Award-winning Americana/Folk duo Misner & Smith will play a concert at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley on Saturday, September 6th, 2014 at 8:00 pm. Known for their stunning live performances, Misner & Smith have been winning over fans with top-notch songwriting, musicianship, and extraordinary vocal harmonies. Also performing with the duo, Josh Yenne (Mazzy Star, The Easy Leaves) will sit in on pedal steel and electric guitars. In October 2013 Misner & Smith released their fourth album, Seven Hour Storm, produced by Jeff Kazor (The Crooked Jades, Richard Buckner), and engineered by Bruce Kaphan (American Music Club, David Byrne, The Black Crowes). This follows the release of three previous albums, Live at the Freight & Salvage (2010), Poor Player (2008), and their debut, Halfway Home (2004), which includes the West Coast Songwriter’s Best Song of 2007, “Madeline (Paradise Cracked)”. The duo was also featured on the newly released cast recording of Woody Guthrie's American Song (July 17th, 2014) recorded live at the Freight & Salvage in the summer of 2012. www.misnerandsmith.com.
It was an entirely different art form that brought these two together in the first place. Having separately studied and worked for years as actors in theaters around the country, it was during several weeks of rehearsals, and an extended run of the play Woody Guthrie's American Song, that Sam and Megan discovered a mutual love of roots music, and in particular, harmony singing. With intricate, often 5-part vocal arrangements of Guthrie's songs as the backbone of the show, the special blend that Misner & Smith have become known for became evident right away. Since then, the two have acted in the play over a hundred times around the country, including runs at venues such as Marin Theatre Company, The Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, among others.
Balancing their lives as musicians and actors is no easy task, yet storytelling is at the heart of both, and may well be the common thread running through all art. Inspired by both music and theater, their influences contain equal parts playwrights, songwriters, actors, and musicians.
