Drop the Knife: A Memoir-in-Song by Jeanne Mackey November 21, 2010

Activist and singer/songwriter Jeanne Mackey marks her 60th birthday with a disarmingly honest and wryly funny musical chronicle of her midlife search for personal and ancestral healing, from the high desert of the Eastern Sierras to the verdant Irish countryside. Mackey, who rocked the 1970s East Coast topical music circuit as a young musician advocating feminist values and social justice, explores the meaning of magic, homeland, curses, and death in a memoir-in-song that draws on her deeply personal experiences of transformative change in an era that taught Americans to celebrate their differences. She is joined by musicians Laszlo Slomovits (guitar, mandolin, fiddle, pennywhistle, panpipes), Lori Fithian (percussion), Eric Fithian (bass), with Mary Wilson and Dale Petty (vocals). Sponsored by U-M Women’s Studies. Free and open to the public; donations accepted for Peace Neighborhood Center’s Performance Arts Academy.