Jake Blount w/ Clover Lynn

Jake Blount is a performer and scholar of Black folk music based in Providence, RI. Initially recognized for his skill as a string band musician, Blount has synthesized his scholarly and artistic pursuits into a diverse performance practice that has taken him to Carnegie Hall, Newport Folk Festival, NPR’s Tiny Desk, and beyond. His albums, released on Free Dirt Records and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, have been featured in best-of lists from NPR, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone. His scholarly publications include “Jail the Zombie: Black Banjoists, Biopolitics, and Archives,” published in Modern American History. He also served as a music consultant for the movie Sinners, and performed on the soundtrack of Ken Burns’s The American Revolution. Blount holds an A.M. in Musicology and Ethnomusicology from Brown University, where he is working toward a Ph.D. in the same and a second master’s degree in Anthropology. A new string band record is forthcoming in September 2026.

CLOVER LYNN

Clover-lynn and the Hellfires is a project borned from ashes of olde; of olde memories, olde melodies and an even older spirit. With her roots dug deep into the mountain sides of the Virginia Clover-Lynn pulls at those roots of her heritage in search of both uncanny and hearth. Conjuring the sounds of an old country dance hall, the smell of mold in an old church on Sunday morning, and the warmth of a story passed down from tongues that came before. With the help of her band of Hellfires, Clover-Lynn is able to create a show that reminds those away from home they can always go back and gives others a feeling of yearning for a home they’ve never known.