail, who join for nine dates, the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, the Brevard Festival Orchestra & Choir, and the National Symphony Orchestra with Bonny LIght Horseman at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall October 22. A complete list of dates is below, and tickets are now available here.
Inspired by the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote, the nine-song All My Friends artfully draws on speeches and letters by Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the League of Women Voters, for “a remarkably personal record, not just in O’Donovan’s presentation of the material, but also in its personnel” (No Depression). Most of the songs on the album were written by O’Donovan for two commissions: one from the Orlando Philharmonic, where she now lives, for the centennial of the Amendment, and the second from the FreshGrass Festival in her native Massachusetts. Following performances with both organizations, O’Donovan continued to explore the themes that would become All My Friends and comes during a tumultuous election year. Listen to O’Donovan’s interviews with NPR 1A here and NPR World Cafe here.
Aoife O’Donovan & Hawktail Play All My Friends Tracklisting:
1. War Measure
2. Daughters
3. Crisis
4. All My Friends
5. America, Come
6. Middle/The River that Runs Both Ways
Aoife O’Donovan Tour Dates
July 12 – Lexington, VA – Lime Kiln Theater % – SOLD OUT
July 13 – York, PA – Capitol Theatre %
July 14 – Westport, CT – Levitt Pavilion %
July 16 – Northampton, MA – Iron Horse Music Hall % – SOLD OUT
July 17 – North Truro, MA – Payomet Performing Arts Center %
July 18 – Westerly, RI – United Theatre %
July 19 – Groton, MA – Groton Hill Music Center %
July 23 – Brevard, NC – Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium +
July 27 – Cambridge, UK – Cambridge Folk Festival
July 28 – Skibbereen, IRE – Skibbereen Arts Festival
August 17 – Manchester, VT – Green Mountain Bluegrass Festival %
August 18 – Manchester, VT – Green Mountain Bluegrass Festival ^
September 17 – 3rd & Lindsley / AmericanaFest – Nashville, TN
September 25 – Tractor Tavern – Seattle, WA ~
September 26 – Vashon Center for the Arts – Vashon, WA ~
September 27 – Aladdin Theater – Portland, OR ~
September 28, 2024 – Sisters, OR – Sisters Folk Festival %
September 29 – The State Room –- Salt Lake City, UT
October 1 – Musical Instrument Museum – Phoenix, AZ
October 2 – Los Angeles, CA – Wallis Center %
October 4 – La Jolla, CA – Epstein Family Amphitheatre!
October 12-13 – Orlando, FL – Dr. Phillips Center For The Performing Arts *
October 22 – The Kennedy Center Concert Hall – Washington, DC^
November 15 - Ferguson Center for the Arts – Newport News, VA#
% performing with Hawktail
^ performing with Crooked Still
~ performing with Hawktail + support from Väsen
+ performing with the Brevard Festival Orchestra & Choir
! performing with the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus
* performing with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra
^performing with Bonny Light Horseman and the National Symphony Orchestra
#performing with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra
About Aoife O’Donovan
GRAMMY Award-winning artist Aoife O’Donovan operates in a thrilling musical world beyond genre. Deemed “a vocalist of unerring instinct” by The New York Times, she has released three critically-acclaimed and boundary-blurring solo albums including her most recent record, 2022’s boldly orchestrated and literarily crafted Age Of Apathy.
A savvy and generous collaborator, Aoife is one-third of the group I’m With Her with bandmates Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz. The trio’s debut album, See You Around was hailed as “willfully open-hearted” by NPR Music. I’m With Her earned an Americana Music Association Award in 2019 for Duo/Group of the Year, and a Grammy award in 2020 for Best American Roots Song.
O’Donovan spent the preceding decade as co-founder and front woman of the string band Crooked Still and is the featured vocalist on The Goat Rodeo Sessions — the group with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. She has appeared as a featured vocalist with over a dozen symphonies including the National Symphony Orchestra, written for Alison Krauss, performed with jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas, and spent a decade as a regular contributor to the radio variety shows “Live From Here” and “A Prairie Home Companion.”
Connect with Aoife O’Donovan
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