Advertisement
Alex Dawson is joined by folk singer Arlan Feiles for a haunting performance combining spoken word and ballads drawn from Dawson’s extraordinary life on a rural Alabama horse farm.“There is no one like Alex Dawson. A riveting, one-of-a-kind storyteller.” — Joyce Carol Oates
-----------------------------------------------
Writer and performer Alex Dawson is joined by award-winning folk singer Arlan Feiles for "Room to Swing an Ax," a fever-dream Southern Gothic song cycle featuring 10 biographical ballads.
Like Waylon Jennings’s memoiristic "Man Called Hoss," Dawson and Feiles pull audiences through the mud and blood of Dawson’s harsh but magical childhood on a haunted horse farm in rural Alabama. The story begins with the morning Dawson’s stepfather, a rancher named Doc, hit him in the head with a five-pound Fireside Friend. It ends with Doc dead and buried by a bucket loader among his horses.
Along the way, there are witches in the woods, snakes in the lake, ghosts in the barn and, trapped in every bent tree, the soul of someone who died wrong.
Part memoiristic monodrama, part audio-biography and part Southern Gothic song cycle, "Room to Swing an Ax" is Big Fish meets Blaze Foley, a strange and compelling journey through memory, family, violence and the supernatural.
Dawson is the lyricist and Feiles provides the music. Dawson is a critically acclaimed writer and performer whose work includes "The Devil & Daisy Dirt" and "Welcome to White Hart." Feiles is an award-winning folk singer known for "Come Sunday Morning" and "Diaspora."
Runtime: 90 minutes.
Advertisement
Event venue
65 Witherspoon St, Princeton, NJ, United States, New Jersey 08542
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.
Discover more events by tag
Performances in PrincetonStorytelling in PrincetonSpoken-word in PrincetonFolk-music in PrincetonMusic in PrincetonArt in PrincetonLiterary-art in PrincetonEntertainment in PrincetonGhosts in Princeton