Fresh off a November show that featured The Slambovian Circus of Dreams — and the first half of a riddle concerning Newtown’s Main Street flagpole — The Flagpole Radio Café will return on Saturday, December 7, at 7 pm, in the theater of Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street.

Lucy Kaplansky will be returning to Newtown, this time to headline.

The Flagpole Radio Café is also an evening of engaging music and compelling comedy performed by an ensemble of local artists. The ensemble comprises musicians Jim Allyn, Rick Brodsky, Howie Bujese, Cadence Carroll, Chris Durham, Dick Neil, and Francine Wheeler, and actors Martin Blanco, Barbara Gaines, Kate Katcher, and David Wheeler.

Flagpole Radio Café (FRC) Co-Producer Martin Blanco is very happy, he said, to have Lucy Kaplansky on the show.

“She performed a concert with The Flagpole Radio Orchestra at Newtown Meeting House two years ago, as well as a house concert in Newtown in support of Francine and David Wheeler’s foundation, Ben’s Lighthouse,” he said. “Not only is she a gifted musician with a beautiful voice, but she is an artist who has expressed great affection for Newtown. We’re looking forward to her long-awaited appearance with much anticipation.”

Ms Kaplansky had also been planning to headline Flagpole Radio Café in April, but that show was postponed. When she spoke with The Newtown Bee ahead of that show, she talked about songs from her two latest releases, Everyday Street (September 2018) and Kaplansky Sings Kaplansky.

The first offers a mix of originals and covers, while the latter was “a labor of love and an opportunity to sit down and record some of the vintage 1940s-era swing that her dad, Irving, a renowned professor and mathematician, loved best,” Newtown Bee Associate Editor John Voket wrote in March.

Kaplansky began singing in Chicago folk music clubs as a teenager. Then, barely out of high school, she left for New York City, where she found a fertile community of songwriters and performers.

With a beautiful flair for harmony, the singer-songwriter became a favorite singing partner of many of her colleagues, but most often she found herself singing as a duo with Shawn Colvin. People envisioned big things for them; in fact, The New York Times said it was “easy to predict stardom for her.”

At that juncture, however, Dr Kaplansky left the musical fast track to pursue a doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Upon completing her degree, Dr Kaplansky took a job at a New York hospital working with chronically mentally ill adults, and also started a private practice. Yet she continued to sing.

Dr Kaplansky was often pulled back into the studio by her friends who wanted her to sing on their albums. She harmonized on Shawn Colvin’s Grammy-winning debut, Steady On, and on Nanci Griffith’s Lone Star State of Mind and Little Love Affairs. She has performed with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell as Cry Cry Cry, and John Gorka and Eliza Gilkyson as Red Horse.

She eventually signed with Red House Records, then Fleming Artists, and continues to tour and receive airplay both nationally and internationally. Two of her early albums earned Best Pop Album honors from The Association For Independent Music, and her CD Ten Year Night is the #1 selling album of all time at Red House Records.

Tickets for the December 7 Flagpole Radio Cafe are $35 and on sale at flagpoleproductions.org. For additional information, contact Mr Blanco at 203-364-0898 or info@flagpoleproductions.org.