We’ve written a number of times about the latest recording from veteran bluegrass entertainer Valerie Smith, a unique project called Maggie’s Journal, based on a diary kept by her great-grandmother, Margaret Attebury Brooks-McCamis. It’s an ambitious topic for a bluegrass concept album, but Valerie is up to the task, with a lifetime of songwriting behind her.
Reviews have been very positive, giving Smith the even more ambitious idea to take Maggie’s Journal into a stage setting, a sort of one-woman-show with Valerie as Maggie, supported by her touring group, Liberty Pike, with other special guests expected to be added.
The debut performances of Maggie’s Journal on stage will be August 1-2 at the Patsy Cline Theater in Winchester, VA. Located inside Handley High School, proceeds from these two shows will go to benefit Winchester Education Foundation’s Community Comfort Campaign to provide new seating and carpet for Patsy’s theater.
Val is excited to give this a go, with hopes that it can become something she can take on the road, inhabiting the character of her great-grandmother, who she never met, and knows only through this journal she left behind.
Folks in the northern Virginia, DC Capitol area might want to check this out.
More details can be found online.
