Westfield Announcements

The Coffee With Conscience Concert Series continues its TENTH SEASON by presenting Pat Wictor an Toby Walker, “the Saints and Sinners Tour,” at the First United Methodist Church, 1 East Broad Street (corner of North Avenue) in Westfield, on Saturday, January 16th. Doors will open at 7:30 PM and the concert begins at 8 PM. Admission is $19.00 on line and $23.00 at the door.

Advance purchase of tickets is highly recommended by going to www.wictorwalker.eventbrite.com or call the concert hotline 908-412-9105.

Pat Wictor has become the name that is being chatted about on the acoustic, blues, folk and Americana circuits.  Steeped in American "roots" music, Pat is a contemporary songwriter and interpreter drawing on the rural country, gospel, and blues traditions of our nation.


His performances--part fireside chat, part meditation on matters earthly and transcendent--feature his originals.  In addition to his own tunes, he is quick to offer up a newly-discovered lyric from another performer, or a fresh arrangement of a traditional song, delighting in introducing his audience to innovative material.  With flowing red hair and zen-like calm, Pat embraces his audience with the sincerity of his music and the clarity of his voice, inviting them in.

Toby Walker is an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist, who is also adept at ragtime and bottleneck. His mastery of the art was recognized in Memphis in 2002, when he won the International Blues Challenge Award. He is a skilled singer and songwriter, drawing inspiration from traditional and contemporary blues, folk, ragtime, and country. His passion for the music drove him to leave an apartment crammed full of recordings, books and instruments to wander around the Mississippi Delta, Virginia and the Carolinas tracking down some of the more obscure - but immensely talented - music makers of an earlier era. He spent time and swapped tunes with Eugene Powell, James Son Thomas, Etta Baker, and R.L Burnside. He draws on these travels to tell the humorous and heartwarming tales of learning the blues at the feet of these old time musicians. You can catch some of the flavor of these stories on his website in the Visit the South section. His fifth CD, Plays Well with Others, came out in 2006. 

The Coffee With Conscience Concert Series is a ten-show series running from September through June at the First United Methodist Church of Westfield. The Series supports the following charities: Contact We Care (Westfield), Homefirst (Plainfield), Habitat for Humanity (Plainfield), the Community Food Bank of NJ (Hilside) and the Keith Knost Special Needs Trust (Mountainside). Each beneficiary has two concerts dedicated to it during the season.

The Coffee With Conscience Concert Series is made possible in part by a generous grant from the Westfield Service League, and other private donations – which are enthusiastically encouraged.

For more information about the Coffee With Conscience Concert Series, the upcoming performance, or ways in which to get involved with the series, please visit www.coffeewithconscience.org. You can also call the Concert Hotline at 908-412-9105 or send an e-mail to ahrre@ahrre.com.