Wildwood Academy of Music and the Arts
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Autumn Reverie
Saturday, November 23rd, 2024
Reverie
"a state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream."
What is this event?
The purpose of Autumn Reverie is to increase awareness of the Academy, changes that are being introduced, and to provide an arts event at the park that is open to the public. There will be an art gallery provided by Arkansas Arts Educators and some food provided by Food Jobs Work, an independent nonprofit organization, dedicated to serving adults with barriers to employment (those affected by poverty, homelessness, addiction or incarceration) through culinary workforce training.
The first 100 visitors will get a small notebook and pencil to write down anything that comes to mind. Tables to sit, relax, and eat will be outside. Around golden hour, there will be live music by the Casey Penn Band and a Jazz group inside the back studios for something more relaxed at night, along with live painters to interact with.
Autumn Reverie Details
4:30pm - 5:30pm
Inside on the Main Stage
Based in Central Arkansas, Casey Penn is an Arkansas Country Music Award-nominated songwriter and a performing bluegrass artist. She's represented by Mountain Fever Records, for which she has released three singles and a debut album (One Step Away / February 2023). Her third single from the album, "We Go Together Like a Guitar and a Fiddle," remained on the Bluegrass Unlimited Top 30 charts for seven months (peaking at #14), and her album graced the Top 15 Album Chart for Bluegrass Unlimited as well. The second single ("Little Lives," written by Carl Jackson and Lucinda Crosby) released in September 2022, and you can check it out here. Penn's first single for the label, "Chasing Rainbows," earned a spot on the Bluegrass Today’s Top 20 Song chart.
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Past Albums
With co-writer Rodger King, Penn won an Arkansas-wide songwriting competition hosted by Infrared Studios. As a result, the two produced and released a Spring/Summer 2016 LP, KINGPENN. Bluegrass Unlimited reviewer Bill Conger wrote of the album, "One of the greatest joys in reviewing CDs is the discovery of new music ... Penn’s cut-to-the-soul vocals are featured in several of the songs ... My favorite is the opening cut, 'Oceans (I Have Cried),' which won an honorable mention in the 2016 Hazel Dickens Bluegrass Songwriting Competition." ​
Penn is a former founding member of the Americana duo Lee Street Lyrical. Now dissolved, the band was signed to MFM’s Travianna Records and was a repeat ACMA nominee for Acoustic Act of the Year. Their release, “I’ll Never Be A Mountain Girl,” written by Penn and Irene Kelley, reached #8 on Bluegrass Today’s Weekly Grassicana chart (2021).
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Songwriting Awards
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Arkansas Songwriting Competition
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2016 Hazel Dickens Songwriting Competition
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New Song Contest Winner 2022 at the Walnut Valley Festival