The Jefferies are already gathering a fan base with their off-the-wall repertoire and quirky stage presence. Consisting of Jeffery Klier on vocals, Xeth Feinberg on guitar and James Bell on drums, the trio lacks a bass player and, to be honest, a singer, but Klier's plain-spoken not-quite poems are delivered with a dry wit over Feinberg and Bell's catchy riffs in a way that simultaneously rocks and amuses.
It is also, crucially, a night built less on sequence than on accumulation. Musicians move through poems, poets move through sound, and the boundaries between forms begin to dissolve in real time.
"When I began this, I had no idea the 19th amendment represented seventy-two years of struggle," says Andrea Ramsey, composer of Suffrage Cantata.