Augusta-based musician Halley Elwell releases her EP “The Last of What I Know” on Friday and will be livestreaming a benefit show on Saturday. The four original songs are a nod to Elwell’s love for women singer-songwriters who rose to fame in the late 1960s and ’70s, including Carole King, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones.
“That period in music was such a fantastic melting pot of jazz, blues, soul, folk, protest song and rock,” said Elwell, a Hallowell native who studied jazz and African American music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and spent many years as a jazz singer. “There will always be those elements of harmony, phrasing and vocal color that I’ll be drawn to.”
Elwell narrowed her selections from a long list of potential songs for the EP. “I chose these songs from the pile because I think they really lend themselves to that singer-songwriter period in American music,” she said.
