The Black Twig Pickers w/ Elsa Howell
ALL AGES SEATED SHOW LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLE THE BLACK TWIG PICKERS The Black Twig Pickers are a group defined by their forward thinking approach to a type of music most often associated with times gone by. Over the course of eight full-length records, including collaborative releases with Jack Rose and Charlie Parr, a split LP with Glenn Jones, and numerous EPs and singles, the group has established itself as a collection of dedicated practioners of old time music re-cast and shaped by their appreciation of modern improvisation, drone, and punk. While not at odds with the experimental scene that has fostered them or the old time circles they travel in, The Black Twig Pickers thrive in the in-betweenness of those two worlds, proving that the exploration of the outmost bounds of sound and the exploration of decades old tradition and community aren’t as different as one might think. The group’s repertoire is constantly growing as they turn to first-person sources, older musicians that were brought up in the old time scene and in some cases the children and families of deceased respected practitioners, and unreleased archival recordings passed among musicians. And while local and regional history is ever present in the music The Black Twig Pickers play, they turn songs that are many decades old into living artifacts, released from the restrictions of era by the personal convictions of the musicians. This spirit of ecstatic abandon is conveyed through the percussive elements of The Black Twig Pickers’ music and more importantly, through a spontaneity and an unrehearsedness the band wears as a badge of pride. As Gangloff explains, “It’s not the melody, it’s the moss.” The sharp twang of the banjo, a spontaneous holler, a foot stomping along in time, and other seemingly incidental sounds become all important. Like the band’s previous Thrill Jockey full-length Ironto Special, Rough Carpenters was recorded with absolutely no overdubs and in as few takes as possible. The Black Twig Pickers are indeed rough carpenters, building unpolished but finely crafted records that embody the spirit of a timeless old-time scene. ELSA HOWELL Elsa Howell took an early interest in old Appalachian ballads, a tradition rich with wild stories and haunting melodies. Her voice and attention to musical detail have won her ribbons at folk song competitions in the mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina, and her native Virginia. She spent more than a year learning the style from ballad master Elizabeth LaPrelle through the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, and Elsa has been featured at the Richmond Folk Festival, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Roanoke’s Taubman Museum of Art, the Floyd Country Store, on the Inside Appalachia podcast/radio show, and she was a resident artist at the 2024 MidMountain Festival, which was devoted to examining and reinventing murder ballads. She has also carved her own path as an acoustic guitarist and songwriter, writing personal songs that meld with her more traditional material. She recorded and released Eyes Wide, her EP of mostly original material, in 2024.
Bella White
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY BELLA WHITE The third album from Bella White, A Sign In The Weather is a body of work steeped in the life-altering magic of its origins. While touring in support of her widely lauded sophomore LP Among Other Things (and sharing bills with the likes of Dierks Bentley, Tyler Childers, and The Red Clay Strays), the Calgary-born singer/songwriter left her home on Vancouver Island and moved to New Orleans, where she soon became happily enmeshed in the city’s vibrant indie-rock scene. As she immersed herself in the unfettered and open-hearted creativity of her newfound musical community, the 25-year-old lifelong musician began assembling a suite of songs that stretch far beyond her bluegrass roots and arrive at a moodier and more audacious breed of folk/Americana. Made with her close-knit circle of collaborators, A Sign In The Weather both echoes the homespun nature of its creation and signals a powerful evolution in her one-of-a-kind artistry. Co-produced by White and Ross Farbe (a New Orleans-based producer/songwriter/musician who’s also worked with Esther Rose and Drugdealer), A Sign In The Weather marks a departure from the more lavish scale of Among Other Things—a 2023 release produced by Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty) and recorded with esteemed musicians like Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek. This time around, White joined forces with her longtime bandmate Patrick M’Gonigle (on fiddle) and local musicians like drummer Sam Gelband, bassist Gina Leslie, guitarist Nick Corson, and vocalist Maddy Kirgo, dreaming up a nuanced yet potent sound that spotlights the singular character of her enchanting vocals and graceful guitar work. Also featuring contributions from Farbe (on guitar, percussion, organ, and synth), pianist Duncan Troast, and Nashville-based pedal-steel player Nikolai Shveitser, A Sign In The Weather ultimately brings a bold new energy to the sophisticated musicality White first cultivated by taking up guitar at age eight (thanks in part to the influence of her father, a Virginia-born bluegrass musician who raised her on classic country and old-time music). The latest installment in a catalog that began with her 2021 debut album Just Like Leaving, A Sign In The Weather also uncovers new layers of White’s soul-searching songwriting—an element praised by major outlets like Rolling Stone and NPR (who stated that “Sometimes the minute you hear a voice, you know it’s for the ages”). “New Orleans is such a musical city, and the experience of being around a lot of songwriters in particular has been so inspiring to me,” she notes. With its subtle interplay of poetic introspection and stream-of-consciousness outpouring, the album embodies a raw urgency that stems from White’s real-time processing of a period of intense change. To that end, A Sign In The Weather takes its title from one of the first songs written for LP: “Without Making A Sound,” an in-the-moment reflection on the painful confusion of letting go and moving on. “Right around when I decided to move I also ended a relationship—it felt like a chapter of my life was closing, and I was experiencing a lot of sadness and guilt and other big feelings,” White recalls. “When I wrote that song I was traveling somewhere that’s usually very warm, but it was like the gray gloominess of the Pacific Northwest had followed me there. It felt like it brought everything full circle to make that the album title, especially because making the choice to shake up my life really opened the floodgates for all the songs to come.”
