You’re invited…
Erik Balkey and Annie Donahue – The Copper Ponies
with special guest Brian Gundersdorf
Friday and Saturday November 2 and 3 at the Barrington Coffeehouse
hosted by the Trifeletti family – Trif, Donna and Trish
doors open at 7:30, show is at 8pm
$15 ticket, reservations recommended; call 856.573.7800 or
go to www.barringtoncoffeehouse.com and click “on-line advance tickets”
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~ November 1, 2012 ~
I was a mechanical engineer. I graduated in 1994 with honors and a 170 credit Architectural Engineering degree. Eleven years ago I decided that I wanted to leave engineering and on January 1, 2002 I got in my car and headed for Interstate 95. For six years I traveled and played music at open mics from Atlantic to Pacific, The Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
During those six years, I learned the troubadour life and made friends of artists, travelers, misfits and dreamers. I won songwriting contests. In one, eight hundred writers entered and thirty-two finalists were chosen, including me. I had the chance to light up a small stage on a ranch in Texas among friends and strangers from the community I learned about as a traveling artist.
On that outdoor stage, for ten minutes, the winds and all but a couple birds got quiet. A few hundred people stilled. They were lined up in rows, knees to back, on benches under the cover of the tiny amphitheater keeping as cool as they could in the Texas Hill Country dust by the Guadalupe River. It was six years of traveling, writing and dreaming, and a ten-minute reward to validate my efforts.
Then, I listened with a few thousand later that night as they listed my name among the six winners of the contest from the main stage between sets by the headlining acts.
In the campground, we sang all night and I fell asleep in a sleeping bag, on the ground, in a tent. No sleep really as I laid down just as the sun came up in the part-Utopia, part-desert griddle makeshift village of campers that assemble every year for 18 days at this revered festival and test their ability to see the beauty among the basic life elements of dirt, heat, water, camaraderie and music.
I moved back to my home area in January 2008 an accomplished artist in a fringe community that exists below the radar of American society. Home is the wonderful Haddon Heights, NJ within earshot of Philadelphia and a half hour from my childhood home in Marlton, NJ. Southern New Jersey measures up to any place I’ve traveled as a place to live. It’s the place my family lives, and the place that suits my disposition like a glove. A glove, like my disposition, that is not always the most comfortable, but is undeniably who I am. “I’m from New Jersey, I don’t expect too much / If the world ended today, I would adjust.”
That first year back in town, I was the lost stranger in his own hometown before I came upon the Mom, Pop and Daughter coffeeshop that would serve as my kitchen, living room and muse. I did a show that November at The Barrington Coffeehouse as my first show back in South Jersey after a year-long performance hiatus
That performance in the corner coffeeshop of the rugged New Jersey small town became the first of annual performances. It is now the only hometown show I do each year with a full feature set as the local headliner. In that room that I like to call “The Best Little Music Coffeehouse That Could” – each year it’s me headlining within the four walls containing forty chairs and endless supply of coffee, great food and heart.
It is with my music heart centered here in this local coffeeshop that I fell in love with music again. At first, I was the loner guy with the highway mileage, the catalogue of songs, the journals of notes, and a list of a dozen national songwriting honors. They were honors that nobody would recognize unless they were the traveling songwriter visiting my coffeeshop on a Friday night as a stop on the underground coast-to-coast troubadour path that I knew well. The coffeeshop is a short mile from my apartment in the bottom floor of a charming old red house among the sleepy tree-covered streets by the park.
I met my duo partner and musical soulmate at the coffeeshop just as we had arranged after meeting online, or just as had been arranged by some bigger plan that I can’t touch but can only believe. I can only count the coffeeshop, music and our duo The Copper Ponies, as some kind of divine blessing for which I cannot express the depth of my gratitude.
I play at the Barrington Coffeehouse with my duo partner tomorrow and Saturday night. My family will be there – my parents, my brother, my eight and a half month pregnant sister, my uncle. Come join us, if you want. But be sure to call them ahead of time to reserve your seat.
This kind of show isn’t for everyone. Really, it is for those of you who like art and who walk around with an open heart, ears and eyes willing to feel and be inspired. If a great book, a great movie or great music is something you consider more than temporary entertainment but something to be experienced and to carry inside you when it is over, this is a concert for you. We have a cup of coffee and a song waiting for you.
Best regards,
Erik Balkey
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Erik Balkey and Annie Donahue – The Copper Ponies
with special guest Brian Gundersdorf
Friday and Saturday November 2 and 3 at the Barrington Coffeehouse
hosted by the wonderful Trifeletti family – Trif, Donna and Trish
doors open at 7:30, show is at 8pm
$15 ticket, reservations recommended; call 856.573.7800 or
go to www.barringtoncoffeehouse.com and click “on-line advance tickets”