Sunday,
July 16th, 2006
Woodstock Square
12:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Benefit Concerts

We offer a concert series throughout the year to help raise additional funds for the annual folk festival. Please plan on attending as many as you can.

Friday, June 16th, 2006, 8 p.m.

Eric Hanke

with Sweet Harmony

$10/adult; $7 students and seniors.
Stage Left Café
125 W. Van Buren Street
Woodstock, IL 60098
815-338-5300

Eric Hanke's music, billed as “Original Americana Music from the Texas Hill Country”, displays a rare eloquence and depth that belies his 27 years - painting vivid pictures of unrepentant outlaws, smoke passing through screen doors, broken dreams, a small town facing the realities of war, and scenes from an inspiring autumn day in Texas. Michael Corcoran (Austin American Statesman) says Hanke's “…breezy roots style is reminiscent of Jackson Browne and the Eagles."

Hanke, a Dallas native who counts not only Willie Nelson and Robert Earl Keen but also Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Woody Guthrie among his heroes, writes songs that are suffused with those artists’ most important legacies - unfailing empathy and a pitch-perfect sense of detail – and delivers them with an expressive, rich, and genuine voice. On his debut album, Autumn Blues, Hanke tells the stories of a broad array of people - an opponent of the Iraq war whose brother becomes a soldier in it, an unrepentant outlaw on his deathbed, a morose Everyman stirred by the message on a panhandler’s sign - and makes nary a misstep doing it. Eric Hanke pays ample tribute to his influences while carving out a niche all his own. More than an amalgam of influences, Autumn Blues is wrought from Hanke’s own heart and soul. As stylistic ancestors, Keen and Nelson and all the rest could not ask for more.

For more information about Eric Hanke, visit www.erichankeband.com.

Sweet Harmony will warm up the crowd as the opening act. Sweet Harmony is a local quartet comprised of Jo Parrish, Kim Schultz, Becky Seip, and Teri Vandenboom. The women, who have known each other and performed together for close to fifteen years, have recently reunited to lend their beautiful voices and tight harmonies to a wide variety of music from traditional to country to pop/rock to bluegrass to reggae.

For information about Sweet Harmony visit www.myspace.com/harmonybabes