Internationally touring rapper, writer, and social entrepreneur Dessa shares techniques and tools for effectively channeling and communicating in lyric writing.

Everyone is welcome to attend. Know that this program prioritizes women, girls, femmes, queers, trans, intersex and non-binary songwriters, MCs, lyricists, and vocalists but there is no identity policy. Let’s rage together.

Dessa is an internationally touring musician and writer who has built a career by bucking genre conventions and industry trends. As a recording artist, she’s appeared on the Billboard Top 200 charts, contributed to The Hamilton Mixtape, and co-written for a 100-voice choir. As an author, she’s been published by the New York Times and National Geographic Traveler and has served as a guest writer for the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. In 2018, Dutton Books (Penguin Random House) published her first hardcover book, a non-fiction essay collection titled, My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love.

Come get weird with the Fort Collins Synthesizer Enthusiasts at their next synth meetup!

From FCSE:

We will be meeting in the Media Library, which is a much smaller space, so bring one synth, or a very compact rig to share. Or, just bring your sense of child-like wonder! Young and old, newbies and veterans, we can all learn from each other!
This month, we will have a very special guest presentation and performance by Kate Warner (of Mirror Fears and church fire) from 3-4, followed by the normal synth meetup format from 4-5.

KATE WARNER
Kate Warner started making electronic music at age 18 with a cracked copy of Fruity Loops and a computer microphone. Influenced by elements from bands like Portishead, Björk, and Curve, Kate knew she wanted to make dark, pretty, distorted electronic music. She recorded the first Mirror Fears EP in 2010 on an old PC with a microkorg, cracked copies of Nuendo and Reason, and some equipment lent by her brother. Over the next few years, she played in the band Talk All Night, put out a full length Mirror Fears album, several remixes and singles, and developed a way to perform live with an MPC and a loop pedal. Her live setup would undergo many different changes over the next few years, with guitar pedals coming and going, a homemade kill switch, and light-reactive synthesizer, mixers, and a mask with a built-in telephone microphone. She released an EP in 2014, and toured from 2014 to 2018, to most areas of the US, and in 2018 to Europe. Her last full length album and accompanying remix album featured musicians from Denver, the US, France, and Germany.

This performance will be unique as she has not played as Mirror Fears since joining the band church fire in December 2018, which has been an exciting and demanding project. She has no plans for Mirror Fears right now, but may revive it sometime in the future.

Don’t miss a special one-night-only screening of 16 Bars featuring a Q&A with Speech Thomas at The Lyric!

Presented in partnership with The Lyric, Washington’s, and KRFC 88.9 FM Radio Fort Collins, 16 Bars is a feature-length music doc that offers a rare glimpse at the human stories — and songs — that are locked away in our nation’s jails and prisons. In a Virginia jail’s makeshift recording studio, four men collaborate on an album with Grammy-winning recording artist, Todd “Speech” Thomas, from the hip-hop group Arrested Development.

Immediately following the film, KRFC 88.9 FM Radio Fort Collins presents the Music District Mic Check: A Conversation with Speech Thomas. Mic Check invites you to go behind-the-scenes and beyond the music with intimate conversations featuring your favorite musicians and industry insiders. Veteran hip hop journalist and radio DJ Kyle Eustice moderates this discussion.

Date: Wednesday, February 26
Time: 7pm (film), 8:30pm (Mic Check conversation)
Location: The Lyric
For tickets and more information:
https://lyriccinema.com/movie/16-bars

About Speech:
Speech is an award winning artist, consistently pushing the artistic and social envelope. He is the leader of the 2x Grammy Award winning hip-hop collective, Arrested Development. He and the group have been a ground-breaking force in Hip-hop culture since 91. Their debut album, “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of…” (EMI), sold over 4 million albums, earned them two Grammy awards for Best New Artist and Best Rap Single (Tennessee), 2 MTV awards, (People Everyday), a Soul Train Music Award, and the coveted NAACP Image Award. Rolling Stone magazine named them Band of The Year (92), while VH-1 named them one of the greatest Hip-hop artists of all time! The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame even named the AD smash “Tennessee” one of the 500
Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Speech has continued to be a trailblazer with the group and as a solo artist sharing stages with Nelson Mandela, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Hilary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, he is the categorical definition of legendary.

 

About Kyle:
Omaha native Kyle Eustice is an accomplished music journalist whose bylines have appeared in publications such as The Source, Wax Poetics, Consequence Of Sound, Okayplayer, Ghettoblaster Magazine and Vice. She’s currently a staff writer/editor for HipHopDX, news chief for Public Enemy’s Chuck D, High Times contributor and senior writer for Thrasher Skateboard Magazine. Kyle lives in Fort Collins with her husband Paul Lukes, and two chihuahuas Paco and Petey. In her spare time, she can be found somewhere backstage with a recorder in her hand or cruising down the Poudre Trail bumping Too $hort on her bicycle.