Name: Jake Xerxes Fussell
Start: 2026-12-19T20:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-12-20T02:00:00-04:00
Location: Haw River Ballroom

This is a standing room show.It would be difficult to find a band that is more self-aware than longtime touring band&nbsp;Lucero. Since forming in Memphis in the late 90’s,&nbsp;Lucero’s&nbsp;base musical hallmarks have remained similar to the band’s initial sound established with their first record&nbsp;The Attic Tapes. In the history of their expansive discography,&nbsp;Lucero&nbsp;has evolved and embraced everything from southern rock to Stax-inspired Memphis soul, whilst simultaneously maintaining their distinctive sonic foundations. Years later, dedicated fans of the group still flock to hear the band’s punchy driving rhythms, punk-rooted guitar licks, and lyrics that evoke the whiskey drenched sentimentality of Americana singer-songwriters.

Lucero

Luna was a New York band formed in 1991 by singer/guitarist Dean Wareham after the breakup of Galaxie 500. The band made seven studio albums before disbanding in 2005. After a ten-year break, they reunited and toured in 2015, and in 2017 released a new LP — A Sentimental Education and an EP of instrumentals — A Place of Greater Safety. Other recent reissues include a deluxe 2xLP version of their classic Penthouse album (on Rhino) and another 2xLP set Lunafied that collects all the covers the band record-ed in the 1990s. Now scattered around the country (Los Angeles, New York and Austin) the band re-tains the same lineup that operated from 1999 to 2005: Dean Wareham on vo-cals/guitar, his wife Britta Phillips on bass, Sean Eden on guitar, and Lee Wall on drums. A Luna Timeline: 1992. Dean Wareham recruits Justin Harwood (ex-Chills) on bass and Stanley Demeski (ex-Feelies) on drums to record Lunapark for Elektra Records. After completing the al-bum, the band places an ad in the Village Voice and thus adds Sean Eden on guitar. Eden, who is Canadian by birth and a trained actor, plays lead guitar on the excellent Indian Summer EP (aka the Slide EP). 1993. The band records their second album, Bewitched, featuring “California,” “Tiger Lily” and “Friendly Advice.” 1995 Luna’s classic third album, Penthouse (1995) is recorded in New York City, fea-turing guests Tom Verlaine (Television) and Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab). The band signs to Beggar’s Banquet in Europe. Rolling Stone calls it “one of the essential recordings of the ‘90s” 1997 Lee Wall replaces the travel-weary Stanley Demeski on drums, and the band rec-ords Pup Tent, their fourth album for Elektra. 1998 Luna recorded their fifth album The Days of Our Nights. 1999 Justin Harwood moves back to his home country (New Zealand), and is replaced on bass by Britta Phillips. 2000 finding themselves between contracts, the band quickly records a live album — Luna Live! for the Arena Rock label. 2002 the band sign to Jetset Records, record Romantica, co-produced by Gene Holder (DB’s) and Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev). Romantica was followed by the mini-LP Close Cover Before Striking. 2004 Luna record their Rendezvous album in Brooklyn, NY. Produced by Bryce Gog-gin with minimal overdubs, it captures the band more-or-less live. 2005 After a farewell tour, on February 28 the band play their last show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. 2015 After ten years away, the band announces a commemorative world tour. The lineup is the exact ’99-’05 group: Dean Wareham and Sean Eden on guitar, Lee Wall on drums, and Britta Phillips (now married to Mr Wareham) on bass. 2016 Captured Tracks label release a vinyl box set comprising Luna’s five albums rec-orded for Elektra and a bonus LP of rarities. 2017 Double Feature Records release the band’s first new material since 2004, the co-vers LP A Sentimental Education and instrumental EP A Place of Greater Safety. 2018 Run-Out-Groove releases the double LP Lunafied — containing all the covers the band recorded during the 1990s.&nbsp;

Luna

"Matsson has made some of the best and most-compelling folk songs of the 21st century.” — Paste&nbsp;“The Tallest Man on Earth has released some of the best modern folk music of this century. He writes elegant, homespun ballads that draw you in toward the proverbial campfire.” — GQ&nbsp;Swedish singer-songwriter The Tallest Man On Earth aka Kristian Matsson is announcing a 2026 US fall tour today and the song “Colors”, his first new music in nearly three years. Recorded by Matsson in his home studio, the song whirls and swirls with his violin, guitar playing and signature croon. Yearning for the verdant inspiration of summer, head below to listen and watch the song’s new video featuring handheld camera footage from Kristian and his crew on a recent run of European shows.&nbsp;Watch/Listen to “Colors”: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://thetallestmanonearth.ffm.to/colors">https://thetallestmanonearth.ffm.to/colors</a>&nbsp;The Tallest Man On Earth has captivated audiences using “every inch of his long guitar cord to roam the stage: darting around, crouching, stretching, hip-twitching, perching briefly and jittering away…” (The New York Times). His tour this fall begins October 15 in North Carolina and snakes through the East and West coasts, ending in Phoenix on November 15. Head below to check out all upcoming tour dates.&nbsp;Critics often draw comparisons between The Tallest Man on Earth and Bob Dylan, citing similarities in both songwriting and vocal style. Matsson himself has acknowledged Dylan's influence, revealing that he started listening to him at the age of fifteen. Fascinated by Dylan's covers, he delved into their origins, which gradually introduced him to early American folk artists like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. However, Matsson is quick to distance himself from being part of any specific tradition, stating, “I don’t want to be part of a tradition. I just want to do what feels natural to me. This is how I play, and this is how I write songs.”&nbsp;His 2023 album ‘Henry St.’ marks the first time Matsson recorded an album in a band setting. As described by Matsson, it’s the “most me album yet, because it covers so many of the different noises in my head. Having been away from it taught me that making music and performing is what I’m doing for the rest of my life, and I’m so grateful for it. It has given me new confidence and playfulness. This is what I do. It’s unconditional.”&nbsp;

The Tallest Man on Earth

This is a standing room show.The Linda Lindas have partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket sold on our tour will go towards supporting organizations working for equity, access, and dignity for all. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://www.plus1.org">www.plus1.org</a>&nbsp;Every day around 4 p.m., The Linda Lindas put down their instruments and jumped in the pool. They used these aquatic moments as a reset during a week-long writing retreat in Palm Springs where phones were banned, the outside world was suspended, and four young people who’ve been making music since tweenhood were writing together in the same room for the first time.&nbsp; In the process, they figured out who they really are. GOTTA GET OUT, the third album from Bela Salazar, Eloise Wong, and Lucia and Mila de la Garza, is the sound of a band discovering itself. Historically, The Linda Lindas have written individually and brought songs to the table. It was a process that served them well through their impressive, Ramones-esque debut Growing Up (2022) and its forceful follow-up No Obligation (2024). The two records took them from L.A. Chinatown all-ages scene mainstays to tours with Green Day and song placements in Inside Out 2. But for this one, they wanted something a little different. “For the first time, we were presenting ideas to each other that weren’t fully formed. That was scary. But we worked through everything together and figured out the role each of us naturally plays,” Lucia explains. “Writing together was a way to find our collective sound,” adds Eloise. “Anything can work if we’re all shaping it together. We can write this slow indie song or a funky dance-y song. And it can all be for the band because we all worked on it together.” At the house with the pool, “I haven't finished this, but do you wanna hear what I have?” became credo. Bela would conjure a “vibe” — a Logic loop, a guitar part twisted through pedals, a chord progression that was unmistakably hers — and they’d construct a song from there, working out lyrics in real time. They tinkered with synths for the first time, and graduated beyond bar chords. At a second retreat in Long Beach, a Mission Impossible marathon was the background ambiance as they worked out yet more songs — by the end, they had 30 total. “We discovered a lot about being very intentional,” says Lucia, who had recently graduated high school. “Gotta Get Out” was the very first song they wrote. They didn’t intend to make it the title or the theme, but kept coming back to it, rewriting verses right before tracking vocals, clipboard and pen in hand, until, as Lucia says, “we made it mean something.” Opening the LP with big spicy synths and an ominous groove, it captures a central restlessness: the itchiness of being inside while the world moves — the desire to break out of the old habits, the old sounds, the old you.&nbsp;The album’s visual world, designed by Eloise, makes the same argument through imagery: inspired by an old Audubon guidebook, clouds grow across the singles’ art from fair-weather cumulus to full cumulonimbus, viewed from a windowsill. The lyrics are rubber-stamped, the paper is glued, and every smudge is maintained.

The Linda Lindas

The Brook &amp; The Bluff return to their rock &amp; roll roots with Werewolf - a high-voltage, live-inspired album that turns up the amps, pushes the tempo, and howls in four-part harmony. Fueled by the sharp songwriting and stacked vocals that have defined their catalog, the collection captures the raw, supercharged energy of the band’s concerts.&nbsp; After nearly a decade of nonstop touring - earning hundreds of millions of streams with fan favorites like “Halfway Up” and “Everything Is Just a Mess” - the band regrouped in Nashville, meeting every morning to write and rehearse like their early days in Birmingham, Alabama. Life unfolded in the background: weddings, divorces, real-world growing pains. Inside the room, it was all music.&nbsp; The band channels the swamp rock spirit of legendary artists like Creedence, Petty, and The Eagles, delivering loud, melodic, deeply human songs like lead single “Super Bowl Sunday” - a crashing, introspective anthem about ego and emotional blind spots. “The goal was to treat the record like a live set,” says frontman Joseph Settine. And that’s exactly what they’ve done.&nbsp;Armed with a new album and an unflinching spirit, The Brook &amp; The Bluff are ready to hit the road again to continue their 2026 Werewolf tour. The band boasts a history of sold out headline tours across the continent, a number of major festival performances, and have supported artists like Noah Kahan, Mt. Joy, The Avett Brothers, Ashe, and Rainbow Kitten Surprise.

The Brook & the Bluff

$1 per ticket will go to The Cloverdale Project, which supports organizations taking care of people, animals, and the world around us. A cross-country move to Nashville. An international touring schedule. A record label with 25 artists and more than 100 releases, all operating out of his living room. A recording studio built into his four-car garage. Evan Honer spent 2024 in a blur of momentum, expanding his life in all directions, playing nearly 100 shows in support of his second album, Fighting For, while writing new songs for its follow-up. Only two years earlier, his cover of Tyler Childers' "Jersey Giant" had become a viral juggernaut, earning more than 200 million streams and launching his music career. He was busy then, too, balancing his college classes with nighttime gigs as a solo act and daily practices with the school's Division 1 swimming team. Things only intensified as school came to a close. Honer released the debut album West On I-10 on graduation day and quickly remade himself into a road warrior, balancing the challenges of early adulthood with an unbending commitment to music. Then, one day, he learned to look around him and take stock of the present. Everything I Wanted finds Honer planting new roots in Nashville, his adopted hometown after a multi-year stint in Southern California. Recorded over 18 days in a garage studio that he built himself, it's a homemade record with big-studio sparkle, its 13 songs emphasizing the indie and alternative-pop influences that have always lingered on the outskirts of his sound. Here, they're moved to the forefront, pushing Honer beyond his roots as an acoustic Americana act and into something more eclectic and electrifying. There are string arrangements courtesy of a talented neighbor, Kate Stephenson. There are horn arrangements, pedal steel swells, and contributions from his roommates, too. At the center of that sound is Evan Honer himself: an acclaimed songwriter, storyteller, and bleeding-heart vocalist who, after years on the move, has learned to slow down a bit and appreciate the moment. "My life completely changed this past year," he says. "I'm learning to be happy with where I'm at. I'm grateful that I get to stand onstage and sing songs I wrote in my bedroom, and people know the words and sing them back to me. How can you be upset about that?" It's true; there's a lot to be grateful for. 500 million streams, for starters. An RIAA gold certification for his "Jersey Giant" cover. Sold-out shows alongside headliners like Wyatt Flores. The ongoing success of his own label, Cloverdale Records. With Everything I Wanted, though, Honer turns his gaze inward, writing autobiographical songs about romance, resilience, roots, and his relationship with his audience. "When the going gets tough, I'll stick through the season," he promises during "Maybe For Once." On the surface, it's a love song to a woman he met on the road, her memory lingering in the rear-review mirror every time his van pulls away. For someone who's used to living life at 80 miles per hour, though, the song is something more: a self-made promise to focus not only upon the destination, but on the journey itself. "These songs are about me not getting in my own way," he clarifies. "I've stopped looking for reasons not to commit. I'm pushing myself to just let things happen." The rest of the record is similarly personal. On the cinematic piano ballad "It's a Home," Honer whisks himself back to childhood to unpack some traumatic family baggage.&nbsp;

Evan Honer

This is a standing room show. If you need a seat in our ADA section, please email <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="boxoffice@hawriverballroom.com">boxoffice@hawriverballroom.com</a> AFTER you have purchased your tickets. Let us know which show you’re seeing and how many seats you need.For more than forty years, The Jayhawks have created music that embodies the enduring spirit and soul of classic American songwriting.&nbsp;The Jayhawks emerged from Minneapolis in the post-punk era of The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum. They pioneered today’s Americana movement through a series of classic albums that introduced rock audiences to their unique musical stew of country, folk, soul, Britpop and rock 'n' roll. The band has played most every major music festival, from Farm Aid to Primavera Sound, Pinkpop to Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. In the tradition of The Band and Tom Petty &amp; The Heartbreakers, The Jayhawks have toured with and served as backup band for many of music’s most acclaimed visionaries, including Ray Davies, Roger McGuinn, and Johnny Cash. Today, Gary Louris, Marc Perlman, Karen Grotberg and Tim O’Reagan continue to record and tour worldwide. Over 12 studio albums and three live albums, The Jayhawks are still building a legacy of music that stands the test of time. The band once again teamed up with legendary producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed) to create their upcoming album entitled Sanctuary Park, set to be released late summer 2026.

The Jayhawks

Joy Oladokun is one of today’s most compelling genre-defying voices. A queer Black musician and daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Oladokun has become a vital cultural voice, writing songs that explore identity, faith, mental health, and social justice with honesty and restraint. Those themes remain at the heart of Hope Is A Heavy Thing, Oladokun's new 12-track album, due September 25. Produced by Oladokun with additional contributions from Nigerian producer Spellz and a feature from Nigerian artist Adekunle Gold, the album marks a bold new creative chapter, broadening her sound while continuing to explore questions of identity, resilience, and belonging with the emotional depth that has become her signature. The project further reflects Oladokun’s ability to draw from diverse influences while creating music that transcends genre and geography. Since her 2020 breakthrough, Oladokun has released three critically acclaimed albums, was nominated for Americana Artist of the Year, and saw her protest anthem “i see america” named a finalist for the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Award for Best Song for Social Change. Praised by The New York Times, NPR Music, and Billboard for her ability to turn quiet introspection into lasting impact, Oladokun has brought her music to national television on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, CBS Saturday Morning, and Austin City Limits, while her songs have been featured across major TV series. With collaborations spanning artists like Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Noah Kahan, and Maxo Kream, she is entering her next chapter by bringing an even broader, bolder sound to the table, continuing to prove herself as an artist who not only bends genre but bridges culture.

Joy Oladokun

For the past decade, soulful duo The War And Treaty—the husband-and-wife team of Michael and Tanya Trotter—have released music that continues to elevate them beyond beloved industry favorites, as well as award-season and touring staples, capable of performing on stages worldwide with widespread acclaim and standing ovations. Every aspect of their new project exemplifies the pinnacle of the group’s ever-creative growth within these mentioned ideas. Twelve years after their founding, The War And Treaty have redefined themselves beyond Academy of Country Music, Country Music Association, and GRAMMY nominations. Moreover, being lauded by the Rock &amp; Roll Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, and the Americana Music Association, which named them Duo/Group of the Year for two consecutive years, cannot contain them as a group greater than the sum of their most successful parts. Immediately upon listening to their latest album, it’s clear that a more vibrant energy now guides a duo confidently shaping their own destiny. Album collaborators include titans of the arts who are as much friends, mentors, and trusted confidants as they are legends across multiple industries: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award winner Whoopi Goldberg (who provides the spoken word intro for “Litty”), Songwriters Hall of Famer Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds (writer of “You Can’t Hurt Me Anymore”), Country Music Hall of Famer Wynonna Judd, and Grammy-nominated performer Valerie June (both on “Reclaim All Of Your Time”) all contribute as guest artists. Hall of Fame-caliber mentors and influential friends, now serving as relaxed collaborators, shape how powerhouse country-soul vocalists like Valerie June and Wynonna Judd influence The War And Treaty’s latest sound. The duo’s pairing is less unlikely than it appears at first glance: both grew up listening to classic country and Memphis soul records, among many other genres. As a result, on the song “Reclaim All of Your Time,” their styles blend seamlessly with Tanya Trotter’s veteran gospel-soul stylings. For nearly five years after writing the folksy, female-empowerment ballad, Michael Trotter, its creator, believed it should be presented as a conversational piece with layered harmonies. He was right. The song, both in its composition and vocal delivery, combines warmth and strength to forge a rare genre bridge. Beyond collaborations, The War And Treaty’s latest work also thoughtfully seeks to expand Ray Charles’ 50-year-old idea that the best music exists in the tension between sacred sounds and secular desires. Given that Michael and Tanya Trotter are a married couple, their ability to explore that space is obvious. Yet, their decade-long efforts to meet industry expectations in folk, Americana, and country music left significant raw and romantic potential in their sound untapped. “We’re finally performing material that shows people how, beyond being mature and intentional, how sanctified and sexual we can be,” says Tanya Trotter. “For Michael and me, it’s important to show the combination of rawness and sweetness that underlies our soulful sound.”

