Custom Made Woman: A Life in Traditional Music featuring Alice Gerrard

Join us for an evening with Alice Gerrard, a talent of legendary status, with special guests Tatiana Hargreaves & Reed Stutz.

In a career spanning more than 50 years, Alice has known, learned from, and performed with many of the old-time and bluegrass greats and has in turn earned worldwide respect for her own important contributions to the music.

Known for her groundbreaking collaboration with Appalachian singer Hazel Dickens during the 1960s and ’70s, the duo produced four classic Hazel and Alice LPs on Rounder and Smithsonian Folkways that influenced scores of young women singers.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Custom Made Woman tells Gerrard’s story through the music, the folk festivals, the kids, and the relationships—both personal and professional—that defined her storied life and career. Her collaborations with Appalachian singer Hazel Dickens during the 1960s and 1970s were pivotal recordings during the decades after the American folk music boom of the midcentury; the duo produced four albums that have recently been rereleased by Rounder Records and Smithsonian Folkways. In addition to Dickens, Gerrard has worked with folks like Tommy Jarrell, Enoch Rutherford, Otis Burris, Luther Davis, and Matokie Slaughter, and founded The Old-Time Herald, based in Durham, North Carolina, serving as its editor-in-chief from 1987 until 2003.

She’s also a lifelong documentarian of the folkways scene, and this book features nearly 100 rare photos—many never before seen—of key musicians, including Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, Hazel Dickens, Elizabeth Cotten, Mike Seeger, and more. In telling the story of her time as a player of traditional music, Gerrard gives us a deeply personal way to understand and appreciate a quintessentially American genre that has a long history and thrives to this day.