“You can’t always change the world,” Greg Williamson observed last week, “but you can help the neighborhood.”
As co-founder of the Soho Sessions, however, Williamson has surely made an impact beyond the neighborhood. The concert series has financially supported causes including mental health, medical research, food insecurity, and gun safety. Williamson and his partner in the Soho Sessions, Nicole Rechter, have raised more than $100 million through affiliated events over the past decade.
And they have fun in the process. In addition to invitation-only concerts in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood that have featured artists including Keith Richards, Paul Simon, Nile Rodgers, Elvis Costello, and Gary Clark Jr., the Soho Sessions makes an annual visit to the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett. This year, they have a particularly special show in store.
Next Thursday, the three-time Grammy Award-winning country duo Dan + Shay, known for No. 1 songs including “Tequila,” “Speechless,” “10,000 Hours” (with Justin Bieber), and “Save Me the Trouble,” will take the Talkhouse stage for an 8 p.m. performance that will benefit the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the country’s largest grassroots mental health organization, helping Americans affected by mental illness through education, support, advocacy, and efforts to raise awareness and reduce stigma.
This edition of the Soho Sessions is sponsored by the FLAG Art Foundation, a New York City nonprofit exhibition space that mounts thematic contemporary art exhibitions centering on emerging and established artists from around the world.
For Williamson, taking the Soho Sessions to the Talkhouse is like coming home. “We had a house in Amagansett long before I was born, going back to 1968,” he said, recalling attending performances at the Talkhouse by such musical luminaries as Taj Mahal and the late Rick Danko. When Rechter visited him here five years ago, he said, “I was telling her the history of the Talkhouse and what a special place it is. She said, ‘We should bring the Soho Sessions here.’ It was her idea, and we’ve been doing it every year. It’s been an amazing partnership with the Talkhouse, and we love doing shows with impact at such an iconic, intimate, and storied venue.”
A Soho Session at the Stephen Talkhouse is an ideal marriage, Williamson said, because both are about “amazing artists performing in intimate spaces. This really works because it’s such a special crowd there, a great music-loving crowd.” Whether in SoHo or Amagansett, “each amplifies a different cause. We generally like to do a cause the artist is passionate about, whether it’s their own foundation or something they believe in.”
Dan Smyers, one half of Dan + Shay, confirmed this. He and Shay Mooney co-wrote “Say So,” a track from their upcoming album “Young,” the Aug. 21 release of which will precede the Young Tour, on which they will headline at 26 venues across North America. “Say So” is about Ben Vaughn, the president and chief executive of Warner Chappell Nashville Publishing, who took his life in January 2025 at age 49.
“I got a call from a friend who don’t call very often,” is the opening line of “Say So.” “Broke it to me and I couldn’t believe that we lost him / Really felt like it came out of nowhere / But it never really comes out of nowhere / It’s crazy the pain that we carry when nobody’s watchin’.”
Vaughn, Smyers said, “was a close personal friend, a mentor to us, the first to believe in us as an artist. He signed us to our first publishing deal. We attribute a lot of our success to him.”
Smyers is open about his own struggles, he said, with anxiety and impostor syndrome, the experience of feeling like a fraud despite evidence to the contrary. “Covid threw a wrench into a lot of our brains,” he added. “Coming out of it was difficult for me and fellow artists. Therapy has really helped me.”
This openness, and the recent release of “Say So,” “has been beautiful for us to break down that fourth wall with fans,” he said. “You don’t have to go through it alone. It’s not always the easiest thing in the world, but if you ask for help, there will be someone on the other end to pick up the phone. We’ve been blessed and fortunate. At this point in our career, we want to use our platform to do some good in the world. Ten-plus years in, that’s what defines success for us now. We hope it does its thing on the charts and goes to No. 1, but if not, if it helps one person, if it saves one life, it was a win for us.” When NAMI was proposed as the beneficiary of next Thursday’s performance, “it was a perfect fit.”
This will be the duo’s first visit to the South Fork, and they are eagerly anticipating it, Smyers said. As it happens, just 12 days ago Dan + Shay made a surprise appearance during Ed Sheeran’s concert in Nashville. Sheeran, Talkhouse patrons will recall, performed at the annual SiriusXM concert there in 2023. “I figured Ed would be a candidate” to have performed at the venue, Smyers said. “I asked if he’d ever heard of it. He was like, ‘You’re going to love it, it’s the best.’ We’re really looking forward to coming up there. It’s a cool opportunity for us to hang with some local folks, and see some sights and sounds.”
“When you’re doing something an artist is passionate about, they’ll show up for it. It’s super exciting to bring Dan + Shay to the Hamptons,” Williamson said, as “they have a spirit and vibe that could not be more perfect for a summer show out east.”
The Talkhouse is “one of the most iconic small venues in the country. I put it in that category of the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, or the Troubadour in Los Angeles,” he added. “To be able to do something separate and apart from my personal history” in Amagansett “is really special.”
Tickets for the Soho Session with Dan + Shay at the Stephen Talkhouse are $350 plus $22.89 in fees and available at bit.ly/4eZKEZ3.
