Taffy’s of Eaton Calendar of Events
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Donna Frost Fri. Oct 14th 8pm at TAFFYs
“Even when Donna Frost picks up her acoustic guitar, the point of view is that of a brass-in-pocket rock chick. Even when her country influences show, there’s a rocker’s grit and guts in her words and attitude. As the singer of the Bunnies, one of Nashville’s first punk-rock bands, she burned a path for others to follow. “Girls Like Us,” her new CD, proves she’s still blazing a trail all her own” Michael McCall, Nashville Sce
“Like a chameleon, her smooth vocals transition from track to track. She reminds one of an early nineties Mary Chapin-Carpenter, mixed in with some Heidi Newfield, and a little soul a la Janis Ian from Seventeen. But she never falls into the trap of letting the music overtake the musician…This is one artist that I believe will be able to stay true to her indie roots no matter how mainstream her work becomes” Jenny Delamotte, Music News Nashville
“Sometimes songwriters are so busy writing a lyric that they forget to wrap it in a good tune. Not so with Donna Frost. Each lyrically sound cut is enveloped in a well-acted scene of musical imagery. A folky edge with a bluesy overtone and a country passion, this diverse disc is a musical résumé for this talented Texan”..Lucky Boyd, My Texas Music
“ …Her songs display a rocker’s attitude vocally and especially lyrically even though the songs are smooth, not ragged and punky”…Jess Marich, Shake Magazine
“…Donna is the real deal” – Rick Grant, “Rick at Night”
“Frost’s music hits you like a wry smile from a waitress that serves truckers food by day & rocks out on her Stratocaster at night”-Chicago Acoustic Underground
Donna Frost is a true traveling troubadour, one voice, one guitar, and many stories to share in song, based on true-life experiences. She logs thousands of miles year round performing shows in cities all across the US & has also performed in the UK & the Caribbean. She is promoting her third CD “Girls Like Us” which was released in March 2009 on SPAT! Records. Two singles from the CD, “Jacksonville” and “Runaway Train” cracked the top 15 on the indie charts in Europe in 2009. She is currently recording a rockabilly project with rockabilly legend Billy Hancock at Sun Studios in Memphis for release in 2011. Donna has been an ASCAPlus recipient for the past 7 years for her work as a performing songwriter and was a Kerrville New Folk finalist in 2004. Donna also is lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the BUNNIEs, who were part of the Nashville New Wave scene in the 1980s. The band reunited in 2007 & have played a number of shows in Nashville & Chicago. She worked with the late Skeeter Davis as her background singer from 1996-2002. Donna is an actress as well and starred as Janis Joplin in the musical “Kozmic Blue” for 3 years in Nashville. She has contributed to Marley Brant’s book, “Tales from the Rock and Roll Highway” and a new book coming soon by Rev. Keith A. Gordon called “The Other Side of Nashville.”
Booked event #3,712 at TAFFYs
Bill Mize
Grammy–Award winning guitarist will perform Sat. May 7th – 8pm at TAFFYs. He is a son of Tennessee, and a fitting representative of his state’s rich musical heritage. His critically lauded fingerstyle compositions are fluid and intricate, and their delivery masterful. One suspects an influential teacher, and one would be right. “I received most of my musical education from a cheap Zenith radio,” says Mize, who as a child drifted off to sleep to the decidedly non-sleepy lullabyes emanating from Nashville’s WLAC and WSM and Knoxville’s WNOX.
Maybe that’s why critics speak of his ability to “transport” the listener; the music itself has been transported. The links to his Tennessee roots are unmistakable, but so are the elements of the far wider musical realm he inhabits, and the mixture is as intoxicating as Tennessee moonshine. With a twist.
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Bill is a past winner of the National Fingerstyle Guitar Competition at The Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. Guitar Player Magazine has labeled this event the “U.S. Open of guitar competitions.” Bill received a GRAMMY Award for his collaboration with musician and storyteller David Holt on the recording Stellaluna, and has been featured on the popular guitar compilations “Windham Hill Guitar Sampler” by Windham Hill Records and “Masters of the Acoustic Guitar” by Narada Records. In 2009, Bill’s music appeared in the Ken Burns documentary “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” Mel Bay Productions transcribed Mize’s second CD, “Tender Explorations,” into a songbook, and his original compositions have been transcribed for Fingerstyle Guitar and Acoustic Guitar magazines.
Bill Price
As a fan of The Beatles and Bob Dylan as a teenager, Bill Price set his sights on being a songwriter. “I don’t know if it was the realization that I was always going to be just an average guitar player or the fact that I always have an opinion that got me headed in the songwriting direction. But for whatever reason, I just got that fire. I was inspired by certain music to try and do the same thing, and I still am.”
Early collaborations with his cousin Dave Price and later on with Mario Noche were also based around writing original music. “Dave was the first person I knew that actually thought about having a concept for a song. Being in my early twenties, I thought that was pretty unique.”
The collaboration with Mario Noche was also a fertile creative period. “I think we both respected each other’s songwriting ability and that inspired us to always try and bring something of quality to the table.”
In 2000 Price recorded his first album of original material, “Bones & Apples.” It received airplay in the US and Europe on college and independent radio. He also teamed up with Indiana bluesman, Gordon Bonham to form “The Brains Behind Pa” – a three, sometimes five-piece band inspired by Dylan’s songs and influences. “Gordon and I both have a love of Dylan’s music and much that inspired him, so we started a side project to kind of explore all of that music.” The result was “Old Hat,” an EP CD that contained seven traditional, folk and blues songs. It also received airplay, on college and independent radio stations across the US, in Canada and Europe.
