RICHARD SHINDELL with Robert Thomas & The SessionMen

 The Cedar Presents 

RICHARD SHINDELL with Robert Thomas & The SessionMen

Saturday, May 10, 2025 / Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM

All Ages

Seated

$25 Advance, $35 Day of Show

This is a seated show with general admission, first-come-first-served seating. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request access accommodations, please go to our

For Cedar presented shows, online ticket sales typically end one hour before the door time, and then, based on availability, tickets will be available at the door.

Richard Shindell is a New Yorker living in Argentina: a craftsman and a true wizard of song. He’s played for coins in the Paris subway, and he’s studied for the priesthood. His gift for profound storytelling songs drew him into the world of folk music. Richard Shindell champions the downtrodden, exalts the disaffected, skewers prejudice, war, and religious intolerance. Richard announced his retirement several years ago, but he’s back, and we’re glad to be part of his Spring tour!

“Shindell tells great stories with an eye for critical detail while never losing sight of the big picture. He works a well-worn stretch of singer-songwriter pavement, but his wonderfully spiritual lyrical sense and intimate compositions ultimately distinguish him.” -No Depression

Richard Shindell lives as both an immigrant and emigrant, crossing thresholds that inform his illumination of the human experience through narrative song. Shindell has inhabited a Zen Buddhist monastery and busked in the streets of Paris.

Originally from New York, now living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Shindell is a writer whose songs paint pictures, tell stories, juxtapose ideas and images, inhabit characters, vividly evoking entire worlds along the way and expanding our sense of just what it is a song may be. Meticulously recorded over three years in New York and Buenos Aires, his most recent release, Careless, offered an ambitious, luxurious, full- length statement. Shindell immersed himself in the studio, allowing the time and latitude to explore, experiment, take risks—to play—as each of these eleven songs was given form and substance. While his signature acoustic guitar style is used to good effect, Careless also found Shindell plugging in more. “The wider sonic and dynamic range of the electric has been a real inspiration. Rejuvenating.”

During the pandemic, Shindell stayed in Argentina, out on the wide open Pampa, reading, writing, taking walks, doing a little experimental recording, and tending the garden. He now returns to the road for a limited number of performances. Innovative, original and occasionally spiritual, Shindell’s songs weave tales that interchangeably champion the downtrodden, exalt the disaffected or wax empathetic to those lost to society’s fringes. From lighthearted ballads and adulterous love songs, to dirges and diatribes that skillfully skewer politics, prejudice, war and religion, to the comic point-of-view of a cow stuck in a barbed wire fence, he has a unique ability to morph into the soul of the many and varied personalities he casts as narrators in certain songs—veritable novellas framed in haunting acoustic melodies.

To learn more about Richard Shindell:

• Visit his website here

Robert Thomas has crafted songs for legends like Kenny Rogers, Bonnie Raitt and the Dixie Chicks. After four decades in the background as a songwriter, Thomas stepped into the spotlight as a performer in a major way in 2022 performing to 74 consecutive small hall standing ovations across Canada, the U.S. and Europe, garnering an ECMA nomination for “Entertainer of the Year” along the way.

Robert’s stellar multi-instrumental backing musicians, the sessionmen - Ray Legere and Jon Arsenault – are equally accomplished with credits that include, Alison Krauss, Rita MacNeil, Doc Watson, and The Chieftains.

Together, Robert Thomas and the sessionmen weave all-original Folk/Americana compositions into a wonderfully entertaining musical chronicle of our times as seen through the lens of Robert’s fascinating career as a song and jingle writer from the 80’s to the present. With a beautiful new album produced by JUNO and Canadian Folk Music Award winner Catherine MacLellan, Robert Thomas and The Sessionmen are excited to support one of their heroes, Richard Shindell, with their acoustic set.

To learn more about Robert Thomas & The SessionMen:

• Visit his website here

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Avenue South, Minneapolis, United States