Just announced: Lea, Heather Aubrey Lloyd, and Kristen Jones at Baldwin’s Station

Three women share the stage at Baldwin’s Station on Thursday, October 15, 2020: Lea, Heather Aubrey Lloyd, and Kristen Jones. Tickets Call 410-795-1041

Tickets $20.00 ~ Showtime 7:30 pm
Tickets Call 410-795-1041
ALL TICKET SALES FINAL, NO REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES
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“A great voice singing great songs.” That is the simplest way to introduce you to Lea‘s music. While she often draws comparisons to other female phenoms like Tracy Chapman, Joni Mitchell and Ani DiFranco, Lea’s sound seamlessly blends gospel, jazz, country and R&B into her own style — SoulFolk.

Lea was born in Baltimore to a father who toured the world playing trumpet in the funk band Black Heat and a mother who dreamed of opera while performing with her siblings in the Jones Family Gospel Singers. Lea was singing on the pulpit of the Baptist church where she grew up as soon she could speak. When she discovered the acoustic guitar as a teenager, she began teaching herself to play by writing songs. Lea’s final year in high school in Germany at a classical conservatory, where she sang with the jazz ensemble Black & White and co-wrote with the British pop trio Indigo Wild.

Having shared the stage with luminaries including Odetta, Mavis Staples, Dar Williams and Anthony Hamilton, LEA performs at a far-ranging array of venues, including arts centers, universities, festivals, and places of worship. She is consistently acknowledged by the Washington Area Music Association as one of the region’s best vocalists, songwriters and recording artists. She is a graduate of the prestigious Artist-in-Residence program at The Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, MD and a beloved children’s music performer among DC families.

Lea’s latest recording, the crowd-funded and highly-anticipated “Let You In,” is a collection of songs the artists hopes will cultivate greater compassion for femininity. Lea’s stunning vocals and award winning songwriting are supported by rich instrumentation, featuring Howard Levy (of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones) on the harmonica.

More than a decade touring the U.S., Heather Aubrey Lloyd has brought her lush, passionate voice to every type of venue, from folk festivals and bars to bait shops and clothing-optional resorts. A recovering reporter, her songs drift from journalistic to deeply personal, each narrative offered up in her distinctive alto and layered over finger-picked guitar. Her sets are rounded out with a few pieces on djembe, the instrument that earned her primal reputation as co-front for the Baltimore-based band ilyAIMY. She’s backed and supported Dar Williams, Ellis Paul, Shawn Mullins, performed as a 2012 Most-Wanted Artist at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival and was a DC Lilith Fair Talent Search finalist. In Jan. 2015, she began work on her second solo CD, “A Message in the Mess,” a collaboration with Reno band, The Novelists.

“Lloyd’s voice has a powerful emotional and technical range, using everything from a delicate whisper to a bluesy growl to breathe life into the folk narratives.” ~ Michael Duck, The Morning Call

Kristen Jones has had a weird and wonderful musical journey over the years. Her diverse experience has led her to become a sought-after and versatile performer on cello, steel drums and vocals, in a wide range of genres.

Kristen started off as a classically-trained cellist. Growing up in upstate New York, she was a member and principal cellist of the Empire State Youth Orchestra for several years. She attended Oberlin College with the intent to become a cello major, but got derailed when she discovered steel drums with Oberlin Steel (formerly known as the Oberlin Can Consortium). “Pan” became Kristen’s passion after her first visit to Trinidad in 1997, where she joined the 120-person Renegades Steel Orchestra for their historic “three-peat” Panorama win. The next year she studied at the University of the West Indies for a semester and continued to participate in Panorama almost annually through 2005. She also performed several times in Brooklyn NY’s annual Panorama with bands such as Despers USA, Pantonic and Metro. She graduated Oberlin in 1999 with a major in Ethnomusicology, focusing on steel pan music.

After graduation, Kristen moved to the Washington DC area and joined up with Pan Masters Steel Orchestra, eventually becoming their director and musical arranger. She also began working at the House of Musical Traditions, a renowned independent music store specializing in folk and ethnic instruments, and became the general manager there in 2005.

Through HMT, Kristen met a lot of other DC-area musicians, and eventually started coming back to the cello. Though she had learned steel drums mostly in the traditional way of playing by ear, the cello had always been a “music-reading” instrument for Kristen. Slowly, she worked on expanding her improvisation skills on cello.

She joined ilyAIMY (i love you And I Miss You, Baltimore-based acoustic grunge band) in 2009 and tours nationally as the ilyAIMY trio with her husband rob Hinkal, and Heather Lloyd. Joining ilyAIMY also inspired her to start playing electric cello, and she now performs almost exclusively with her NS Designs CR4 cello. Kristen also adds harmony vocals to ilyAIMY’s sound.

Kristen is also cellist and vocalist with Lulu’s Fate, a trio performing old-time Appalachian and other Americana music. Kristen performs frequently at area weddings and events with Music By Anthem’s string quartets and trios, including an all-electric string quartet. For several years she performed on steel pan and cello with the rock/reggae/world collective 50 Man Machine — this group has now re-formed in Louisiana with new members, but Kristen continues to lend her steel drum talents to other artists on a freelance basis.

Kristen has performed and recorded on both cello and steel drums with dozens of other area artists, including We’re About 9, Mosno Al-Moseeki, Lea, David Potts-Dupre, Christylez Bacon and more.

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