Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Austin, Texas-based musician, singer, storyteller, and songwriter Guy Forsyth was Born in the Denver City Hospital in Colorado on November 30, 1968 to Stephen and Vicki Forsyth. After a short time spent discovering that he and college didn't agree, Forsyth joined the circus – or at least the closest thing he could find, The Renaissance Festival. He got a job as a stuntman playing Robin Hood, getting beaten up by an actor playing Little John in an act that ended with Forsyth getting his butt kicked and thrown into filthy water. He has tried to work his way up in showbiz ever since.

While on the road, he would spend the weekends performing and the weekdays healing. He would spend his time practicing guitar, and listening to music in the places they would go like New Orleans, New York, Memphis. On January 10, 1990, Forsyth packed anything that would fit in a U-Haul trailer and drove south on I-35 from Kansas City, Kansas to Texas to make his fortune in the music industry. He found himself playing at Joe's Generic Bar down on Sixth Street in Austin, busking on the West Mall of the University of Texas Campus and anywhere that would listen.

Today he has played around the world, made 20 or so records, won many awards and helped define Austin music. Forsyth is simply a one-of-a-kind original. He not only writes and sings his own songs, but he enjoys telling the stories behind their inspiration. He is a modern American Songster. Not one song is the same, but they share the same care and craftsmanship. No matter the tune, no matter the rhythm, Forsyth’s music will bring a smile and make the body move. One could even argue that he was made for this lifestyle—one of endless music and lyrical storytelling.

Blues made him want to play. Forsyth’s first works were electric, raw blues that held nothing back. When he showed up in Austin, he had with him a bandolier of Harmonicas and a carnival barkers voice that could cut through the noise of the busiest night on Sixth street. In 1999 Forsyth & Artie Gold recorded their recorded first Blues album, “Scalpel & Sledgehammer” on cassette tape. “It was recorded at Erik Blakley’s home studio (for $8 an hour), where Artie produced, recorded and paid for it all himself,” said Forsyth. “We sold it at gigs, took some to the Antone’s record shop, there might be a couple still there. I was the Sledgehammer.”

He found himself working his way up from the lowest working man blues clubs to Austin’s Blues Throne, Antone’s. Clifford Antone signed Guy to his prestigious Antone’s Blues Label after Guy’s band landed an every Sunday residency that lasted ten years (Needle Gun, Can you Live Without, Steak), and winning The Austin Chronicle Readers Poll for Best Blues Band for several years running. Clifford Antone’s label suffered some trouble with the Law after being involved with a rather massive marijuana bust and, despite the records being critically acclaimed, the label went into a series of bankruptcies. Frustrated, Guy could not get his own records to sell.

Undeterred, he started The Asylum Street Spankers, an irreverent band that followed him in ecstatic, eclectic, theatrical acoustic display of American musical history, as if Rock and Roll had never happened that took Austin by storm, which was awarded best none of the above band and performed at the Austin Music Awards. While all of this was going on, Forsyth released a live record in Holland on a Dutch Label (High Temperature, Lizard disk) that made such an impact that Forsyth tours Europe almost every year, with North Europen Blues bands routinely covering his songs.

Forsyth’s most recent musical project, The Hot Nut Riveters, is a band that holds their own in a pure acoustic sound mix of eccentric bluegrass-Bluespop/Country Folk and they will be releasing their second album early in 2018 (Torches & Pitchforks part 1: Politics). And, if that wasn’t enough on his plate, Forsyth has been leading his award winning blues band. Over the years, Forsyth’s music had been featured, both live and recorded in favored pubs and bars of Austin, to movies (Waking Life and Hands on a Hard Body, to name a couple). He has been on tour nationwide and internationally, from festivals to shared stage time with the big boys (BB King, Ray Charles, Ben Harper, and John Hammond to name a few). To top his accomplishments, he won the Austin Male Vocalist of the Year Award (2005) and is nominated again for the same title in 2018.

Forsyth’s life is not entirely focused on music, however. He is a firm believer of working together to bring about solid goals and happier times. He played for Bernie Sanders and sang This Land is Your Land with him during the Presidential Election of 2015-16 when he was campaigning in Austin, and is a firm and active supporter for HAAM (Health Alliance for Austin Musicians). To sustain his community on the most fundamental of levels he has taught Tai-Chi in Austin for 10 years to disabled vets, children & anyone else who wanted to learn for free giving lessons to those who wanted to learn, believing that it is a solid way to help center oneself and create balance in life.