The War & Treaty

This is a partially seated show.&nbsp;Over six unique and very personal studio albums, Jake Xerxes Fussell has found his musical future by reimagining, reorchestrating, and reunifying the past. By combining different traditional music sources in a completely original way, he routinely creates fresh works of art that are at once rooted in tradition and ingeniously modern. &nbsp; “It starts at a very intuitive level, it has to be natural in order for it to succeed,” Fussell explains. “I’ll really get into a song and feel like I hear something in there like a melody, a particular phrase, a chorus, and I feel like ‘I could use that’ and one thing leads to another.” &nbsp; It's Fussell’s inspired intuition that remakes a classic American folk song like “Rock Island Line”—the first single from his latest album The Old Beloved Path—into something that still rings with inherent wisdom but is completely his own. An accomplished fingerpicker on guitar who’s also blessed with a smooth baritone voice that effortlessly exudes the gravitas his creations demand, he says that in the past he might have avoided a song like “Rock Island Line” because it seemed too commonplace to him—too many folksingers had already done it. This touchstone of the well-known fabric of American folk music, “didn’t really need my interpretation.” But after listening again to &nbsp;the recording of this train song by British skiffler Lonnie Donegan , something about the incantation of the chorus struck a chord. In typical Fussell fashion, his remarkable ear and intellect took over. &nbsp; “The song struck me as very beautiful, but just singing the verses wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t relate,” he says looking back. “So, I wound up putting it together with an old English nursery rhyme that I had been kicking around. “Wire, briar, limberlock /How many geese is in our flock?” and “If you want to ride you got to ride it like you’re flyin, get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line.” Marrying those two things, I felt like something worked, it felt like a song to me.” &nbsp; Prominent artists and documentarians in their own right, Fussell’s father is a folklorist, writer, painter, and photographer and his mother is an innovative fiber artist. Fussell grew up in an extended community devoted to the preservation of traditional cultural pursuits including storytelling, log cabin building, and basketmaking. Imbued with this deep respect for the past as well as an unquenchable intellectual curiosity, he grew up appreciating the beauty in those supposed lost arts and is now privy to all that in a way a lot of his compatriots in Indie music are not. While popular music songwriters like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen will always be among his heroes, he calls people who do nothing but source traditional music and play fiddle tunes faithfully as apostles of a “noble pursuit.” &nbsp; “For people in the folk music world, songs are their religion. But traditional music is not a bee &nbsp;stuck in amber. I tend to think of everyone who plays traditional music as being on a spectrum from conservative to wildly creative. I am somebody who tends to sit on the edge of those two worlds. I don’t always present these songs in a historical context. I have to relate to them personally. I approach these songs through my own worldview.”

Jake Xerxes Fussell

After spearheading the alt-country movement with Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar pursued his vision with Son Volt, who recorded three landmark albums in the ’90s before the groundbreaking artist put the band on extended hiatus and cut three solo LPs. Missing the free exchange of ideas and the surprises that inevitably occur when a group of simpatico musicians lock together, Farrar assembled a new lineup of Son Volt in 2004 and has since released nine albums. The latest album, Sound Signal Serenades, was released as a special 2026 Record Store Day limited edition LP. Jay Farrar’s work often seeks out the ghosts of America's discordant or forgotten past, converses at length with them, and writes songs that stake a claim to a better future.

Son Volt

Alamance County is on the verge of making history by flipping all three of its seats Blue at the NC General Assembly. Join us on SATURDAY, SEPT 12TH for an evening of music, community and conversation as we raise money to send Ian Baltutis, LeVon Barnes and Southey Blanton to Raleigh this November.Event hosted by ABSS Board Member Tameka Harvey and Quinn Ray of The Hometown Holler.Musical guests include The Carolina Cutups and the Fox Fires. Be sure to arrive early and catch a special DJ set from LeVon Barnes!Doors open at 5:30, show starts at 6:30. Tickets will be available for a minimum donation of $25

Beats and Strings

The Five Points Rounders is an old-time string band that has been playing for square dances in the greater Durham area for the past 20 years. As creators of the much-loved Rowdy Square Dance, the Rounders strive to breathe new life into traditional southern square dancing. With their passion for the music and a commitment to building community, the Rounders have sought to create inclusivity in previously gendered spaces. Much of the calling is gender-free. All dances are taught beforehand, but chaos and a general disregard for instruction are always welcome. They believe firmly that, “If you ain’t doin’ it wrong, you ain’t doin’ it right”. So, come as you are; bring your dance shoes and your smile. You’ll be glad you did. The Five Points Rounders this time around include: David Bass (fiddle), Shawn Galbraith (banjo), Rob VanVeld (bass), and Tracy Lafleur (guitar) Calling for this evening by the fabulous Simone Fine

Barn Dance

Join us for the premiere of Theory of Change, a documentary following three working-class mothers in rural North Carolina as they organize their neighbors and build local power.This premiere also launches our statewide Theory of Change Impact Campaign—and serves as a fundraiser to help bring the film to communities across North Carolina to spark conversation, build relationships, and connect people to opportunities to take action.Come celebrate the film, meet the people behind it, and help us take Theory of Change across the state.September 4, 2026 | 7:00–9:00 PM Haw River Ballroom 1711 Saxapahaw-Bethlehem Church Rd, Saxapahaw, NC 27340Free and open to the public. Registration encouraged. Film runtime: 42 minutes Reception to followYour support will help fund screenings, organizing, and community engagement as we take Theory of Change on the road across North Carolina.

Theory of Change Documentary Screening

Celebrate the end of the Saturdays in Saxapahaw season!8-10pmFREE and open to all

Saturdays in Saxapahaw After Party

21 Years of HAPPINESS! The weekly festivities include performances by local bands and a thriving Farmer’s Market with fresh local produce, eggs, baked goods, flowers, honey, locally produced microbrews, handmade arts and crafts, food trucks, ice cream and more! Festivities take place every Saturday with the market opening at 5pm and music going from 6 to 8pm from the first Saturday in May through last Saturday in August. Admission is free though donations are appreciated, organizers will have our famous “Swan Buckets” on stage each week and Swan Venmo information posted for the bands! Please give what you can to these wonderful musicians!Please read everything you need to know about Saturdays in Saxapahaw at: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw">https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw</a>

Boom Unit Brass Band

21 Years of HAPPINESS! The weekly festivities include performances by local bands and a thriving Farmer’s Market with fresh local produce, eggs, baked goods, flowers, honey, locally produced microbrews, handmade arts and crafts, food trucks, ice cream and more! Festivities take place every Saturday with the market opening at 5pm and music going from 6 to 8pm from the first Saturday in May through last Saturday in August. Admission is free though donations are appreciated, organizers will have our famous “Swan Buckets” on stage each week and Swan Venmo information posted for the bands! Please give what you can to these wonderful musicians! Please read everything you need to know about Saturdays in Saxapahaw at: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw">https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw</a>

Road to Cattywompus (Sleepy Fest)

All Y'all Country All Stars

John Howie Jr. and the Rosewood Bluff

21 Years of HAPPINESS! The weekly festivities include performances by local bands and a thriving Farmer’s Market with fresh local produce, eggs, baked goods, flowers, honey, locally produced microbrews, handmade arts and crafts, food trucks, ice cream and more! Festivities take place every Saturday with the market opening at 5pm and music going from 6 to 8pm from the first Saturday in May through last Saturday in August. Admission is free though donations are appreciated, organizers will have our famous “Swan Buckets” on stage each week and Swan Venmo information posted for the bands! Please give what you can to these wonderful musicians!Please read everything you need to know about Saturdays in Saxapahaw at: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw">https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw</a>

Country Soul Songbook

Raistlin Brabson & Up Jumped Trouble

Cat Power&nbsp;is celebrating the 20th&nbsp;anniversary of her milestone 2006 album,&nbsp;The Greatest, with&nbsp;Redux, a three-song EP arriving digitally and on 10” vinyl via Domino Recording Company on&nbsp;Friday, January 23, 2026.&nbsp;&nbsp;Recorded by GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer and longtime collaborator Stuart Sikes (Loretta Lynn, The White Stripes) at Austin, TX’s Church House Studios with backing by &nbsp;Dirty Delta Blues&nbsp;– the all-star supergroup assembled for the world tour that followed&nbsp;The Greatestcomprising guitarist&nbsp;Judah Bauer&nbsp;(The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion), keyboardist&nbsp;Gregg Foreman&nbsp;(The Delta 72, Jesse Malin), bassist&nbsp;Erik&nbsp;Paparozzi&nbsp;(Lizard Music), and drummer&nbsp;Jim White&nbsp;(Dirty Three, Hard Quartet) –&nbsp;Redux&nbsp;includes a brand new re-recording of James Brown’s chart-topping classic, “Try Me,” premiering everywhere today. The track was among those first recorded by the singer-songwriter otherwise known as&nbsp;Chan Marshall&nbsp;during the original sessions that produced&nbsp;The Greatest&nbsp;but never completed.&nbsp;Redux&nbsp;also includes a stunning rendition of Prince’s iconic “Nothing Compares 2 U,” recorded in tribute to the late, great guitarist Teenie Hodges, a legendary member of The Memphis Rhythm Band that backed Cat Power on&nbsp;The Greatest&nbsp;and with whom she formed a close bond before his passing in 2014. The EP also includes a re-imagined version of one of the many standout tracks on&nbsp;The Greatest, Marshall’s own “Could We,” newly recorded in the arrangement that was performed live on&nbsp;The Greatest Tour&nbsp;with Dirty Delta Blues.&nbsp;Next year will see Cat Power perform&nbsp;The Greatest&nbsp;in its entirety with&nbsp;a very special&nbsp;series of 20th&nbsp;anniversary live shows beginning February 12, 2026, at Houston, TX’s White Oak Music Hall and then traveling North America, Europe, and the United Kingdom through early November.

Cat Power

This is a standing room show.Released in God’s year of 2026, the 250th anniversary of the founding of America in Kurt Vile’s fine city of Philadelphia, Philadelphia’s been good to me finds one of our nation’s greatest songwriters staking a claim on his hometown. “This is my ‘bringing it all back home to Philly’ record,” Vile says. “I’m treating it like my last one. I put everything into it. It’s my best vocal record. It’s my best electric guitar record. It’s my most organic record, made in the comfort of my own zone.”Largely self-produced, with assists from Adam Langellotti, keys wiz Matthew Jugenheimer, drummer Kyle Spence, guitarist Jesse Trbovrich, and longtime Violators boardsman Rob Schnapf, the record embodies Vile’s understanding of music as a conversation between people across time and space. The title track is an ode to his hometown that doubles as an homage to Tom Petty’s homage to California. The barn-burning “Chance to Bleed” features guest spots from Memphis OGs Natalie Hoffman and Greg Cartwright but boasts a music video proudly shot at the Philly venue Kung Fu Necktime and features a cameo by local legend Schoolly D. “You Don’t Know Cuz It’s My Life” is Kurt’s take on a stadium anthem, building up to a laid-back yet triumphant chant of “I’m from Phil-a-del-phiaaaaaaah!” that you can imagine a crowd of Eagles fans screaming along to, Twisted Teas pointed towards the heavens.Make no mistake: Philadelphia’s been good to me is the sound of Philly’s constant hitmaker coming back to kick ass, son the haters, and put on for the City of Brotherly Love — and in trueKurt Vile fashion, doing so while sounding more relaxed than ever. Between the 250th anniversary of America and its hosting of select World Cup games, 2026 is shaping up to be a big deal for Philadelphia. “And then there’s one other thing,” Vile says. “I gotta be that third thing. Because I am Philadelphia. I gotta own it. I gotta rise to the occasion.”

Kurt Vile And The Violators

This is a standing room show. A PDF of your tickets will be emailed to you a week before the show.Please help WUNC keep local journalism alive in the Triangle and beyond at:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://support.wunc.org/site/Donation2?2885.donation=form1&amp;df_id=2885">https://support.wunc.org/site/Donation2?2885.donation=form1&amp;df_id=2885</a>Watchhouse, the North Carolina based duo of Andrew Marlin &amp; Emily Frantz, have announced a new studio album called Rituals, due out May 30, 2025 via Tiptoe Tiger Music / Thirty Tigers. The collection marks the pair’s first release of all new, original songs since their 2021 self-titled album, which earned praise from Rolling Stone (“pristine acoustic picking collides with hazy, dream-like psychedelia”) Mojo, NPR Music, American Songwriter and more.&nbsp;Starting over a decade ago playing coffee shops and local restaurants around North Carolina, Watchhouse is a grassroots success story that’s been driven by Marlin’s poignant songwriting. With sold-out shows at legendary venues like Red Rocks and the Ryman Auditorium, and hundreds of millions of streams, they’ve earned a reputation for creating music that “redefines roots music for a younger generation” (Washington Post). The duo - now with a family of their own - are two singers and musicians with profound chemistry, performing earnest yet masterfully crafted songs that encompass the unknowable mysteries, existential heartbreak, and communal joys of modern life. The forthcoming album is no exception.

Watchhouse

Omar Ruiz-Lopez and Eric Hirsh

21 Years of HAPPINESS! The weekly festivities include performances by local bands and a thriving Farmer’s Market with fresh local produce, eggs, baked goods, flowers, honey, locally produced microbrews, handmade arts and crafts, food trucks, ice cream and more! Festivities take place every Saturday with the market opening at 5pm and music going from 6 to 8pm from the first Saturday in May through last Saturday in August. Admission is free though donations are appreciated, organizers will have our famous “Swan Buckets” on stage each week and Swan Venmo information posted for the bands! Please give what you can to these wonderful musicians! Please read everything you need to know about Saturdays in Saxapahaw at: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw">https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw</a>

Django Haskins

It’s been a year since Saxapahaw was hit by a storm and huge flood with massive impacts on this village and community we hold so dear. Neighbors, friends, businesses, families, donors, volunteers and community organizations near and far joined together to dig out, build back and support each other. The loving response was truly beautiful and overwhelming with so many pitching to help. We came together at Haw River Ballroom that very first day to organize and respond and it’s truly amazing to see what grew out of that first gathering. &nbsp;So let’s mark that day by coming together again to catch up, share and celebrate all that has been achieved in a year. All are welcome at the first annual UNSINKABLE SAXAPAHAW ANNUAL FLOOD OF LOVE CELEBRATION DANCE PARTY! Please join us. Friday, July 10th at 8pm - free and open to all! &nbsp;Catch up and conversation on the Cup 22 level, and dancing it all out on the main floor! See you there.❤️

Unsinkable Saxapahaw Dance Party

Alamance Jazz Band

Irving Aday & Cuban Joy

Due to an urgent family medical issue,&nbsp;The Church&nbsp;is forced to postpone their upcoming U.S. Tour.&nbsp;This show will be rescheduled to&nbsp;June 21,2026.&nbsp;All tickets will be valid for the new date. * In the event that a refund is needed,&nbsp; please use the Etix customer support form: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.etix.com/ticket/customer-support.spa">https://www.etix.com/ticket/customer-support.spa</a>Few bands enter their fifth decade of making music with all the fierce &nbsp;creative energy of their early years. Even fewer bands are like The Church. Experiencing a renaissance of sorts with their worldwide critically-hailed 26th album The Hypnogogue and its companion 27th album (that also serves as a &nbsp;worthy standalone) Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars, The Church has &nbsp;witnessed their continued impact to astonishingly grow exponentially in &nbsp;audience size and media attention through not only their new albums but a &nbsp;world tour that took them through North America, the UK, Europe and back &nbsp;home to Australia. Coupled with the 2024 vinyl re-issues of their first four &nbsp;albums – Of Skins &amp; Heart, The Blurred Crusade, Séance, and Heyday – their most recent Australian tour was one of their most successful tours to &nbsp;date. The band also launched an exclusive fan community via a partnership &nbsp;with The Chorus, aptly named nightfriends. It is a first for this storied band &nbsp;– an online experience where fans can receive first dibs on concert and new &nbsp;release presales, have access to unreleased songs/demos/live cuts, never before-seen live show video content and concert films, behind-the-music &nbsp;essays about the creation of pivotal albums, exclusive band Q&amp;As and Forum &nbsp;interactions, and much more. 2025 is turning into a banner year for the band, getting ready to turn the &nbsp;page and both explore new music and celebrate their impressive catalog &nbsp;with a slew of live dates. Kicking off with their first-ever ‘Singles-centric’ tour this Summer in North America, they will be digging into their catalogue and &nbsp;playing the songs that launched them into mainstream consciousness, including “Metropolis,” “Ripple,” “C’est La Vie”, and of course, “Reptile” and &nbsp;“Under the Milky Way.” They also have a new album – their 28th! – planned &nbsp;for release later this year.&nbsp;The renowned five-piece line-up is made up of bassist, vocalist and founder &nbsp;Steve Kilbey, along with long-time collaborator, drummer, and producer Tim &nbsp;Powles (a member since 1994), guitarist Ian Haug, multi-instrumentalist &nbsp;Jeffrey Cain, and guitarist Ashley Naylor. The Church continue to remain a &nbsp;treasured creative force.

The Church

Sparked by the flames of 1920s jazz, klezmer, and vaudeville, the Squirrel Nut Zippers blazed onto the music scene in the mid-1990s at a time when big band music was having a resurgence and the doors were wide open for curious leader Jimbo Mathus and his caustic crew of rollicking, ragtime musicians. Formed in 1993 by Mathus (vocals, guitar, trombone) in 1993 in the Chapel Hill area of North Carolina with former vocalist and banjo player Katherine Whalen, the eclectic group of diverse local artists quickly gelled and wove together a tapestry of sounds comprising elements of early jazz, blues and southern roots, that are still evident today. The Zippers quickly made their live debut in Chapel Hill and thanks to their truly unique and original music and energetic, almost carnival-like stage performances, they developed a large fan base throughout the South within just a few months. This momentum continued to gain speed and between 1995 and 2005, the Squirrel Nut Zippers sold more than three million albums. Their watershed album, Hot (Certified Platinum, 1996), was recorded in the heat of New Orleans, fueled by a smoldering mix of booze and a youthful hunger to unlock the secrets of old-world jazz. Perennial Favorites (1998) followed Hot’s success, peaking at #18 on the Billboard Top 200 and was certified Gold the month after its release, as well as their iconic holiday record Christmas Caravan, which was released that same year and debuted at #12 on the Billboard Holiday Albums Chart. The band’s next chart-topping album would come a decade later, after the group took a hiatus and changed its lineup with Mathus serving as the only original member. Beasts Of Burgundy (2018) debuted at #4 on the Billboard Jazz Albums Chart proving that the Zippers were back and that with Mathus at the helm, that the band was continuing to explore its own musical universe, evolving all the while. Today, the Zippers continue to tour, performing over three decades of their music to sold out audiences across the country. In addition to their career-retrospective shows, they also perform their wildly popular “Christmas Caravan Tour,” featuring the best of Christmas past, including songs from their Christmas Caravan and Mardi Gras for Christmas albums, and the “Jazz From The Back ‘O Town” show, which offers a glimpse into the songs that inspired the band from the birthplace of jazz – otherwise known as New Orleans’ “Back ‘O Town.” For more than 30 years, the Squirrel Nut Zippers have proven that their truly unique and original sound has not only stood the test of time but also that no other artist of this generation has embraced and synthesized such eclectic influences in such a seamless, authentic manner

Squirrel Nut Zippers

Story Charlemagne

Celebrate Juneteenth at the Haw River Ballroom on June 19! Featuring music from a live DJ, food, dancing, games and fun!

