Me&Thee Music welcomes the return of Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem on Friday, Nov. 17 at 8 p.m. with their special brand of barefoot, front porch, tap-your-feet Americana music that transports audiences from the Georgia Sea Islands and the Appalachians to a Texas dance hall and a New Orleans street parade. The band’s lockstep harmonies can shake the rafters or hush a room.
Arbo has seven albums on Signature Sounds and their CD “Ranky Tanky” won a Parents’ Choice Foundation Gold Award. In the lineage of string bands who blur the boundaries of American roots music, Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem have a particular knack of pairing words and music from bluegrass barnstormers to sultry swing, old-time gospel and bluesy folk-rock including influences as divergent as Hank Williams, Leonard Cohen, and Bruce Springsteen.
Arbo grew up in New York City, where she studied centuries of sacred music from Hildegarde to Poulenc to Paul Winter. She has toured with Joan Baez, John McCutcheon, and many others.
Tight harmonies, foot-stomping rhythms, and indelible songs are the hallmarks of this popular band from the Berkshires comprising Rani Arbo on fiddle and guitar, Andrew Kinsey on bass, banjo, and ukulele, Anand Nayak on electric and acoustic guitars, and Scott Kessel on homemade percussion kit, which includes a funky collection of cardboard boxes, tin cans, caulk tubes, packing-tape tambourines with bottle-cap rattles, a vinyl suitcase, and even a Mongolian jaw harp.
In the latest fall listings by Tripadvisor, Me&Thee Music has been named the number-one nightlife spot in Marblehead for the first time, with the highest five-star rating.
No-fee tickets are $25. Tickets for students and children are always $10. Locally, tickets are available at Arnould’s Gallery, Washington Street. Online info and no-fee tickets are available only at meandthee.org. No phone orders are accepted and no other ticket websites are authorized.
Doors open at 7:15 p.m., and the music begins shortly after 8 p.m. Me&Thee is an all-volunteer nonprofit arts organization at the UU Church, 28 Mugford Street, now in its 54th Season.