“I learned yoga in the park, the community can take care of itself,” he says. “If you can afford to contribute, you should; when I can, I do.” He frequently visits schools to teach music for children, from instruments to lyrics; not just teaching them to play, mind you, but to understand the magic that is at their fingertips. Which is to say, the musician Guy Forsyth is a work of wonder; bright and eclectic as his music with a flair of “What next?” by the end of the day. With both his music and his way of life, he has us seated at the edge of our seats, waiting to see what will happen in the next scene. Forsyth is the proud father of 2 little girls and a compassionate member of the community and is always first to lend a hand.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Maggie Koerner is a singer, songwriter & actress from New Orleans by way of Shreveport, Louisiana.

Right after getting her bachelor’s degree in psychology, Maggie caught the attention of Brady Blade (Emmylou Harris, Dave Matthews Band) who produced her debut album, Quarter Life (2011). Shortly after the release and on the advice of fellow musician David Shaw (The Revivalists), she moved to New Orleans.

Upon moving to New Orleans, it didn’t take Koerner long to write another album she would record and produce herself, Neutral Ground (2013). It was around this time that she had the opportunity to take over as the front-woman for Galactic, gaining international attention for her fiery performances and commanding presence touring alongside Widespread Panic, Charles Bradley and Dr. John. Her songwriting and vocals are featured on Galactic’s albums Carnivale Electricos (2012) and Into The Deep (2015), both of which feature singles she co-wrote with Shaw, “Hey Na Na” and “Dolla Diva."

In 2015, Koerner left Galactic to focus on her music again which has included a string of festival performances including New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Austin City Limits, Pemberton Music Festival as well as tours alongside The Revivalists, Band of Horses, Marcus King, The Head & The Heart, Shakey Graves, Tank & the Bangas, Warren Haynes, Gov’t Mule & more.

As her momentum continues to grow, Koerner reached out to the UK-based singer/songwriter Fink who wanted to collaborate with her through his R’COUP’D imprint via Ninja Tune. The result, an EP titled Dig Down Deep, was released in 2016 and showcased an ever-evolving Koerner. Fink’s sparse production emphasized the intensity of her vocals creating an intimate, yet powerful listen. The album was well received by CLASH Magazine who proclaimed “Koerner is rather special talent...” and highlighted her “remarkable sense of depth and songwriting...”

Koerner continued to tour, signed a publishing deal and eventually began to work on a new album, collaborating with a variety of artists and producers to pen 11 songs recorded in New Orleans. In 2019 & 2020, a series of singles were released including the searing “If I Die”, which was featured in ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy. Koerner’s LP “The Bartholomew Songs,” was released March 2022 independently. In October 2022, Maggie spent a month in Louisville, KY filming and starring in an independent film, “Heart Strings” (2024). Maggie recently co-wrote 2 songs with Jessica Simpson on her recent albums Nashville Canyon EP Pt 1 & 2.

Koerner’s latest album, UPSTATE, is out everywhere November 7, 2025.

Doors @ 7:00pm
Show @ 8:00pm
All Ages
Full Bar
Free On-Site Parking

Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore – Almost Acoustic Duo

Roots music legends, the Grammy winning Dave Alvin and Grammy nominee Jimmie Dale Gilmore, decided to join forces and play music together in 2017. Although Texas born Gilmore was twice named Country Artist of the Year by Rolling Stone, and California native Alvin first came to fame in the hard rocking rhythm and blues band The Blasters, they discovered that their musical roots in old blues and folk music are exactly the same.

“a modern-day Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson” - Texas Monthly "Americana legends" – Santa Cruz Sentinel

Since that discovery, Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore have recorded two critically acclaimed albums, TexiCali and Downey to Lubbock, and continued to tour, rocking the stage together with their band The Guilty Ones.

"Alvin and Gilmore stay true to their rustic roots and weave a traditional tapestry that allows them to leave an individual imprint as well." - Lee Zimmerman/Alternate Root

“…one of the most enduring musical partnerships on the planet.” – Folkalley.com

As they hit the road in 2026, this time they will bring you the Almost Acoustic Duo. Friends for over 30 years, their lively shows feature songs from the duo’s albums, as well as classic original compositions from their individual albums, while swapping songs, telling stories, and sharing their life experiences on stage. A show you won’t want to miss!

