Singer with local ties returning to area to help local folk music club kick off its season

Greg Greenway has always been an ambitious songwriter.  These days a lot of his songwriting is aimed at bringing people together, so he has his work cut out for him.

Greenway headlines the Feb. 3rd opening night of the South Shore Folk Music Club’s 46^th season, at the First Parish Church in Duxbury. (The First Parish is located at 842 Tremont St. in Duxbury, and the show begins at 7 p.m., with tickets $22 for non-members, $20 for members. Check the club’s website at ssfmc.org for more details.)

Greenway will be back in the area on March 9, when he headlines the Homegrown Coffeehouse in Needham.

Ties to Boston

Greenway grew up in Richmond, Virginia, but by the late 1980s he was living in Boston, within sight of Fenway Park, and forging a career in the music world. He was the frontman for the rock band Trace of Red, but really found his calling as a folk artist, building a steady fanbase with regular gigs at places like Easton’s old Blackthorne Tavern. By 1992, he’d released his debut album, “A Road Worth Walking Down,” and been able to sprinkle more and more of his original tunes into his sets.

Between 2012 and 2020, Greenway was part of the folk trio Brother Sun, and in 2017 he began doing a series of programs – Deeper Than The Skin – with fellow Virginia native Reggie Harris, where they perform songs and tell stories about how much they – a black man and a white man – have in common, and how their perspectives might differ.  Last April, Greenway’s 10th solo album, “Between Hello and Goodbye” was released to rave reviews, and was cited as the most played album of April by The Folk DJs’ List tracking folk radio play over 200 stations worldwide, with three songs in the organization’s top 10 playlist. (Greenway's music is available online through his website, greggreenway.com, via mp3s, downloads, or physical copies, although he eschews the streaming platforms.)

Start planning: Great tribute bands are coming to the area. Find an act playing the music of a favorite

On a more personal note, Greenway moved from Boston to Cape Cod in 1996, and then in 2016 fell in love with a Virginia schoolteacher, moving there in the next year after they’d been married. These days he lives not far from where he grew up, an irony not lost on him as some of his music deals with issues that go back 150 years.

Returning home

“I grew up in Richmond, where they had 40 major (Civil War) battles within a 20-mile radius,” Greenway noted by phone from his home. “That history is still in the soil down here. Growing up in the 1950-60-70s we always had the sense that things were getting better, but it seems like it’s just been backlash from that point on. But in our shows together, Reggie and I don’t point fingers at anyone – we just tell our stories. We just did one of our shows last week, for a group of 1^1th graders on Long Island, and it was invigorating to see how sharp and aware these kids were.”

“It is incredible that Reggie and I never met until we were both playing at the Village Gate in New York City, and met in the green room,” Greenway said. “We were born just three days apart, in practically the same place, and were both athletes in high school. We found we had so much in common and knew many of the same people. I was a basketball player, so I hung out with black and white kids, and it was no big deal. But a seminal moment for me was when we had a race riot break out at one of our games during my junior year – mainly because of our racist coach. Reggie had never had anything like that happen, but we found we did have many things in common, besides both being folk singers.”

New record runs gamut

On the new solo record, Greenway’s songs run the gamut from the serious and thought provoking to the delightfully silly, such as the highway anthem ("Get Out Of The Left Lane") that suggest that folks who dawdle in the left lane all the time are among society’s worst. That’s a latter day take on Greenway’s ‘90s anthem ("Driving in Massachusetts") about Massachusetts drivers and their unpredictability, and he’s said that having that one played on the old public radio show Car Talk was the pinnacle of his career.

On the most recent album, “Hello Hello Hello” can be seen as a joyful emerging-from-pandemic song, while “Don’t Promise Me” is a bright, gospel-blues, and “Saving the Best for Last” is a heart-tugging ode to late-life romance centered on piano. There’s a fine video online for “That’s Where the Hope Comes From,” an a cappella tune where the power and superb tone of his vocals gives the uplifting theme even more impact.

"‘Hope’ is a song that came from a great story I saw on the broadcast of The Living Legacy Project,” Greenway recalled. “They were visiting historic civil rights sites and talked to this lady who Medgar Evers had talked into helping his efforts in Mississippi. Her comments about how she never allowed herself to get too discouraged, and how each day she just got up and got dressed and kept at it inspired me; that’s where the hope comes from – it’s a new day tomorrow.”

Unique way to open shows

Greenway will often open his shows with an a cappella performance.