Ryan Montbleau (solo)
ALL AGES SEATED SHOW LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLE RYAN MONTBLEAU A relentless road warrior and masterful wordsmith, Ryan Montbleau has spent the better part of thirty years cultivating a devoted audience on the strength of his ecstatic live shows and exhilarating sonic versatility. He’s collaborated with artists as diverse as Trombone Shorty, Galactic, Steel Pulse, Tall Heights, Martin Sexton, Anders Osborne, and George Porter, Jr; shared bills with the likes of Tedeschi Trucks Band, Ani DiFranco, Todd Snider, The Wood Brothers, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Mavis Staples; and racked up more than 150 million streams on Spotify alone. NPR’s Mountain Stage compared his “eloquent, soulful songwriting” to Bill Withers and James Taylor, while Relix celebrated his “poetic Americana,” and The Boston Herald raved that “he’s made a career of confident, danceable positivity.” Montbleau’s freewheeling new album finds him exploring the full spectrum of his influences like never before, touching on folk, rock, funk, soul, hip-hop, and reggae, all with a preternatural ease that belies the intensely focused craftsmanship behind it. The songs are sprawling and unpredictable, grappling with a modern world perpetually teetering on the edge of chaos, but the performances are relentlessly optimistic, insisting on hope and joy in the face of it all. The result is Montbleau’s most vulnerable and cathartic work yet, an album that acknowledges the inevitability of doubt and pain while at the same time celebrating our limitless capacity for growth and love.
Built To Spill w/ The Hypos
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYBUILT TO SPILLBuilt to Spill was formed in 1993 by Doug Martsch and over the years they have toured extensively and made several albums with a rotating cast of musicians, currently featuring Teresa Esguerra (Prism Bitch) on drums, and Melanie Radford (Blood Lemon) on bass. THE HYPOS The Hypos are an Asheville, NC/ Memphis, TN band built around the collaboration of veteran songwriters Greg Cartwright (Reigning Sound, Oblivians) and Scott McMicken (Dr Dog, Ever-Expanding). Their eponymous debut album is a playful blend of sounds and styles that is wonderfully hard to categorize but easy to enjoy. Joined by Evan Martin on drums, Kevin Williams on bass and Krista Wroten on violin, the Hypos world is a lush landscape of bouncing rhythms and Earthy acoustics. Scott’s unmistakable voice, brimming with curiosity and wonder, makes the perfect traveling companion to Greg’s road worn croon as they investigate all the sonic possibilities on their 10 song LP. Also, they like Frogs. A lot. What else do you need to know? Oh yeah, this fine album was lovingly mixed by Matt Ross-Spang.
