our promo for this concert, March 25, 2017
Boston Duo the Page Turners Saturday Night – RAF Now Serving Homemade Ice Cream by Simply Natural Creamery, Open Tuesdays 5-8 p.m. – Eyes on Main Street Photo Show Going Up in Wilson
[Fountain, NC] The Boston-based duo the Page Turners perform original and traditional bluegrass and old-time country music at Fountain General Store this coming Saturday night.
Winners of the 2016 FreshGrass Best Duo prize, the Page Turners met while students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and began performing together as part of the Berklee American Roots Program.
Carolyn Kendrick plays fiddle and Jake Howard plays mandolin and writes their original songs. They share lead vocals and blend harmonies together.
One critic notes that they perform “sharp original music ” that puts “new twists on old favorites, blending their love of bluegrass, old-time country music, swing, and fearless songwriting.” Another says they “harness the best and deepest parts of bluegrass and old-time sounds as their own unique springboard for some wonderful new music.”
Carolyn Kendrick grew up in Northern California in a family of Texan musicians. Her formal music studies included Suzuki violin and marching band. She then moved on to bluegrass and Billie Holiday studies on her own.
A Berklee graduate, she received the Fletcher Bright Scholarship, was a 2015 FreshGrass Fiddle Competition finalist, and a participant at the Savannah Music Festival’s Acoustic Music Seminar in 2016.
Jake Howard, from Akron, Ohio, graduates this year from Berklee. Before moving to Boston, he performed in his uncle’s Blue Ribbon Bluegrass Band, with whom he recorded two CDs.
The Page Turners’ show at Fountain General Store kicks off the 4-stop North Carolina portion of their Southern tour and is their only performance east of Winston-Salem.
“We’ve got the Page Turners in East Carolina because their friends from Mile Twelve enjoyed playing Fountain so much last fall,” said RAF proprietor Alex Albright. “Like the Mile Twelve pickers, these are terrific conservatory-trained musicians who love bluegrass and traditional old-time and country music, and they really love performing for audiences as authentic as ours.” Mile Twelve is also scheduled to play RAF again on September 24.
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The Page Turners were an Austin, Texas based roots music duo that blended bluegrass, old-time, and classic country music. Jake Howard (mandolin, guitar, vocals) and Carolyn Kendrick (fiddle, guitar, vocals) met while studying at the Berklee College of Music. After organizing the Page Turners, they moved from Boston to Austin, Texas in October of 2017.
The band’s name came from Howard and Kendrick’s shared love of reading. Both wrote songs for the band, and Kendrick stated in an interview with The Partae that many of the songs she writes are based loosely on books she has read. According to the interview, she is especially inspired by western novels.
The band won FreshGrass Festival’s Best Duo Award in 2016. In 2017, they released a self-titled debut CD of their original songs.
To hear some of their music and watch their music videos, visit their YouTube page here.
Carolyn Kendrick is now pursuing solo music and in 2020 released her debut EP titled Tear Things Apart. She has her own YouTube channel here. Kendrick also teaches private fiddle lessons and at fiddle camps around the United States.
Jake Howard now plays mandolin for the Hen House Prowlers and West Bound Situation.
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–Charlotte Grimes
April 2021
References
Lawless, John. “The Blackbird Said from the Page Turners.” Bluegrass Today, Bluegrasstoday.com, 20 July 2017. Read it.
“The Page Turners.” Bluegrass Today. Read it.
“The Page Turners.” The Partae 18 July 2017.
