Tickets $50 advance, $55 door

Over four decades the contributions of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee John Sebastian have become a permanent part of our American musical fabric.

His group The Lovin’ Spoonful played a major role in the mid-’60s rock revolution, but what leader, singer and songwriter Sebastian had in mind was actually a counter-revolution. “We were grateful to the Beatles for reminding us our rock & roll roots,” John explains, “but we wanted to cut out the English middlemen, so to speak, and get down to making this new music as an ‘American’ band.”

The Lovin’ Spoonful’s first seven singles made it to the Top 10 – unprecedented and utterly unthinkable at the height of Beatlemania. At first they’d taken older material from blues, country, folk and jug band sources – what we now term “roots music” – and made it sound modern. Then, in a series of original songs composed and sung by John Sebastian, they did the reverse, creating thoroughly modern music that sounded like it contained the entire history of American music.

This music had an immediate and indelible impression on the public consciousness, but John Sebastian was already well-known on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Making his bow as a member of the Even Dozen Jug Band, his skills on guitar, harmonica and autoharp soon made him a sought-after accompanist, working with Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Mississippi John Hurt, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan and many others.

John is still out there spreading his gospel of American roots music. John Sebastian is not only a master musician, writer and performer, he remains one of the best ambassadors American music has ever had.