“That’s a trick I learned from a show back in the old Boston Garden when I was just a fan,” he noted. “It was a multi-band package show and all these acts got up there and wailed, and it all sounded awful. Then, Kool & the Gang came out, and since they hadn’t had a sound check, they just began singing by themselves. Suddenly you had 18,000 people in rapt attention, and it sounded great, too. Over the years I’ve found that to be very useful, playing festivals and so on, because it is like hitting the re-set button for the audience. One of the first places I can remember doing that was at the South Shore Folk Music Club, so I have very warm memories of performing for them.”

Greenway had multiple shows for the SSFMC when it used the Beal House in Kingston as its venue.

“The coffeehouse scene in the northeast is like nothing else in the country,” he said. “I can clearly recall picking up my white rotary phone in my old Boston place, when the SSFMC offered me my first headliner show at the Beal House. I had opened for Chris Smither there, and a couple others, and in later years Brother Sun played there, too. I can also remember the church in Duxbury, where I played a co-bill with Cheryl Wheeler, not long after my first album. That’s when I opened by doing the song ‘A Road Worth Walking Down’ a cappella for the first time, so it means a lot to me.”

Making the most of the pandemic

Greenway took advantage of the pandemic downtime to really focus on his piano playing and wrote much of the last album on that instead of his customary guitar. That fascination with keyboards had its start at the Circle of Friends Coffeehouse in Franklin.

“My first live album, in 2003, was at Circle of Friends, and that was the first time I tried some piano,” said Greenway. “At the start of the pandemic, I began practicing piano every morning. It is such an advantage to be able to play the music in my head, amazing to be able to play what I’m thinking right away. The more musical you can get, the better it makes me on guitar too. I always played with Berklee College guys in my rock bands, and they always viewed jazz as a lifetime job, so you always push to learn and improve.”

Bringing people together

Looking back again at the new album, the song “Another Day” refers to the right-wing march at Charlottesville, Virginia, from 2017, decrying its display of hatred, while “Build A Bridge” is an anthem for bringing people together, with key lines like “we won’t make it to the other side, until we find the will to build a bridge.”

“We have no choice,” Greenway said of the latter song. “We’re all in this together. There has to be a way to talk, and not turn our backs on each other. If we take the time to listen, we see the other side has some legitimate gripes.  And as Reggie and I have seen, since the George Floyd tragedy, people are finally willing to talk about race in this country. And as my song ‘Big Wide World’ says, it’s not impossible. It’s still on us, but it’s not impossible, and music is hope. I want people to come away from my concerts uplifted and with hope for our future.”

And fans should not expect Greenway to simply be playing message songs all night either, as his repertoire runs the gamut and he’s first and foremost an entertainer. Back in those early days at the Blackthorne Tavern, he did a super version of Don McLean’s "American Pie."

“I think of the show in 20-minute segments,” he said. “I realize I am not going to hypnotize people by just standing there in one place. Over the course of the night I will have changes of pace, chances to clear the palette for the audience, and go from guitar to piano to ukelele and so on.”

“Those old nights at the Blackthorne were some of my hardest gigs,” Greenway said with a laugh. “They wanted me to keep my first set low key and quiet, so as not to disturb the dinner crowd. Nothing about me wants to be quiet and low key on stage!”

The Milk Carton Kids in Boston

On that common theme of acoustic folk music with beautiful vocals, The Milk Carton Kids headline the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on Friday night (Jan. 26), part of their tour celebrating their Grammy-nominated "I Only See the Moon" album. The Los Angeles duo's first new record in four years continues their sublime combination of hauntingly poetic lyrics and soul stirring vocal harmonies so pure that they invite comparisons to past icons like The Everly Brothers or Simon and Garfunkel. The Milk Carton Kids were in Boston in October, opening for Gregory Alan Isakov at the 3,000 capacity Roadrunner, but their music is much better suited to the 975 capacity Paradise, where its subtle nuances can be appreciated. On the new album, Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan look at the passage of time, precious moments spent with loved ones, and savoring life's indelible memories. While some previous albums have used lots of production, this album feels more sparse, centered on Pattengale's rhythm guitar and Ryan's finger-picked melody lines for the exquisitely evocative sound that has won them legions of fans. And the interplay and harmony the two vocalists achieve is truly stunning, so it is no surprise to see them earn another Grammy nomination (their fourth overall) with this latest gem of an album.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Former Bostonian to help South Shore Folk Music Club open 46th season