Folk artist Amsel performs in Radio Room Saturday

Click to Enlarge Folk artist Beth Amsel performs in the Radio Room tonight. Courtesy

By Sharon Sullivan
Grand Junction CO Colorado
May 9, 2008

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Go & Do

What: Beth Amsel concert When: Saturday, May 10, at 7 p.m. Where: The Radio Room, 1310 Ute Ave. Cost: $15 Information: 241-8801, ext. 7

    GRAND JUNCTION — Beth Amsel said she’s “musically omnivorous.”

    As the last of five kids, Amsel inherited all of her siblings’ record collections — a diverse range of genres — and thus grew up listening to all kinds of music.

    But “being a chick with a guitar, it all tends to go through the folk filter,” Amsel said.
Amsel, 36, comes to Grand Junction Saturday night to perform in the Radio Room.

    Amsel’s online bio states: “At a rebellious thirteen, Beth fled what she calls ‘the black eyelined, hair sprayed depths of suburban Long Island’ for a small ranching town on the Western Slope of Colorado, whose serene landscape and sharp mountains felt more like home than subdivisions and strip malls.

    “In Colorado, Beth says, ‘I became intimately acquainted with potato peelers, wheels of barbed wire and my voice.’”

    Amsel’s been writing all her own music since she was 22.

    “I was always an avid reader, and writing in a notebook or journal my whole life, so when I started playing guitar, it was a natural extension (to write music),” Amsel said.

    Amsel left Colorado for a while to play and learn music in New England, where there’s been a long-time appreciation for folk music. She returned to Colorado in 2003, and she resides in Nederland with her husband and dog.

    She performs regularly all over the country, from Key West, Fla., to Bellingham, Wash., and has often opened for other folk favorites like Greg Brown and Lucy Kaplansky.

    She has released three records, plus a new EP called “Flyaway” released last September.

    To learn more about Amsel or listen to her music, visit www.bethamsel.com.
For tickets to this concert in KAFM’s newly solar-powered Radio Room, call 241-8801, ext. 7, or visit www.kafmradio.org.

    Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.