The Valhalla Art, Music and Theatre Festival Opens June 25th

The 2014 Valhalla Art, Music and Theatre Festival begins On Wednesday, June 25th with a concert featuring award winning songwriter and guitar player Ray Bonneville with very special guest Lance Canales and the Flood opening the show.

Lovers of all genres of music will appreciate these renowned American Roots and Blues artists. The Boathouse Theatre’s rear doors will be open to the lake view for this special evening! Advance tickets are $20 and $22 at the door. Information and tickets are on line at www.valhallatahoe.com or by calling 530-541-4975.

Red House Records artist Ray Bonneville is a poet of the demimonde who didn’t write his first song until his early 40s, some 20 years after he started performing. But with a style that sometimes draws comparisons to JJ Cale and Daniel Lanois, this blues-influenced, New Orleans-inspired “song and groove man,” as he’s been so aptly described, luckily found his rightful calling.

Born in Quebec, his family moved to Boston when he was 12. He served a year in Vietnam as a Marine, struggled and overcame drug addiction, earned a pilot’s license in Colorado, then moved to Alaska, then Seattle, and Paris and New Orleans. But it took a close call while piloting a seaplane across the Canadian wilderness to make him decide it was time to get busy writing songs - gritty narratives inspired by a lifetime of hard-won knowledge set against his gritty, soulful guitar and harmonica playing.

He’s since earned many accolades, including a Juno Award for his 1999 album, Gust of Wind. His post-Katrina ode, “I Am the Big Easy,” earned the International Folk Alliance’s 2009 Song of the Year Award, and in 2012, Bonneville won the solo category in the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge. He has guested on albums by Mary Gauthier, Gurf Morlix, Eliza Gilkyson, Ray Wylie Hubbard and other prominent artists, and shared songwriting credits with Tim O’Brien, Phil Roy and Morlix, among others. Slaid Cleaves placed Bonneville’s “Run Jolee Run” on his lauded 2009 album, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away.

Ray plays vintage retrofitted Gibson Melody Maker and Guild electric guitars, wooden plank stomp boards he designed himself, harmonica and sings. He is a true one-man-band, filling theatres, clubs and halls with the sound of a four piece band. His performances rapt audiences and create instant fans everywhere he goes.

Ray is touring in support of Easy Gone, his fourth album for Red House Records. The album takes listeners to some of the dark spaces and exotic places Bonneville has gone on his own travels. An Austin resident since 2006, Bonneville still puts the rhythms and soul of New Orleans into much of his music. His songs carry a groove and momentum that’s uniquely his — and will always be a part of him, no matter where he roams.

Lance Canales & The Flood are a roots-blues influenced Americana trio from California’s breadbasket, where Canales lived the life that so many songs have been written about since the birth of roots music – hard labor, one room shacks and taunting ghosts whispering of a better life.

Canales’ combines a deep, raspy vocals combine a hard-edged storytelling approach beneath a stripped down, foot-stomping, acoustic instrumentation including stand-up bass played by David Quinday (whose mournful bowing can be found on tracks such as “Hummingbird Blues” on the bands most recent album “Elixir”) and multi-percussionist Zak Parrish.

Canales garnered a reputation as a child as a wild horse trainer and for years was forced to take his lumps in order to help his family make ends meet. It wasn’t until he confiscated an older sister’s beat up guitar and combined it with vocals he’d discovered in church that he was able to slowly carve a way out of the hard toil life with his music.

At present, Canales is most passionate about the bands February 2013 release of the single “Plane Crash at Los Gatos: Deportee” written by Woody Guthrie in 1948. The song has been covered by many stellar musicians, but what makes this version so important is that it reveals the names of the Mexican nationals, the “deportees” who died in the crash. After first performing the song with the names at the 2012 Steinbeck Festival, Canales decided he wanted to do more for the “deportees” who were buried in a mass, unmarked grave in Fresno, California, where the band now resides. In August of 2013, Lance Canales & The Flood are, in collaboration the Guthrie Foundation, put on a concert to raise money for a historic memorial headstone for the “deportees.”

The annual summer-long Valhalla Art, Music & Theatre Festival is a unique celebration of music, live theater and the visual arts set against the magnificent backdrop of Lake Tahoe. The Festival takes place at the Tallac Historic Site on the shore of Lake Tahoe, a 74-acre setting currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Now in its 34th year, events occur at historically authentic locations including the Boathouse Theatre, Valhalla Grand Hall and the Grand Lawn.

2014 Festival ticket prices will vary and many events are free. For current info visit the Valhalla Tahoe website or call 530-541-4975. Valhalla Tahoe members receive a 10%-20% discount and for membership inquiries, discounts and passes, please visit Support Valhalla here or call 530-541-4975. Find the Festival on Facebook: Please "Like" us on Facebook.

Valhalla is located at the Tallac Historic Site located two miles past the intersection of Highways 50 and 89 next door to Camp Richardson.