"The pair has established a personal and musical chemistry that seems as natural as a morning sunrise” - John Roos/Patch.com SF

“superb and surprising” - Philadelphia Inquirer “effortlessly cool…tender and beautiful” – Magnet Magazine

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

You're favorite Austin players return for another captivating night of retro rock-n-roll with full performances of Revolver & Rubber Soul. Join us for another amazing night of going back in time with The Pepperland Players!

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Mama’s Broke have spent over a decade in a near-constant state of transience, pounding the transatlantic tour trail. They've brought their dark, fiery folk-without-borders sound to major festivals and DIY punk houses alike, absorbing traditions from their maritime home in Eastern Canada all the way to Ireland and Indonesia. Nowhere is the duo's art-in-motion approach more apparent than on their long-awaited JUNO nominated sophomore record Narrow Line (released May 2022 on Free Dirt Records) It's the sound of nowhere in particular, yet woven with a rich synthesis of influences that knows no borders.

The eleven songs on Narrow Line burrow deeply, with close harmony duets, commanding vocals, and poignant contemplations on cycles of life, including birth and death. Tinges of Americana stand side-by-side with the ghosts of Eastern European fiddle tunes and ancient a cappella ballad singing, melding into an unusually accessible dark-folk sound. A careful listen of Narrow Line invokes an ephemeral sense of place—whether real or imagined—inviting us to take comfort in the infinite possibilities of life, whether or not we ever choose to settle down.

For a group defined by constant touring, it’s not surprising that the two artists that make up Mama’s Broke, Lisa Maria and Amy Lou Keeler, met on the road. As Lisa remembers it, “Amy was driving her old Mercedes from Montreal to Nova Scotia and I was looking for a ride. We spent the 17 hours in the car talking almost exclusively about music. By the time we reached Halifax we started playing together, and within a week or two became a band.”

Both coming out of travelling communities that are focused on music and protest, the two owe the way in which they move through the world to the integrated and self-sustaining nature of DIY culture and activism. It was a busy life that took them on a roundabout annual touring schedule running between Canada, the United States, Ireland, the UK, and Europe. In each country, they built grassroots DIY communities to support their music or moved along the pathways of communal organizing that sustained other touring artists.

The driving force behind this band is – and has always been – the commitment to challenge borders between people, places, and traditions; while encouraging freedom of expression and community through music.

--

Lost Patterns is an American roots duo based in Austin, TX, featuring songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Beth Chrisman and Silas Lowe. They bring an earthy grit to the lonesome, lowdown backroads of acoustic Americana, that is always moving and evocative.

Chrisman and Lowe have been sharing stages together since 2006 when they met during a bluegrass jam at a BBQ joint. The duo plays songs culled from the depths of the American musical tradition as well as writing new classics shaped by those musical landscapes.

As a member of the Carper Family and High Plains Jamboree, Chrisman has performed at Merlefest, A Prairie Home Companion, Augusta Heritage, and Mountain Stage. She is an in-demand side player as well, with notable performances alongside Bobby Bare, Alice Gerrard, John C. Reilly, and Willi Carlisle.

Lowe was a member of the Atomic Duo and has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the Vancouver Folk Festival, the John Hartford Memorial Festival. His songs have been covered by numerous bands, and recently a song he co-wrote with Brennen Leigh was featured on the Grand Ole Opry.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Benmont Tench is a founding member of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and one of contemporary music’s finest organ players, piano players, anything- with-keys players. In addition to all of the Heartbreakers recordings, Tench has played on records by Stevie Nicks, Willie Nelson, Green Day, Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, the Dixie Chicks, the Replacements, John Prine, Waylon Jennings, John Fogerty, Elvis Costello, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, just to name a few. Jimmy Iovine, man of many hats and former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ producer, puts it this way: “If you want a track to sound better, you just put Benmont’s part higher in the mix.”

