COYLE — Uncle Bonsai will play Concerts in the Woods on Saturday at the Laurel B. Johnson Community Center.
The center is located at 923 Hazel Point Road in Coyle. The show is scheduled from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are by donation only with a suggested donation of $20 per person.
Organizers said if Tim Burton and Edward Gorey hijacked the Andrews Sisters en route to a Stephen Sondheim festival with The Beatles and Tom Lehrer in the sidecar, you’d get Seattle super-harmonizers Uncle Bonsai.
With three voices and an acoustic guitar, Uncle Bonsai presents an often-dizzying vocal array of intricate harmony. Their songs, dark and hilarious at times, just as often delight with moments of great insight and beauty.
The trio aligns itself with the underachiever, the dejected, the outsider, the black sheep.
Densely packed lyrics fly by in a whirr at times and take a skewed stance on topics such as first-world problems, the creation of the universe, the afterlife and holidays with the family.
Uncle Bonsai’s acoustic folk-pop songs are almost one-act plays or short stories, resisting strict pop, folk or singer-songwriter categories. Their songs focus on the passing of time, the passing of genes and the passing of pets – the truth of everything seemingly buried somewhere under the family tree.
Now in its 42nd year, the group has nine recordings, a reversible/hard cover book for parents (and their kids) and recently premiered a show, “Seven Sins, Seven Wonders, Seven Dwarfs,” featuring a 25-song cycle. The group plans to do shows that integrate these songs into their regular material and will also present the entire cycle in a series of shows this fall.