An Evening With Patterson Hood (of Drive-By Truckers)
ALL AGES FULLY SEATED SHOW LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLE PATTERSON HOOD Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood’s fourth solo album and first in over 12 years, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams sees the veteran singer, guitarist, and songwriter exploring his youth and young manhood in a collection unlike anything in his ever-evolving catalogue. A baroque American song cycle spanning the time between early childhood and leaving his rural hometown in search of his musical dreams, the album gathers songs that have amassed over the remarkably prolific songwriter’s career, many of which provided him with distraction and creative sustenance during lockdown, others which have resided among his notebooks for years. “This record has all these kinds of unintended themes,” Hood says. “It’s all subconscious, because I didn’t really set out with an agenda, writing-wise. It really just kind of occurred to me when I was actually putting it all together, just how much it seems to have a theme to it.” The dozen years since his last extracurricular outing, 2012’s Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, had seen Hood accumulate a cache of material which did not quite fit into the Drive-By Truckers canon, songs which he set aside for “if and when” he got around to another solo project. Kept off the road during the 2020 lockdown, he found himself recording demos in his Portland, OR attic, without a clear plan but thinking “maybe this might be worth pursuing at some point.” Hood had moved to Portland with his family in 2013 and swiftly found a place among the Rose City’s thriving music scene, including a friendship forged with producer/musician Chris Funk (The Decemberists). Having long discussed collaborating, in 2023 the two artists’ typically stacked calendars finally allowed them the opportunity to team up and they set to work recording what Hood intended to be “a bigger departure” from Drive-By Truckers and his previous solo efforts than ever before. “The band has been in such a good place that I hadn’t really thought in terms of doing anything outside of the Truckers anytime soon,” Hood says. “I decided if I ever was going to do another solo record, I wanted it to be pretty different than the band, as different as it can be.” Hood further took the occasion to explore sounds outside the boundaries and obligations of his day job, deviating from Drive-By Truckers’ traditionally guitar-driven palette to craft richly textured arrangements marked by the inclusion of strings, woodwinds, and vintage analog synthesizers. With its powerful textural clarity and Hood’s literary strengths at the fore, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams emerges as a staggering investigation into how time can shed light on the recesses of memory, revealing this exceptionally gifted songwriter’s resolute inclination to look back through the golden haze to grapple with the darkness and secret truths that perhaps weren’t understood or reckoned with at the time. As he has throughout his career – from Drive-By Truckers’ ceaseless investigation into American values and culture to his solo body of work’s autobiographical meditations – Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams sees Patterson Hood once again stripping away the facade of things to get to the core, lifting up life’s rock to see what lies underneath.
Randall Bramblett Band
ALL AGES SEATED SHOW LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLE RANDALL BRAMBLETT BAND Randall Bramblett is a lifer. For decades, he’s explored the deep explored the deep corners and outer orbits of American roots music, creating a southern sound that’s every bit as eclectic as its maker. Bramblett’s talent earned him the respect of rock’s finest. Highlights – he toured in the Gregg Allman Band, joined Sea Level with Chuck Leavell, spent 16 years in Steve Winwood’s band. His songs were covered by Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Delbert McClinton, and more. He’s been the horn leader for Widespread Panic, and also tours in Marc Cohn’s band. It’s a huge tribute to his songwriting to have soul/blues icon Bettye LaVette release an entire album of his songs in 2023, and have that album nominated for a Grammy. Super-producer Steve Jordan brought in Steve Winwood, John Mayer, Jon Batiste, Larry Campbell and more to play on it. But it’s Bramblett’s own career as frontman where his artistry is truly on full display as an original, respected talent. His catalog reaches a new milestone with Paradise Breakdown, his thirteenth record, a unique sound he calls Modern Roots Music. WNCW listeners voted it #10 Top album for 2024! Living in Athens, and inducted into the Athens Walk of Fame, Bramblett’s talents are repeatedly praised by musicians, critics, DJs and fans.
Paul McDonald & The Mourning Doves
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY PAUL McDONALD Born in Alabama and baptized in the dive bars of the southeast, Paul McDonald first made noise with the Grand Magnolias, a roots-rock outfit, before catching fire in the public eye during American Idol’s 2011 run. When the bright lights blurred and the cameras turned, the man behind the voice slipped into the shadows where he did what real artists do: he lived, he lost, and he wrote. Retreating to Nashville, that holy city of reinvention, Paul stitched himself back together with worn boots, hard songs, and a new band called the Mourning Doves. Now, the giant has stirred with the release of So Long to the Dark Side–a gospel-tinged reckoning wrapped in cosmic Americana and lit with songs that sound like they were scribbled on the edge of a breakdown and sung back from the brink. Raised on Petty, Parsons, and pain, Paul McDonald is not chasing trends; he’s conjuring something older and truer. His live performances are equal parts revival and rock séance. In a breakthrough moment, Paul McDonald & the Mourning Doves brought the songs of So Long to the Dark Side and more to the headline stage at the 17th Annual 30A Songwriters Festival in front of a wildly enthusiastic crowd that followed him to a couple of evening performances over the weekend and established him as the 2026 Festival buzz band. Throughout 2026, Paul will tour every market in the U.S. in support of the new record.
