Photo: Deborah Feingold
On Monday, April 8 at 8:00 PM at the New York Academy of Medicine, Rosanne Cash is singing at a benefit concert to help save the schooner Lettie G. Howard.
Rosanne Cash is a gifted, Grammy award winning singer/songwriter and the Lettie G. Howard is an exceptionally beautiful schooner celebrating her 120th birthday this year. The Lettie G. Howard, a wooden Fredonia schooner built in Essex, Massachusetts in 1893, is, not surprisingly, showing her age. When she was drydocked at the Mystic Seaport in CT in 2012 to repair rot in her keelson, they discovered that the rot was far more extensive than originally thought. The cost of the repairs, of course, was also significantly higher than budgeted. (See our previous post – Help Save the Schooner Lettie G. Howard.) The South Street Seaport Museum has undertaken a capital campaign to raise $250,000 for critical repairs and restoration to the beautiful old schooner and is more than halfway to reaching that goal. Now, Rosanne Cash is raising her voice to to help raise the necessary cash, so to speak, to finish the job. Click here to learn more about the benefit concert. Donors at the Jib level and above will be invited to join Rosanne Cash for a champagne reception following the performance.
Rosanne Cash Sings for Lettie G. Howard
The Lettie G. Howard is one of few surviving examples of the fishing schooners once in wide use in the North Atlantic. She is a rare beauty with classic fishing schooner lines, turning heads wherever she goes, and is a designated National Historic Landmark. After an active life in the fisheries of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Lettie G. Howard arrived at South Street Seaport Museum in 1968. In 1994, after an extensive two-year rebuild that restored her to her original appearance, she was certified as a Sailing School Vessel by the U.S. Coast Guard and began a new career carrying students of all ages on life-changing voyages. Working in partnership with New York Harbor School the Seaport plans to have Lettie sailing with students in 2014.
Rosanne Cash, while considerably younger than the Lettie, has also had a most illustrious career. She has recorded eleven No. 1 singles, blurring the genres of country, rock, roots, and pop. She has received one grammy and twelve grammy nominations, among other awards and accolades, including an honorary doctorate from Memphis College of Art. A prolific writer, she has authored Bodies of Water (Hyperion, 1996), Penelope Jane: A Fairy’s Tale (Harper-Collins, 2006), edited the book Songs Without Rhyme (Hyperion, 2001), and recently penned her memoir Composed (Viking, 2010). Rosanne’s prose and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Oxford-American, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Martha Stewart Living and various other publications. Her last record album, The List, won the Americana Music award for Best Album of the year and was a critical and commercial success.
Ms. Cash’s family landed at Salem, MA, aboard the Good Intent in 1643, with generations of mariners and musicians in between.