Friday, June 6, 2025: Couples Night, featuring Miles & Mafale, and Martha Trachtenberg & Tom Griffith
7:30 p.m. Open Mic (7:00 signup), 8:30 p.m. show
Suggested Donation $20 (Cash or Check Only)
Miles & Mafale

Catherine Miles and Jay Mafale — husband and wife, co-conspirators, storytellers. They are two scoops of modern folk with a sprinkling of pop-catchiness, topped off with the wit and flair that comes of their theater backgrounds.

Catherine’s voice is an expressive powerhouse. Jay’s guitar is distinctive and unconventional. They are known for the plainspoken poetry, clever humor, and unique perspectives of their songs. Miles & Mafale aim to shift points of view through themes of perseverance, hope, and strength of spirit. And yes, sometimes they throw in a villain just for fun.

It can be said that Catherine and Jay have experienced more than the usual share of ups and downs… but this, along with their diverse influences and initial decade of performing cover songs (in their own group and as sidemen) gives them a tremendous “palette” to draw from. Miles & Mafale blend all of that together into their own candid and playful style.

Audiences first came to know Catherine and Jay as a trio, The YaYas, with piano man Paul Silverman. More recent years found them touring the country with Karyn Oliver and Carolann Solebello as No Fuss and Feathers.

Miles & Mafale’s songwriting has earned them acclaim in venerable listening rooms and festivals nationwide, along with recognition as Most Wanted Emerging Artists at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, three-time Kerrville New Folk finalists, South Florida Folk Festival/Vic Heyman Award Finalists, and Honorable Mentions in Mid-Atlantic and Braver Angels song contests. They have performed as official showcase artists at SWRFA, SERFA, NERFA, and FARM.

The duo’s latest release, Be Brave, is “Beautifully made. An articulate page-turner of an album that feels like a short story collection in 10 songs.” Marilyn Rea Beyer, WFMT Chicago.

Martha Trachtenberg and Tom Griffith met over music many years ago, and have been making beautiful music in more ways than one ever since. Known as Long Island’s First Couple of Folk, their musical resumes extend far beyond those boundaries.
Martha Trachtenberg was a founding member of the Buffalo Gals, the first all-woman bluegrass band, back in the mid-1970s, aka the dawn of time. Her 1999 CD, It’s About Time, won straight As from Newsday and radio airplay both in the States and abroad.  Martha’s songs have been recorded by a number of artists from the bluegrass world, including Tony Trischka and Skyline, Nothin’ Fancy, Missy Raines and Jim Hurst, Dede Wyland, John and Cathy Cadley, and, most recently, IBMA’s 2024 Male Vocalist of the Year, Greg Blake. For the past three years, she has taught and/or performed at the prestigious Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival and is slowly but surely assembling songs for another CD.  So slowly, in fact, that the working title is Better Late Than Never . . .

Tom is an artist and composer who has written award-winning music for a variety of media. He won a couple of Clios and NYMRAD radio awards, and a Cannes Silver Lion for writing and producing jingles like “It’s As Real As It Gets” and “Welcome to Millertime” for the Miller Brewing company, “I’ve Got that M&M’s Feeling,” for Mars, and “Sometimes You Need a Little” for Finesse shampoo. He has produced such artists as Marc Cohn, Ry Cooder, Fats Domino, Dave Edmunds, Allen Toussaint, Jimmy Buffett, .38 Special, Kenny Rogers, and George Benson.

Tom has written music for the movies Girlfriends and Not a Pretty Picture which are in the Critereon Collection. The Key, which he scored with Jonathan Helfand, won the National Education Fiction Video Award. His most recent project, A Couple of Guys, has won numerous awards on the film festival circuit.

His first solo album, Hodge Podge, was chosen as an Album of the Year by the Long Island Voice. 40 Years Later was picked by Newsday as the Long Island Album of the Year. Prominence, a first-person adventure game for which he wrote the music, was an Indie Games staff pick for Game of the Year.

Stu says, “The partnership of Martha and Tom prove that the gods of love and the gods of talent can get together and do something really beneficent once in a while.”

***

Our Times Coffeehouse takes place at the Long Island Ethical Humanist Society, located at 38 Old Country Rd., Garden City, a half mile west of the Mineola Railroad Station. Its phone number is (516) 741-7304.