Benmont Tench’s second solo LP The Melancholy Season will be released March 7, 2024 on Dark Horse Records. The Melancholy Season is Benmont Tench’s true arrival as a singer-songwriter, without compromise or doubt. It was produced by Jonathan Wilson–an acclaimed singer-songwriter and touring guitarist for Roger Waters who has worked on career-defining albums for Dawes, Father John Misty and Margo Price–with an attention to the space and intimacy where the best songs breathe and resonate.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Tab Benoit is a 4x Grammy nominated singer, songwriter and guitarist who has built a remarkable 30+ year career on the foundation of his gritty and soulful Delta swamp blues, acquiring a devoted legion of fans along the way, as well as 5 Blues Music Awards, including BB King Entertainer of the Year (twice) and an induction into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

After a 13-year hiatus, Tab is back with his latest effort, I Hear Thunder, on his own label, Whiskey Bayou Records. The new album was his first #1 in the Billboard charts in over 30 years. Read more about it in Billboard here.. Benoit's 2013 release, Medicine, was co-produced with Anders Osborne for Concord International, and garnered three Blues Music Awards. Following this notable success, Benoit took a step away from music, taking a 13-year sabbatical from recording and entering a period of creative exile.

Tab's accomplishments as a musician are matched only by his devotion to the environmental health of his native Louisiana wetlands. The notoriety achieved by his success provided him with a mouthpiece to promote his growing concern for the Louisiana Wetlands and coastal erosion from the region he calls home. Benoit is the founder and driving force behind Voice of the Wetlands, an organization working to preserve the coastal waters of his home state. In 2010, he received the Governor's Award for Conservationist of the Year from the Louisiana Wildlife Federation. Benoit has also starred in the iMax motion picture Hurricane on the Bayou, a documentary of Hurricane Katrina's effects and a call to protect and restore the Wetlands.

Benoit has recorded and/or performed with Junior Wells, George Porter Jr, Dr. John, Willie Nelson, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Billy Joe Shaver, Maria Muldaur, James Cotton, Cyril Neville, Kenny Aronoff, Allen Toussaint, Kim Wilson, Jimmy Thackery, Charlie Musslewhite, Kenny Neal, Chris Layton, Ivan Neville, Jimmy Hall, Jim Lauderdale, Anders Osborne, and Alvin Youngblood Hart to name a few.

--

When it comes to songwriting, less is more, and simplicity is strength. Just ask Paul Thorn, who’s spent three decades turning soulful grooves and small syllables into songs that pack a big wallop. Maybe he learned the power of minimalism from his years as a pro boxer; maybe it just comes naturally. But whether he’s targeting heads, hearts, hips or the occasional funny bone, he somehow manages to condense large nuggets of wisdom into tight little mantras, the kind embroiderers stitched onto pillows before internet memes existed.

Thorn’s new album, Life is Just A Vapor, contains some beauties: “Life is a vapor, let’s live it while we can”; “tough times don’t last, but tough people do” (from “Tough Times Don’t Last”); “any mountain up ahead is just a hill” (from “Old Melodies”). They’re words of advice, comfort, support, encouragement, often meant to uplift, especially in times of struggle.

“I like for people to be touched by music and get something from it, something that they can take with them throughout the day,” Thorn says. “Every song on this album, there's a message in it of some sort about how to live life.”

American Blues Scene writer Don Wilcock calls Thorn “an everyman (who) addresses things we all think about, but few can articulate with the kind of candor, humor and folksy truth that immediately endear him to almost everyone lucky enough to hear his music.”

Whether he’s expressing love in “I Knew,” warning an ex’s new conquest about the dangers ahead in “She Will,” extolling the value of holding off on sex in “Wait” or listing the ingredients for making a marriage work in “Courage My Love” (“a half-acre on your daddy’s land / and a little luck / a load of white gravel in our driveway / so we don’t get stuck in a rut /a 3-horsepower lawnmower and courage my love”), Thorn delivers his messages with consummate skill — and pinpoint precision. One minute, he’ll unwind an outrageous tale full of wild characters (often accompanied by his own cartoonish illustrations); the next, he’ll tug at heartstrings with confessions of love, loss or failed dreams, balancing wit and pathos with an ease only the best storytellers can pull off. One of Thorn’s favorites was his friend and mentor John Prine, who inspired the title tune.

We’ll discuss that one in a bit, but first, we should mention that in “Wait,” a commentary about dating in the Tinder era, the fella who buys his dates dinner with a two-for-$20 coupon is someone Thorn actually knows. “Geraldine and Ricky” is based on real people, too — well, a real person and her hickory-headed dummy. Whether written solo, with longtime manager/collaborator/album producer Billy Maddox or with Chuck Cannon, Scotty Brassfield or Denny Carr, nearly all of these songs are inspired by or reference actual events or people; Geraldine was a traveling evangelist who couldn’t connect with children until she tried ventriloquism. When she spread the lord’s word through Ricky, kids were mesmerized — including 5-year-old Thorn, who requested, and got, a ventriloquist doll for Christmas.

