The online box office is now closed, but there are plenty of seats left for tonight's concert. So, come on down!

Also ... don't let the weather dissuade you. It will be toasty warm at the WAC and besides, we're of heartier stock than that!

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The Watchung Arts Center's "Powerful Woman of Song" Series

Proudly Presents...

Wishing Chair!

Give a listen on Myspace

Check out a short video on YouTube

Wishing Chair is the collaborative effort of Miriam Davidson and Kiya Heartwood. The duo is a songwriting, string dancing, accordion playing, harmony singing, storytelling, hand drumming, banjo strumming, soul stirring, two-woman tour-de-force!

Kiya comes from a long line of wild things, honky-tonkers and Methodist preachers from Kentucky and Tennessee. She was raised in central Kentucky and headed west to Oklahoma. Miriam, on the otherhand, was born on Long Island, raised in the outskirts of Philadelphia, and comes from a family of musicians. She could sight-sing before she could read and quickly learned to play both the Banjo and the accordion.

From driving contemporary folk originals to five-hundred-year-old ballads, Wishing Chair's roots-folk is full of passion, energy and power. Kiya's hip-cowpunk spirit mingled with Miriam's soulful, East Coast sophistication gives this duo its beautiful balance. While acoustic guitars, accordion and drop-dead gorgeous harmonies are their tools of the trade; it is the songs that are their passion. Kiya's lyrics are poetic and powerful and any subject is fair game: love, shipwrecks, urban sprawl, punk bars and 19th century poets.

Wishing Chair was formed in 1995 and has released five CDs on the Terrakin label. Both Miriam and Kiya go into a cold sweat when asked to categorize the music they play, but the best answer so far seems to be roots/folk or contemporary folk. Wishing Chair think of themselves as folksinger-songwriters. As Kiya says, "Basically, we're song farmers." Wishing Chair's influences are as wide as their sound: everything from the politically charged work of artists like Holly Near and Dick Vaughn, the Americana roots of Steve Earle and Emmy Lou Harris, to the adventurous trad-pop of artists such as Fairport Convention and Solas. But at the end of the day, it is always about the songs.