Rap & Spades: Juneteenth

Amelia Day

Andy Hull is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer, best known as the lead singer for the acclaimed Atlanta-based band, Manchester Orchestra. Over the past two decades, they’ve ascended beyond their Atlanta, GA, origins to national TV performances, playing main stages at major festivals like Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, and reaching #1 at commercial AAA radio and the Alternative radio Top 15 (“The Gold” from 2017’s A Black Mile To The Surface). The sweeping and cinematic nature of the band’s consistently impressive catalog—inspired in part by Hull and producing partner Robert McDowell’s experience scoring movies, including 2016’s Swiss Army Man and 2019’s The Death Of Dick Long—has continually been synced across film, TV, and commercial campaigns. The band’s critically acclaimed sixth album, The Million Masks of God, debuted in 2021 on various Billboard charts with first-week sales, including at #1 on Alternative and Vinyl charts, and at #3 on the Top Current Album Sales and Top Rock Albums charts. It featured the Top 2 AAA and Top 20 Alternative radio hit “Bed Head,” which has been lauded as “an epic fit for sold-out venues” (Consequence). As a songwriter and producer, Hull has worked with artists including Logic, Paris Jackson, Briston Maroney, and Foxing. Beyond Manchester Orchestra, Hull's signature voice can also be heard across his solo project, fan favorite, Right Away, Great Captain!, and his collaboration with McDowell and Kevin Devine, Bad Books.

Andy Hull

This is a partially seated show.Drivin N Cryin is an enduring American rock band whose roots forward sound and uncompromising spirit have made them a vital force since forming in Atlanta, Georgia in 1985. Blending Southernrock grit, folk storytelling, and hard-charging rock &amp; roll, the band built a reputation early on as a must-see live act and a songwriter’s band with depth far beyond trends.Led by singer-songwriter Kevn Kinney and anchored by bassist Tim Nielsen and drummer Dave Johnson, Drivin N Cryin broke through nationally with a run of influential albums that helped definelate-’80s and early-’90s American rock. Songs like “Fly Me Courageous,” “Honeysuckle Blue,” “Straight to Hell,” “Build a Fire,” and “Scarred But Smarter” became staples of rock and AAA radio,with Fly Me Courageous earning Gold certification and remaining a cornerstone of the band’s catalog.While they emerged during the MTV era, Drivin N Cryin never disappeared. Over four decades, they’ve remained a consistently touring, recording band — releasing new music, evolving theirsound, and cultivating a loyal, multigenerational audience. Their influence extends well beyond their own recordings; “Straight to Hell” found new life through covers and collaborations thatintroduced the song to entirely new audiences.The band’s stature is reflected in both peer respect and formal recognition, including induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, as well as Kinney’s induction into the Milwaukee Music Hall ofFame. Touring history includes shared stages with artists spanning multiple eras and genres, The Who, Hootie &amp; The Blowfish, The Black Crowes, ZZ Top, Soul Asylum, Blackberry Smoke, TheMarshall Tucker Band, Jason Isbell, along with recent appearances on destination events like Rock Boat, Outlaw Country Cruise, and Moon Crush.Their latest album, Crushing Flowers, marks a deliberate return to the band’s core. Stripped back to the original three-piece, the record favors clarity, chemistry, and feel over excess — a confident,back-to-basics statement from a band that knows exactly who it is. Rather than chasing nostalgia or novelty, Crushing Flowers reinforces what has always set Drivin N Cryin apart: honest songs,emotional weight, and the unmistakable sound of a band still fully engaged in the work.Nearly forty years in, Drivin N Cryin remains a living, breathing American rock band — not a revival act, not a footnote, but a continuing story still being written.

Drivin N Cryin

Alli Blois and the Seeping Hearts

This is a seated show. “One of the most unique and enduring bands in alternative rock” - All Music "Margo Timmins's voice is as melancholy and enchanting as ever” - The New York Times "There’s something that is nearly miraculous about the way Margo Timmins’ beautiful voice fits with those pained lyrics written by her brother Michael Timmins…the result is some truly transformative music." - The Mercury News Cowboy Junkies will be performing a career-spanning show from The Trinity Session to their recent album, Such Ferocious Beauty!&nbsp; Sometimes revolutions begin quietly. In 1988, Cowboy Junkies proved that there was an audience waiting for something quiet, beautiful and reflective. The Trinity Session was like a whisper that cut through the noise -- and it was compelling. It stood out in the midst of the flash and bombast that came to define the late 80's. The now classic recording combined folk, blues and rock in a way that had never been heard before and went on to sell more than a million copies.&nbsp; Formed in Toronto in 1985 with siblings Michael Timmins on guitar, Margo Timmins on vocals, Peter Timmins on drums, and Michael’s lifelong friend Alan Anton on bass, the band has sparkled over the course of 29 albums. “I’ve known Alan longer than I’ve known Pete,” says Michael. “We were friends before Pete was born.” Unlike most long-lasting groups, Cowboy Junkies have never had a break up or taken a sanity-saving hiatus. There’s an appreciation of each other that keeps them constantly working. “It’s that intimacy and understanding of what each one of us brings to the table,” says Michael.&nbsp;&nbsp;

An Evening with Cowboy Junkies (Night 2)

This is a seated show. “One of the most unique and enduring bands in alternative rock” - All Music "Margo Timmins's voice is as melancholy and enchanting as ever” - The New York Times "There’s something that is nearly miraculous about the way Margo Timmins’ beautiful voice fits with those pained lyrics written by her brother Michael Timmins…the result is some truly transformative music." - The Mercury News Cowboy Junkies will be performing a career-spanning show from The Trinity Session to their recent album, Such Ferocious Beauty! Sometimes revolutions begin quietly. In 1988, Cowboy Junkies proved that there was an audience waiting for something quiet, beautiful and reflective. The Trinity Session was like a whisper that cut through the noise -- and it was compelling. It stood out in the midst of the flash and bombast that came to define the late 80's. The now classic recording combined folk, blues and rock in a way that had never been heard before and went on to sell more than a million copies.&nbsp; Formed in Toronto in 1985 with siblings Michael Timmins on guitar, Margo Timmins on vocals, Peter Timmins on drums, and Michael’s lifelong friend Alan Anton on bass, the band has sparkled over the course of 29 albums. “I’ve known Alan longer than I’ve known Pete,” says Michael. “We were friends before Pete was born.” Unlike most long-lasting groups, Cowboy Junkies have never had a break up or taken a sanity-saving hiatus. There’s an appreciation of each other that keeps them constantly working. “It’s that intimacy and understanding of what each one of us brings to the table,” says Michael.&nbsp;

An Evening with Cowboy Junkies (Night 1)

Slow Teeth

Holler Choir

Over the past 20 years, The New Pornographers have proven themselves one of the most excellent bands in indie rock. They’ve constantly offered new sonic surprises with every album, and ‘Continue as a Guest’ is their greatest leap to date. The group’s ninth album and first for Merge establishes them alongside modern luminaries like Yo La Tengo and Superchunk when it comes to their ability to evolve while still retaining what made them so special in the first place.

The New Pornographers

Josh Ritter is a renowned singer, songwriter, musician, artist and best-selling author. One of today’s most thoughtful and prolific voices, he has released eleven studio albums including 2019’s widely acclaimed ‘Fever Breaks’ of which NPR Music praised, “He remains a hydrant of ideas while embodying an endless capacity for empathy and indignation, often within a single song.” His twelfth studio album ‘I Believe in You, My Honeydew’ is out now. Two-plus decades into his celebrated career, Ritter has written music that has transcended generations including luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Bob Weir covering his songs. The Book of Gold Thrown Open tour is meant to encompass the whole of Ritter’s career, versus focusing on any one studio album. In addition to his work as a musician, Ritter is also a national best-selling author, having released two novels to date: 2021’s The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All and 2011’s Bright’s Passage. Released to critical attention, Stephen King wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Bright’s Passage “shines with a compressed lyricism that recalls Ray Bradbury in his prime…This is the work of a gifted novelist.” “Josh Ritter remains at the top of his game two decades into a highlight-strewn career. He’d be forgiven for loosening his grip, but his hand has never felt surer.”- NPR Music “Harking back to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and maybe a little Mark Knopfler, Mr. Ritter has always been a slinger of serious ideas and high-flown imagery.”- The New York Times “Mysterious, melancholy, melodic…and those are only the M’s.”- Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly

An Evening with Josh Ritter

The North Carolina Piedmont-based trio of Setting bring together their substantial collective skills as musicians and their collaborative, explorative mindsets from groups such as Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Peeesseye, Sylvan Esso, and Jake Xerxes Fussell to bear in their inventive and rich improvisations. Multi- instrumentalists Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund subvert expectations while creating a sense of ease and wonderment. Their intricate interplay of synthesizers, cassette loops, banjo, keyboards, electronics, zithers, and a litany of percussive instruments form a tactile amalgam of celestial transcendence and terrestrial rhythm, a loamy pulse fluidly guiding every minute fluctuation in feel. Dedicated improvisers with years working together, the band has developed their own idiosyncratic vernacular and sense of flow. Setting’s self-titled album (Thrill Jockey) is a definitive statement of their improvisational acumen meeting compositional rigor, a robust wellspring of hypnagogic grooves and mosaiced textures. &nbsp;Setting harnesses the euphoria of communal creation.

Setting

Iron &amp; Wine is the musical project of singer-songwriter Sam Beam. Bornand raised in South Carolina, Beam is a former film professor who got hisstart making home recordings before landing on Sub Pop Records. Iron &amp;Wine’s 2002 debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle garnered both critical andpopular acclaim, vaulting Beam into the spotlight of the burgeoning indie-folk/Americana scene as one of its new and leading voices.For over 20 years, Iron &amp; Wine has captured the emotion and imaginationof listeners with distinctly cinematic songs. His recorded output includesseven full-length studio records, collaborations with Calexico, Ben Bridwell(Band of Horses), and Jesca Hoop, countless EP’s, singles andcompilation/soundtrack appearances, a live concert documentary, and fiveGRAMMY nominations.Iron &amp; Wine’s latest record, Light Verse was released in April 2024 withPaste Magazine noting “… Beam returns with an expanded sonic palettewhile also rekindling the bright spark that made 2007’s The Shepherd’sDog so magical.”

Iron & Wine

Big Fat Gap

This is a standing room show. ADA seats are at capacity.“My dad, as a poet, always told me to never censor myself – that’s one of his cardinal rules of creative writing,” says multiple-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams. “That became my motto which I’ve stuck by all these years.” Miller Williams’ advice clearly is born out on Lucinda’s powerful eighteenth studio album, the provocative World’s Gone Wrong. “I felt a sense of urgency in making this record,” she adds.Filled with gut-wrenching topical songs, the album’s ten tracks were written and recorded in a blast of collaborative creativity as Lucinda and her cowriters – primarily husband/manager/co-producer Tom Overby and guitarist Doug Pettibone – grappled with events transpiring during the spring of 2025. A whole other album had been in the works, but that “urgency” to address our current cataclysmic situation motivated Lucinda and company to cut World’s Gone Wrong in direct response. “Music is a powerful weapon,” she points out. “I want this record to make people aware, wake them up. I like to push people’s buttons.”Lucinda, Pettibone, and Overby returned to co-producer Ray Kennedy’s Room &amp; Board Studio in Nashville to cut the tracks with her newly configured band: guitarist Marc Ford (Black Crowes), drummer Brady Blade (Emmylou Harris), and her longtime bassist David Sutton. On the gripping title track, they’re joined by guest vocalist Brittney Spencer and keyboardist Rob Burger on Hammond B3. Its title inspired by the 1931 Mississippi Sheiks song (repurposed by Dylan in ‘93), the lyrics give voice to the lives of baffled everyday Americans: a nurse and a car salesman “workin’ long hours” and “lookin’ for comfort in a song.”Throughout the album, Lucinda is at her most direct, not mincing words via those distinctive, one-of-a-kind vocals. The ominous “Something’s Gotta Give” (also featuring Spencer) is punctuated by Pettibone’s and Ford’s fiery two-guitar interplay – a clarion call that “evil has come to play/you can feel it everywhere.” On the country-blues “Lowlife,” Mickey Raphael’s dulcet harmonica livens up this ode to a juke joint where weary souls find relief. Lucinda and her band played the song onstage with Raphael during Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Fest, and “audiences really responded to that one,” Lucinda recalls. After their August 2 tour stop in Saratoga Springs, they reconvened with Raphael at New York’s iconic Electric Lady Studio to cut the vibrant track.The blues-rockin’ “Sing Unburied Sing,” inspired by Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 award-winning novel of a haunted South, offers soaring background vocals by Maureen Murphy and Siobhan Kennedy. A gutbucket blues, “Black Tears” features Reese Wynan’s Hammond B3 accenting a down-and-dirty dual guitar attack. Accompanied by a serpentine slide guitar, “Punchline” eviscerates “false gods and deceivers/playin’ on our deepest fears” and “people being taught to hate.” Personifying the voice of liberty itself, in “Freedom Speaks” Lucinda reminds us that “apathy will blind you,” urging us to “stand up and fight.” The punk-blues “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?” is a sequel of sorts to the piercing “Man Without a Soul,” from Lucinda’s critically acclaimed Good Souls Better Angels (2020). Backed by Murphy’s churchy vocals, Lucinda paraphrases biblical scripture, delivering a bit of fire-and-brimstone that’s sorely needed.The sole cover song on the album, Bob Marley’s formidable “So Much Trouble in the World,” features the inimitable vocals of national treasure Mavis Staples. “It’s the first time I’ve cut a Bob Marley song,” says Lucinda, who’s released a series of albums of songs by the Fab Four (2024’s Lucinda Williams Sings the Beatles from Abbey Road) and Tom Petty (2020’s Runnin’ Down the Dream), as well as blues and country classics. “I was self-conscious about it at first, because the song is so great and it had already been recorded the best it’s ever going to be. But then when Mavis Staples came in to do vocals….” Together, they nailed it.The hymnlike “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around,” featuring Norah Jones on piano and harmonies, is a heartbreaking closer, yet there is an aspirational quality too. “Norah’s voice lifts the song up,” says Lucinda. “Her part is subtle, kind of quiet, but it adds a whole level of something to the song.” That “something” permeates the entirety of World’s Gone Wrong, giving courage to listeners who are – as the title track says – “lookin’ for comfort in a song.”And that’s what Lucinda fans have come to depend on over the past 45 years – since her sophomore effort comprised of originals, Happy Woman Blues, in 1980. With a back catalog of remarkable albums, including 1998’s game-changing Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, three Grammy awards and countless accolades, including Time Magazine naming her America’s Best Songwriter in 2001, Williams is one of our most revered artists, beloved for her singular vocals and extraordinary songs. And in these troubling times, we need the light she shines on World’s Gone Wrong more than ever before.

An Evening with Lucinda Williams and her band

My Days of 58 is the eighth Bill Callahan album, his first since 2022. The twelve tunes here open uncanny depths of expression as Bill continues to blaze one of the most original songwriting-and-performance trails out there. With My Days of 58, he applies the living, breathing energies of his live shows to the studio process, sharpening his slice-of-life portraiture to cut deeper than ever before.&nbsp; The core musicians featured on My Days of 58 is the group that toured for 2022’s REALITY: guitarist Matt Kinsey, saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi and drummer Jim White, whose synergy was evident in 2024’s live Resuscitate!. This showed Bill, as he puts it, “that they could handle anything I threw at them,” adding:&nbsp; “Improv/unpredictability/the unknown is the thing that keeps me motivated to keep making music. It’s all about listening to yourself and others. A lot of the best parts of a recording are the mistakes—making them into strengths, using them as springboards into something human.”&nbsp;&nbsp; With this in mind, Bill prepared the songs with each player separately. Taking a note from songwriter, fan and friend Jerry DeCicca, he recorded the basic tracks for all but one song in a duo with Jim White. Meanwhile, he rehearsed with Matt, guitar to guitar, while asking Dustin to make horn charts for a few songs. Bill:&nbsp; “I usually just sing a melody to a horn player or let them try a few takes and go from there. This time I thought, why not get some of the record charted out. There’s always room for spontaneity on top of that. And we did indeed throw some off the cuff stuff on top of the charted horns in a couple cases where they weren’t fully doing what I wanted.&nbsp; With this record I kept thinking of it as a ‘living room record.’ I’m not talking about fidelity at all here. Living room attitude. Living room vibe. Not too loud, not otherworldly. I asked for the horns to be relaxed like someone on the couch playing, not a blast from heaven or hell.”&nbsp;&nbsp; For more spontaneity and human color, Bill called up several other players: Richard Bowden on fiddle, whom he’d seen playing with Terry Allen and loved; pianist Pat Thrasher; bassist Chris Vreeland; and trombonist Mike St. Clair. About pedal steel player Bill McCullough, who he knew from Knife in the Water, Bill says this:&nbsp; “He has a real abstract approach to an abstract instrument—he’s a photographer (shot the front and back cover) and sees the steel in the same way as apertures and f-stops—foreground and mid ground and background—blurry and sharp. That’s how I’ve always seen the steel so it’s exciting to share that. &nbsp; But hobo stew is always the idea—throwing together who I have at hand instead of following a recipe. I’m always learning. I know very little after all these years. I go by gut mostly, but sometimes forget all the possible considerations to consider.&nbsp;The goal of every record at the recording part of the process is to get thrown out of Eden. Every session starts in Eden but you have to get out of there at some point.”

