Hard Luck Cafe Series Moves to Cinema Arts

The and Folk Music Society of Huntington announced last week that they are partnering together to present the Folk Music Society’s Hard Luck Cafe, starting this April.

The Hard Luck Cafe series is designed to showcase local and regional up-and-coming artists. The event is held every third Thursday of the month and will wrap up its stint at the Congregational Church of Huntington  in March. Hard Luck Cafe chairman Dave Waxman spoke of the positives of relocating their event to the Cinema Arts Centre’s Sky Room.

“We hope to attract more performers and reach a larger audience there,” he said. “Our main purpose is to be a venue for musicians.”

A subset of the Folk Music Society’s board, the Hard Luck Cafe committee, is in charge of deciding which artists to bring in for the concert series. Waxman said that artists are usually selected in three different ways: board members will hear somebody perform at another venue and reach out to them, artists will contact the Folk Music Society asking if they could perform or someone at one of the open mics that precedes each Hard Luck Cafe performance will be selected to come back as a main act.

The first performance at the Cinema Arts Centre will be on April 21 and feature singer-songwriters Lara Herscovitch and Josh Joffen. Herscovitch was the Connecticut State Troubador for 2009-10, a honorary position that requires the troubadour to function as an ambassador for music and perform at several Connecticut state events. Joffen is a Brooklyn native and winner of the Kerrville New Folk Competition for Songwriters in Texas.

The event starts on April 21 at 7:30 p.m. with an hour of open mics. Herscovitch and Joffen will then take to the stage at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $7 for Cinema Arts Centre and Folk Music Society members, $10 for nonmembers.