A songwriter that is in a band inspired by Bob Dylan is bound to take the next logical step – that is, write original music for his band. “It’s an obvious extension of what we were exploring in all the old songs and Dylan’s music. It was time to apply those qualities that we like in all of that music, to our own music. Carve out our own identity.” The resulting album, “Better For The Deal,” released in May of 2006, has fifteen original songs and strongly reflects the band’s influences. It has also received airplay in the U.S. and Europe on college and independent radio.
Price released The Circus & The Gallows 3-song CD single in 2007. In late 2009 he released With the Eye of a Skeptic…, a full-length, acoustic-based CD. “It received good reviews and radio airplay overseas – mainly in Europe,” Price explains. “The reception to the Skeptic album was the most positive and extensive that any of my albums had received up to that point. It received a couple of reviews in the U.K. and airplay in Ireland which was new territory for my projects.” There were also positive reviews and airplay in Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and Croatia to name a few others, as well as some airplay on independent and college radio in the U.S.
In 2010 Price began to expand out from his native Indiana by playing regional shows around the Midwest. 2011 saw the beginning of the recording sessions for his latest album called “I Can’t Stop Looking at the Sky.”
Price embarked on his first serious mini-tour in 2013 playing shows in the Northwest United States as recording continued through 2014 for the “I Can’t Stop Looking at the Sky” album project. The project was finalized in the spring of 2015. What had begun as a single CD, evolved into an ambitious thematic music/design/literary project. Inspired by traveling to the Western United States, the songs cover themes such as: time, home, forgiveness, grace, truth, childhood and paradox. The resulting deluxe package includes two hours and twenty-three minutes of music on two CDs, two 36-page oversized, extensive lyric booklets, a 120-page journal from the inspirational trip, a 160-page book of poems, short stories and essays, as well as other items such as buttons, posters and stickers. The project was released in June of 2015. September saw a tour of the Northwest.
Booked event #3,721 at TAFFYs
Grayson David Schick
Grayson is a daydreamer, writer, & creator 25 year old from Southwestern Ohio. Raised outside of Dayton, Ohio. Grayson first learned his craft by growing up watching & witnessing his father, mother, siblings, aunts, uncles, & cousins dance and sing at any opportunity. His mother taught him piano beginning around six years old. Due to a parental grounding and home lockdown, he then began playing guitar & writing at the ripe age of 14.
He’s been compared to David Ramirez, Gregory Alan Isakov, and the Decemberists. The work from his first EP was described as “just nostalgic enough to make you smile, but not enough to make you cry; aged enough to feel rusty, but not old fashioned”. His songs have been spoken of as “oaky with a raspberry finish to them”- melodies as “thoughtful” and his voice as “a distant & melancholy feel” while having a “musty quality”.
His EP was released in Feburary 2014 and his first full-length album Part Time River (produced by Joshua) was just released in December.
https://graysonschick.bandcamp.com/album/part-time-river
Donna Frost Fri. Oct 14th 8pm at TAFFYs
“Even when Donna Frost picks up her acoustic guitar, the point of view is that of a brass-in-pocket rock chick. Even when her country influences show, there’s a rocker’s grit and guts in her words and attitude. As the singer of the Bunnies, one of Nashville’s first punk-rock bands, she burned a path for others to follow. “Girls Like Us,” her new CD, proves she’s still blazing a trail all her own” Michael McCall, Nashville Sce
“Like a chameleon, her smooth vocals transition from track to track. She reminds one of an early nineties Mary Chapin-Carpenter, mixed in with some Heidi Newfield, and a little soul a la Janis Ian from Seventeen. But she never falls into the trap of letting the music overtake the musician…This is one artist that I believe will be able to stay true to her indie roots no matter how mainstream her work becomes” Jenny Delamotte, Music News Nashville
“Sometimes songwriters are so busy writing a lyric that they forget to wrap it in a good tune. Not so with Donna Frost. Each lyrically sound cut is enveloped in a well-acted scene of musical imagery. A folky edge with a bluesy overtone and a country passion, this diverse disc is a musical résumé for this talented Texan”..Lucky Boyd, My Texas Music
“ …Her songs display a rocker’s attitude vocally and especially lyrically even though the songs are smooth, not ragged and punky”…Jess Marich, Shake Magazine
“…Donna is the real deal” – Rick Grant, “Rick at Night”
“Frost’s music hits you like a wry smile from a waitress that serves truckers food by day & rocks out on her Stratocaster at night”-Chicago Acoustic Underground
Donna Frost is a true traveling troubadour, one voice, one guitar, and many stories to share in song, based on true-life experiences. She logs thousands of miles year round performing shows in cities all across the US & has also performed in the UK & the Caribbean. She is promoting her third CD “Girls Like Us” which was released in March 2009 on SPAT! Records. Two singles from the CD, “Jacksonville” and “Runaway Train” cracked the top 15 on the indie charts in Europe in 2009. She is currently recording a rockabilly project with rockabilly legend Billy Hancock at Sun Studios in Memphis for release in 2011. Donna has been an ASCAPlus recipient for the past 7 years for her work as a performing songwriter and was a Kerrville New Folk finalist in 2004. Donna also is lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the BUNNIEs, who were part of the Nashville New Wave scene in the 1980s. The band reunited in 2007 & have played a number of shows in Nashville & Chicago. She worked with the late Skeeter Davis as her background singer from 1996-2002. Donna is an actress as well and starred as Janis Joplin in the musical “Kozmic Blue” for 3 years in Nashville. She has contributed to Marley Brant’s book, “Tales from the Rock and Roll Highway” and a new book coming soon by Rev. Keith A. Gordon called “The Other Side of Nashville.”
Booked event #3,712 at TAFFYs
Moriah Haven hosts her legendary Artist Showcase at TAFFYs
Please visit this page to learn about this incredible event. (will open in new window)
-Hosted by Moriah Haven http://moriahhaven.com/