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Billy-McLaughlin-Church-of-the-Lost-Souls

Upcoming Shows at Parkway Soon, Livestreams and In Person Tickets

Featuring Members of SimpleGifts – Laura, Amy, Karen!

The inspiration for The Church of the Lost Souls came from the audience when SimpleGifts performed The Young and the Rest at the Parkway a few years ago. After, numerous encores on a Saturday night, Billy explained “this HAS to be the last song. I have to be at church early in the morning! …or maybe we should leave all our equipment here and all come back and play for you tomorrow! We could call it The Church of the Lost Souls or something and just play whatever music makes us happy!” The audience response was thunderous and requests for this type of show have gone unabated ever since.

Filled with songs of both joy and introspection, this listening room/living room styled show will feature all kinds of new music each week with special guest acoustic artists. When allowed by MN Covid guidelines change, reserved ticket in-person socially distanced seating will allow for a live audience in addition to our livestream. More info will be available soon at billymclaughlin.com and at: theparkwaytheater.com

All SimpleGifts albums are available on Spotify, Apple and Amazon

SimpleGifts Stream-Team

Be part of our SimpleGifts Stream-Team!

One of the only ways for artists to succeed anymore is for our songs to get added to your play-lists whether you use Spotify, AppleMusic, Amazon etc. You can help us get noticed everytime you add one of our songs to your playlists. That’s all you need to do to join our new Stream Team. If you drop us a message about what you added recently we’ll add your name for a monthly drawing to win 2 tickets for one of our upcoming shows: info@simplegiftsmusic.net

Thanks for always supporting SimpleGifts!

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SimpleGifts Life-Line-Fund

There’s no two ways about it – musicians’ livelihoods have recently been wiped-out and the pandemic has negatively affected all of us. We still believe that music is our best way to help heal others. We invite you to consider contributing to the SimpleGifts Life-Line-Fund. Your gifts will immediately impact the losses we are still experiencing as we try to heal the world with music. All of our upcoming shows have been restricted to just 25% of total capacity and this fund will help bridge the gap for members of our band and crew. It is hard asking for help and we know not everyone is in a position to throw us a “Life-Line”. Even an encouraging comment would mean a lot – info@simplegiftsmusic.net

Please visit our Donations page to give today!

Now Streaming!

For years fans have been asking if there is way to listen to our music online…well, we are happy to announce that ALL SimpleGifts albums are now available for streaming or purchase across several online platforms!!!

Stream or download at Amazon, Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify and more. Every album from aSimpleGift to the latest, This Christmastide, is available digitally. Stream us to your heart’s content and please take a moment to follow us to stay connected for new music and exclusive playlists!

SimpleGifts is also releasing our first-ever streaming single on Nov 29th! Recorded LIVE at last year’s show in Marine-On-St. Croix, keep an eye out and spread the news about our groundbreaking version on God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen on Spotify/Amazon/Apple Music!

2019 Holiday Tour Huge Success

Here is what you all helped us accomplish for the 2019 Holiday Tour:

November 29 – Waconia Performing Arts Center, Waconia MN
December 6 – Lakeville Performing Arts Center, Lakeville MN
December 7 – Celtic Junction, St Paul MN
December 10 – Christ Presbyterian Church, Edina MN
December 12 – the Myers – Thrivent Community, Woodbury, MN
December 13 – Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, Plymouth MN
December 14 – Memorial Auditorium, Worthington MN
December 15 – Paramount Theatre, Austin MN
December 17 – Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center, Bloomington MN -Matinee
December 17 – Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center, Bloomington MN -Evening
December 18 – Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center, Bloomington MN -Matinee
December 18 – Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center, Bloomington MN -Evening
December 19 – Marine City Hall, Marine-On-St-Croix MN
December 20 – Marine City Hall, Marine-On-St-Croix MN
December 21 – Marine City Hall, Marine-On-St-Croix MN
December 22 – Marine City Hall, Marine-On-St-Croix MN
December 23 – Marine City Hall, Marine-On-St-Croix MN

Looking ahead to 2019

We hope you are having a wonderful 2019 so far!!! We can’t thank you all enough for making our 2018 Holiday Tour so special!

Do you know what we’re most looking forward to in 2019??? That we don’t have to wait 11 months to see you!!! We are thrilled to announce our year-round show, SimpleGifts with Billy McLaughlin presents The Young & the Rest… An acoustic tribute to Neil Young and the rest of your favorite artists who defined an era and whose popularity endures – Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Eagles, Joni Mitchell, America and more.

We are so excited to see you waaaay before November this year :-)

-SimpleGifts with Billy McLaughlin

Christmastide 2018 Tour brings SimpleGifts to new venues and new heights!

It is quite something to be booking next year’s Christmas Tour while you haven’t even finished this year’s! That’s what we were busy doing at SG-HQ last December after developing new marketing materials earlier that summer like the videos you can watch here on our site. Getting ahead of the 2018 booking curve has us positioned for a record-breaking year as far as reaching folks who value the true Christmas story shared in song. We will bring SimpleGifts’ reputation as a unique musical force to communities and venues that haven’t seen us in years or will be welcoming us for the first time. Partnering with performing arts centers who have extensive contact lists will create opportunities for more audiences who have had enough of Frosty and Rudolph and are longing to be fed with soulful song-selections, arrangements, recordings and live performances. Our loyalty to long-time presenters and communities is well represented on our 2018 Tour while re-establishing and creating new ones.

Good thing we have our tour bus “Angel” and the best driver in the world, Mr. Danny Bury. We’re gonna be putting on more miles and are already praying it only snows on days we don’t have to travel. The top-notch audio, lighting and set design you are hoping to share with new family and friends you are planning to bring this year is also intact under the leadership of our corp crew – Les, TJ and Larry. We can’t wait for the tour to start!!!

2018 is a breakout year for SimpleGifts new project!

It’s not a change in our name folks! We are still called SimpleGifts featuring Billy McLaughlin. What IS new is our first official “non-holiday” project that will get us out playing throughout the year. Looking back, the few times we have played outside of our holiday repertoire, gravity seemed to always pull us in the direction of the great harmonies that fit around the music of Neil Young. To hear great female vocalists NOT impersonating Neil’s iconic voice as other tribute groups and Jimmy Fallon have done, is to re-experience his great songwriting newly re-interpreted! It’s like hearing the songs for the very first time!

Add in some Crosby,Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell, The Eagles and America and you have a great title and description:

The Young and the Rest….a tribute to Neil Young and top acoustic artists who defined a generation!

This project is our focus for the remainder of 2018 and 2019 outside of our exciting upcoming Christmastide 2018 Tour. It won’t be our only project with a clever title but we decided to start with what is closest to our hearts. As always, the show involves unscripted improvisational commentary so no two shows are ever the same. We are having a blast on stage and want you in on it time and time again!

New ticketing experience necessary due to overwhelming demand.

After manually assembling lists and saving our fans 100% of 17 years of ticket-fees, we simply can’t pull that off anymore via PayPal. Many of our venues have ticketing programs and fees that are solely under their control and we trust you will be satisfied. For the shows that we self-produce and provide you ticket service, things will look a bit different but we have gone to great lengths to ensure you the absolute lowest fees available – NOTHING like TicketMaster! Thank you for your feedback as we move ahead to modernize this important function of SimpleGifts with kudos to our favorite and long-time office manager, Hannah Day, who will continue to make sure you get in for the show!