Acclaimed folk singer/songwriter Greg Brown, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, will perform Saturday, April 23 as part of Lawrence University’s seventh annual Earth Day Festival.
The day-long celebration of Mother Earth will feature live music, information booths on environmental issues and volunteer work on Lawrence’s new organic garden. Appleton singer/songwriter Susan Howe will open the concert portion of the Earth Day Festival at 2:45 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel with Brown scheduled to perform at 3:45 p.m.
Tickets for Brown’s concert are $15 in advance, $18 at the door. For more information, contact the Lawrence box office at 920-832-6749. Doors to the chapel will open at 2:15 p.m.
Known for a distinctive Midwestern sensibility that combines humor with empathy, Brown has penned songs that have been performed by musical legends Willie Nelson and Carlos Santana as well as Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter and others.
An Iowa native who still lives on his grandparents’ farm there, Brown is the offspring of a Pentecostal preacher father and an electric guitar playing mother. He has recorded more than two dozen albums, including 1985’s “In the Dark With You,” which has been hailed as an acoustic classic and “One Big Town,” which earned him the first of his two Indie Awards for Adult Contemporary Album of the Year in 1989.
Brown earned a Grammy nomination in 1993 for “Friend of Mine” with Bill Morrissey and four years later received a second Grammy nomination for “Slant 6 Mind.” Veering from his familiar territory of domestic concerns, Brown has also recorded an album of William Blake poems, “Songs Of Innocence And Experience” in 1986, and a collection of children’s music, “Bath Tub Blues” in 1993. His most recent album, “Honey in the Lion’s Head,” was released last year.
Earth Day Festival activities kick off at 9:30 a.m. with Lawrence students participating in the official ground-breaking of a new organic garden Lawrence will be planting later this spring at the bottom of Union Hill. The first of its kind on-campus garden will be used to grow organic produce that will be served in the dining halls as well as sold during the summer at local farmer’s markets and to area food subscribers.
From 11:30 a.m – 2:45 p.m., Main Hall green will be abuzz with a variety of activities, including live music performed by Lawrence students, a display of environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles and educational booths with information on environmental activism. In addition, the Lawrence geology department will sponsor a rock, mineral and fossil identification booth, along with a free “tour” of Wisconsin through geologic time, free samples from the department’s rock pile and an opportunity to “fish for fossils” from the Silurian seas that once covered the state.
Prior to Brown’s concert, John Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders will deliver the address “Putting the Culture Back into Agriculture: Defending Food Sovereignty From Corporate Globalization” in the chapel.
Based in Madison, Family Farmer Defenders is a national nonprofit grassroots organization that promotes sustainable agriculture, rural justice, workers rights, animal welfare, consumer safety, fair trade and food sovereignty. Founded in 1994, FFD works to empower farmers and consumers toward reclaiming their local food and farm systems from corporate agribusiness control.
