The Moorestown Music Collective (MMC) will host three summer shows this Thursday; Sunday, June 23; and Saturday July 13 featuring John Train with Tom Heyman, Buffalo Nichols and Red Desert Motel.
“That’s going to be a really good show, they’re just a very fun band,” said MMC member Mark Hines of the John Train band’s performance. “They play lots of Americana-roots, rock-folk type of music going all the way from Bob Dylan to basically the Velvet Underground, bands like that.”
Thursday’s show will be held at the Community House of Moorestown at 6:30 p.m. It will mark the third time the John Train band performs at the MMC, and they will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of their album “The Sugar Ditch.” Heyman’s second solo record, “Deliver Me,” was critically acclaimed and some of its songs were heard in the TV series “True Blood,” “Justified” and “Damages,” according to Heyman’s website.
The second show on June 23 – with international artist Buffalo Nichols – will also be at the Community House, at 7:15 p.m.
“He is what I will call a contemporary blues musician,” noted Hines of Nichols, “because he really updates the blues sounds. He’s somebody that’s had two nationally released albums out … He’s a very, very strong artist and we’re very pleased to have him.”
Nichols honors the traditions of the blues while adding 21st-century accents to centuries-old music, according to the AllMusic website. He plays acoustic guitar in a country blues style, and his lyrics refer to hard truths about family and relationships and current political and racial concerns.
Red Desert Motel will perform the third MMC show on July 13 at Moore Bagels on Main Street. Show time is 8 p.m., with doors open at 7:15 p.m. The Red Desert Motel is a roots-rock duo from South Jersey that plays originals and covers, according to its Facebook page.
The MMC also has two shows scheduled for the fall, on Friday, Sept. 13, and Thursday, Oct. 10. They will feature artists Josh Rouse and Wesley Stace.
The collective is a nonprofit that started two years ago after Hines discovered an article about a neighborhood near Akron, Ohio, that used a vacant building as a nonprofit music venue. Since its inception, the organization has held about 20 shows.
“We are definitely a D-I-Y operation – do it yourself – and I think we’re respected by a lot of musicians for that approach,” Hines noted, “that we’re not trying to make money, we’re trying to support musicians, their livelihoods, get their music to a greater audience. We’re also trying to promote Moorestown and the Main Street district and the restaurants as well.
“We want our shows to be accessible to everyone, (so) that they can come in and feel comfortable,” he added. “Our goal, too, is that we want to expose people from Moorestown or in the surrounding communities to acts that they maybe aren’t that familiar with, but they come away having appreciated (that) they discovered another artist and their artistic vision and learned new music.”
For more information on the MMC’s upcoming shows, visit its Facebook page.
