NOV 14 | Cobb Great Hall
DOM FLEMONS
Program to be announced from the stage.
INTERMISSION
RANKY TANKY
Freedom
You Better Mind
All For You
Let Me Be
Down In My Heart
You Gotta Move
Turtle Dove
Good Time
Stand By Me
Sometime
Shoo Lie Loo
Lift Me Up
Beat Em Down
Ranky Tanky
Tonight’s program will run approximately two hours and 10 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission.
Dom Flemons is originally from Phoenix, Arizona and currently lives in the Chicago area with his family. He has branded the moniker The American Songster® since his repertoire of music covers over 100 years of early American popular music. Flemons is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, actor, slam poet, music scholar, historian, and record collector. He is considered an expert player on the banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, percussion, quills, fife and rhythm bones. Flemons was selected for the prestigious 2020 United States Artists Fellowship Award for the Traditional Arts category which was generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In 2020 Dom Flemons re-issued his album titled Prospect Hill: The American Songster Omnibus on Omnivore Recordings. The two-CD album features three parts: the original Prospect Hill album, the 2015 EP What Got Over, and The Drum Major Instinct which includes twelve previously unissued instrumental tracks. His original song “I Can’t Do It Anymore” was released on a limited-edition wax cylinder recording. Recently, he released a cover of the Elmore James classic “Shake Your Money Maker,” recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis, alongside Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band and featured guest, legendary guitarist Steve Cropper. He played his six-string banjo (Big Head Joe), quills, and bones on Tyler Childers’ groundbreaking album Long Violent History and played jug alongside Branford Marsalis on the soundtrack to Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on Netflix.
In 2018 Flemons released a solo album titled Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys on Smithsonian Folkways and received a Grammy® nomination for Best Folk Album at the 61st Grammy Awards®. This recording is part of the African American Legacy Recordings series, co-produced with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
At the 2018 National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Mid-America Awards, Flemons was nominated for two Emmy Awards for PBS’s Songcraft Presents Dom Flemons and for the co-written song “Good Old Days” with songwriter Ben Arthur.
He was the first artist-in-residence at the Making American Music internship program at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in the summer of 2018.
In 2005 Flemons co-founded the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who won a Grammy Award® for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2010 and were nominated for Best Folk Album in 2012. He left the group to pursue his solo career in 2014. In 2016 the Carolina Chocolate Drops were inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame and are featured in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Flemons has archived the legacy of the Carolina Chocolate Drops in his personal collection at the Southern Folklife Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, TN.
Ranky Tanky has achieved many firsts for South Carolina’s West African-rooted Gullah community since their formation, earning yet another milestone at the 2019 Grammy Awards® by taking home the Best Regional Roots Album prize for their sophomore release, Good Time. The album, which also hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz chart, combines songs carried down through generations in the Sea Islands of the Southeastern United States with the band’s own original compositions in the Gullah tradition. In Ranky Tanky's hands, this style of music has been described as "soulful honey to the ears" (NPR) while being covered by The New York Times, NPR’s Fresh Air and the Today show, who had the band on for a performance.
Ranky Tanky (a Gullah phrase for “get funky”) are five lifelong friends from Charleston, South Carolina who have established themselves as passionate global ambassadors for their local culture and community, helping to faithfully preserve the traditions originated by African Americans in the coastal South during slavery that are kept alive through the present day. The band have been featured on NPR's Fresh Air and the Today show, PBS Newshour and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Ranky Tanky were honored to be featured artists in President Biden’s inauguration event, We The People. They were the subjects of a 10-page profile in Oxford American’s South Carolina Music issue and were named 2020 Artist of the Year by the Charleston City Paper.
