1195 SE Powell Blvd, Portland, OR 97202

Pickathon Presents
David Huckfelt and Annie Humphrey with Quiltman and Mark Shark
Wed Jul 24 08:00 pm (Doors: 07:00 pm )
21 and up
Longtime songwriter & activist friends David Huckfelt (formerly of The Pines) and Annie Humphrey (Leech Lake Ojibwe) have been teaming up for a decade in their shared mission to fuse hard-hitting songs and performances with social & environmental justice issues.  Each a revered songwriter and recording artist in their own right, David & Annie have teamed up for performances from a pontoon boat on the Mississippi River with The Indigo Girls to the acclaimed “Water Is Life” festival in Duluth, MN with Bon Iver, Ani Difranco, Hippo Campus and more.  Camping out at the intersection of storytelling, poetry, and folk song both traditional and contemporary, these two Midwestern singer-songwriters have eight records between them, hundred of performances all across Turtle Island, and a shared ethic rooted in community, activism, and the guiding inspiration of their time working with John Trudell. 

Artists

David Huckfelt

David Huckfelt is a singer/ lyricist /activist and founding frontman of Minneapolis indie-folk cult favorites The Pines.  An Iowa native and former theology student, Huckfelt attended the Iowa Writers Workshop before turning his attention to songwriting and performing.  With improvisational mastery, Huckfelt’s shows and songs of no-spiritual-surrender have earned him a devoted following from small-town opera houses & theaters to national festival stages like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Edmonton and Calgary Folk Fests, and the legendary First Avenue mainroom, sharing stages with Mavis Staples, Emmylou Harris, Bon Iver, Calexico, Trampled By Turtles & more.  An early encounter and collaboration with radical Native American poet John Trudell introduced Huckfelt as friend & partner to an array of Indigenous artists & activists including Winona LaDuke, Louise Erdrich, & Keith Secola, working for climate justice and tribal sovereignty under the banner of music + resistance.  With roots in the same fertile Midwestern soil that produced legendary folk singers like John Prine and Greg Brown, David's new solo work preserves a rugged optimism that blasts through layers of dark in real time with songs that speak volumes, soft & clear.

 

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Annie Humphrey

Growing up on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Northern Minnesota, Annie lived in a home filled with voices made of thunder and nothing could stop it.  Her parents were brilliant people individually.  Her father, a singer and musician and her mother an artist and poet.  Together they made sadness.  Each of her parents taught Annie the beautiful things they knew.  They showed her that she carried their gifts in her hands too.  This is how creating art and music came about for her.  This is  what saved her.  This is how she lives now.

Things my dad taught me:  skin a deer, set net, clean fish, make maple syrup, harvest wild rice, play basketball, ride motorcycle, go without if you can't afford it, play guitar 

Things my mom taught me: draw, paint, sew, write, laugh, wonder, forgive 

  Annie has 4 children and 2 grandsons.  She has a handsome, Indian, horseman husband.  They inspire her spirit and her art.
 

“Journeys of feeling
her song her voice
reflecting spirit

Story telling
People’s story
Woman’s story
 
Helping the music
to remember
what is real
 
Ancestor memories
Dealing with nows
Shadow worlds
 
An Ancient way
For the healing
A woman sings ”
— JOHN TRUDELL
 
ON ANNIE’S NEW RECORD “The Light In My Bones”

Acclaimed Anishinaabe singer, songwriter, and environmental activist Annie Humphrey is pleased to announce the upcoming release of her new record “The Light In My Bones” with a tour of the upper Midwest this October and November.  Joined by longtime allies and collaborators David Huckfelt (singer-songwriter and folk-activist) and Jeremy Ylvisaker (guitarist, producer, multi-media artist), “The Light In My Bones” Tour will bring music, stories, community, and an all-inclusive spirit of celebration and protection for Mother Earth to schools, churches, music venues, Tribal colleges and reservation halls across Minnesota and Wisconsin.  In addition to evening concerts at local venues, most of which benefit regional social service organizations, Honor the Earth will also be presenting a series of day-time community art engagement activities in each city around the themes of sustainability, conservation, treaty rights and our shared interconnectedness.  “The purpose of this project and tour is to gather and create and be coherent together.  To rise up and recognize the very real power within each of us.”, writes Annie Humphrey.
 

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Quiltman

Quiltman Sahme and Mark Shark
Renowned Native Singer, Drummer, Composer, Water Protector
& Healer Quiltman Sahme (Warm Springs) and celebrated Multi-
Instrumentalist, Composer, Author & Educator Mark Shark have
been creating, recording and performing for audiences around the
world for more than three decades. As two founding members
of award-winning Poet/Artist/Activist John Trudell’s (Santee Sioux)
band “Bad Dog” they have been fortunate to have shared the
stage and studio with some of their own personal heroes during
their long storied career: Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt,
Jesse Ed Davis, Taj Mahal, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and many
others. Quilt and Mark are now thrilled to be joining forces with their
longtime talented friends Annie Humphrey and David Huckfelt for this
very special show.

Mark Shark

orn in St. Louis Missouri some years back, to a musical heritage, my earliest memories include watching my parents practice on the beautiful black Steinway piano in our living room.

Both my mother Mary Bray, and my father William Schatzkamer, were concert pianists who met at Julliard.

After graduating they played many concerts together, then my father spent years on the road recording for RCA, touring with Paul Robeson, then onto Professor Emeritus and Conductor of both the Washington University and the Gateway Symphonies of St. Louis.

Both high achievers, my mother graduated from Smith College, received a masters degree in Ed. Psych from Washington University and her Ed.D from U Mass in Amherst. In addition to having four children she also enjoyed educating with the Head Start program, teaching music and writing.

I started most of my days listening to my father practice Brahms, Scriabin,  Bach and Beethoven, and ended most days singing Pete Seeger folk songs with my mother out of the Fireside Songbook as she played along.

I believe all of us, my brother Bill and sisters Laura and Nina, at some point attempted to learn piano, but we were quickly intimidated by either our lack of innate ability or the fear of the bar that was set before us.

I clearly remember the first time I heard an electric guitar.  I was riding in the car with my dad when Chuck Berry came on the radio “ugh” he exclaimed “what dreck!”  and he quickly turned the radio off.

I quickly turned it back on desperate to learn more about this exciting new sound!

My father glanced suspiciously over at me, his menacingly high arched brow raised the question before he spoke “You like this noise Mark?”

“I do like it Pi, it’s great…it’s exciting!”

His large shoulders slumped heavily and I could feel the distance starting to take shape between us but neither of us said more.  He indulged my desire for the radio as we drove on.  One mans poison…

About this time my older brother Bill brought home his very own record player and broadened my musical horizons with John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee.

He invested in an electric guitar and started teaching himself to play.  I loved watching him figure it out and wanted to play too, but he was left handed and switching the guitar around was not convenient.

I would have to get my own.

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