Bill Callahan

Afie Jurvanen does not spend too much time in cities these days. For nearly two decades, Jurvanen was a fixture of the Toronto scene, both as a valued multi-instrumentalist and producer for friends like Feist, The Weather Station, and Kathleen Edwards and as the architect of one of his country’s most celebrated artists, Bahamas. Jurvanen came of age across Bahamas’ first six albums, the restlessness of jumpy early hits like Pink Strat and Barchords slowly shifting into the generous domesticity of 2023’s Bootcut. But Jurvanen has long been drawn to open spaces, to a quieter life. In 2009, the year of his aforementioned debut, he began visiting Nova Scotia, the Atlantic Ocean. Over the next decade, his trips became more consistent, then more frequent, and then longer, until, in 2019, Jurvanen and his family of four finally made the move—nearly 2,000 kilometers northeast, to Nova Scotia. They live a lifestyle, Jurvanen half-jokes, that is “close to Mennonite.” The kids are homeschooled. No one has an iPad. Text messages can feel like miracles. But in 2022, Jurvanen went back to a city—namely, Music City, or Nashville, Tenn. During five days at the Sound Emporium, he worked with some of America’s true country greats, aces like Vince Gill and Sam Bush, Russ Pahl and Mickey Raphael. Bootcut, he reminisces, was maybe the easiest record he’s ever made, his songs and visions executed with utter clarity by absolute pros. When Jurvanen came home, though, he still had a few tunes and plenty of energy. Could he make more music, he wondered, outside of a city?&nbsp; Despite his extended résumé, Jurvanen has never been much of a tech guy or studio hound, never one for making his own records. In 2021, however, producer and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Van Tassel had also left Toronto, moving back to Nova Scotia and building a little studio, called DreamDate, in a backyard shed there. It was just small enough to skirt inspections, just big enough to house everything. Jurvanen had once rented Van Tassel’s space back in Toronto to listen to his Earthtones album on someone else’s speakers, to decide if it was ready for release. He’d been impressed by the place’s minimalism and tidiness, by the studio rarity of everything working. So Jurvanen began driving the 20 minutes from his cottage to Van Tassel’s spot via a winding ocean road, passing his days hanging out with his local friend and recording some songs. There was no real agenda but to work and play. And that’s how two people in a little shed made what may be the most effortlessly magnetic record in the entire Bahamas catalogue, My Second Last Album. Van Tassel and Jurvanen played every sound on My Second Last Album, from the buzzing acoustics of “Shadows” to the Mellotron ostinato of “Play the Game.” This self-dependence allowed them to do anything they wanted, to follow musical enthusiasms into any space they favored. Jurvanen wrote “The Bridge” via text with Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor, and he and Van Tassel turned it into an infectious country-funk tune, the strutting refrain closing the gap between Little Feat and Canned Heat. “Ready for a New Thing” echoes Joni Mitchell’s famous electric guitar tone, using it as the core of a buoyant little pop song about growing up, about being happy with growing older. “Feels So Good” is a modern soul wonder, its perfect groove framed by bass, piano, and finger-snap drums and built with a brilliant amount of negative space. There is charging indie rock, hazy piano, and pastoral folk-rock. Again, My Second Last Album is anything Van Tassel and Jurvanen wanted it to be.&nbsp; What’s most striking about these 10 songs, though, may be Jurvanen’s lyrical candor and open sense of play. He often found himself so motivated by what he and Van Tassel had accomplished during the day that he’d go home and write another song by night, the pace giving him permission to put down words without second-guessing himself. “Don’t hold back/share your opinion,” as he belts out as he emerges from the bridge on the funny and real opener, “Sauna.” His opinions here range from government payouts that could feel like pandemic bribes (again, “Sauna”) to the anti-rock star practice of waking up early enough to see the dawn and feel the day take shape (“Ready for a New Thing”). Over the tender piano of “Only Inspiration,” he extols the virtues of living in a house of women and girls, while he chastises Henry Ford’s vitriol and social media’s endemic bile on “Dearborn.” There is a burgeoning strain of self-determination to it all, of finding and accepting new ways to live for oneself and for everyone else, too. As Jurvanen, the son of immigrants, sings during the poignant closer, “We all belong in this country.” In the country, Jurvanen found his own state of being. For a long time, Jurvanen didn’t know what to do with My Second Last Album. After cutting a legitimate country record in the city where the genre lives, was it a too-weird left turn to put out a loose-limbed indie-pop set cut in a shed? He thought about slicing it into singles or splicing it as a bonus onto some sort of future Bahamas compendium, maybe even shelving it altogether. But then he put the record back on after not hearing it for several months and had the simplest and most profound realization possible: He loved these songs, the way they sat together, the story they told about who he was at that moment—a married father content to live in the country alongside the very ocean where he surfs, a musician who often goes to his buddy’s house to casually make some music. It became My Second Last Album, one of Bahamas’ truly indispensable works.

Bahamas

Rooster Walk is proud to present the May 9th edition of Saturdays in Sax featuring Florencia &amp; the Feeling.Rooster Walk Music &amp; Arts Festival recently won Best Music Festival in the mid-Atlantic. Entering its 16th year, the family-friendly festival&nbsp;is only 90 minutes away and hosts 45+ bands on six stages on Memorial Day Weekend.Visit Rooster Walk's booth on the day of Florencia's performance to enter&nbsp;to win tickets to the festival and RW swag. As a nonprofit, Rooster Walk's mission is to support music and arts education in its home of Martinsville, VA. Rooster Walk organizers, Johnny Buck and Jessica Wilson, are proud Saxapahaw residents.21 Years of HAPPINESS! The weekly festivities include performances by local bands and a thriving Farmer’s Market with fresh local produce, eggs, baked goods, flowers, honey, locally produced microbrews, handmade arts and crafts, food trucks, ice cream and more! Festivities take place every Saturday with the market opening at 5pm and music going from 6 to 8pm from the first Saturday in May through last Saturday in August. Admission is free though donations are appreciated, organizers will have our famous “Swan Buckets” on stage each week and Swan Venmo information posted for the bands! Please give what you can to these wonderful musicians! Please read everything you need to know about Saturdays in Saxapahaw at: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw">https://www.hawriverballroom.com/saturdays-in-saxapahaw</a>

Florencia & the Feeling

We are so excited about this year’s Haw River Festival! We will help kickoff Saturdays in Saxapahaw with live music from Jasmé Kelly, The Spectacles and the New Potatoes, a giant puppet parade from Paperhand Puppets, stand-up paddleboard raffle, canoe rides for kids, stream monitoring, river walk, food trucks and farmers market!

Haw River Festival

PopUp Chorus Come celebrate LIFE and COMMUNITY by singing these two fantastic songs with PopUp Chorus!Join us to sing two harmony rich pop classics, one newer and one older, at each of our PopUp Chorus events at the gorgeous Haw River Ballroom. Sing your heart out with a room full of people who will soon be your friends, as we create a chorus in a night. All voices and abilities are welcome!What is PopUp Chorus?Ask yourself these questions: Do you like to sing? Have you thought about joining a chorus but are too busy to commit? Do you sing in the shower or in your car? Did you sing in college or school but don’t have an opportunity to now? If you answered "YES!" to any of these questions, then you belong in PopUp Chorus. We’re an ad hoc chorus with no audition or weekly commitment. People turn up when they want to sing and love the songs. We’re never the same group twice and everyone is welcome, regardless of singing ability. We do not believe bad voices! At each PopUp Chorus, co-conductors, Kayla Richardon-Pichè and Carter Hodge, along with a full band, will teach harmonies and parts for both songs. When everyone is ready, we do a dress rehearsal, and end with a final filmed performance. This is your chance to feel the joy of singing with others. It’s easy and fun.&nbsp;&nbsp;

PopUp Chorus

On her 2018 debut album Lush, seventeen-year-old Lindsey Jordan sang “I’m in full control / I’m not lost / Even when it’s love / Even when it’s not”. Her natural ability to be many things at once resonated with a lot of people. The contradiction of confidence and vulnerability, power and delicacy, had the impact of a wrecking ball when put to tape. It was an impressive and unequivocal career-making moment for Jordan.&nbsp;On Valentine, her sophomore album out November 5th on Matador, Lindsey solidifies and defines this trajectory in a blaze of glory. In 10 songs, written over 2019-2020 by Jordan alone, we are taken on an adrenalizing odyssey of genuine originality in an era in which “indie” music has been reduced to gentle, homogenous pop composed mostly by ghost writers. Made with careful precision, Valentine shows an artist who has chosen to take her time. The reference points are broad and psychically stirring, while the lyrics build masterfully on the foundation set by Jordan’s first record to deliver a deeper understanding of heartbreak.On “Ben Franklin”, the second single of the album, Jordan sings “Moved on, but nothing feels true / Sometimes I hate her just for not being you / Post rehab I’ve been feeling so small / I miss your attention, I wish I could call”. It’s here that she mourns a lost love, conceding the true nature of a fleeting romantic tie-up and ultimately, referencing a stay in a recovery facility in Arizona. This 45-day interlude followed issues stemming from a young life colliding with sudden fame and success. Since she was not allowed to bring her instruments or recording equipment, Jordan began tabulating the new album arrangements on paper solely out of memory and imagination. It was after this choice to take radical action that Valentine really took its unique shape.Jordan took her newfound sense of clarity and calm to Durham, North Carolina, along with the bones of a new album. Here she worked with Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee). For all the album’s vastness and gravity, it was in this small home studio that Jordan and Cook chipped away over the winter of early 2021 at co-producing a dynamic collection of genre-melding new songs, finishing it triumphantly in the spring. They were assisted by longtime bandmates Ray Brown and Alex Bass, as well as engineer Alex Farrar, with a live string section added later at Spacebomb Studios in Richmond.Leaning more heavily into samples and synthesizers, the album hinges on a handful of remarkably untraditional pop songs. The first few seconds of opener and title track ‘Valentine’ see whispered voice and eerie sci-fi synth erupt into a stadium-sized, endorphin-rush of a chorus that is an overwhelming statement of intent. “Ben Franklin”, “Forever (Sailing)” and “Madonna” take imaginative routes to the highest peaks of catchiness. Jordan has always sung with a depth of intensity and conviction, and the climactic pop moments on Valentine are delivered with such a tenet and a darkness and a beauty that’s noisy and guttural, taking on the singularity that usually comes from a veteran artist.As captivating as the synth-driven songs are, it’s the more delicate moments like “Light Blue”, “<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://c.et">c.et</a>. al.” and “Mia” that distill the albums range and depth. “Baby blue, I’m so behind / Can’t make sense of the faces in and out of my life / Whirling above our daily routines / Both buried in problems, baby, honestly” Jordan sings on “c. et. al.” with a devastating certainty. These more ethereal, dextrously finger-picked folk songs peppered in throughout the album are nuanced in their vocal delivery and confident in their intricate arrangement. They come in like a breath of air, a moment to let the mind wander, but quickly drown the listener in their melodic alchemy and lyrical punch.&nbsp;The album is rounded out radiantly by guitar-driven rock songs like “Automate”, “Glory” and “Headlock”. Reminiscent of Lush but with a marked tonal shift, Jordan again shows her prowess as a guitar player with chorus-y leads and rhythmic, wall-of-sound riffs. “Headlock” highlights this pivot with high-pitched dissonance and celestially affected lead parts – “Can’t go out I’m tethered to / Another world where we’re together / Are you lost in it too?”, she sings with grit and fatigue, building so poignantly on her sturdy foundation of out-and-out melancholy. On Valentine, we are taken 100 miles deeper into the world Jordan created with Lush, led through passageways and around dark corners, landing somewhere we never dreamed existed.&nbsp;Today, in the wake of recording Valentine, Jordan is focused on trying to continue healing without slowing down. The album comes in the midst of so much growth, in the fertile soil of a harrowing bottom-out. On the heels of life-altering success, a painful breakup and 6 weeks in treatment, Jordan appears vibrant and sharp. “Mia, don’t cry / I love you forever / But I gotta grow up now / No I can’t keep holding onto you anymore” she sings on the album closer “Mia”. She sings softly but her voice cuts through like a hacksaw. The song is lamenting a lost love, saying a somber goodbye, and it closes the door on a bitter cold season for Jordan. Leaving room for a long and storied path, Valentine is somehow a jolt and a lovebuzz all at once.

Snail Mail

As the eyes open and the world first blinks to life, there it is: oblivion. Rather than destruction or collapse, Alice Phoebe Lou’s oblivion is a deep, inky place where motes of softly burning potential gently drift into life. The South African-born, Europe-based singer-songwriter reached past the torrential noise of modern life and into another space to pull out luminous melodies and intimate lyrics, turning them into playful, profound songs that honor the sublime simplicity of her busking years. “Instead of overthinking the outcome and the judgment, these songs are just creating for myself, a coming home,” she says of Oblivion (due October 24 via Nettwerk Music Group). “Tapping into this unawareness of unconsciousness sounds like bliss. Oblivion is a place where you can forget what others see in you and find your true essence.”Over the course of five impeccable LPs, Alice Phoebe Lou established herself as a musical force, continuing to unveil new facets to her expressive vocals and beguiling songwriting. While that evolution drew rave reviews from critics and her growing fanbase (now totaling more than 2.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify), the singer-songwriter was starting to feel the pressure of needing to constantly build the next stage.&nbsp;While previous albums may have reveled in immaculately layered production, here Phoebe Lou flutters over a simple acoustic strum—the listener placed in the room, in the moment with the lyrical self-appraisal. The songs of Oblivion flow in an almost dreamlike state, melodies looping like concentric circles and wordless harmonies floating through the mix—likely the result of a dedicated stream of consciousness songwriting process. Recorded in Berlin's La Pot Studio and co-produced by longtime collaborators and friends Ziv Yamin and Dekel Adin, Oblivion is a masterclass in push-and-pull subtlety; Alice Phoebe Lou’s voice feels lit by a spotlight and placed on a pedestal even as the songs live in quiet, confident moments.&nbsp;Throughout its ethereal trek, Oblivion drinks in the unknown and holds your hand as you wade into that mysterious depth. Across its stripped-back arrangements, Alice Phoebe Lou turns vulnerability into a mythic strength, contorting uncertainty and conflicted emotions into intimate friends. “These songs are coming from the darker places in yourself, that place of holding something inside and then letting it go, even if it’s embarrassing or vulnerable,” she says. “Oblivion leans into the idea of allowing yourself to let things overflow in order to feel them, work through them, and come out on the other side.” Alice Phoebe Lou invites listeners to explore both her oblivion and their own as well, illuminating a long, iridescent path of the soul and coming out stronger on the other side.

Alice Phoebe Lou

This is a standing room show.I did not enter this world afraid And I refuse to leave it this way. &nbsp;&nbsp; Flock of Dimes – the solo project of multi-instrumentalist and producer Jenn Wasner – releases her third album, The Life You Save, worldwide on October 10th, 2025, on Sub Pop Records. &nbsp; Across the last few decades – whether it be as Flock of Dimes, as half of beloved duo Wye Oak, or via one of her many collaborations with Bon Iver, Sylvan Esso, and a sprawling list of other musical juggernauts – Wasner’s extensive catalog displays her gift for balancing authenticity and directness with an unmistakable left-of-center sensibility. Her songwriting has always found her as a keen-eyed observer, a deeply empathetic and thoughtful storyteller with a skill for probing memory, heartbreak, and unhealed trauma, a shroud of syncopation or off-kilter guitar taking a song somewhere quietly prodigious. &nbsp; Her last solo album, the critically-lauded Head of Roses, took on heartbreak from a dualistic perspective, following a winding thread of intuition into the unknown and into healing. Her new album, The Life You Save, takes that a step further; put simply, it’s the most honest, intimate and personally revealing record of Wasner’s career. As heart-wrenching as they are hopeful, its twelve tracks delve the depths of addiction and codependency, inherited and experienced trauma, and the process of finding peace in the face of others’ suffering. The Life You Save is resonant, unflinchingly exposed – like a missive from the eye of a storm. But while it somehow manages to feel both viscerally raw and vulnerable, above it floats a sense of quiet peace, a sheen of hindsight, or perhaps of acceptance. It is the story of how it feels to be trapped between two worlds—the one you came from, and the one you’ve escaped to; about the belief that somehow, you can take the ones you love with you to this place; about the grief of realizing that the only person you can save is yourself. &nbsp; The Life You Save was produced by Jenn Wasner and recorded at Betty’s in Chapel Hill, NC, and Montrose Recording in Los Angeles, CA, and includes the highlights “Long After Midnight,” “Defeat,” “Afraid,” “Keep Me In The Dark,” and “River In My Arms.” The Life You Save also features additional production from Nick Sanborn (tracks 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11), is engineered by Adrian Olsen &amp; Alli Rogers, mixed by Adrian Olsen, and mastered by Huntley Miller. &nbsp; Jenn writes on The Life You Save: &nbsp; “My previous records, generally, have been a summary of things I had already been through— experiences I had observed and reflected upon, reporting back from some amount of distance. But this record is different. It is an attempt to report from inside of a process that is ongoing and unfinished, from which I will likely never fully emerge as long as I am alive: my struggle within the cycles of addiction and co-dependency. &nbsp; “I set out trying to make a record about other people. &nbsp; “Their problems, their struggles, their addictions.

