BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:America/New_York X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VEVENT UID:153065@kingstonhappenings.org DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251214T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251214T190000 DTSTAMP:20251215T144026Z URL:https://kingstonhappenings.org/events/jeffrey-martin-x-anna-tivel/ SUMMARY:Jeffrey Martin x Anna Tivel DESCRIPTION:On a small corner lot in southeast Portland\, Oregon\, Jeffrey Martin holed up through the winter recording his quietly potent new album Thank God We Left The Garden. Long nights bled into mornings in the tiny s hack he built in the backyard\, eight feet by ten feet. What began as demo s meant for a later visit to a proper studio became the album itself\, spa re and intimate and true. Recorded live and alone around two microphones\, Jeffrey often held his breath to wait for the low diesel hum of a truck t o pass one block over on the busy thoroughfare. During the coldest nights\ , he timed recording between the clicks of the oil coil heater cycling on and off.\nMartin's fourth full length album\, Thank God We Left The Garden comes out on Portland's beloved Fluff and Gravy Records Nov __. He produc ed and engineered it himself\, recalling\, "There was a magic quality to t he sounds I was getting in the shack with these two cheap microphones\, so me lucky recipe of time and place that allowed my voice and the way I play guitar and the shape of these new songs to come together with the kind of honesty I was craving."\nSo much has happened in the world since the rele ase of his previous album One Go Around (heralded by No Depression as 'the poetry of America')\, and Jeffrey has filled the time doggedly\, but happ ily\, touring the US and Europe\, watching it all unfold in a stream of sm all town conversations and city sprawl. In a moment where depth is so ofte n traded for the instantaneous\, where tech billionaires are building rock ets to escape the planet\, where the dead-eyed stare of artificial intelli gence is promising to existentially upend our world\, and where divisivene ss in our culture is breeding delusional levels of certainty\, Jeffrey Mar tin's new record feels like a hopeful and fully human antidote.\nThere are holes in all the side walls where the wind it brings the rain inAnd the g old crowns have been found out to be brass that has been paintedThere are holes in all our bibles where we make secret compartmentsTo hide the broke n treasures we smuggled out of the garden -Quiet Man\nThe sounds feel warm \, close\, and refreshingly real\, all held up by the richness and rare ca ndor of Jeffrey's voice. Production is restrained mostly to his guitar and vocals\, with flashes of classical guitar for a tumbling wash of melody a nd low end color. Martin's voice sits high above everything\, reaching int o new melodic territory that goes beyond his earlier work. "I feel like I' ve only just learned how to sing\," Martin said. "Like I've been chasing t his record since my very first recordings. I wanted to really see what I c ould do\, just my guitar and my voice and little else. I don't think it wa s conscious. I think maybe it was a reaction to the pace of life these day s. The churning news and entertainment and politics and violence of it all . I needed to know that even in this day and age\, just a few simple ingre dients still hold up."\nBeloved Portland-based guitarist Jon Neufeld added electric guitar to three tracks. Sticking to the same less-ismore approac h\, his playing skillfully and subtly elevates the lyrical intention. Neuf eld's touch is best displayed on Red Station Wagon\, a searing story about one man's transformation from a narrow-minded bigot into a person who fee ls deep remorse for the ugliness of his youth. In his transformation he di scovers the clarity of empathy and compassion. The devastating and redempt ive four minute song contains the emotional arch of an entire film\, and e ach turn is beautifully punctuated by Neufeld's guitar. In addition to his guitar work\, Neufeld mixed and mastered the album\, and was such a cruci al part of the final feel of the record that Martin also credited him as a producer.\n"Jon and I really produced this album together\," he said. "Me in the shack\, and then him in his studio working with what I brought him as he mixed and mastered. It was such a treat to work with him. I brought this pile of rough songs and he was able to dial it in and make up for my complete lack of recording know-how. I love the performances I got\, but Jon's magic is what helped them breathe and truly come to life."\nNo less lyrically weighty than his previous work\, Thank God We Left The Garden ho lds a new kindness and easy solace that feels timeless and full of generos ity. The title is a paradoxical nod to Martin's own spiritual conclusions\ , a theme that is subtly woven throughout the album. The son of a pastor\, he touches on his religious upbringing then carries us well beyond his pa st where the weight of his deepest questions are free to unfold.\n"It's al ways bothered me how uptight religion gets around the messiness of our hum an natures\, always trying to tell people they're broken and flawed from t he get go. The only God I can imagine is one who is overjoyed with the mes s. Who revels in the edgeless mystery. I imagine hanging around with angel s all day gets boring pretty fast. So maybe we got the story wrong. Maybe we were supposed to leave the Garden all along. Maybe that was the first g ood thing we ever did. After all\, I can't think of anything that has an o unce of meaning or dimension that doesn't come from failure."\nThis is an album that craves your full attention\, best experienced as a whole. Each song further illuminates the scene until you find yourself resting in the strangely comforting tangle of aliveness and meaning (and full spectrum of being alive./what it means to be alive.). At its core Thank God We Left T he Garden is an album made of questions\, humble and nuanced\, a reverent celebration of the asking.\nIn my mind there's a garden\, full of beauty a nd darknessFull of sorrow and sweet things where my heart can be honestIn that garden there's a fruit tree and I eat from it dailyThe same that Adam and Eve ate / what does that make me? -Garden\nWhether singing about his own internal landscape\, telling a story of someone else's\, or reflecting on the elusive relationship between scarcity and contentment\, Martin's w riting never pushes the listener away\, never points a finger. He sings of things we can all pin a memory on\, holding the rough shorn gem of human experience up to the light.\nThere's a treasure that we all know but we ca n't have it / It's a place beyond the measure of our mindsIt is where we g o when we forget we're living / It is where we go when we forget we die . . .And all the tools we use to feel important / they are useless as a sail boat in the skyWhere old bones and heart aches are forgotten / It's a plac e we don't have words to describeThe sun will rise like it always does on the day that I dieThe world will spin\, the sun will go on burningNever ev en knowing I was alive-There Is A Treasure\nThank God We Left the Garden w ill be released on Fluff and Gravy Records in the fall of 2023. Subsequent touring will carry Jeffrey Martin through all of the US\, Canada\, and Eu rope.\n\n\nhttps://www.jeffreymartinmusic.com/\n\n\nANNA TIVEL\nAnna Tivel is a Portland\, Oregon-based\, internationally touring songwriter who is forever drawn to the quiet stories of ordinary life. The characters and im agery that populate her writing are full of breath and vivid color. With s ix full-length albums out and a seventh on the 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 absol ute favorite living songwriters. Her writing on [Outsiders] is at the same level as Paul Simon when he wrote 'The Boxer' and 'American Tune.'"\n\n\n https://www.annativel.com/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://kingstonhappenings.org/wp-content/upload s/2025/12/547973705_1429994202259471_3429221874833273185_n-e1765207227655. jpg CATEGORIES:@Featured,@Newsletter,Music,Nightlife and entertainment LOCATION:Colony Woodstock NY\, 22 Rock City Rd\, Woodstock\, New York\, Uni ted States GEO:42.0424924;-74.11799489999999 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=22 Rock City Rd\, Woodstock \, New York\, United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Colony Woodstock NY :geo:42.0424924,-74.11799489999999 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251102T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR