Our patio bar is returning this summer season! Join us Memorial Day weekend to celebrate our opening, and welcome SALA to the venue. SALA will be open for extended shopping hours in conjunction with our full bar. Bring your dinner, and a friend and enjoy the summer air by the Williams river.
Singer-songwriter Aimee Van Dyne’s musical journey has followed a circuitous path. Born into a musical family, Aimee possessed a passion for music early on, spending her formative years singing harmonies and playing piano with friends and family. “Music was always my first love,” she says. “even though I studied classical piano for ten years, my biggest influences were artists like Neil Young and The Beatles.”
As an art student at Brown University, Aimee started writing songs on her own, blending the folk/rock roots of her musical heroes with her own confessional style. A few years later, while studying architecture at Cooper Union, Aimee began applying the layering techniques she was experimenting with at school onto her music, creating multi-textured sounds from simple vocal and instrumental tracks.
Aimee’s primary songwriting tools soon became her guitar, her voice, and her multi-track recorder, which she used to create her characteristic harmonies. The harmonies became such a prominent component of her songwriting that Aimee admits that “sometimes it was hard to go out and play a song with just me and the guitar, because it felt like half of the song was missing!”
It wasn’t until Aimee was in her thirties and working as an architect that she began her career as a singer-songwriter. The result was her first CD, “Owning Up” (2001), which showcased the songs she performed with her six-piece band in NYC venues such as The Bitter End, The Living Room, and Arlene’s Grocery.
With the arrival of her twin daughters in 2006, Aimee took a ten-year hiatus from her music and architecture careers to be a full-time mom. In 2016, after a life-changing move from Brooklyn to the mountains, Aimee returned to songwriting and performing in her newly adopted home of Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Her upcoming CD is a collection of old and new songs, reflecting the patchwork journey which has defined her life.
Review of “Owning Up”
This album is a tantalizing glimpse of the live show, where three of the best voices in town soar through a uniquely imaginative blend of ideas: counterpoint, contrapuntal vocals, two sets of lyrics playing against each other, you name it. Nobody else even comes close to what these women are up to. The material tends towards the melancholy, with catchy choruses and melodies that frequently evoke the thoughtful, George Harrison side of the Beatles.
–Alan Young, NY Music Daily
Patio Bar Hours: 2PM – 8PM