Flock of Dimes

This is a standing room show. You you require an accessible seat, please contact our box office as soon as you purchase your ticket at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="boxoffice@hawriverballroom.com">boxoffice@hawriverballroom.com</a>.&nbsp;Gillian Welch’s rich and remarkable career spans over twenty-five years, and she and her musical partner David Rawlings are a pillar of the modern acoustic music world. They have been hailed by Pitchfork as “modern masters of American folk” and “protectors of the American folk song” by Rolling Stone.&nbsp;After moving to Nashville in the early 1990s, Welch was launched into the public consciousness when Emmylou Harris recorded a cover of Welch’s “Orphan Girl.” Her career continued to flourish as her 1996 debut Revival, produced by T Bone Burnett, was released to critical acclaim. Firmly on the roots music map following the release, Welch followed up that GRAMMY nominated album release with 1998’s Hell Among The Yearlings, a stark duet record with Rawlings, further solidifying the duo as a force in the folk music scene.&nbsp;For her work as executive producer as well as a performer and songwriter on the eight times platinum O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, Welch was awarded the Album of the Year GRAMMY, and was simultaneously nominated for her own Time (The Revelator) which Rolling Stone called one of the best albums of the 2000s and is widely considered by critics to be one of the best albums of all time. This release was Welch-Rawlings’ first on their own record label, Acony Records, helping to establish the duo’s fierce commitment to independent music.&nbsp;2003’s Soul Journey was the pair’s first experimentation with a fuller, electric sound, which paved the way for the Dave Rawlings Machine project, and their first release under Rawlings’ name (A Friend of A Friend, 2009), which was accompanied by a time period of heavy touring and headlining major festivals while biding their time to return to the duet sound the two were traditionally known for. 2011’s The Harrow and The Harvest&nbsp; was nominated for for Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Engineered Album at the GRAMMYs, and won Artist of the Year (Welch) and was nominated for Instrumentalist of the Year (Rawlings) at the Americana Honors &amp; Awards. The album garnered glowing reviews and topped multiple year end “Best Of” lists.&nbsp;In celebration of the twenty year anniversary of the Welch-Rawlings partnership, the two launched an archival branch of Acony Records, entitled Boots, dedicated to releasing outtakes, demos, bootlegs, and live recordings from their copious vault. Thus far they have released five album’s worth of music with more on the way.&nbsp;In&nbsp;2018, Welch was the first musician to receive the Thomas Wolfe Prize for Literature. The award is bestowed by University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Department of English &amp; Comparative Literature and recognizes contemporary writers with a distinguished body of work.&nbsp;2019 saw Welch and Rawlings nominated&nbsp;for an Academy Award for “Best Original Song” where they performed their singing cowboy duet, written for the most recent Coen brothers’ film, live on the show. In 2020 the duo released All the Good Times, the first album under both their names, and won the GRAMMY for&nbsp;the Best Folk Album.Recently, they were crowned with the Berklee American Masters Award and honored by Americana Music Association with a Lifetime Achievement for Songwriting.Welch and Rawlings continue to tour the world in support of their music while simultaneously writing and lending their talents to countless fellow artists’ projects. They are continuously working to release their acclaimed catalog on phonograph records of the highest possible fidelity.Singer. Grammy-nominated songwriter. Producer. Award-winning guitarist. Since kicking off his career with 1996’s Revival — an album billed under Gillian Welch’s name, but featuring the indispensable co-writing, harmony-singing and instrumental chops of her musical partner — David Rawlings has woven one of the most acclaimed paths in Americana music. He reaches a new destination with his third solo album, Poor David’s Almanack, whose songs point to a frontman who continues walking the fine line between rootsy revivalism and bold innovation.This is a modern folk album that wears its old-school influences on its sleeve. Like Bob Dylan’s early work, Poor David’s Almanack looks to archetypal songs of the American roots-music catalog for inspiration, using them as launching points for a wildly original tracklist. The high-lonesome harmonies and acoustic fretwork of “Midnight Train” jumpstart the album on an earthy note, while “Airplane” — a southern ballad featuring a string section arranged by Rawlings himself — reaches skyward. Rawlings even evokes the call-and-response format of old field songs during the chorus of “Good God a Woman,” then serenades a lover with the fiddle-fueled, countryfied “Come Over My House.” Throughout its 10-song tracklist, Poor David’s Almanack sounds both fresh and familiar, offering new music rooted in the tradition, texture and twang of the folk songbook.“This is new territory for me, with songs that stick much closer to classic folk melodies and classic folk structures,” he explains. “Before, if I’d wanted to sing a song like ‘Midnight Train,’ I would’ve covered a traditional song that already exists. This is the first time I looked at myself and thought, ‘Wait, if I want to play music like that, I should make it myself,’ because I love that kind of music and I want to be a creator of it. I want to try and inject some of myself into that folk bloodstream.”A leader of the contemporary folk revival, Rawlings began releasing albums with Gillian Welch in the mid-’90s, championing a more acoustic-based sound during the heyday of grunge. For more than two decades since, he has juggled multiple roles as a frontman, duo partner, sideman and behind-the-scenes producer. His vocals can be heard on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, whose multi-platinum sales and widespread popularity helped introduce old-time folk music to a 21st century audience, and his unique approach to the acoustic guitar has influenced a new generation of forward-thinking folkies, several of whom — including Dawes and Old Crow Medicine Show — have hired Rawlings to produce their own albums. Dawes’ Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith both make appearances on Poor David’s Almanack, as do multiple members of Old Crow’s past and present lineups, including Ketch Secor and Willie Watson. On an album filled with some of the brightest lights in Americana music, though, Rawlings’ star shines the strongest, whether he’s singing in a mercurial voice or leading his band through an instrumental section worthy of a front-porch picking party.Half of Poor David’s Almanack was written alone — a first for Rawlings, who typically co-writes with Gillian Welch — and songs like “Money is the Meat in the Coconut” have already become staples of his live show, tossed into his setlist days after they were completed. Later, while recording the album to analog tape at Woodland Studios in East Nashville, Rawlings experimented with overdubs and other layered effects. Assisting him were a pair of top-shelf engineers: longtime collaborator Matt Andrews and legendary studio hand Ken Scott, whose work can be heard on landmark albums by the Beatles, David Bowie, and Elton John.Influenced by new experiences, old sounds and classic books (including Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, whose title serves as the basis for Rawlings’ own album), Poor David’s Almanack nods to its source material without borrowing. It’s a nod to the past and a step toward the future. “Cumberland Gap,” with its electric guitar solos and coed harmonies, even evokes the California folk-rock of Fleetwood Mac, pushing Rawlings into ever-evolving territory.“That’s the beautiful thing about this kind of music,” he says. “It’s supposed to be a chain. Maybe it’s supposed to be a chain that looks like a circle. We’re all looking for our best way to contribute to the great musical landscape. We’re all trying to raise some little part of that building.”

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings play Grateful Dead Acoustic Reckoning

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings Play Grateful Dead Acoustic Reckoning

The Five Points Rounders is an old-time string band that has been playing for square dances in the greater Durham area for the past 20 years. As creators of the much-loved Rowdy Square Dance, the Rounders strive to breathe new life into traditional southern square dancing. With their passion for the music and a commitment to building community, the Rounders have sought to create inclusivity in previously gendered spaces. Much of the calling is gender-free. All dances are taught beforehand, but chaos and a general disregard for instruction are always welcome. They believe firmly that, “If you ain’t doin’ it wrong, you ain’t doin’ it right”. So, come as you are; bring your dance shoes and your smile. You’ll be glad you did. The Five Points Rounders this time around include: David Bass (fiddle), Shawn Galbraith (banjo), Rob VanVeld (bass), and Tracy Lafleur (guitar) Calling for this evening by the fabulous Simone Fine

Come see the best paddling films of the year from all around the world!In partnership with our friends at the Haw River Ballroom, we will be hosting a screening of select films from the 2026 International Paddling Film Festival. These world-class short films highlight the best of the paddling community, showcasing paddlers overcoming incredible challenges and adversity while forging deep bonds with both nature and each other.<h2 style="text-align: start"></h2><ul><li>$15 online</li><li>$20 at the door</li><li>20% off up to 2 tickets for members of the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/hawrivercanoe/items/578044/?full-items=yes&amp;flow=856120">Haw River Paddle Club</a>!</li></ul>

2026 Paddling Film Festival

PopUp Chorus Come celebrate LIFE and COMMUNITY by singing these two fantastic songs with PopUp Chorus!Join us to sing two harmony rich pop classics, one newer and one older, at each of our PopUp Chorus events at the gorgeous Haw River Ballroom. Sing your heart out with a room full of people who will soon be your friends, as we create a chorus in a night. All voices and abilities are welcome!What is PopUp Chorus?Ask yourself these questions: Do you like to sing? Have you thought about joining a chorus but are too busy to commit? Do you sing in the shower or in your car? Did you sing in college or school but don’t have an opportunity to now? If you answered "YES!" to any of these questions, then you belong in PopUp Chorus. We’re an ad hoc chorus with no audition or weekly commitment. People turn up when they want to sing and love the songs. We’re never the same group twice and everyone is welcome, regardless of singing ability. We do not believe bad voices! At each PopUp Chorus, co-conductors, Kayla Richardon-Pichè and Carter Hodge, along with a full band, will teach harmonies and parts for both songs. When everyone is ready, we do a dress rehearsal, and end with a final filmed performance. This is your chance to feel the joy of singing with others. It’s easy and fun.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Pop Up Chorus

Join us Saturday, February 28th for a Mardi Gras celebration hosted by Haw River Ballroom, Left Bank Butchery, and Melville Bakery &amp; Co featuring the great music of Boom Unit Brass Band! Let’s Parade! Let’s Dance! Let’s Drink! Let’s Eat! We will be transforming Cup 22 into a New Orleans style pop up restaurant with food for purchase: Left Bank Gumbo and Muffulettas, and other delicious offerings including MelVille Bakery &amp; Co Beignets, New Orleans Cafe Au Lait and lots of great special cocktails and mocktails! On the main floor join us for a great concert and dance party! Wear your masks, bring your beads and fabulous outfits, and get ready to celebrate together. Boom Unit Brass Band is the Triangle's local version of a New Orleans Second Line jazz band. Their powerful sound, which fits somewhere between traditional Second Line bands and the ultra-tight Youngbloods Brass Band, comes from a full line-up of Trumpets, Trombones, and Saxophones plus a funky drummer holding it all together. They are fully loaded and capable of going straight from the parade to the stage. Boom Unit Brass Band has been featured at some of North Carolina's premiere music venues and festivals. Commanding audiences’ attention with their lively performances, infectious rhythms, and powerful horn arrangements, Boom Unit Brass Band has assembled a dedicated following in North Carolina and raised through the ranks of their brass band contemporaries. Doors and food ready at 6 and concert starts at 7! Laissez bon temps rouler!

Saxapahaw Mardi Gras with Boom Unit Brass Band

Celebrate Black History Month at the Haw River Ballroom on February 1! Featuring music from a live DJ, line dancing, games and fun!

Rap & Spades: Celebrate Black History Month

This is a standing room show.Few bands stick around for thirty years. Even fewer bands leave a legacy during that time that marks them as a truly special, once-in-lifetime type band. And no band has done all that and had as much fun as Leftover Salmon.Since their earliest days as a forward thinking, progressive bluegrass band who had the guts to add drums to the mix and who was unafraid to stir in any number of highly combustible styles into their ever evolving sound, to their role as a pioneer of the modern jamband scene, to their current status as elder-statesmen of the scene who cast a huge influential shadow over every festival they play, Leftover Salmon has been a crucial link in keeping alive the traditional music of the past while at the same time pushing that sound forward with their own weirdly, uniquestyle.The band now features a lineup that has been together longer than any other in Salmon history and is one of the strongest the legendary band has ever assembled. Built around the core of founding members Drew Emmitt and Vince Herman, the band is now powered by banjo-wiz Andy Thorn and driven by the steady rhythm section of bassist Greg Garrison, drummer Alwyn Robinson, and dobro player &amp; keyboardist Jay Starling.The current lineup is continuing the long, storied history of Salmon which found them first emerging from the progressive bluegrass world and coming of age as one the original jam bands, before rising to become architects of what has become known as Jamgrass and helping to create a landscape where bands schooled in the traditional rules of bluegrass can break free of those bonds through nontraditional instrumentation and an innate ability to push songs innew psychedelic directions live.Salmon is a band who for more than thirty years has never stood still; they are constantly changing, evolving, and inspiring. If someone wanted to understand what Americana music is they could do no better than to go to a Leftover Salmon show, where they effortlessly glide from a bluegrass number born on the front porch, to the down-and-dirty Cajun swamps with a stop on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, to the hallowed halls of the Ryman in Nashville, before firing one up in the mountains of Colorado.

Leftover Salmon

Join us for "3731" an intimate, multimedia solo performance by CJ Suitt that turns the stage into sacred ground.3731 is an intimate, multimedia solo performance that turns the stage into sacred ground. This show explores how objects become portals to memory--unearthing stories of devotion, sacrifice, humor, and loss through poetry and song. Layering ritual, storytelling, sound, and projection, the piece asks how we carry our mothers with us, and how remembrance itself can be a radical act.This performance is the culmination of an artist residency supported by Culture Mill.

3731 by CJ Suitt

THIS IS A STANDING ROOM SHOW.Nearly a decade ago, Margo Price turned Nashville on its head with her breakthrough, beloved debut solo album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. Released in the throes of bro-country and before pop stars were crossing over into the genre left and right, it showcased an artist completely unafraid to double down not only on herself, but what she’d always loved: classic country songs written from the intellect and the gut, hell-bent on truth-telling and both timeless and urgent all at once. Respected by her peers, praised by critics and beloved by her fans, Price created a lane where independent-minded, insurgent country music can exist and thrive alongside the mainstream, and became an ardent fighter for her beliefs in a genre where the norm is to shut up and sing. A trailblazer and a champion for the craft, Price redefined what it meant to be a modern country artist.&nbsp;​And now she’s back with an exquisite, truly timeless album that reconnects with her roots and pays tribute to the art of the country song, inspired in part by the legends whom she now calls colleagues and friends. Hard Headed Woman is both a look forward and a look back: a way to march forward while staying true to yourself when the path of less resistance is right there in front of us, and short cuts are around every corner. And a way to look back when we need to trim what is no longer working, and to stay connected with where we’re from. It is a promise and a manifesto, a love song to both a city and a genre, and a defiant cry for individuality.&nbsp;In creating Hard Headed Woman, Price brought all of her power as one of &nbsp;our most beloved and respected songwriters to craft a deep exploration of love and America in a time of unprecedented uncertainty. Featuring appearances from Tyler Childers, co-writes with Rodney Crowell and a Waylon Jennings song that his widow, Jessi Colter, urged her to sing, it is country music as only Price can make it: free of rules, cherishing tradition, hard headed to the core but with a delicate, beating heart.&nbsp;Since releasing Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, Price has barely slowed down. She’s made four records, played Saturday Night Live, been nominated for a Grammy, toured the world alongside artists like Chris Stapleton and Willie Nelson, released a lauded memoir (Maybe We’ll Make It, due on paperback September 2nd), became an in-demand producer and was appointed as the first female board member of Nelson’s Farm Aid. And she’s been fearless when it came to genre, venturing into psychedelic rock on her most recent, Jonathan Wilson-produced record, Strays. It would have been easiest to just stay that course, and keep running. But Price doesn’t follow success or comfort. She follows the art.&nbsp;​It took a whole lot of hard work and honesty with herself and others to get there, but that’s never stopped Price before. &nbsp;“I made the decision that I had to rebuild everything from the ground up,” Price says. “There’s all this pressure to be pumping out content, and I felt the opposite in the way I wanted to approach this record and my life in general.”

Margo Price

Come on over to the Haw River Ballroom for a Bad Bunny/ Super Bowl Watch Party - and half time DANCE PARTY á la Bad Bunny! We’ll have the bar open on the main floor and you are welcome to bring in your own food and snacks.Doors open at 6pm!

Bad Bunny Super Bowl Watch Party

This show is standing room.Born and raised in North Carolina, the Tan and Sober Gentlemen began taking in the songs, stories, and tunes that make up their beloved state’s musical tradition before they could talk.The music of the Carolinas, (and Appalachia in general) stems from the marriage of the Irish fiddle and the African banjo, which first met in the American South before the Revolution. The Tan and Sober Gentlemen aim to bring these traditions full circle. They play Irish tunes, ballads, and pub songs right next to the Appalachian fiddle tunes of their youth, melding the two into what they call “Irish-American hillbilly music.”Meanwhile, they have earned a reputation as one of the South’s hardest-hitting live acts, playing at blazing tempos and putting every last bit of energy they possess into the show. The result is a raucous celebration of the Carolinas’ Irish heritage, with drinking, dancing, and merriment galore. Since their formation in 2017, the six-piece band has toured the US and Ireland, headlining legendary Irish clubs such as Whelan's and the Roisin Dubh and playing the internationally renowned festival Electric Picnic. Stateside, their resume includes festivals such as the IBMA Bluegrass Live!, Bristol Rhythm and Roots, Appaloosa Festival, Great Blue Heron, and Shakori Hills. This year they will be adding Merlefest and the Blue Ox Festival to their resume as well as Fleadh Cheoil na Héireann, the world's largest annual festival of Irish music. In January of 2024, in their home of Alamance County, they sold out their show at the Haw River Ballroom recording a live album with a crowd of 800 people. They released their sophomore record, Regressive Folk Music, in June 2022, and their debut record, Veracity, was named by Shite'n'Onions as one of the five best Celtic punk records of 2019 and 2020.

The Tan & Sober Gentlemen

An Evening with Josh Ritter (Night 1 of 2)

Casting extra roles for a final dinner scene in&nbsp;&nbsp;"Architecture of An Angel," student thesis short film.&nbsp;Synopsis: After a bird falls from the sky at her feet, Veronica begins following a series of small signs that seem to gather around her. Drawn toward symbols of union and ceremony, she prepares herself to take on a new role. As her cousin’s wedding approaches, Veronica steps forward with a sermon that blurs the line between ritual, revelation, and the world around her.We will be shooting on January 16th in the evening, at Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, NC. Any age and gender is accepted! If you have any questions or concerns, please email <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:aeroexanimo@gmail.com">aeroexanimo@gmail.com</a>

Short Film Casting Call

Join us this New Year’s Eve for the exuberant dance fest we all need! &nbsp;Haw River Ballroom DISCO CAMP! &nbsp;Dance instructor and host Malik Walker will turn you into a pro! Learn The Hustle, The Robot, The Bus Stop, Night Fever and Nutbush City as you fine tune your skills through each dance session. All levels welcome - this is an unintimidating joyous night of laughter, dance and fun. Once we all have it down the dance party begins! Special appearances by the Saxapahaw Xanadu Skate Club, Go Go Dancers (by the end of the night YOU might be one!) Confetti, Stage Access and Glitter Dodgeball and of course the group countdown to 2026! Join in!

New Year's Eve Disco Camp

If you are a registered voter in Alamance County have signed or have NOT signed the petition yet, this is your moment! Come have fun and meet Shannon L. Long!We are hosting a 5000 Signature Reveal Party and this is your chance to come out, have fun, and make history by signing the petition to place Shannon Long on the 2026 Sheriff’s ballot.Music Line dancing Food Laughter AND the chance to sign the petition!Signing the petition does NOT mean you are voting, it simply allows the people of Alamance County the right to choose their Sheriff in 2026.If you believe in fair elections, accountability, and giving voters a real choice, come sign and bring friends who haven’t signed yet!Questions? Call or text 336-355-0668Let’s finish strong and cross 5,000 signatures together!

