19th Annual Christmastide Homecoming
Sunday, December 18, 2022
6 pm Doors // 7 pm Show
$50 VIP Seating (includes premium seating and pre-show reception with Billy and SimpleGifts!)
$40 Advance Reserved Preferred Seating
$35 Advance General Admission
All Ages
Ticket purchases are final and non-refundable.
Nothing compares to the way Christmas brings family and friends back together.
And after two years of Covid-19 absences, SimpleGifts featuring Billy McLaughlin lean hard into this truth in 2022 by renaming their popular annual metro holiday tour, Christmastide Homecoming.
This modern old-world group brings their seasonal magic to The Parkway Theater in its only Minneapolis concert experience. There they will blend angelic 3-part harmonies, acoustic instruments with a Celtic flavor, and uplifting arrangements of classic, non-commercial Christmas music.
Expect a soulful evening you won’t find in other shows this holiday season.
The siren-voices of SimpleGifts (Carin Vagle, Karen Paurus, and Amy Courts) soar with a Celtic twist (Laura MacKenzie on whistles/flutes/bagpipe), along with acoustic guitar (Billy McLaughlin), bass guitar (Dan Ristrom), drums (Patrick Nelson), percussion (Billy O), and fiddle & mandolin (Nathan Wilson).
Billy McLaughlin has been changing people’s idea of what an acoustic guitar can sound like since the 1980’s. He is recognized as an innovative performer and composer who embraces the advantages of acoustic guitar amplification, unorthodox techniques and altered tunings while celebrating a gift for melody. His enormous yet fluid acoustic guitar tone has carried him around the world, to Billboard’s Top-Ten Chart and most recently through a devastating medical disorder called focal dystonia. McLaughlin has had to re-learn the guitar left-handed and is in the early stages of what might be described as ‘one of the great musical-comeback stories of all time.” His story is the subject of an award-winning documentary film called Changing Keys – Billy McLaughlin and the Mysteries of Dystonia.
“…you may swear Billy McLaughlin is two of the greatest acoustic guitarists you’ve ever heard.” — Pittsburgh Post Gazette
“… it’s amazing that such an extensive sound comes from one instrument.”
— Chicago Sun Times