Featured Artists:
Darren Senn and Richard March
The Staycation Cyber Festival takes place Easter Weekend, April 10-12, 2020 on Facebook Live and will feature the artists on the Evangeline Presents Roster plus a couple who are not. Please see below the profile for full schedule and links for the festival. Two more artist profile blogs to come!
More information on Evangeline Presents, our artists and the festival is at www.evangelinepresents.com
Darren Senn
Darren Senn has a new single and video out called Gone are the days. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/uR5XtgnVm-8
Engaging his audiences with storytelling and simple, yet well-crafted songs, Darren Senn is a true entertainer with a broad appeal. His outlaw-folk music is ripe with humor but also goes to the darker reaches of the human condition.
While growing up in the Eugene, Oregon area, Darren never learned an instrument, and his only musical experience was putting rolls in his grandparents’ player piano and pumping the pedals all day long to classical and ragtime tunes.
It wasn’t until age 27, after he’d been living in Lake Tahoe, Nevada for three years that Darren learned his first guitar chord. In the wee hours of the new millennium, a friend showed him the chords to Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. He learned that song and since then has hardly put the guitar down.
After learning a bunch of folk and rock songs he loved growing up, Darren decided to write some songs of his own. The result was his first album, I Gotta Get Organized (2008), a collection of raw acoustic numbers about women, gambling and wanderlust. Since then he has kept at the writing and made three subsequent albums: Thrift Store Melodies (2015), Detrimental Tendencies (2018) and Live at the Crystal Bay Club (2018), a show he opened for the legendary David Bromberg.
By day, Darren works as a Texas Hold ‘em poker dealer. “I fell into dealing cards in Nevada as a trade because I gravitate to all things Wild West. I love participating in the traditional and shadier side of what makes the west so alluring. Listen to any of my ballads and you’ll see. I feel like I was born a century too late, like I would be right at home settling a dispute with a six shooter in the middle of Main Street. But, hey, that’s where the writing of songs comes in to satisfy my fantasies. I live in my songs. They are real places to me.”
Darren aspires to carry on, in his own style, the magic of the storyteller songwriters like John Prine, Todd Snider and Townes Van Zandt. “What I love most is the ability to connect in a meaningful way with an audience using just an acoustic guitar and some thoughtful words and melodies. That’s a really special place for me. I want us all to go on a little trip somewhere when I get on a stage.
More at: www.darrensenn.com
Richard March
“That young man can turn a phrase….he’s a good’un” - Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
“Among singer-songwriters in this town (Sacramento) he has the most professional stage presence, hands down. Local muscians of any genre would be well served watching a Richard March show and studying how the man performs his songs” - Christian Keiffer, novelist
As a songwriter/storyteller, San Francisco-born March is part modern day throwback to the melodic, progressive country music stars of several decades ago when folks like Mickey Newbury, Kris Kristofferson and Glen Campbell were regularly heard on radio and seen on evening television. And with his new band, March has widened his sound- Laurel Canyon-esque with clear nods to one of his heroes, Jackson Browne.
March's live performance skills have garnered him opening positions for Johnny Cash's legendary backing band the Tennessee Three, folk icon Ramblin' Jack Elliott, the popular Mississippi folk star Steve Forbert, bluesmen Nick Gravenites and John Hammond, Straycat Lee Rocker and western soul cult heroes the Hacienda Brothers.
He is a Sacramento Area Music Award (SAMMIE) critic’s choice for Outstanding Male Vocalist, received a Best of Sacramento Award from Sacramento Magazine for "Best Americana Artist", and was awarded "Best Locally Produced Album" for LEVEE ROAD in the Sacramento News and Review's 2007 "Best Of" issue.
In June of 2013, Richard took a break from the ‘performing’ life to fulfill his longtime dream of serving overseas as a Peace Corps volunteer. He was sent to Motta, Ethiopia where he completed a very challenging, and rewarding 27 month service using music to support his teaching of English to both teachers and students. In December of 2015 Richard returned to the Sacramento area and has begun performing again, while re-adjusting to the American pace of life. While Ethiopian musical influences are not yet found in his recent shows, what is evident is a storyteller with a renewed sense of presence in the moment, a hot band and purpose for the future.
More at: www.tichardmarchmusic.com