Rockville, MD: For the past three years, progressive music lovers have come together to enjoy top national singer/songwriters and express dismay about the Administration’s policies.
The first “UnNaugural” was conceived by musical presenter (“Folk ‘N Great Music” house concerts) and Maryland State Senator Cheryl Kagan. She invited five musicians to perform and raise funds for five progressive causes on the same night that posh Inaugural balls were underway in Washington D.C. In the succeeding years, the causes and performers have changed, but the commitment to engage and resist has not.
With confidence that this time next year America will be celebrating an uplifting renewal, Kagan says this fourth UnNaugural concert will definitely be the last. “This will be the final UnNaugural, because we expect to be celebrating a new President’s inauguration in 2021,” Kagan vowed. “And we have another talented line-up of musicians who are going to help wrap things up in style.”
Headliner Tom Chapin has been called “one of the great personalities in contemporary folk music” by the New York Times. A member of an extraordinarily talented music family, one of Tom’s brothers was the pop star Harry Chapin, who died in a car accident in 1981. Tom’s work is in a similar vein to Harry’s. “It’s not like Harry did one thing and then I came along and did something else” Mr. Chapin told the Times. “We’ve been together as a family from Day 1, always collaborating, and always in the same style of music – story songs, songs in the singer-songwriter folk tradition.”
- David Roth is a musical storyteller whose songs have been featured at Carnegie Hall; performed by Peter, Paul & Mary; flown on NASA’s space shuttle; and printed in the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. “David and his music will touch you to the very depths of your soul. He’ll make you laugh and cry, inspire you to rise and fly,” said Jack Canfield, co-author of the Chicken Soup books.
- Crys Matthews blends Americana, folk, jazz, blues, bluegrass, and funk and was the winner of the 2017 NewSong Music Competition. The reviewer of a 2016 appearance at Alexandria’s Birchmere wrote that Matthews “brings a rather refreshing and lively spirited hipster vibe to the music industry, with a simple, yet elegantly woven voice accompanying her acoustic guitar.”
- Singer, comedian, and author Cynthia Kaplan inspired Time Out New York to write “if you’re lucky, Cynthia Kaplan will sing and play guitar, and then you’ll laugh until you can’t breathe.” Her songs have titles like “We Were the Donner Party,” “When God Was a Student at Notre Dame,” and “Hey Bob Mueller.”
- And Rod MacDonald was described by the Boston Globe as “a poet with a lot on his mind who has never allowed himself to make points at the expense of making music.” The Broward County New Times wrote that MacDonald “was at the forefront of a Greenwich Village music scene known as Fast Folk, which, while not nearly as influential as the ’60s era scene that fostered the likes of Bob Dylan, produced hugely successful artists such as Shawn Colvin and Suzanne Vega.”