Geoff Muldaur

You know there’s gotta be something special about Geoff Muldaur if Richard Thompson says that there are “only three white blues singers—Geoff Muldaur is at least two of them.”

Muldaur, a singer and purveyor of American roots music, was one of the founding members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (in which he served as the washboard player, clarinetist and blues master) in the early ’60s, and the Paul Butterfield’s Better Days group. He has performed with countless notables (Bonnie Raitt, Eric Von Schmidt, Jerry Garcia and Dave van Ronk, to name a few). He was one of the great musical forces to emerge from the folk scene centered around Cambridge, Mass., and Woodstock—a musical community that also included the likes of Bob Dylan and the Band.

Muldaur may be heard regularly as a guest on Garrison Keiler’s A Prairie Home Companion and has been featured on a variety of National Public Radio shows, including Weekend Edition and All Things Considered, but this weekend, we have the chance to check him out live to witness the amazing fingerpicking guitar style for which he’s famous.

Geoff Muldaur will take the stage at Caffe Lena (47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs) tomorrow (Friday, May 21) at 8 PM. Tickets are $15 and $12. For more information, call the club at 583-0022.

Millennium Actress

Not all Japanese anime is teenage girls in saucy school uniforms fighting demons, or sleek, cynical Sci-Fi action. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those types of anime—those genres are beloved by millions.) Millennium Actress, a mind- tripping, gorgeously drawn film from director Satoshi Kon, is a very different breed of animation. It’s a drama of obsessive love, played against a mad rush through Japanese film history.

Set in the 1970s, it’s the story of a TV journalist who obtains an interview with an elderly, reclusive film star. In the course of filming the interview, the actress, journalist and a cameraman are sent whirling forward and backwards through time, in the star’s real and filmic lives. Twentieth-century Japanese history, also real and filmic, is represented with drama, wit and style—from World War II to the postwar boom, and from samurai epics to monster films. Millennium Actress is something special.

Saratoga Film Forum will screen Millennium Actress tonight (Thursday, May 20) and tomorrow (Friday, May 21) at 8 PM at the Saratoga Arts Center (320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs). Tickets are $6, $4. For more information, call 584-FILM.

Greenwich: The Musical

Did you ever wake up one morning and decide to write a musical about the town you live in? Taking his cue from some folks in Maine who did just that, longtime Greenwich-based singer-songwriter Bob Warren did it too. Thus, we are presented with Greenwich: The Musical.

According to their press material, the libretto was “written by a committee of eight, who all—remarkably—remain on speaking terms.” (Folks in small towns must be nicer.) The songs celebrate local nature, history and commerce (“Oh, to Be a Farmer”), and the show will feature 80—count ’em, 80—stalwart residents of Greenwich.

Greenwich: The Musical will be presented tomorrow (Friday, May 21) and Saturday (May 22) at 8 PM, and Sunday (May 23) at 2 PM, at the Greenwich High School Auditorium (10 Gray Ave., Greenwich). Tickets are $10 general admission, $8 seniors and students, and will be available at the door. The proceeds will benefit the Greenwich Free Library. For more information, call 692-9118.