Submitted by Melanie Beth Curran

New York’s Western Female is the musical project of songwriter and frontwoman Melanie Beth Curran. Through channels of Americana, honky-tonk, croon, early jazz, old-time, French chanson, rock n’ roll, and spoken word, Western Female brings audiences closer to the places, people and histories lingering below the surface of the Western experience. While entertaining their audiences, Western Female invites examinations of the role of the female performer over the course of history. What can she sing about, how can her body move, how must she dress, what stories can she tell on stage and how does the culture embrace her, commodify her, venerate her or long for her demise?

Western Female will be performing in the San Juan Islands among other stops on their Northwest tour. Curran will be joined onstage by Peter Freeman and by Dave Bolt, with whom she founded the old-time string band The High-Waisted Ramblers. Western Female’s Pacific Northwest tour is one of three location-based tours this summer, including tours in the Southwest and Northeast. In fall, Curran will depart for Bretagne, France, on a Fulbright Fellowship to write ethnographically about Breton traditional music.

Western Female will appear at the Lopez Grange on Saturday, June 15, at 7 p.m. Tickets available at the door, suggested $10-$20 donation.