5000 Signature Cowboy Theme Reveal Party

“Electric guitar, saxophone and rap in one night at Cup22, December 27th 6PM. Come on over for a free show and see two genre blending acts”“Nonsense is an alternative rock duo consisting of Holland Lagarde and Jasper Ewing. Their sound knows no bounds, ranging from pastoral and calm, to digital and anxious. Their most recent EP, Office Pop, is a sardonic reflection on corporate culture. Blending saxophone, guitar pedal freakouts and drum machines, Nonsense is not to be trusted around instruments.”“MONKEYCHILD is the project of Asheville based rapper, singer, producer and thinker Milo Davis. His first singles captured a distorted and manic vision of rap, predating current rap trends by several years. Milo's most recent release, MAN2, is his most essential and cohesive work yet. Brilliantly assembled self produced tracks pull influence from 2000's R&amp;B (COME BACK 2 ME) and trap (2 American), while others sear with intensity (2DUNKED FREESTYLE). Prolific and also unpredictable, MONKEYCHILD's next moves are ones to watch.”

Nonsense

<h3>December 16th:</h3><h3>&nbsp;Breathwork and Inner-Relationship Focusing for Male-Identified People</h3>With Culture Mill and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/breathworkdurham/">Ari Berenbaum</a>6pm to 9pm : The Haw River BallroomFacilitators will guide participants through multiple rounds of breathwork, followed by an introduction to Inner-Relationship Focusing, in order to allow new embodied insights into the complex connection between internal physiological and emotional landscapes. Specifically for male-identified people who often lack spaces for such internal and communal exploration, this workshop is designed to foster a deeper and greater understanding of all that can be unearthed by spending time within the complexity of the body and the felt sense.

Practice Forward

Launched a little more than twenty years ago in Raleigh, North Carolina, Chatham County Line built a devoted local following on the strength of their genre-bending live show—an intoxicating blend of bluegrass, folk, country, and rock and roll—before breaking out internationally with their 2003 self-titled debut. In the years to come, the band would go on to release eight more critically acclaimed studio albums, top the Billboard Bluegrass Chart four times, collaborate with the likes of Judy Collins, Sharon Van Etten, and Norwegian star Jonas Fjeld, earn two gold records in Norway (where they were also twice nominated for the Spellemannprisen, Norway’s equivalent of a Grammy), and share bills with everyone from Guy Clark and Lyle Lovett to Steve Martin &amp; Martin Short and The Avett Brothers. NPR&nbsp;hailed the group as “a bridge between bluegrass traditions and a fresh interpretation of those influences,” while Uncut&nbsp;lauded their “powerful melodies and gorgeous harmonies,” and Pitchfork dubbed their music “timeless.”&nbsp;The band’s latest release, Hiyo, marks the band’s first release since the departure of their longtime banjo player and serves as something of a reintroduction to the roots stalwarts, complete with new sounds, new collaborators, and a whole new lease on life. Recorded at Asheville’s Echo Mountain studio with co-producer/engineer Rachael Moore (Kacey Musgraves, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss), the collection finds the trio—Dave Wilson (lead singer/guitarist), John Teer (fiddle/mandolin) and Greg Readling (bass/pedal steel), embracing change at every turn, experimenting with fresh sonic palettes and innovative approaches to their core instrumentation. The songwriting remains classic Chatham County Line here—rich, evocative tales of love and heartbreak, joy and sorrow, righteousness and revenge—but the settings have evolved to incorporate synthesizers, drum machines, and more electric guitar and percussion than ever before. Given the group’s string band roots and decades spent singing around a single microphone, the results are nothing short of revelatory, taking an enduring sound and injecting it with a thrilling new spirit of discovery and vitality.

Chatham County Line Holiday Tour

This is a partially seated show.Reared in Georgia and now settled in North Carolina, Jake Xerxes Fussell has established himself as a devoted listener and contemplative interpreter of a vast array of so-called folk songs, lovingly sourced from a personal store of favorites. On his latest album, When I’m Called—his first LP for Fat Possum, and his first as a parent—Fussell returns to a well of music that holds lifelong sentimental meaning, loosely contemplating the passage of time and the procession of life’s unexpected offerings.The album was produced by James Elkington and mixed by Tucker Martine. In addition to Elkington, it features the playing of Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station), Joe Westerlund (Bon Iver, Califone), and others. Blake Mills contributes guitars on several tracks. Joan Shelley and Robin Holcomb provide backing vocals.“…Fussell is the rare contemporary to approach folk in its pure form, shunning self-penned compositions about bummer relationships to concentrate on material handed down from bygone, hardened times.” – The New Yorker“(Fussell) is one of the great magpies of American song, collecting forgotten, tarnished gems with a folklorist’s zeal… his renditions aren’t so much cover versions as composites…” – The Guardian“…maybe the leading interpreter of American folk music right now.” – Ann Powers, NPR

Jake Xerxes Fussell (Partially Seated Show)

The annual Saxapahaw Holiday Market is back on Saturday, December 6 and Sunday, December 7!Hours are Saturday 12/6 9am-5pm and Sunday 12/7 9am-4pm.Admission is free!Shop with vendors across Saxapahaw at Haw River Ballroom, Hawbridge School - Upper and Lower and Culture Mill. Please visit our neighbors around the village as well! VENDOR SPOTS ARE FULL!

Holiday Market (Day 2 of 2)

The annual Saxapahaw Holiday Market is back on Saturday, December 6 and Sunday, December 7!Hours are Saturday 12/6 9am-5pm and Sunday 12/7 9am-4pm.Admission is free!Shop with vendors across Saxapahaw at Haw River Ballroom, Hawbridge Schools - Upper and Lower and Culture Mill. Please visit our neighbors as well around the village! VENDOR SPOTS ARE FULL!

Holiday Market (Day 1 of 2)

<h3 style="text-align: start">November 4th:</h3><h3 style="text-align: start">Songs of Resistance</h3>Led by Kamara Thomas and Kym Register6pm to 9pm: The Haw River BallroomSome things cannot be expressed only in spoken or written words. For those, singing is required. How can raising our individual voices into collective song be a practice that builds embodied solidarity and resistance while allowing the braiding together of both grief and joy. You do not need to be a singer or even able to carry a tune to participate. All you need is a body and a voice.

The human who sings and composes under the name Bonnie "Prince" Billy and acts under the name Will Oldham has, over the past three-plus decades, made an idiosyncratic journey through, and an indelible mark on, the worlds of independent music and cinema. With his highly individualistic approach to music making and the music industry, one that cherishes intimacy, community, mystery, and spontaneity; his brilliance has captivated fans and made Bonny one of our most influential and beloved songsmiths.&nbsp;Bonnie "Prince" Billy's latest offerings include 2023’s Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You and 2024’s Hear the Children Sing the Evidence (with Nathan Salsburg and Tyler Trotter). &nbsp;He had a cameo role in Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders. &nbsp;BPB’s newest record is The Purple Bird (produced by David Ferguson), and features such giants of American music as John Anderson and Tim O’Brien.

Bonnie "Prince" Billy with Dawn Landes and Matt Kivel

Andy Falco and Travis Book are both members of the Grammy award winning bluegrass band The Infamous Stringdusters. Inspired by their love of the music of Jerry Garcia, the duo branches off on their own for occasional tours to celebrate Garcia’s timeless songs.“The project actually originated back stage at ‘Dusters shows where Travis and I would typically warm up with some fun Jerry songs” Falco explains. “At some point we just thought it would be fun todo it in public”They draw from Garcia’s solo material, his Grateful Dead catalogue as well as the Traditional songs Jerry loved to play.“Performing this music as a duo allows us to explore the songs and jam in a way that’s unique to playing as a Duo” Says Book. “We typically hear these songs in larger ensembles, but the songs done with just bass and guitar somehow make the music very interactive with the audience. It’s really a testament to the quality of the songwriting, and we like to put a spotlight on that aspect of Jerry.”

Andy Falco & Travis Book Play Jerry Garcia

November 18th + December 3rd: Intergenerational MovementWith Culture Mill and Clint Lutes6pm to 9pm: The Haw River Ballroom

This is a standing room show.Ketch Secor is a merry ringmaster, passionate professor, modern Beat, and unassuming virtuoso. The Story the Crow Told Me is his solo debut, tracing the journey from street busker to founding Old Crow Medicine Show, now a Grammy-winning, Opry-member band behind the double-platinum hit “Wagon Wheel.” Produced by Jody Stevens, the album&nbsp;features Marty Stuart, Molly Tuttle, Willie Watson, Jaren Johnston, and an ode to Nashville with help from Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.&nbsp; Ketch will be touring in 2025 in&nbsp; support of the album on his The Story The Crow Told Me Tour.&nbsp;

Ketch Secor (of Old Crow Medicine Show): Story the Crow Told Me Tour

This is a seated show&nbsp;The musical King Mackerel &amp; The Blues Are Running is a long-running and beloved theatrical performance of music and stories about fishing and life along the Carolina coastline. Called “a pure salt watered delight” by the late Clive Barnes, New York Post theater critic, King Mackerel is full of tall tales and rollicking songs told by The Coastal Cohorts–a trio of good-ole boys who happen to be staging a benefit concert to save the Corncake Inlet Inn. The lively cast of fishermen-musicians sings up a storm, tells fish stories, ghost stories, and relates accounts of first loves and ones that got away.&nbsp;The Coastal Cohorts are working to protect North Carolina’s coast—and beyond!—by supporting The Nature Conservancy, and you can, too! Please consider adding a donation at checkout. 100% of donations will go directly to TNC’s North Carolina chapter.&nbsp;Productions and personnelThe musical, written and conceived by Bland Simpson and Jim Wann with help from Don Dixon and Jerry Leath Mills, has had many productions around the Carolinas, up and down the East Coast, and from Atlanta to Indianapolis to Calgary in Canada. The original line-up of Coastal Cohorts has carried the show from Key West to Martha’s Vineyard over King Mackerel’s 40-year run. Those players include Don Dixon, bassist, singer-songwriter and renowned record producer of such musical groups as REM, the Smithereens, Marti Jones, Hootie &amp; the Blowfish and more; Bland Simpson, pianist, of the Red Clay Ramblers and Kenan Distinguished Professor of English &amp; Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina; and Jim Wann, guitarist, principal composer-lyricist of Pump Boys &amp; Dinettes, the Broadway hit that was a Tony and Drama Desk Nominee for Best Broadway Musical and winner of the Olivier Award in the U.K. History King Mackerel opened in 1985 at a westside Chapel Hill club called Rhythm Alley (a club occupying a former location of Cat’s Cradle) and has also had successful runs Off-Off-Broadway at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in New York (in 1995 and on numerous other occasions), and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (1996). The original Cohorts continue to play live shows, so check back here for dates.

King Mackerel and the Blues are Running

Boris formed in 1992 and eventually arrived at the band’s current lineup of Takeshi, Wata, and Atsuo in 1996. &nbsp;In the years since, Boris has tirelessly explored their own rendition of what is heavy through methods entirely their own. Though the depths of their “heaviness” may intensify, their unique musicianship defies classification in any one genre or style, so let’s just call it real “heavy music” in extreme color. Their music has been called a “game changer” regarding the leading edge of the world’s rock scene, and that influence is limitless. They enter realms that cannot be described simply in terms of the “explosive sound” or “thunderous roars” that have become their trademark.

Boris: Pink 20th Anniversary Tour

<h3>October 28th:</h3><h3>Time Bank</h3>With Culture Mill and Harry Phillips6pm to 9pm: The Haw River BallroomLocal polymath and green-thumb Harry Phillips wants to start a Time Bank. Building on our last session on Solidarity Economies, what is a Time Bank and how does it work? What is essential for it to be successful and how can you get involved in Saxapahaw? This session will be divided into learning, discussion and the potential for concrete planning around this initiative.

S.G. Goodman returns from the Western Kentucky bottomland with her latest full-length album, Planting by the Signs, Available June 20, 2025 on her very own Slough Water Records via Thirty Tigers. Composed of songs inspired by love, loss, reconciliation, and the aforementioned ancient practice. Eleven tracks highlighted by the critically-acclaimed and award-winning artist’s singular voice and her penchant for juxtaposing vulnerable folk music with punchy rock ‘n roll, replete with chiming guitars, ethereal atmospherics, and her DIY ethos. Goodman provides a timely reminder that the only way forward is together, and that we must always take into account humanity’s dependence on and responsibility to the natural world. Back in the early hours of 2023, Goodman told her late friend Mike Harmon and his wife Therese that she wanted to base her next album around the concept of planting by the signs, which she had heard about growing up, and recently rediscovered while reading a volume of Foxfire. She remembered general points from her rural southern childhood - how planting a garden, or weaning a baby, or getting a haircut are best timed in accordance with the cycle of the moon. A concept diametrically opposed to the tech-obsessed, profit margin-driven mania swirling around her. Through exploring themes related to planting by the signs, Goodman hoped to help herself and others reconcile this jarring disconnect, as well to pass along the story of the practice to her nieces and nephews - the latter being a role she took very seriously. &nbsp; But it wasn’t an easy path to writing Planting by the Signs or to the recording studio. 2023 saw the passing of her beloved dog, Howard, as well as the tragic death of Harmon, a father figure and mentor. Mike was mentioned in Goodman’s song, “Red Bird Morning” on Old Time Feeling, her debut. Her band used to practice in the quonset hut behind his house. He would check on her house while she toured. Often, Goodman would call him for advice from the road. A few days before he died, he advised her about putting chains on her van during a snow storm. He once drove that same van from Boston to Chicago so the band could play a one-off in the middle of a tour. He was a rock for Goodman, and a rock star in his own right. Harmon’s death led to Goodman reconciling with her longtime collaborator and guitarist, Matthew Rowan, who had become estranged from her following a year of grueling live shows in 2021. Rowan and Goodman had met in their early 20s while at college in the Murray, KY, indie rock scene, and eventually began playing music together. His idiosyncratic guitar work became an essential part of her production. He wrote most of the guitar parts on her first two records, and their creative relationship stretched for nearly 10 years. But life on the road isn’t for all, one thing led to another, and Rowan decided to step away. After Harmon passed, Matt was one of the first people Goodman called. From there they began to mend their relationship, and eventually, once she started working on her new album, S.G. asked Rowan to be her co-producer. The album would not exist in its current form without their reconciliation.&nbsp; With over 150 performances on the books in ‘23, including headlining sold out tours and opening for the likes of Tyler Childers and Jason Isbell from Red Rocks to the Grand Ole’ Opry, there was also little time for songwriting, much less recording.

S.G. Goodman

Folk’s modern muse Jensen McRae has revealed the release date for her highly anticipated sophomore album, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!, scheduled to drop on April 25 via Dead Oceans.&nbsp;Set against the backdrop of heartbreak, self-discovery, and the complexities of love, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! is a bold evolution for the young artist. The eleven-track album, recorded in North Carolina with Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Bon Iver) and featuring contributions from Nathan Stocker (Hippo Campus), Matthew McCaughan (Bon Iver), and her brother Holden McRae, is a vibrant collection of songs anchored by razor-sharp lyrics and timeless pop melodies.McRae’s voice is as versatile as her songwriting—wispy and textured at times, clear and bright at others. It’s a voice that embodies both the heartbreak of being left and the strength of doing the leaving. The album’s title, inspired by a line from Back to the Future, reflects McRae’s resilience: “I could’ve easily collapsed beneath the weight of what happened to me, but I didn’t. I was bulletproof the whole time.”Following the release of her latest album, Jensen McRae will embark on an extensive North American and European/UK tour in Spring 2025, bringing her signature blend of raw lyricism and soulful melodies to stages across the globe. The North American leg kicks off on May 3 in Philadelphia, PA, with stops in major cities like New York, Toronto, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In June, McRae will take her evocative storytelling overseas for a string of shows across Europe, with dates in Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, and Bristol. General public tickets go on sale Friday, February 28, at 10 AM local time at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://jensenmcrae.com">jensenmcrae.com</a>At just 27, Jensen McRae has already toured with Noah Kahan, MUNA, Amos Lee, and Corinne Bailey Rae, graced a Times Square billboard, and served as the cover of Spotify’s Today’s Singer-Songwriters playlist. A graduate of USC’s Thornton School of Music and a GRAMMY Camp alum, McRae is carving out space for young Black women in the folk genre with unflinching honesty and raw lyricism.She released her debut album, Are You Happy Now?, in 2022, featuring viral singles like “Immune” and “Wolves,” has earned widespread acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vulture, UPROXX, NY Post, Billboard, and &nbsp;Stereogum. She’s been spotlighted in PAPER, DORK and&nbsp; Wonderland Magazine, with the latter declaring, “The future is just beginning for Jensen McRae.” Of her most recent work with “Massachusetts,” NYLON praised her candid storytelling: “Listening to Jensen McRae almost feels too personal, as if every lyric was not just a line in a song, but an unraveling of her innermost thoughts.”Inspired by the likes of Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman, McRae’s voice—both literal and lyrical—resonates deeply, personifying the human experience with rare vulnerability and grace. With a sound that blends introspection and artistry, she’s an artist who’s here to stay.

Jensen McRae

THIS IS A STANDING ROOM SHOW.Join us on Thursday, October 23rd at the Haw River Ballroom for “Music for Mental Health,” presented by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://begoodtoyourselfmusic.com/">Be Good to Yourself - Mental Health for North Carolina musicians</a>. BGTY is an organization focused on bringing free or greatly discounted mental health and addiction counseling and treatment for North Carolina musicians, venue and studio workers and their families.We are thrilled to announce that <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.theconnells.com/">the Connells</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://theromanspring.bandcamp.com/">the Roman Spring</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://theveldtmusic.bandcamp.com/">the Veldt</a> have agreed to play!Be Good to Yourself started in late 2019, we have since partnered with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://simsfoundation.org/">The SIMS Foundation</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://backline.care/">Backline</a> to start serving the NC music community.Backline is a national organization focused on mental&nbsp;health + music and already has a network of providers in place to start serving the music community across North Carolina.This event is the culmination of six years of work, fundraising, event organization and a lot of love.We are very excited to make the formal announcement that we can finally start providing the mental health and addiction care our North Carolina musicians, venue and studio workers and their families deserve. And as early as January, 2026!