Yagódy (roots music from Ukraine)
ALL AGES SEATED SHOW LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLE YAGODY The Ukrainian band “YAGODY” originated after Zoriana Dybovska’s previous project in Donetsk. In 2010, Mykola Huseynov proposed creating a band called “Khrushchi v Borschi” to perform and popularize Ukrainian music in the East. The group existed for four years but disbanded due to the onset of hostilities in the Donbas region. In 2014, Zoriana, along with her son, had to leave Donetsk and relocate to a safe territory. However, she didn’t abandon the idea of reviving and reinterpreting folk songs. In June 2016, the band “Yа́gody” was founded in Lviv, with Zoriana as the driving force and participants being talented actresses she taught stage speech. Together, they explored the Ukrainian repertoire through artistic “home expeditions” and learned to play musical instruments. The band’s name emerged accidentally. At their first performance (Lviv Book Forum, 2016), the moderator Volodymyr Biehlov announced the band as “Yagody” (in English- Berries). By 2017, at the “Muszelki Wigier” festival in Suwalki, Poland, due to another host’s carelessness, the band’s name changed to “Yagódy.” The year 2020 proved pivotal for the band, as they presented their debut album with the same name, “YAGODY,” along with a music video for the song “Kalyna-Malyna.” The album included ten singles based on Ukrainian and foreign folk music. In 2021, a music video for the single “Zelena Lishchyna” was released, followed by “Divonko” in 2022. In 2023, the band created their first original song “Tsunamia”, which they will present in the national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest 2024. Currently, the band has refreshed and grown. They actively tour Europe and organize charity concerts abroad. The ensemble consists of three vocalists, an accordionist, a bass guitarist, a drummer, and a cymbalist.
New Dawn Starkestra: Space Bunny Apocalypse & Easter Egg Hunt
ALL AGES STANDING ROOM ONLY NEW DAWN STARKESTRA Join us for some Easter Sunday fun with some surprises and New Dawn Starkestra. New Dawn Starkestra is a new collaboration between four heavyweights of the Western North Carolina music scene: vocalist and songwriter Rebekah Todd, guitarist Isaac Hadden, bassist Quinn Sternberg, and drummer Jeff Sipe, a veteran of the jam and jazz worlds known for his work with Aquarium Rescue Unit and beyond. Together, they’ve formed something that feels less like a supergroup and more like a conversation — one that’s unfolding live, night after night. At its core, the band is rooted in trust: each member brings original songs to the table, but there’s no fixed destination. Their sets blend composed material with extended improvisation and unexpected detours. One moment might feel like Southern soul, the next like spacey fusion, and the next like something you’ve never quite heard before. It’s not genre-hopping — it’s just what happens when four players actually listen to one another. What separates New Dawn Starkestra is their ability to stretch out without losing the thread. The musicianship is airtight, but it never gets in the way of the emotional core. They’re not afraid of silence, or space, or slowness — and when the energy builds, it feels earned. Their shows aren’t about replication; they’re about discovery. In their short time together, they’ve already begun turning heads at venues and festivals throughout the Southeast, with performances that feel more like experiences than sets. There’s no spectacle here, no posturing. Just four artists showing up, tuning in, and chasing whatever spark happens to catch that night.
Martha Scanlan and Jon Neufeld
ALL AGES SEATED SHOW LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLE MARTHA SCANLAN AND JON NEUFELD While Martha Scanlan and Jon Neufeld’s collective accolades are impressive- they have shared the stage and collaborated with artists as diverse as Levon Helm, Jim James, Emmy Lou Harris and Peter Buck, and played festivals from Merlefest to Bonnaroo- it is their unique alchemy, a sense of adventure and improvisation on stage and in the studio, that most characterizes their work together and what has earned them a loyal cult following world wide. The 2024 release Save it For Later, their fourth album together, was listed among the year’s best albums by No Depression Magazine. They are currently at work on a new collection of original songs, traveling back and forth between Neufeld’s home in Portland, Oregon where he works as a mixing and mastering engineer and Scanlan’s in Western Montana. Scanlan’s songs have appeared in works by celebrated American authors Joyce Carol Oates and Rick Bass and have been covered by Sarah Jarosz, Solas, and Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse. Her song Higher Rock is featured on Robert Plant’s latest release, Saving Grace.
