MOUNT VERNON – Folk singer and guitarist R.J. Cowdery will perform Saturday at the Woodward Opera House, the oldest authentic 19th-century theater in the United States.
Cowdery, of Columbus, likes to make her audience “think, laugh, cry and feel,” her bio says.
“Much like the Midwestern Ohio landscape she calls home, her songs are stories of middle ground, and her tales are expressions of being in the midst of life,” the bio reads. “Fans tell her it’s uncanny the way her songs seem to take a peek directly into their lives.”
She injured a finger as a child, which forced her to learn a distinct style of playing guitar.
It’s a “distinctive technique that’s earned Cowdery her rightful place at the folk table,” the bio says. Her playing style is described as “fingerpicking with a deep bass line.” The artist has the ability to make it sound like there is more than one guitar on stage.
Cowdery has been a winner at several folk competitions, including the Kerrville New Folk and Mountain Stage NewSong contests, as well as the Falcon Ridge Emerging Artist and Sisters Folk festivals.
She released an album in 2019 entitled, “What If This Is All There Is” (GoosePie Music).
Her favorite artists include John Gorka, the Indigo Girls, Shawn Colvin and Tracy Chapman, Cowdery wrote on her blog.
Those musicians “made me sit down in a dark room and listen with my eyes closed because it hit something inside of me that was emotional and real,” she said. “And then I’d grab my guitar hoping that some of that would rub off on me because of the way it made me feel. If I could only get other people to feel that way about my songs. WOW! That’s a powerful thing.“
The concert starts at 7 p.m. and dinner will be offered, catered by the Kenyon Inn. Tickets may be purchased online on the theater’s website or by calling 740-263-6737 for more information.
The first event at the Woodward has been traced back to Dec. 8-10, 1851, the Opera House said. It was a lecture on electricity by a Dr. Boynton.
Efforts to restore it began in the 1970s. The Opera House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
