Annie Humphrey To Be Featured Artist for Fourth Annual Music from the Prairie
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Date: Friday, April 3
Location: Loft Theatre, Grinnell Arts Center, 926 Broad St.
The Grinnell Area Arts Council and Grinnell College Center for Prairie Studies will present their fourth annual Music from the Prairie event on Friday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. in the Loft Theatre. The featured artist this year is Minnesota based singer-songwriter Annie Humphrey, accompanied by guitarist Jeremy Ylivsaker. Stephanie, Sophie, and Tenoch BadSoldier Snow will open the show.
The council connected with Humprey through another Minnesota musician, David Huckfelt. Huckfelt has played in Grinnell twice with his band The Pines, and once accompanied by Ylvisaker in support of a solo album. Arts Council events manager Erik Jarvis explains, “When it was time to start looking for artists for this series, I asked David if he had any suggestions. He really gets what we’re trying to do with this Center Prairie Studies collaboration, and knows lots of great artists. He suggested Annie.”
Humphrey says, “I met Jeremy at a gig in 2018. I was backstage with him, Keith Secola, and David Huckfelt. I remember mentioning in our little huddle that I just finished writing songs for a new record. I got an email from Jeremy and he offered to be involved in the recording. He ended up not only playing on, but producing the album.”
The album is called Eat What You Kill. Humphrey, who is Ojibwe, says the title “is about being accountable. I’d appreciate it if a person who has hostility towards me, for the way I look, or towards my views, would be accountable for the pain they cause me and mine.” She goes on to detail a handful of stories where she and her daughter were treated cruelly because of their identity.
While many of the songs are inspired by such conflicts, the recording collaboration with Ylvisaker was smooth. Humphrey explains, “it was like Jeremy was in my head. He played his guitar to my songs. It all came very easy and natural and real. Once all tracks were complete I requested that he do his thing with them and show it to me when he was done. There was no back and forth, change this, change that. He showed me and it was done.”
Humphrey lives on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. She says, “Music from the Prairie means Earth connection to me. Respectful Earth connection. I'm connected to my place and location 100%. I live on the Rez. I gather its gifts (natural resources) the way my parents taught me to and their parents taught them and their parents taught them.”
Center for Prairie Studies Director Jon Andelson says the goal of the series is to “showcase musicians from the prairie region whose music addresses aspects of life in the prairie region. The series is part of a larger effort to encourage Grinnellians — both long-time residents and temporary sojourners — to connect more closely with things that are special about this region, from the native prairie landscape to agriculture to old and new ethnicities to the arts. We feel that such connections help to build our individual and collective identities.”
A limited number of tickets are available for Grinnell College students, faculty, and staff from Jan Graham at Macy House.
Tickets may be purchased for $10 at the Grinnell Arts Center or online.
For more information, contact Erik Jarvis.