When Lisa Biales brings her prodigious talents to The Coffee Pot in Greenville on Thursday, October 6, she and her bandmates in the Lisa Biales Trio will undoubtedly draw a crowd of devoted fans who have followed her throughout her many appearances in our community. I first met Lisa in the early 2000’s when she and singing partner Sarah Goslee Reed memorably performed in local schools as part of Darke County Center for the Arts’ Arts In Education program, singing mostly original songs based on beloved children’s literature. Lisa’s love of singing was obvious to all as the duo charmed students and faculty with their warm personalities and beautiful voices. Since then she has appeared in several DCCA Coffee House Series shows, some of which also included violinist Doug Hamilton and cellist Michael G. Ronstadt both of whom will team with Lisa at The Coffee Pot, and performed as part of DCCA’s Artists Series presentations at Henry St. Clair Memorial Hall.
Lisa grew up in a musical family—her dad fronted a jazz band, her mother sang with that band as well as in plays and church choir—and has been singing for as long as she can remember. When she was in sixth grade, she played her guitar and sang in church, then branched out to sing at weddings before joining various bands playing rock and roll, bluegrass, folk, and Americana. After completing a Master’s Degree in theater at Ohio University and following the success of her first album of original songs, Lisa quit her day job in 2003 to devote her full attention to music, explaining that she decided to put all of her energy into singing and playing the guitar, which were things that she truly loved; she has been successfully performing and recording ever since.
Singing –the vocal production of musical tones–is not only ancient, but also universal, the origins of which are lost in antiquity, but predate the development of spoken language. The voice is thought to be the original musical instrument, as amazingly no human culture is known to exist that does not sing! Primitive societies sang as they prayed to their gods or celebrated rites of passage, and to memorialize and preserve their history. Lisa Biales celebrates this ancient and forever art form that she so loves, singing with joy and enthusiasm, communicating emotions as well as stories with her clear, bell-like voice. Oh, and her guitar skills are also quite impressive, as is the mastery of their chosen instruments displayed by her musical cohorts in the Lisa Biales Trio, Doug and Michael.
DCCA’s Coffee House Series presents high quality artists performing in welcoming intimate surroundings where food and drink are available; audiences get an up-close personal look at the performers, often engendering a magical connection and generating an energy exchange that inspires awesome performances. Other 2022-2023 Coffee House presentations include Heartland Productions’ performance of songs from the Great American Songbook at Union City’s Arts Depot on December 1, and eclectic duo Acoustic Eidolon, consisting of cellist Hannah Alkire and her husband Joe Scott who invented and plays the guitjo (a guitar strung like a banjo), performing at Montage Cafe on March 23; singer/songwriter Elden Kelly closes out the series at Arcanum’s Wayne Trail Historical Society on April 20.
Tickets for Coffee House shows are a real bargain at $15, or just $10 for DCCA members, and can be purchased by contacting DCCA at www.DarkeCountyArts.org or 937-547-0908. Any tickets remaining by showtime will be available at the door the night of the show, but I strongly believe that tickets for Lisa’s performance will be gone long before then. As her many local devoted fans already know, Lisa Biales was born to sing; sharing time with this extraordinarily talented artist is a not-to-be- missed and cherished privilege.