“I would get up and tell jokes at church, and I'd take it to school and tell jokes at school,” he says, with that Tupelo, Miss.-formed accent and instantly charming, matter-of-fact delivery he has. “I had my mind up that when I grew up, I was going to be a ventriloquist.” (His singing career actually began at 3 — in church, of course; Thorn’s dad was a Pentecostal minister.)

Over a snaky rhythm enhanced by guest guitarist Luther Dickinson, Thorn fictitiously paints Geraldine as “a toxic opportunist looking for anything that will better her situation.” When she lands a dying old sugar daddy, she dumps Ricky. But karma catches up to Geraldine, while Ricky, thankfully, gets rescued.

But Life is Just a Vapor is not all homilies and humor. “I’m Just Waiting,” a catchy, funky tune featuring blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa, deftly examines relationship insecurity. In “Chicken Wing,” over a cool melody on which guitarists Michael Graham and Bill Hinds (on slide) merge T. Rex with Southern rock, a former pimp and scam artist admits: “I’m in the winter of my life / I love my dog, I like my wife / I wash the dishes, I sweep the floor / I keep a 12-gauge behind the door.”

For the record, the song is not about the uncle Thorn introduced on Pimps and Preachers, one of a dozen albums he’s released on his own Perpetual Obscurity Records since founding the label in 2000. (Thorn made his recording debut on A&M Records in 1997, after ex-Police manager Miles Copeland III heard him and had him open for then-client Sting, one of A&M’s top talents.) And just to be clear, Thorn’s definition of pimp includes “anybody that manipulates people and doesn't give them nothing in return.”

“I'm around pimps every day, especially in the music business,” he adds. “A pimp is a larger word than just somebody on the corner with a gold chain. ‘Chicken Wing’ is an overview of a bunch of pimps that I have known in my life and I melded their stories together. … all that song is about is different seasons of life.”

Speaking of seasons of life, two of the album’s most poignant songs contemplate the passage of time. “Old Melodies,” the kind of song a retro-country-loving couple might dance to after renewing their wedding vows, suggests challenges are easier to face with a partner by your side.

“It's about being together through life, and that's where I'm at,” Thorn says. “I'm 60 years old, and the stuff I'm writing about and singing about is for people that get what being 60 years old is.” Then he reveals the song’s sobering origin, which adds a different perspective.

“We had a family problem a long time ago, a relative that ran off the tracks with drugs and everything,” he explains. “When my dad was dealing with the pain of the heartache that somebody he loved was in a dark hole, he was just standing there, crying. And he said, “Man, ‘Amazing Grace’ used to be my favorite song, but now it’s ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Boy, that just hit me right between the eyes. They're both great songs, but ‘Amazing Grace’ is more like a praise song. ‘We Shall Overcome’ is, ‘We got something we gotta deal with, and we're gonna deal with it, and we're gonna get past it.’ I thought that was a beautiful thing he said.”

Thorn, a brilliant gospel stylist, could sing the heck out of either of those songs. If you haven’t heard his version of the O’Jays’ hit, “Love Train,” from Don’t Let the Devil Ride, his 2018 album of gospel covers, you haven’t experienced the song the way it truly should be heard.

On this album, he’s backed occasionally by Tupelo gospel group New Testament, or Muscle Shoals session singers Cindy Richardson and Marie Lewey (aka the Shoal Sisters) — who sing on “Life is Just a Vapor,” a phrase adapted from scripture.

It's safe to say no one but Thorn would start a song with the lines, “Me and John Prine was eating ice cream / at the Double Tree Inn Suite 1019.” And no one but Thorn would follow them with, “Don’t tell Fiona she won’t understand / Life is a vapor. Let’s live it while we can.”

Of his late friend, Thorn says, “He’s one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and one of the nicest people, too. I can't even count the times I've opened up for him, which was a great opportunity for me.”

As he will do for countless audiences, Thorn narrates the story behind those lyrics: “One night after I opened up for him,” he recounts, “John invited me and a few other friends to come to his hotel room and have some ice cream after the show. So I went, and it was a big thrill. Then the next morning I went on Facebook and I wrote about my encounter, and I said to the world what a moment it was for me to get to hang with John and have this ice cream and everything.

