Los Angeles musicians Abby Posner and Paula Fong will be in Columbus on Thursday to perform the first show of this year’s Barn Concert Series.

Abby Posner has been a working musician in Los Angeles for more than 18 years. She is best known for her ability to play nearly any instrument that she can get her hands on, twisting genres, and pushing the boundaries of folk, roots, electronic and pop music making her “Genre Fluid.”

If you have seen Abby perform live, you know she can play a fierce lead-blues guitar solo, or throw down a complex Earl Scruggs banjo riff. You also may have spotted her playing drums, mandolin or bass while using her looping pedal. In addition to her versatility, she puts passion and soul into everything she does. Posner’s live shows are simply mesmerizing. Her energy is comparable to Chris Thile of Nickel Creek, and The Lumineers. Posner’s songs range from intimate haunting folk songs, to upbeat festival/dance your pants off hits.

This CalArts music graduate has composed and produced music for commercials/TV, films and radio shows all over the globe (including Hulu’s Maggie, The Fosters, This American Life, The Art of More and Last Tango in Halifax, custom songs for Facebook, Viacom-CBS and CW’s Kung Fu). She also has music placed in commercials and TV shows all over China, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Australia. Posner appeared in two episodes of GLEE on season four playing banjo and guitar, and the Freeform show Famous In Love playing banjo.

Abby has also scored the music for multiple films (Across Land Across Sea, Through Their Eyes, award winning short animation Elizabeth Sees and recently scored the Award-winning Documentary Lady Buds) while playing and touring all over the country. In 2019 Posner played banjo and sang Wagon Wheel as a featured principal role in Bank Of America’s ad campaign for the Ken Burn’s PBS Country Music Documentary along side Dom Flemons and Amythyst Kiah. She is also the winner of the 28th Annual USA Songwriting Competition.

Paula Fong is an Americana singer-songwriter from Los Angeles with a sound that can vary from lilting trad folk, to upbeat country toe tappers, to soulful grit. During her youth, she spent many summers in the French countryside, and was deeply influenced by the local Breton folk music. She continued to explore singing various genres from Classical to Chinese opera and eventually joined an Americana church band where the main musical focus was acoustic country and folk – the kind of music that is both spiritual and also something people can relate to in everyday life.

During that time she fell deeply in love with American roots music and became enamored with the classic voices and songwriting of Joni Mitchell, Gillian Welch and Patty Griffin, but was also inspired by indie folk groups like NickelCreek and The Wailin’ Jennys. From 2015-2019 she teamed up with Seattle based singer-songwriter Tom Kell and they released two albums of co-written music. After Tom passed in 2021, Paula went on to pursue a solo project under her own name and released her first EP, Chestnut Mare, in the fall of 2024. She currently sings back up vocals and tours with Abby Posner’s band – Abby Posner and the Big Fall, is an music director for an Americana/folk music church service (think Watkin’s Family Hour if it was a church service) and was nominated as a finalist in the International Acoustic Music Awards.

Steve Ellis, co-founder of the series, with his wife Kay, met both artists at last year’s Folk Alliance International Conference in Kansas City.

“Abby and Paula are exceptional songwriters and performers,” said Ellis. “We are very fortunate that they agreed to take a side trip to Columbus while in the midst of their East Coast tour. They are also two terrific people who we’re excited to introduce to our wonderful community of music lovers.”

This show is the first of six the series will host at their Mac Davis Road venue this year, plus the Ellises will present a “Sean of the South” concert at the Lyceum at Lee on June 13.

As there is at every show, there will be a light dinner and beverages provided free for the audience. A donation jar is placed near the food tent at each concert to benefit a different local charity. At the April 24 show, the money raised will go to Beyond The Fire, a local organization that assists those who have lost their home in a house fire.

Tickets for each concert are $30 and can be purchased online at barnconcertseries.com. Parking and dinner for each show begins at 6 p.m., with the music starting at 7 p.m.

While there is a chance of rain on the day of the show, Kay Ellis said, “we never have to miss a show due to weather because we have a great group of partners who always have our backs. We’ll post relocation plans if necessary on our Facebook page and those that have bought tickets already, need to keep an eye on their email. We’ll send out a notice if we have to move the concert.”

This year’s Series will have one show each in April, May, June and September, and two in October. Follow “The Barn” Concert Series on Facebook for more information.

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