Two western troubadours are riding into Kearney for two days of music and writing at the Kearney Public Library. Kerry Grombacher and Aspen Black perform nationwide for arts councils, house concerts, festivals, museums, and libraries. They lead creative writing workshops, as well, and have worked with the Kearney Library’s Writers Group since it was formed, five years ago.
- On Monday, March 23, 2020, Kerry Grombacher and Aspen Black will meet with the Writers Group for a 12 o’clock noon workshop that will focus on turning everyday stories into memoir. Workshop fee is $10 (lunch included). Pre-registration requested.
- Also, on Monday at 3:00 p.m., they will lead a Youth Ukulele Workshop for beginners and intermediate players. Pre-registration requested by March 22.
- On Tuesday, March 24, they will perform a free concert, “Songs & Stories of the American West,” at 7:00 p.m.
“It’s an honor to be asked to return to the Kearney Public Library with our cowboy songs and western ballads, and a treat for us to have another opportunity to sing for the great Kearney audience,” said songwriter Kerry Grombacher recently. “And we’re both looking forward to meeting with the Writers’ Group again.”
Aspen Black added, “We’ve had several workshops with the group, and they are always rewarding, both for the writers and for us, as facilitators. I’m also looking forward to leading the ukulele workshop, and meeting a new group of talented young people in Kearney.”
The Kearney Public Library is located at 2020 1st Avenue in Downtown Kearney. All three programs are open to the public and free of charge. For more information about the concert, the writing workshop, or the ukulele workshop, please contact Christine Walsh at 308-233-3282, or visit the website, www.cityofkearney.org, and click on “Library.”
Kerry Grombacher’s and Aspen Black’s songs are influenced by the English ballad tradition, the string-band music of Aspen’s Appalachian home, and the corridos of the desert Southwest, where Kerry has lived and worked, and the songs draw vivid portraits and tell fascinating stories that are set in a Western landscape that is populated by cowboys and Indians, ranchers and rodeo riders, outfitters and chuckwagon cooks, and lawmen and lawbreakers.
Kerry Grombacher plays guitar and mandolin. His songs have been featured on the ABC-TV adventure travel show, “Born to Explore,” and on the Putumayo World Records CD “Cowboy Playground,” which was released in over 60 countries. He has released five albums of original songs, and his songs have been recorded by a list of artists that includes Jim Jones, Belinda Gail, The Texas Trailhands, Gary Prescott, and Trails & Rails. He notes, proudly, that there is a room named for him at the Sands Motel in Grants, New Mexico, on Historic Route 66.
Nalini Jones, of the Newport Folk Festival, says “Kerry Grombacher is the best kind of songwriter, with lyrics that take us on journeys to places we’ve never visited before, and melodies so pure and true that they seem to rise up from the plains...”
Aspen Black plays guitar and bass. She received the 2019 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Cowboy Poetry, following the 2018 release of her CD of Cowboy Poetry, “Tales from the Road.” Aspen’s “Lovin’ the West” won the Rural Roots Music Commission’s 2017 Classic Western CD of the Year award, and her “Eastern-Western Cowgirl” was the 2015 Female Country-Western CD of the Year. She was a Top Five finalist for the International Western Music Association’s Female Poet of the Year in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and her poetry CD, “Invisibility,” was a Top Five finalist for Cowboy Poetry CD of the Year in both 2015 and 2016.
Dick Shoemaker, of YNN-TV, in Franklin County, Virginia, says “Aspen Black has the voice of an angel. I could listen to her sing all day, and just sit back and smile.”
The Kearney Public Library is located at 2020 1st Avenue in Downtown Kearney. All three programs are open to the public. For more information about the concert, the writing workshop, or the ukulele workshop, please contact Christine Walsh at 308-233-3282, or visit the website, www.cityofkearney.org, and click on “Library.”