Aoife O’Donovan (Photo by Omar Cruz)
In late 2021, Aoife O’Donovan shared an album-length live cover performance of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska for Bandcamp. Now, she takes her versions on the road for Aoife O’Donovan Plays Nebraska, which stops at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday, March 15.
GRAMMY Award-winning artist Aoife O’Donovan operates in a thrilling musical world beyond genre. Deemed “a vocalist of unerring instinct” by the New York Times, she has released three critically-acclaimed and boundary-blurring solo albums including her most recent record, 2022’s boldly orchestrated and literarily crafted Age Of Apathy. Recorded and written over the course of Winter and Spring 2021 with acclaimed producer Joe Henry (Bonnie Raitt, Rhiannon Giddens), Age Of Apathy is “stunning” (Rolling Stone) and “taps into the propulsion of prime Joni Mitchell” (Pitchfork). Age of Apathy was nominated for 3 GRAMMY awards including Best Folk Album.
The New York Times described Aoife’s 2021 performance of the album as “saluting Springsteen’s songcraft with clear, pitch-perfect articulation and affable delivery.”
Watch Aoife O’Donovan perform “Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen for Salt Lick Sessions on YouTube:
A savvy and generous collaborator, Aoife is one-third of the group I’m With Her with bandmates Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz. The trio’s debut album See You Around was hailed as “willfully open-hearted” by NPR Music. I’m With Her earned an Americana Music Association Award in 2019 for Duo/Group of the Year, and a Grammy-award in 2020 for Best American Roots Song.
O’Donovan spent the preceding decade as co-founder and frontwoman of the string band Crooked Still and is the featured vocalist on The Goat Rodeo Sessions — the group with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. She has appeared as a featured vocalist with over a dozen symphonies including the National Symphony Orchestra, written for Alison Krauss, performed with jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas, and spent a decade as a regular contributor to the radio variety shows “Live From Here” and “A Prairie Home Companion.”
Aiofe O’Donovan
W/ Hawktail
The Birchmere
Wednesday, March 15
Show @ 7:30pm
$39.50
All ages