It is a show to celebrate!
A Cobble Hill crooner will have a kind of homecoming in Prospect Park on July 25, breaking from a tour to twang onto the Celebrate Brooklyn stage in front of her adopted hometown. The southern songstress has been a devotee of the outdoor concert series for years, and says that visiting the summer stage as a performer is a dream come true for her and her band.
“I’m really excited,” said Dawn Landes, “We all live in Brooklyn, and everyone’s really excited — it’s the Carnegie Hall of Brooklyn.”
Landes left her native Kentucky 15 years ago for the big city, bunking down in Cobble Hill for the last seven years. The free park performance this weekend will showcase her homespun pop-rock with a country flavor in front of the borough she now lovingly calls home.
“I get a hometown vibe in both Brooklyn and Kentucky,” said Dawn Landes, “There’s something good about every place.”
Landes will make her park appearance while in the midst of touring with indie-folk legend Sufjan Stevens, for whom she plays guitar, piano, and synthesizer, as well as singing. Landes saw Stevens perform at Celebrate Brooklyn five years ago, and her Prospect Park debut will bring her musical journey full circle.
“That was one of my favorite shows of all time, so I can’t believe I’m now playing in his band and also playing on that stage,” she said.
The Brooklyn belle will open for soulful fellow southerner Jason Isbell, whose solo career has taken off since breaking from the band the Drive-By Truckers. That is also a return for her — Landes toured with Isbell in 2009, and is happy to be reunited with him.
“I love his voice, and he’s a wonderful songwriter,” said Landes. “I’m delighted by all the success he’s had because he’s put in the work and now he’s getting some of the accolades and it’s great to see that happen to a really great writer.”
At the show, Landes will draw from her latest album “Bluebird,” a selection of older tunes, and a sampling from “Row,” her musical adaptation of the memoir of Tori Murden, the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Landes collaborated with director Danny Goldstein to adapt Murden’s book “A Pearl in the Storm.”
Landes performed a 90-minute concert version of the musical at Manhattan’s Joe’s Pub in June, and says that a full stage production is still in the works.
Dawn Landes at BRIC’s Celebrate Brooklyn! festival at Prospect Park Bandshell [enter at Ninth Street and Prospect Park West in Park Slope), (718) 965–8900, www.brica