The Veldt, The Connells & The Roman Spring

THIS IS A STANDING ROOM SHOW.Music has always loomed large in the life of Don Was. Born in Detroit in 1952, he has enjoyed a multi-faceted career as a musician, record producer, music director, film composer, documentary filmmaker, and radio host. Since 2011, he has also served as President of America’s venerated jazz label, Blue Note Records.&nbsp;As a record producer, he has won six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year in 1989 for Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time and Producer of the Year in 1994. Albums he has produced have sold close to 100 million copies for a wide array of artists such as The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, John Mayer, Ringo Starr, Wayne Shorter, The B-52s, and Charles Lloyd. In 1995, he produced and directed the Brian Wilson documentary I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, which won the San Francisco Film Festival’s Golden Gate Award. As a film composer, he received the 1994 British Academy Award (BAFTA) for Best Original Score for the film Backbeat. He also won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction for CBS’s The Beatles: The Night That Changed America.&nbsp;In 2018, Don joined Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir to form the Wolf Brothers, a band that continues to tour in the U.S. and overseas. In April 2023, he served as Music Director for Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl, and he is featured in the Willie Nelson &amp; Family documentary on Paramount+. In September 2024, he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Americana Music Foundation at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. He also hosts Dinner With Don Was, a weekly radio show on John Mayer’s SiriusXM Channel 14.&nbsp;At Blue Note Records, Don fiercely protects the label’s 85-year-old legacy, meticulously preserving its revered catalog of Black American Music. His work includes overseeing acclaimed vinyl reissue series such as Tone Poet and Classic Vinyl, as well as signing and producing many of the label’s current artists, including Robert Glasper, Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Gregory Porter, and Jason Moran.&nbsp;Don’s deep Detroit roots keep him closely tied to the city. For the past 15 years, he has music-directed and played bass in the Don Was Detroit All-Star Revue, part of Detroit’s annual diversity festival, the Concert of Colors. From 2009 to 2012, he hosted The Motor City Hayride on SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country channel, and since 2021 he has co-hosted The Don Was Motor City Playlist, a live weekly show on Detroit’s NPR station WDET-FM. Don is also the voice of Neville the Dog in the hit Amazon Prime Video children’s series Pete the Cat.&nbsp;THE PAN-DETROIT ENSEMBLE Don Was’ latest group, The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, features top-tier jazz musicians from his hometown. “There’s a unique sound and feel to Detroit that permeates the music in a way that resonates all over the globe,” says Was. “There’s a rawness, a lack of pretension, and an unmistakable underlying groove that reflects the people and culture of the entire city.”&nbsp;The band includes longtime collaborators such as Blue Note artist Dave McMurray on saxophone and Eminem’s Oscar-winning collaborator, keyboardist Luis Resto.

Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble

<h3>October 15th:</h3><h3>Solidarity Economies</h3>With Culture Mill with members of Haw River Assembly and Triangle Mutual Aid6pm to 9pm: The Haw River BallroomAre the systems of care and resource distribution (economies) upheld by our larger society the only option? What kinds of alternative systems have thrived, particularly at a local level? How are these ideas being put into practice right now in Saxapahaw or elsewhere? How can these systems allow for greater collective care, stronger relationships, more abundance and deeper resilience as neighbors? How can we deepen such practice together? This embodied program is open to all, and will be divided between facilitated learning, reflecting and exchange.

This is a seated show.&nbsp;Patty Griffin is among the most consequential singer-songwriters of her generation, a quintessentially American artist whose wide-ranging canon incisively explores the intimate moments and universal emotions that bind us together. Over two decades, the 2x GRAMMY® Award winner – and 7x nominee – and Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement award winner, has crafted a remarkable body of work in progress that prompted the New York Times to hail her for “[writing] cameo-carved songs that create complete emotional portraits of specific people...[her] songs have independent lives that continue in your head when the music ends.” 2019 saw the acclaimed release of the renowned artist’s GRAMMY® Award-winning 10th studio recording, PATTY GRIFFIN. One of the most deeply personal recordings of Griffin’s remarkable two-decade career and first-ever eponymous LP, PATTY GRIFFIN made a top 5 debut on Billboard’s “Independent Albums” chart amidst unprecedented worldwide acclaim, and later, a prestigious GRAMMY® Award for “Best Folk Album.” Griffin’s new album, CROWN OF ROSES, is a deeply personal and introspective work that explores themes of identity, nature, family, and womanhood. Emerging from a creative drought during the pandemic, Griffin found herself re-evaluating the stories she’d long told herself. The result is an eight-track collection that is both sparse and emotionally rich, blending folk, Americana, and blues. With CROWN OF ROSES, Griffin offers a record that’s both grounded and transcendent — one that invites listeners to release old narratives, embrace new truths, and stay truly alive while they’re here. Having crafted a rich catalog that chronicles love and death, heartache and joy, connection and detachment, Patty Griffin continues to push her art forward, as always imbuing every effort with compassion and craft, uncanny perception, and ever-increasing ingenuity.&nbsp;Rickie Lee Jones is an American musician and storyteller who has been inspiring pop culture for decades, beginning with her first two seminal albums, Rickie Lee Jones and Pirates. Named the “premiere song-stylist and songwriter of her generation” (New Yorker), the two-time Grammy winner will release her first all jazz album in April 2023, produced by Russ Titelman. In 2021, Jones released her celebrated memoir Last Chance Texaco, named Book of the Year by MOJO and a Best Book of the Year at Pitchfork and NPR. The Independent writes, “There has always been something defiant about Rickie Lee Jones . . . a voice from a dream, elusive yet familiar, transcendent, a messenger from another place.”&nbsp;

An Evening with Patty Griffin and Rickie Lee Jones

Sleepy Cat Records is thrilled to be joining The Haw River Ballroom again in presenting our 4th Annual Sleepy Fest in the beloved community of Saxapahaw, NC on October 11th, 2025! Sleepy Fest provides an important platform for emerging North Carolina-based artists, creates opportunities for our community to connect, and helps raise the funds we rely on to stay in operation. We take pride in using Sleepy Fest as a platform to promote the social justice work that is already happening in our community as well as the kind of thoughtful work we hope to encourage moving forward - including but not limited to racial and environmental justice, anti-colonial/imperialist organizing and discourse for non-western nations, and queer representation/platforming.The day will kick off with free-to-the-public performances at the Haywagon Stage and&nbsp; Artisan Market in the spirit of the long-running Saturdays in Saxapahaw series. Ticket holders will have access to the main festival grounds near the Ballroom, enjoying performances between the Haywagon Stage, Ballroom Main Stage, and the Amphitheater. In addition to the shops in town, we’ll have food and beverage vendors, as well special programming by participating local businesses.As in Sleepy Fest’s past, you can expect a diverse lineup of Sleepy Cat and other artists and one-time collaborations and improvisations. We’re planning visual installations and other non-music arts elements similar to last year’s quadraphonic performances, projections by dance artist Brooks Emanuel and Dye Vat DJs, as well as our Vendor and Artisan Market, Kids Zone, and more! We believe that this event will once again bring a day of joy and music-immersion to attendees, and will continue to foster a deeper appreciation for the wealth of culture and community in our area.<h1>Lineup</h1>This year’s festival will feature a blend of performances from our Sleepy Cat Artists as well as non-label artists and friends. So far the lineup includes folk, oldtime, americana, cumbia, immersive electronic, a drag show, a puppet show, twangy punk rock, and more:Alice Gerrard, Made of Oak, Hard Drive, Joseph Terrell, Magic Al DJ set, Stormie Daie, Josh Moore, Quran Karriem, Delver, Lonnie Walker, Trippers &amp; Askers, Slow Teeth, Kill the Buddha, Stella Rosalie Rosen, Sugaree String Society, Heron Toe, Quilla, Ancestor Piratas, Brooks Emanuel, and more to be announced!<h1>Arts &amp; Makers Market</h1>This year’s market will be located at Saxapahaw’s Haywagon Stage, home of the long running and family-friendly Saturdays in Saxapahaw. In keeping with that spirit, we will kick off Sleepy Fest with a free/open-to-the-public show and market from 11am-430pm. Our ticketed experience will then run from 2pm-10pm at the main festival grounds between the Ballroom and Amphitheater. Exact schedule subject to changeSignup to be a market vendor -&nbsp; coming soon.<h1>Food &amp; Bev</h1>There will be food and beverage vendors to enjoy all day, including coffee, alcoholic and NA beverages, and vegan food options.Full food &amp; bev vendor list coming soon.*You’re welcome to bring your own food items if you have specific dietary preferences, though we encourage you to purchase food onsite from our great vendors and local businesses.<h1>Schedule</h1>11am-430pm Free Arts Market &amp; Show at Haywagon Stage2pm-10pm Ticketed access to festival grounds - Ballroom &amp; AmphitheaterExact schedule subject to change<h1>»TICKET INFO«</h1>TICKET SALES STOP AT 12PM DAY-OF FEST, OCTOBER 11thAND WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR<h1>General Admission</h1><ul><li>Adult - $49.50</li><li>Kids 6-12 - $22</li><li>Kids 0-5 - FREE</li></ul>General Admission tickets provide access to the festival grounds for all programming from 2pm-10am, where you’ll enjoy feature performances between the Ballroom and Amphitheater, Haywagon and Art Market, DJ sets, vendors and other special programming.*Early Bird is scheduled to end June 1st<h1>Volunteer</h1>SIGNUP OPENS AUGUSTOur volunteers play a big role in making Sleepy Fest what it is. Volunteer for one shift (approx 3 hours) in exchange for free entry to Sleepy Fest. Volunteers are assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis, and early signups receive first choice of preferred shifts. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.sleepycatrec.com/join-newslitter">Sign up for the Sleepy Cat NewsLitter</a> to get first access<h1>Extra Donations</h1>Feeling extra giving? Make stand-alone or add-on donations in $5 increments.Your extra donation will go towards:<ul><li>Our sliding scale program, subsidizing affordable tickets, and helping make Sleepy Fest more accessible</li><li>Funding our label projects for 2025, should we have surplus beyond the above mentioned priorities</li><li>Paying event staff and performers bonuses above base pay</li></ul><h2 style="text-align: center">Thanks so much!</h2>More information and contact info at:<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.sleepycatrec.com/sleepyfest"> </a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.sleepycatrec.com/join-newslitter">https://www.sleepycatrec.com/sleepyfest</a>Follow us on IG<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/sleepyfest/"> @sleepyfest</a> to stay in the loop as we roll things out

Sleepy Fest

This is a standing room only show.Atlas was a pretty big record for us, and chances are if you’re reading this, it’s a pretty big record for you too. Nobody ever said, “I love Real Estate, but I hate their third LP, Atlas.” And if they did say that, they never said it anywhere around us - and we read everything you guys write on the internet; some of it can get pretty weird. And so, on this momentous occasion, we will be bringing A CELEBRATION OF ATLAS to a city near you, to honor its 11 year and 7 month anniversary. We’ll be playing almost the entire album in its entirety (basically) and other lesser known tunes from the Atlas era. We’llalso be playing a selection of our greatest hits, because we know you love those too. Please come and celebrate with us - we can’t wait to see you.

Real Estate

Bad Suns are embracing everything that’s possible. On their joyous fifth album, fittingly titled Accelerator, the Los Angeles trio are taking stock of everything they’ve been through together as a band and pushing into a bright future with a renewed sense of purpose. Together since 2012, Christo Bowman (vocals/guitar), Gavin Bennett (bass) and Miles Morris (drums) started playing together as teenagers and went viral almost immediately with their magnetic blend of indie-rock and ‘80s synth sheen. After four hit albums, the trio reached a point where they needed to recalibrate and recenter if they wanted to continue. Recording their exuberant 2023 EP Infinite Joy was a cleansing experience that recalibrated Bad Suns and set them on a thrilling path forward into making Accelerator, which comprises 12 new tracks brimming with dance-pop hooks and poignant lessons learned.&nbsp; &nbsp;“We saw the Infinite Joy EP as a new beginning for the band. I felt this yearning once again,” reflects Christo Bowman. “Accelerator being our fifth album, our first studio album as a trio, and the first album of my 30s, we knew that this was going to be really important. We didn't want to take that lightly. We asked ourselves, how do we live up to the occasion? We saw this album as a mountain we wanted to climb.”In planning their elevation, Bad Suns reconnected with their go-to producer Eric Palmquist (Tate McRae, Half Alive), who also helmed their 2014 debut Language &amp; Perspective, plus follow-ups Disappear Here (2016) and Apocalypse Whenever (2022). Going into recording Accelerator, Eric encouraged Bad Suns to channel their sense of renewal into an energetic sonic direction they’d tapped into before, but never quite to this extent. “One of the first times we sat down with Eric, we were talking about what we'd all been vibing with. He said point blank, ‘It would be really cool to mess around with some ‘90s house-inspired music. Right away, the light bulb went off for me. I'd wanted to push in that direction forever.”While tracks like the previously released “Communicating,” anthemic opener “Slow Karma,” the pulsing “Why Am I Like This,” and the shimmering club cut “Just Like Magic” reveal a riveting pop turn for the band, Accelerator is still steeped in the original DNA that made Bad Suns a feel-good viral sensation with early hits like “Cardiac Arrest.” The rushing pop melodies mirror Accelerator’s title, but its lyrics are filled with stop-and-think moments where Christo surveys his past actions and makes the intentional choice to embrace personal growth and impending fatherhood.“My 20s were a challenging time with a lot of peaks and a lot of valleys,” he says. “There's a lot of joy, a lot of mistakes. This album is ultimately about finding the strength within yourself to assess the damage that's been done and make the changes that you need to in order to take control of your own life, kind of reckoning with the fact that you can't control the external circumstances. I can't control the world around me, but I can control the way that I react to the events taking place and the way that I move through the world.”The hook-packed gem “Slow Karma” acts as Christo’s mission statement for Accelerator. An intimate and cathartic track, the album opener finds Christo at a personal and professional crossroads as he confronts old habits and makes the decision to become sober. “I was at a point in my life where it was becoming abundantly clear to me that I needed to make some changes in order to progress and live the life that I really wanted,” Christo says. “Getting sober is really hard, but then it becomes the easiest thing in the world. ‘Slow Karma’ is about accepting that this is gonna be difficult. And I don't know exactly what's ahead, but I know this is the direction I'm supposed to be moving down.”The sparkling “Mystery Girl” signifies another crossroads as Christo, in a diaristic stream of consciousness, remembers his coming-of-age years while facing the inertia of fatherhood. “There's this beautiful new chapter in my life unfolding, and there's mixed emotions that come with it,” he says. “This is a song about my teenage years, past relationships and experiences, and being a young person who is ultimately just looking for love.”Christo is equally unafraid to imagine what would have happened had he not made a series of positive changes. On the urgent, electropop banger “Back To Zero,” the singer envisions an alternate reality without Bad Suns or his wife and partner of 13 years and arrives at a place of heart-bursting gratitude for everything he has and the future that lies ahead.&nbsp;“I didn't want this record to be too self-help-oriented, but I did want every song, one way or another, to relate some wisdom I’ve gained,” Christo says. “By imagining myself alone in an apartment, my wife long gone — my life very easily could have looked like that. I’ve learned how important it is, as the lyrics say, to ‘find the beauty in what's painful,’ and love every moment for what it is.”As Bad Suns move into their latest era, one filled with exciting personal and professional milestones, they’ve never been more harmoniously aligned. “While making this album, I turned 30, I got married, I found out I was having a kid. Going to the studio every day and being in the room with the guys, I had this sense that I'm going to look back and know that was probably one of the best times of my life.”

Bad Suns

Stop by Cup 22 at Haw River Ballroom between 10am-2pm to pick up Narcan and other life saving tools!

Save a Life Day

Practice Forward: Resilient . Creative . Communities&nbsp;is a new workshop series curated and framed by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.culturemill.org/">Culture Mill</a>.&nbsp;We believe that a community of practice cultivates a community of care -- Grounding in the body, this series explores a range of topics through embodied practice. The series' aim is to support community resilience and strengthen community connective tissue, enabling us, individually and collectively, to respond to uncertainty and crisis from the place of practice rather than reactivity. This series insists that creativity and embodiment are key to building resilient communities. Culture Mill's Fall 2025 series is provided in partnership with the Haw River Ballroom. Next Up:Join us September 23 at 6PM at the Haw River Ballroom for Processing Chantal: Embodied Integration of the FloodJust two months following Chantal, and during the one year anniversary of Helene and 20th anniversary of Katrina, there is much to grieve, be with, move through, and welcome in as we collectively experience climate crisis. Culture Mill will facilitate a space to a broad community in which we can share and hear personal stories and will offer a series of embodied practices to help us integrate personal and shared experiences, learn body-centered tools, and initiate communities of practice that build towards creative and responsive resilience.This offering is FREE, but please pre-register!

