BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Paradise City Music//paradisecitymusic//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Margaret Glaspy w/ Anna Tivel DTSTART:20260924T230000Z DTEND:20260925T020000Z DTSTAMP:20260818T212659Z UID:event-43@paradisecitymusic DESCRIPTION:In an era of excess and endless distraction\, the New York-bas ed singer/songwriter Margaret Glaspy rejects the noise in favor of somethi ng far more essential. On the self-possessed title track for her new album I Am Both Glaspy offers an ardent refusal of any outside pressure to comp romise her multidimensionality. “I wrote ‘I Am Both’ a while ago\; t he story is based on a female character that I look up to deeply—a woman who contains multitudes while seeing reality very clearly\,” says Glasp y. “It can feel safer to try to fit myself into a category\, but I find that embracing my own complexity is much healthier for me.” That embrace of complexity runs throughout the album’s eleven tracks.In the making o f I Am Both Glaspy stepped away from social media and soon discovered a cl arity of mind she hadn’t experienced in years\, followed by a sustained burst of creative momentum. As she penned her lyrics in longhand and then polished them up on a typewriter\, Glaspy assembled a selection of songs t hat span from fictional vignettes to unguarded self- revelation to empathe tic observation of the troubled world around her. Produced by Joe Henry (t he three-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/producer known for his work with luminaries like Aimee Mann and Joan Baez)\, I Am Both ultimately sta nds as a striking new statement from one of the modern music canon’s mos t formidable songwriters.“When I started writing for this record I had a goal of getting my practice back—to walk the walk in terms of how I env ision myself as a songwriter\,” says Glaspy\, a Northern California-bred artist who made her debut with 2016’s lavishly acclaimed Emotions and M ath. “At first it was really hard to break that addiction to social medi a\, but after a while something shifted. It felt like I’d gotten back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions. It was life-changing.”Her fourth full-length album\, I Am Both emerged from three days of sessions at New York City’s Reservoir Studio s\, where Glaspy recorded live with drummer/percussionist Jay Bellerose (B onnie Raitt\, Robert Plant\, Alison Krauss)\, keyboardist Patrick Warren ( Tracy Chapman\, Tom Waits\, Bruce Springsteen)\, and bassist Ross Gallaghe r (Paula Cole\, Grails). “I always think of myself as more of a photogra pher than a sculptor in the studio—it’s about capturing the moment rat her than layering and building things up over time\, and Joe has a similar mentality when it comes to recording\,” says Glaspy\, who first connect ed with Henry at a T Bone Burnett-curated tribute to Bob Dylan at New York ’s Town Hall in 2022. “There was an incredible chemistry with the band and the whole process felt electric\, so a lot of what you hear on the al bum is the first take.”The follow-up to 2023’s Echo the Diamond (haile d by Uncut as “songs that glint like shards of glass yet brim with love\ , grief\, courage\, existential doubt and all the stuff that makes us huma n”)\, I Am Both brings Glaspy’s disarmingly direct vocals and eloquent guitar work to a cathartic form of folk-leaning indie-rock. In a potent i ntroduction to the LP’s luminous immediacy\, the album opens on “Michi gan”—a lush and lacerating piece of storytelling that imagines a post- breakup escape to the Midwest. “I was in Michigan a couple years back a nd had a really beautiful time\, and thought about how New Yorkers sometim es fantasize about the countrysideas a retreat from the intensity of the c ity\,” Glaspy says. “It turned into a song about someone going through a bad breakup\, and then deciding to just leave the city behind.”Like “Michigan\,” a number of songs on I Am Both unfold as finely detailed story fragments that privilege impression over exposition\, each one etche d with a precise emotional truth. On the wildly romantic “That Rose\,” Glaspy spins distanced longing into something gloriously surreal (“I dr eamt you looked into the clouds like they were my eyes / You made them blu sh—the clouds got shy”). “It was fun to write a love story where the jealousy is almost sweet.” One of several songs featuring Glaspy’s so ulful performance on harmonica\, “Common Ground” tilts toward a Dylan- esque acerbic wit. “That song feels relevant to the culture these days. There’s a tendency to either put people on a pedestal or dismiss them en tirely\, instead of perceiving them as human beings or using our own reaso ning.”Another outward-looking and galvanizing track\, “Martin Luther K ing Jr.” reframes passages from a 1957 sermon by the legendary civil rig hts leader\, recasting his wisdom in light of present-day emergencies like the U.S. housing crisis. “I’ve been listening to Martin Luther King ’s speeches for a long time\, and I find so much inspiration in how tran scendent his public speaking is\,” says Glaspy. “His work is obviously very pertinent to what we’re going through right now in America and the world over.”Throughout I Am Both\, Glaspy reveals one of the more thril ling outcomes of deepening her creative practice: a commitment to followin g her own internal logic when structuring songs. On the slow-building and softly powerful “Reminder\,” she contends with her own smallness again st the scale of others’ suffering\, rendering her inner monologue in a r ush of unbroken syntax (“Hope can only get me so far / I also have to be willing to catch a few scars / And I also have to be willing to apologize / And I also have to be willing to scrutinize / And I also have to be wil ling to not be right / But I also have to be willing to fight\, fight\, fi ght”). “That song’s a message to myself for when it feels like I’m doing nothing of value\, reminding me that it’s important to keep showi ng up in lots of little ways instead of giving up altogether\,” says Gla spy. “It’s an example of something I never would’ve written if I wer e still praying to the gods who told me everything needs to be neat and ti dy and symmetrical.”That sense of self-acceptance extends beyond identit y and into Glaspy’s broader philosophy: one that increasingly resists th e cultural appetite for hierarchy and ascent. “In any industry\, success is measured by climbing as high as you possibly can\, but these days I th ink of music as something more like a public service\,” she says. “You show up in city after city and you bring the music with you\, and hopeful ly it reaches whoever needs to hear it. I feel really honored to be of ser vice in that way.”Anna Tivel is a Portland\, Oregon-based\, internationa lly touring songwriter who is forever drawn to the quiet stories of ordina ry life. The characters and imagery that populate her writing are full of breath and vivid color. With six full-length albums out and a seventh on t he way\, Anna has been likened to a short story writer and praised by NPR\ , Rolling Stone\, Billboard\, and others for her keen observations of the human condition. In fact\, Ann Powers of NPR Music had this to say\, " \;Anna Tivel is just one of my absolute favorite living songwriters. Her w riting on [Outsiders] is at the same level as Paul Simon when he wrote &ap os\;The Boxer&apos\; and &apos\;American Tune&apos\;"\;\nTickets: http s://ironhorse.org/shows\nFull listing: https://www.paradisecitymusic.org/s how/43 LOCATION:Iron Horse Music Hall\, 18 Center St.\, Northampton\, MA URL:https://www.paradisecitymusic.org/show/43 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR