KC TURNER PRESENTS

WILLY TEA TAYLOR & CASSANDRA LEWIS

+ Rita Taylor

HopMonk Novato Session Room

Fully Seated | 21+ Only

ABOUT:

There is no question that Willy Tea Taylor’s life as a singer/songwriter was predetermined – his role realized the moment he wrote his first song. His inspirations drawn from two separate wells; Living the life of a cattleman’s kid and experiencing true visionaries music like Greg Brown, John Hartford, and Guy Clark. The image of Guy Clark and friends sitting around the kitchen table loaded with ashtrays full of butts, half-smoked cigarettes, food, and booze on one Christmas Eve in 1975 burned into Taylors’s soul. Those guys, swapping songs without pretense, lit Willy Tea’s fire. And ever since, its led purpose with passion – finding a hang by curating relationships through musical friendships that get him closer to his own Clark style kitchen table.

From his early days co-fronting The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, to singing solo in countless cowboy bars, to pitching countless wiffle ball games, Willy Tea has never lost the vision. Now Willy Tea Taylor has taken his vision of the “hero hang” on the road. and his talented traveling band The Fellership is made up of his fantastically talented buds who play Willy’s songs with a brand of reckless abandon and utter humility that spits in the face of pretense. The way The Fellership plays Will’s songs is the way they demand to be played and, in their short time together, they have been awe-ing every audience lucky enough to see them.

Nashville-based singer and songwriter Cassandra Lewis brings her signature Cosmic Americana to life with a kaleidoscopic blend of classic country, psychedelic soul, and cinematic storytelling. Known for her powerhouse vocals and unfiltered emotionality, Lewis channels a life lived across continents and chaos — from being born on a converted WWII base in Nuremberg to a childhood of constant moves, small-town grit, and eventually the wild spiral of houselessness and heartbreak that shaped her voice.

Her sound has been described by press as a “tapestry of cosmic Americana, retro soul, and country gold” (No Depression), and she jokes that her music is like “Dolly Parton on acid. Janis Joplin on Jesus.”