“Right when I posted it, his manager called my manager and said, ‘Take that post down immediately. John is a severe diabetic, and his wife Fiona is going to kill him for eating ice cream.’”

In total straight-man mode, Thorn nonchalantly adds, “Yeah, I got him in trouble for eating ice cream.”

And that’s how the finest troubadours do it: Set ‘em up with humor, then hit ’em in the feels with lines like, “Every day’s a gift, breathe in and hold it. / Every day’s a gift, it’s gone before you know it.”

Gorgeous, moving words. Simple, straight-forward and, if you’ve lost a loved one, or a hero like Prine, very likely tear-inducing.

“I'm just trying to put out a good body of work that will be remembered like John's music,” Thorn admits. “I'm trying to carry on his tradition, to keep it alive.”

Prine, the heavyweight champ at spinning humor and heartbreak into gold, would have loved this song, and this album. Maybe the lyrics he inspired will motivate someone to grab some thread and start stitching.

“Shoulda, woulda, coulda, I’ll do it someday, / Turns into time just slippin’ away. / The hour glass is runnin’ out of sand, / Life is a vapor. Let’s live it while we can.”

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Kelly Willis is Back Being Blue, to take a color-coded cue from the title of her seventh album. It’s a shade she wears well, though long-patient fans might just say: You had us at back. They’ll take a new Willis record in whatever hue it comes, now that it’s been 11 years since her last solo release, 2007’s Translated from Love. The Austin-based singer/songwriter has hardly been MIA in the intervening years, having recorded and toured as part of a duo with Bruce Robison. But she’s setting the duet Mm.Oo. aside for do-it-alone mode, at least as far as the spotlight is concerned. (Robison hovers just outside it this time, as producer.). Hers is a solo voice again, but it’s not necessarily sotto voce: This is an album of songs about lonesomeness that also happens to be a cracklingly good time.

Willis wrote six of the 10 tracks on Back Being Blue by herself, the first time she’s penned that big a portion of one of her albums without outside assists. That doesn’t mean she’s gone into deeply confessional territory for her “Blue” period.

Lyrically, “it’s not an extremely personal record,” she says, downright cheerfully. There may be profundity within, but what Willis was really after was a sense of playfulness. “I wanted to make a fun, interesting record that leans on the influences that first inspired me to make music,” she says. “I don’t think of it as even being so much about my vocals as an album about vibe.” Explaining, “The important thing to me was to take these songs and to get them just right musically. And in my mind, I was thinking of where maybe Skeeter Davis meets Rockpile, or Marshall Crenshaw meets the Louvin Brothers.”

Who wouldn’t want to hang out at either of those intersections? Not ignoring the fact that in Willis’ world, as the album title might augur, high times and heartache are inextricably tied, “I guess the songs I write can be more sad than I think they are,” she admits with a laugh. “The lyrics are always sad in country music. I mean, we sometimes wonder why people hire us to do weddings. We’re like, ‘Really? You wanted this? Well, okay!’ But the music, more than ever, I think, is very fun.”

The title song, which brings a slight R&B vibe to her trademark country, was key in setting the tone. “When I wrote ‘Back Being Blue,’ I felt like I made a discovery,” she says. “Up until writing that song, my songs were all feeling a little bit wordy and complicated and personal, and they just weren’t clicking. Then I wrote that one, I just felt like, oh!­––what I need to do is try to simplify, and write these stories in a way that feels like you’re not quite sure what era they were written in.”

She makes it sound like a fresh epiphany, but some might say that sending the hands of the clock spinning––in a word: timelessness––has always been a hallmark of her career. As the New York Times wrote, “Kelly Willis looks back to country music before Nashville embraced power ballads and cute happily-ever-after songs. She has an old-fashioned country voice with a twang, a breathy quaver, a break or a throaty sob whenever she needs one… Whether she was wishing for comfort, admitting to a bruised heart, yielding to illicit romance or trying to say goodbye, her voice was modest and true, illuminating the delicate tension and pain in every line.” No Depression noted that her music transcends throwback appeal: “There’s no point in being nostalgic for the generic delineations of the past. We are in the present. That’s where Kelly Willis lives. And it’s there that she sings, as keenly and movingly as any singer in the country or pop or rock present.” Rolling Stone zeroed in on the eternality of her tone: “Willis’ Okie soprano still crackles like no other, and her control and phrasing make it more devastating than ever.”