Processing Chantal

With their hypnotic rhythms and mesmerizing vocals, Stereolab became one of indie's most distinctive and influential bands when they emerged in the early '90s. Led by Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier, the group celebrated strands of pop music -- bossa nova, lounge-pop, movie soundtracks -- that were traditionally banished from rock's lineage. On early singles and albums such as 1993's Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements, Stereolab combined '60s pop melodies with an art rock aesthetic borrowed from Krautrock bands like Faust and Neu!; by the time of 1996's Emperor Tomato Ketchup, their sound incorporated jazz, hip-hop, and dance music. Their work with John McEntire and Jim O'Rourke on 1997's Dots and Loops and 2001's Sound-Dust reflected an increasingly intricate, experimental approach, but following the 2002 death of member Mary Hansen, they eventually returned to a poppier style on albums like 2008's Chemical Chords. Stereolab's unmistakable sound had a lasting impact: Contemporaries like Pavement and Blur aped their style in the '90s, while hip-hop artists such as J Dilla and Tyler the Creator sampled the band's music or collaborated with its members in the 2000s and 2010s. Late in that decade and into the 2020s, Stereolab's revival as a touring band and a steady stream of reissues underscored their reputation as innovators. Tim Gane (born July 12, 1964; guitar, keyboards) was the leader of McCarthy, a London-based band from the late '80s that functioned as a prototype for Stereolab's sound. Gane met Laetitia Sadier (born May 6, 1968; vocals, keyboards), a French-born vocalist, at one of McCarthy's concerts. The pair began a romantic relationship that became a musical collaboration after McCarthy disbanded in 1990; Sadier sang on the final McCarthy album. The duo began recording as Stereolab, borrowing the name from Vanguard Records' hi-fi effects division in the '50s. Gane and Sadier also formed the label Duophonic Records with manager Martin Pike to release their singles. Stereolab's first year of existence was prolific: The debut EP Super 45 arrived in May 1991, followed quickly by the Super-Electric EP that September and the Stunning Debut Album EP that November. At that point, the group were working with Th' Faith Healers drummer Joe Dilworth and former Chills bassist Martin Kean; Gina Morris occasionally provided backup vocals. Too Pure released the band's first full-length, Peng!, in May 1992, and the EP compilation Switched On in October. As with all of the group's releases from this era, both albums featured the visual trademark of a maniacally grinning cartoon taken from a '70s Swiss political comic (which the band named "Cliff"). That year, Stereolab also issued the Lo-Fi EP and added keyboardist/vocalist Mary Hansen and drummer Andy Ramsay to the fold. Released in early 1993, Stereolab's The Groop Played "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" EP featured the core group of Gane, Sadier, Hansen, and Ramsay, along with ex-Microdisney guitarist Sean O'Hagan and bassist Duncan Brown. One of the first '90s alternative records to explicitly draw from the "Space Age" lounge-pop music of the '50s, The Groop became an underground sensation, paving the way toward Stereolab's first American record contract with Elektra Records. Their next album, and first American release, was Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements. Released in August 1993, it became an underground and college hit throughout the U.S. and U.K. They followed it that October with Crumb Duck, a split EP with Nurse with Wound.&nbsp;

Stereolab

Expertly crafted songs and sublime musicianship are the backbone of Nashville-based band The Brook &amp; The Bluff. Originally from Birmingham, AL, the band’s name is derived from the pockets of Birmingham where they grew up—Bluff Park for frontman Joseph Settine, and Mountain Brook for drummer John Canada, keyboardist Kevin Canada, and guitarist Alec Bolton.&nbsp;&nbsp;Their latest release, This Could All Go Nowhere, follows the success of their compelling debut First Place and their sophomore album Yard Sale, which features the anthemic "Halfway Up" alongside fan favorites like "Everything Is Just a Mess," "Shelby," and "Misnomer." Their third record, Bluebeard, further cemented their reputation for heartfelt songwriting and dynamic sound. As with all their previous work, the band continues to captivate audiences, creating music that resonates with fans across the world.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Building on their evolving sound, The Brook &amp; The Bluff once again teamed up with longtime collaborator Micah Tawlks (COIN,Jake Wesley Rogers) to record This Could All Go Nowhere. The EP features standout tracks like "Bad Bad News" and "Calling Cards," showcasing the band’s intricate harmonies and inventive arrangements. The record explores themes of fear and emotional paralysis—all wrapped in upbeat, infectious melodies.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Known for their energetic live performances, The Brook &amp; The Bluff have built a strong touring foundation,headlining sold-out shows in major markets and supporting acts like Mt. Joy, Ashe, Stephen Sanchez, and Rainbow Kitten Surprise. With 2025 on the horizon, the band is poised for an even bigger year, setting the stage for an exciting new chapter.

This is a standing room show.Hayes Carll isn’t preaching or teaching. He’s not interested in telling the rest of us what to do or think. But he is charting out a personal guide for his life, quieting the noise, and sitting with his real voice – the one that’s candid, consistent, and often inconvenient.We’re Only Human is Carll’s tenth album. Like his best lyrics, it is also an understated masterpiece, an honest snapshot of one man’s confrontation and delight with humanity’s biggest and most intimate questions. Where do we find forgiveness for ourselves and grace for others? How do we hold on to peace of mind and stay present? What can we—and should we––trust? And how can we moor ourselves to, well, ourselves, in the midst of confusing, trying times? We’re Only Human offers audiences the chance to listen to Carll as he listens to himself.“I’ve lived outside of myself for so long,” Carll admits. “Distractions, fear, anxiety, insecurity, and the complexity of being human in this world have so often pulled me away from being present or at peace.”“I feel like there’s been a voice riding shotgun all my life, pushing me to do better, but I’ve struggled to listen to it,” Carll says. “The idea behind this record was to do the personal work I needed to do, then codify those lessons in song to serve as sort of breadcrumbs to get me back on the trail if, and inevitably when, I get lost again.”Carll is more than two decades into a celebrated career. Praise from places such as Pitchfork and the New York Times––the latter of which yoked Carll’s ability to tackle tough issues with wry humor to Bob Dylan––punctuate a resume that includes Americana Music Awards and a Grammy nomination. His songs aren’t safe, but many of Nashville’s stars have recorded them, including Kenny Chesney, Lee Ann Womack, and Brothers Osborne. As a solo recording artist, Carll has long-since established himself as one of Americana’s most-played––and most loved––voices. His warm but crackling vocals, wit, and heart dance through wordplay that’s always clever, and never too precious. Through it all, whenever Carll points a finger, it’s most often at himself.As We’re Only Human collects moments of Carll figuring out how to be with himself, the songs feel forthright, hopeful, and timely. In today’s onslaught of instant gratification, rage-baiting headlines, glorified intolerance, and falling empathy, the record is a startling outlier: an artist’s raw, real-life effort to live well—both with himself and others. Carll embraces private epiphanies, and shares them with the world, allowing them to unfold for all to see and share.Of course, We’re Only Human is also art. So while appreciating the motivation and compelling themes driving it will underpin the listener’s experience, Carll’s album also matters because of the sheer brilliance of its execution. These are songs composed by a writer’s writer, wielding his considerable skill with precision and beauty.The album’s title track unfolds with plaintive piano and a mantle of grace. Carll sings, with a calming sincerity, “We’ll do most anything to avoid the pain / Hiding our hearts and casting the blame / 6,000 tongues, but we’re all the same / Ain’t no need to carry that shame / ‘Cause we’re only human.”Hard-won minutes of quiet clarity inspired some of the record’s most beautiful moments. Accented by bright mandolin and soft, simple percussion, “Stay Here a While” captures a peaceful reprieve from a racing mind. “I remember sitting on the couch, looking out the window, watching the birds do their thing,” Carll says with a laugh. “I got lost in their lives for a moment, and it was such a wonderful feeling because my mind is always going in circles, seeking excitement, and frankly, just thinking about myself. I enjoyed the peace I felt in that moment and I thought, this is lovely and I’d like to stay in this place.” Carll shared that takeaway with MC Taylor, aka Hiss Golden Messenger, who not only could relate, but helped finish the song.“High” offers another invitation to stop and breathe. Opening with a solo horn, flute, and stripped down piano, the track is lovely and sincere, with Carll’s signature humor hovering comfortably nearby. There are also times when Carll’s sharp wit comes roaring to the foreground. “Progress of Man (Bitcoin and Cattle)” sends up society’s disorienting––and conflicting––forces, while “Good People (Thank Me)” is a masterclass in comedic timing, stubborn humanism, and the untapped potential of gratitude.A dogged insistence on acceptance, both of one’s self and others, courses through the album— as does Carll’s determination to hold himself accountable. “If I’m judging others, then I’m not having to look at myself,” Carll says. “I’m flawed as hell, judgmental, and critical of myself and those around me. That’s a loop that feeds itself. But I figure If I can look at myself clear-eyed and acknowledge my own shortcomings, it might help me have some grace and acceptance for myself and others.”It’s that sort of harmonious duality––embracing one’s self and confessing one’s own mistakes––that solidifies the record’s big-hearted honesty. “The creative process was in large part a self-therapy session. I don’t think that would work if I was only looking at everyone else’s issues,” Carll says.A moving series of grounding vignettes, realizations, and self-love roll through “What I Will Be,” as Carll promises to not compromise himself to fit in. A slow-burning, blues-tinged standout, “I Got Away with It” is painful and gorgeous. Brimming with hope, “One Day” balances the work Carll sees as necessary with the certainty that satisfaction, contentment, and peace are reachable by trusting in yourself and the universe.Featuring a parade of Carll’s longtime friends, album closer “May I Never” is a plea to himself. As Ray Wylie Hubbard, Shovels &amp; Rope, Darrell Scott, Nicole Atkins, and The Band of Heathens’ Gordy Quist and Ed Jurdi each take verses, listeners are swept up in a resolute promise to keep after good. “It brings up a lot for me when I hear them singing those lines,” Carll says. Each of those people – whether they know it or not – have played a part in my story, and it’s gratifying and humbling to me to have them lend their voices to this song.”In the end, Carll’s latest album is a lovingly and purposefully written collection of reminders. “I hope other people find something in it, too” Carll says. “Through it all, I am trying to stay appreciative, knowing that I did what I set out to do: write something that can help me navigate this journey with a little more grace and peace.”

Hayes Carll

On their self-titled debut album, Fancy Gap–the duo of singer/songwriter Stuart McLamb (The Love Language) and songwriter/producer Charles Crossingham–takes listeners on a journey that steers through life’s melodies with windows down. It’s a country-tinged, radio-ready sound, yet delves deep into universal themes. From stirring reflections on death and aging to the joyous celebrations of life, love, and triumph, every track on Fancy Gap captures different facets of the human experience. With a twang evoking the heartland and a widescreen perspective hinting at something greater, McLamb and Crossingham explore poignant moments of laughter and loss, enduring bonds of friendship, and the ups and downs of relationships.&nbsp;McLamb has always been a heart-on-his-sleeve songwriter–one that’s also a traveler, tourer, hand-holder, relationship whisperer, and chronicler of beginnings and endings–and the bittersweetness that courses through The Love Language’s four albums is a voyage worth all the heartbreak. As he began working on the band’s fifth album in early 2020, McLamb took some early demos to Crossingham, whom he had known for nearly a decade but became closer with after moving back to Raleigh, North Carolina, that March. The pandemic struck in the midst of feeling out those early ideas; the two sheltered in Crossingham’s mountain cabin in Fancy Gap, Virginia, and questions of what life would look like when the world started over seeped into their late-night songwriting sessions. What began as a producer/artist collaboration blossomed into a close-knit co-writing project, rooted in Crossingham’s inspired belief and admiration in McLamb’s talents, and the musical kinship that the two had forged.As the tracks were fleshed out, a collective idea of song and place became entwined in how the two wanted these compositions to sound and feel. “Charles and I wanted to make an album that sounded like the music we wanted to hear. It just so happens that at the time we were listening to a lot of classic '90s radio rock and a lot of classic country radio 98.1 WBRF out of Galax, VA,” McLamb explains. Fancy Gap was born. “Over the next two years,” he adds. "We hustled through odd jobs to keep our heads above water while dedicating ourselves to crafting the best songs we could.” The music took shape during recording sessions at the cabin, as well as impromptu jam sessions where Crossingham played guitar and McLamb handled drums and vocals. "The lockdown had us feeling cooped up, so we just let loose and rocked out. Making music with a friend like that was a blast—it took me back to the early days of jamming in my parents' garage with my younger brother," McLamb recalls fondly. They would then refine their best ideas at the Fancy Gap cabin, utilizing a portable rack unit of Quad Eight preamps. "Many of the lead vocals were captured in the moment, often on the first or second take," he says.&nbsp;Reaching out to fellow artists and musicians became a priority as their excitement around the music continued to grow, and also felt like the thread to sew together the fabric of life after lockdown. “During the pandemic, we–and a lot of our artist friends who were struggling–needed a belief that there would be a light at the end of this,” Crossingham explained. “As the songs began to come together, we wanted to open our tent, and ask some of those friends and artists we respected to be a part of Fancy Gap with us.” As such, the album features masterful contributions from Sharon Van Etten (vocals on “Strawberry Moon”); Taking Back Sunday’s Adam Lazzara (vocals on “Filthy Habits”); Rami Jaffee (The Foo Fighters, The Wallflowers) on the Hammond B3 organ and Wurlitzer; acclaimed session guitarist Will McFarlane (Bonnie Raitt, The Mountain Goats, Etta James); and Jon Graboff on pedal steel ( Willie Nelson, Noel Gallagher, M. Ward, Norah Jones). Fancy Gap was finalized over five sessions with Grammy-award-winning engineer Craig Alvin (‘Album of the Year’ Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour), who mixed the album at Noble Steed Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.&nbsp;As McLamb’s timeless voice leads the way–all classic pop timbre and heart swells, casting notes toward the sky–the songs explore love found (“Little Heart Racer”) and love lost (“Diamond Cutter”), the passing of loved ones (“Magnolias”), and hazy dreams and addictions of all kinds (“Old Ways”). The album pulses with a front porch phrasing and tempos that echoes the mountain locale of its recording; “How to Dance” and “Little Heart Racer” swing with a breezy roadhouse exuberance countered by the sweet melancholy of “Strawberry Moon.” Throughout, Fancy Gap also finds McLamb and Crossingham conjuring the pop leanings of early Counting Crows and The Lemonheads (“Filthy Habits”), the chordal phrasing and harmonies of Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills &amp; Nash (“Whispering Winds”), the stadium-sized sing-along choruses of The Wallflowers (“40,000 Miles”), and the expansive western terrains akin to a more psychedelic Marty Robbins (“Diamond Cutter”).&nbsp;Fancy Gap, for all the genuine emotional resonance it hits lyrically, feels like a hands-in-the-breeze springtime ride at dusk, with a treasure trove of your favorite albums under your seat and nothing in front of you but gravel roads and wistful speed. It’s a musical expedition that transcends the sum of its parts, painting sonic landscapes that linger in the heart and soul. – Roy Bourne, April 2024

Fancy Gap

FREE DANCE PARTY following Boom Unit Brass Unit’s set at Saturdays in Saxapahaw to end the season!

Summer Dance Party Night

It's the 20th anniversary of Saturdays in Saxapahaw!! The weekly festivities include performances by local bands and a thriving Farmer’s Market with fresh local produce, eggs, baked goods, flowers, honey, locally produced microbrews, handmade arts and crafts, food trucks, ice cream and more! Festivities take place every Saturday with the market opening at 5pm and music going from 6 to 8pm from the first Saturday in May through last Saturday in August. Admission is free though donations are appreciated, organizers will have our famous “Swan Buckets” on stage each week and Swan Venmo information posted for the bands! Please give what you can to these wonderful musicians!<h2>Please note that dogs are NOT allowed, sorry!!</h2>

Meltdown Rodeo

This is an open floor show.Starring:Woody Platt w/ Mike Guggino* Graham Sharp*, and Nicky Sanders*, (*members of the Steep Canyon Rangers) and Songs from the Road Band. Early sets performed by Big Fat Gap and Constant Change followed byWoody, Mike, Graham and Nicky. There will be a hour long dinner break then Songs from the Road and we will close the show with an All Star Jam including members from all bands and more.There will be an all day silent auction offering bids on items such as World Class trout fishing trips, a professional K-9 training class, vintage items, handmade home decor, and more. Winners will be announced before the last set.Food trucks will be available on site as well as the nearby Saxapahaw General Store and The Eddy Pub.Proceeds from this event will go to Holly and Joe Brantley for aid in the expenses of cancer treatment for Holly. To read their full story please visit their website <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://gofund.me/e176bce5">https://gofund.me/e176bce5</a>Amenities for VIP ticket holders include free non-alcoholic beverages, a grazing table, 2 free beer tickets, and band member meet and greets. Friends of the host will also receive VIP status.We look forward to seeing you for an amazing show to help support a wonderful couple for a good cause.

A Blue Grass Spectacular!

It's the 20th anniversary of Saturdays in Saxapahaw!! The weekly festivities include performances by local bands and a thriving Farmer’s Market with fresh local produce, eggs, baked goods, flowers, honey, locally produced microbrews, handmade arts and crafts, food trucks, ice cream and more! Festivities take place every Saturday with the market opening at 5pm and music going from 6 to 8pm from the first Saturday in May through last Saturday in August. Admission is free though donations are appreciated, organizers will have our famous “Swan Buckets” on stage each week and Swan Venmo information posted for the bands! Please give what you can to these wonderful musicians!

Delver is a fully improvisedImmersive Quadraphonic ExperiencesAmbient &lt;&gt; Dance<h4 style="text-align: center"></h4>

Delver

This is a seated show.East Forest is a multidisciplinary artist, producer, speaker, and ceremony guide.&nbsp; Since 2008, East Forest’s “lush” (Rolling Stone) and “blissful” (NPR) music has blended ambient, neoclassical, electronic, and avant-pop to explore sound as a tool for inner journeys and consciousness expansion.The project's latest endeavor is "Music for Mushrooms," a feature-length narrative documentary showcasing the transformative power of psychedelics, music, and community.&nbsp; East Forest’s most recent musical release, “Lovingly: A Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner, vol. III” is an immersive long-form live album, over six hours in length, and intended to guide journeys of deep introspection from start to finish.&nbsp; The third volume of his Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner series, the music was recorded and improvised live inside psilocybin ceremonies facilitated between 2020 and 2024.&nbsp;&nbsp;East Forest's extensive catalog includes over 30 albums and notable collaborations with artists such as Ram Dass, Jon Hopkins, Laraaji, Dead Prez, Nick Mulvey, Peter Broderick, Max Cooper, and DJ ANNA. The project has performed at major festivals and venues internationally.As a trailblazer in meditation and inner resilience, East Forest offers guided meditations, retreats, and a podcast ("Ten Laws w/East Forest").&nbsp; His approach promotes non-religious, accessible spirituality.&nbsp; He's a faculty member at the Esalen Institute and has collaborated with institutions across social justice, mental health, science, music, and creative fields, including Google, Johns Hopkins, UCSF, Stanford, and TED.His work has appeared on Bright Antenna, Domino, Mercury KX, Aquilo, Ghostly, as well as Tender Loving Empire &amp; Universal/Decca. “Life and death and what it all means.” - <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.billboard.com/music/features/east-forest-interview-new-album-aaron-rodgers-darkness-retreat-1235465675/">Billboard </a>Interview“It’s just stunning.” - <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P7uCh_AkE7-1T980hEzHIB7N58IjfDnt/view?usp=sharing">Bob Boilen</a>, Tiny DeskThe Soul of Choice - East Forest Op-Ed in <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://doubleblindmag.com/east-forest-psychedelic-future">Doubleblind</a> IG @eastforest | FB, YT, TT @eastforestmusic