Join the Woody Guthrie Center® on Friday, July 22, as we welcome Lilli Lewis to the Tulsa stage!
Athens, Georgia native turned New Orleans Folk Rock Diva Lilli Lewis is a voice for the voiceless in Americana, her third full album for Louisiana Red Hot Records, lauded by NPR,Rolling Stone, Offbeat Magazine and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Trained as an opera singer and classical pianist, singer-songwriter Lewis has been a composer, producer and performing artist for over two decades. She has been known as the Folk Rock Diva since performing in the Folk Rock band The Shiz, founded with her wife Liz Hogan.
Lewis issued three previous releases on Louisiana Red Hot Records where she serves as VP and the Head of A&R: The 2018 The Henderson Sessions, 2019’s We Belong, and the 2020 My American Heart Red + Blue EP. In 2020, Lewis also released a single she co-wrote, coproduced and performed — the “Mask Up” anthem for a public health campaign from Louisiana Red Hot Records and WHIV-FM featuring New Orleans favorites Kirk Joseph, Glen DavidAndrews, Roland Guerin, James Andrews, and Erica Falls.
Since the shutdown, Lewis has performed a powerful set for the Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America series, sang “My American Heart” for a voters’ rights benefit (where Broadway star Mandy Patinkin compared her voice to “the color of light”), and performed for WWOZ-FM’s Piano Night benefit alongside celebrated artists like Jon Batiste, Ivan Neville.
Her full ensemble, known at home as the Lilli Lewis Project, refers to itself as “not so much a band but rather a pan-generational cult of radical decency” willing to traverse any musical terrain, bearing the spirit of days when everyone still seemed to believe music could change the world. As the story goes, Lewis’ mother was told her baby probably wouldn’t survive because of lung trouble in utero. Lewis now uses those same lungs to bring what she calls sacred songs into profane spaces, and though she’s abandoned trying to define her sound, she hopes her audiences leave her performances knowing two things: that they are brilliant as they are, and that they have the ability to use their own brilliance to make a better world.
You won’t want to miss this performance!
