MOUNT VERNON – Singer-songwriter Lydia Brownfield is looking forward to finally playing before a live audience again after months of isolation during the COVID-19 shutdown.
“Dinner, music, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my Saturday even if I wasn’t playing,” Brownfield told the News. She is scheduled to perform on Saturday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. at the Woodward Opera House in Mount Vernon.
Brownfield, a native of Columbus, who moved there after spending time in Atlanta and New York City, will play only original work that she has written.
She’ll also play a new song
written during the coronavirus quarantine about growing up on the west side of Columbus.
“A lot of my songs are just soul-searching,” she said. “Hopefully, the audience will feel connected.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, Brownfield did not play music for two months.
“I was just processing everything,” she told the News. “I didn’t feel especially creative. I took some time off.”
Before long, she started writing again and recorded an albumshe hopes to release next year. “It gave me time to reflect,and I was able to jump back in with a vengeance starting May,” Brownfield said.
The Mount Vernon audience can expect to hear music from many different genres that reflect a career embracing several different influences.
“I started off in the Punk era,” Brownfield said. “A lot of my earlier stuff was real edgy. But on acoustic guitar, it sounds really folky— edgy folk pop.”
She also sings the blues, and some of her songs even have a jazz sound.
“There’s a little bit of country too,” she said. ”The majority of my songs I would say are folkpop.”
She played in Nashville once but found her music wasn’t quite country enough to fit comfortably into that scene. She also performed in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village; and she has opened for the Indigo Girls and Shawn Mullins, among others. Brownfield has been compared
to Sinéad O’Connor and Sheryl Crow.
She will be accompanied by her long-time partner, Jeff Dalrymple, as an acoustic guitar duo.
The Woodward Opera House, which opened in 1851, is “America’s Oldest Authentic 19th Century Theater still standing,” its website said.
For more information on the concert, visit thewoodward.org.
