The Folk Collective: Folk, the Next Generation

The beauty and magic of folk music are its ability to transcend all boundaries, including race, gender, economic, religious, and generational. The love of musical storytelling has been passed from generation to generation for as long as music has existed.

Join for “Folk: The Next Generation,” where we’ll celebrate the ancient tradition of sharing Folk music with Club Passim artists and their up-and-coming successors.

This celebration features Darren and Aidan Buck, Stephanie McKay and Ezra Schwarz-bart, Kim and Rachel Moberg, and surprise guests!

We Are Passim!  To learn more about The Folk Collective, visit passim.org/folkcollective.

KIM MOBERG

FOLK
SINGER/SONGWRITER

Award winning singer/songwriter/guitarist Kim Moberg was born in Juneau, Alaska, the daughter of a mother of Alaskan Native Tlingit descent and a US Coast Guard veteran father from Kansas. Kim inherited an innate sense of music which was the constant in Kim’s childhood, helping her to adjust to the frequent moves associated with growing up in a military family.

A classical pianist and guitarist, Kim’s mother guided her life-long love for a wide range of musical genres from traditional and contemporary jazz to Broadway tunes and Folk music. Her father, a lifelong country music fan, exposed her to legendary Country music artists like Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. As a Folk/Americana artist, Kim’s sound reflects this mélange of her musical upbringing.

At the age of 14, Kim began playing acoustic guitar on a borrowed nylon 6 string. Later, Kim taught herself to strum and finger pick to her favorite songs by singer/songwriters, but debilitating stage fright kept her from pursuing her dream of becoming a professional performer. In 2014, after a career spanning nearly two decades in the financial industry, Kim set out to overcome her stage fright and wrote her first song.

Kim teamed with Grammy-nominated producer Jon Evans (Tori Amos / Sarah McLachlan) to record “Above Ground” (2017) who’s title celebrates the achievement of her goal to bring her music out of the basement.. The collection includes 7 original songs, including the anthem “Resist” and 1 cover (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”).

Her sophomore release “Up Around The Bend” (2020) addresses a variety of topics such as her great grandmother’s marriages (“Josephine”), the soldiers that guard The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (“21 Steps: Ballad of the Unknowns”)and the award-winning “Angels Fly” about the loss of her sister to breast cancer.

Both albums have been aired world-wide and charted on the Folk International Folk DJ and the North American College & Community Radio charts to critical acclaim.

Kim and Jon collaborated again for her third album “The Seven Fires Prophecy: Suite for Humanity” (2023), an 8 song original suite that ties the ancient Anishinaabe prophecy to our current social environment. The project blossomed from Kim’s desire to share what she learned about Indigenous teachings and the important and relevant life lessons they offer.

Kim’s rich vocals, described as “a blend of honey and whiskey”, gently guides listeners through her musical stories while her compositions tug at feelings of melancholy, heartbreak, healing and social consciousness.

HANK WONDER

AMERICANA
COUNTRY

Somewhere on the musical map, where the twang of Classic Country meets the grit of Southern Soul, Hank Wonder marks a detour down a sonic stretch of unpaved road. Together since 2013, the Boston-based trio of Annie Bartlett (fiddle and viola), Darren Buck (vocals), and Michael Loria (guitar) continue to craft a soulful blend of Americana that’s equal parts down-home and gussied up.

In 2017, they released their debut album Little Mysteries, produced by Charlie Rose (Mike & Ruthie, Elephant Revival, Railroad Earth, Barnstar!). Two years later, the band returned to the studio with Zachariah Hickman (Josh Ritter, Rodney Crowell, Ray LaMontagne, Mark Erelli, Barnstar!) to record a follow-up. Initially stalled by the pandemic, Waylaid was released in 2021.

Still truckin’ down that stretch of unpaved road – Hank Wonder will celebrate ten years together in November 2023, and is currently cooking up a new batch of tunes!
STEPHANIE MCKAY
Stephanie McKay is a recording artist, songwriter, arts educator, and advocate whose artistic practice lies at the intersection of music, community, and education.