Spire Lobby Series Presents: Song Circle ft. Kim Moberg, Rupert Wates, and Dave Dersham

Kim Moberg

Kim Moberg was born in Juneau, Alaska, the daughter of a classical pianist mother of Alaskan Native Tlingit descent and a US Coast Guard veteran father from Kansas.
Music was the constant in Kim’s childhood, helping her to adjust to the frequent moves associated with growing up in a military family.

At the age of 14, Kim began playing acoustic guitar on a borrowed nylon 6 string. A few years later, Kim taught herself to strum and finger pick to her favorite songs by singer/songwriters of the 1970’s.

Kim teamed with Grammy-nominated producer Jon Evans to record both of her CDs. “Above Ground” celebrates the achievement of her goal to bring her music out of the basement and “Up Around The Bend” consists of 13 new original songs and one cover, Cliff Eberhardt’s “The Long Road”. Both recordings have received world wide airplay and critical acclaim, charting on the Folk International Folk DJ and NACC charts.

Kim’s passionate and heartfelt vocals mesmerize listeners while her compositions tug at feelings of melancholy, heartbreak, healing and social consciousness.

Rupert Wates

Rupert Wates was born in London and studied at Oxford University. He has been a full time songwriter since the late 1990s, when he signed a publishing contract with Eaton Music Limited. In London he worked with some of the best performers in the city. Moving in 2001 to Paris, Wates formed his own quartet and began playing live regularly. In fall 2006 he came to the US. He is now based in New York City and Colorado. Since coming to the US, he has won more than 40 songwriting and performing awards (www.rupertwatesmusic.com/awards).

Rupert Wates averages 120 live shows every year, in front of audiences totaling more than 3,500, in acoustic venues in every state in America, in Canada and in Europe. He performs sometimes alone, sometimes with his trio or his quartet. He prefers smaller listening rooms where the audience is up close and the emphasis is on the music. He was voted an Artist Of The Year in both 2013 and 2016 by the international house concert network Concerts In Your Home (www.concertsinyourhome.com), and for five years running he has been the most booked performer on their database of several hundred artists. In 2018, Wates was a Finalist in the Kerrville New Folk Song Contest, and an Emerging Artist at Falconridge Folk Festival.

Audiences everywhere respond to Wates’ brand of melodic art/folk—haunting songs that ring true.

Dave Dersham

Dave Dersham’s songs are “marine” — according to anti-folk artist and occasional improvisatory slam poet, James O’Brien. Murky, cautionary tales of submerging archipelagos, Samoan pigskin heroes, unfolding eco-dystopia, the alliterative whimsy of pedestrian afternoons in rural, uber-academic Western Massachusetts — where Dave grew up and can’t seem to leave permanently, despite the irritating coupling of unreliable snow, mutating ever more quickly into the humidity of summer doldrums, trapped by the Holyoke Range, lingering the flood plains.

Dave completed “The Burn of Summer” (2003) in Somerville, MA, with the engineering assist of Jabe Beyer, Tim Kelly, and Tom Eaton. They, and a generous crew of remarkable talent, somehow got it all together, enabling the album to enjoy regular airtime on Folk Radio’s WUMB (UMASS/Boston) WERS (Emerson College), and a finalist selection for Mountain Stage’s Emerging Artist competition.

“Gilding the Lilies” came out in 2011, recorded and accompanied by Lloyd Thayer and Jared Fiske. The 10 tunes were colored with lap steel, electric guitar, percussion, and keyboard. The work was distributed internationally. Dave Dersham is a sly humorist, cultural critic, and melancholy optimist. A groover of uncanny rhythm, muted chords, and open-hearted tenderness.

A new (overdue) album will come in 2022, despite the insinuations of C-19.