The native Okie-ness Rolling Stone noticed in her honeyed voice is tempered by a whole lot of Texas. Romance and music brought her to Austin while she was in her late teens, fronting a celebrated but short-lived rockabilly band, Radio Ranch. Famed singer/songwriter Nancy Griffith took a shine to her voice and recommended Willis to producer Tony Brown, one of the titans of Nashville country, who signed her to a deal with MCA. Her three major -label albums yielded plenty of critical acclaim, with enough media attention that she even found herself representing for Texas on People magazine’s annual “50 most beautiful people” list. But, not for the first or last time, mainstream radio didn’t quite know what to make of a youthful neo-traditionalist who appeared to have been transported from a less trendy era.

Then came the album that set the template for the second act of this American life: the 1999 Rykodisc release What I Deserve, her debut as an independent artist in all senses of the term.

“I feel like I’ve never really quite fit into any one group,” Willis says. “I wasn’t really country enough to fit in with the Nashville mainstream, and I didn’t quite fit in with that alt-country stuff, either. But What I Deserve was a huge turning point, because that was the first time I was able to just do my record my way, and the first time I had really grown as an artist and was writing more songs and aware of how to get my ideas across musically. I also looked at that as potentially being my last record. I felt kind of washed up, which was a really strange place to be as a 25-year-old. But to accomplish that record and have it be so well -received gave me a lot of confidence. From then on, I knew I could continue to be a musician, and whatever it was going to look like, I was gonna make it up as I go along, and there could be real satisfaction in that.”

There were personal and creative detours to come. Easy (2002) and Translated by Love (2007) generated equal love from fans, the press, and fellow musicians. Meanwhile, motherhood competed for her attention, to put it mildly. “I had four babies in the space of five years. As challenging as work/family balance became, it led to a pleasing mid-career wrinkle when she backed into a side career with Robison, who conveniently happened to be not just her spouse but her creative and popular equal in the Americana world. A series of annual Christmas shows led to a holiday album, which led to two non-seasonal duo projects, Cheater’s Game (2013) and Our Year (2014).

“We could feel this excitement and electricity at our performances together,” Willis says, “and so we finally just started doing that, even though we’d been keeping it at arm’s length, professionally. We just couldn’t deny it, and so we just decided to take a chance that it wouldn’t destroy our marriage,” she laughs. “But now it’s really important to both of us to get out there and do our own thing.”

So what did Willis do when it came time to reassert her artistic independence with Back Being Blue? Hire Robison as producer. “As I was going through the process, I realized he understood what I was trying to do, and that nobody cared more about how it turned out than he did. I didn’t have a bigger fan out there in the world.”

Choosing Robison as her producer, ironically, made for a long commute to work each day as she was recording the album, since Robison’s studio, the Bunker, is on a rustic five-acre plot with a fishing hole 40 minutes south of Austin. But it was worth the daily drive, she figures: “It’s kind of its own vibe out there, and you can hear it, I think, in the recordings. It feels old school to me. It’s got a real reverb chamber, and we did it on analog tape with an old board;” — old enough that “ the tape machine broke down six times while we were recording, but he’s got a guy he talks to up in Nashville that walks him through fixing it every time.”

That analog mentality filters into “Modern World,” one of the few songs on the album less about single-gal dilemmas and more about where Willis is now. “I can’t put my phone down,” she admits. “I’m trying to keep it away from my kids, but I’m not able to keep it away from myself. When we used to not have the stuff, we were forced to be more engaged. I was thinking I wanted to write about that, but I wanted to write about that in maybe the Louvin Brothers would have written about it.” “Freewheeling” is about how “everybody wishes they could let go of their anxiety or some of those old, comfortable pains that won’t go away. And I think we always look around and see other people that seem to be able to handle everything much easier.”

Sources for the four outside songs range from Rodney Crowell, who recommended that Willis cut “We’ll Do It for Love Next Time” (from his 2003 album “Fate’s Right Hand”),. to Skeeter Davis, whose “I’m a Lover (Not a Fighter)” is the one pick you could pinpoint as being tied to a place in time, thanks to its lyrical reference to Cassius Clay. “We were trying to come up with other, more contemporary rhymes that might work there, like ‘Sugar Ray,’ but ultimately I liked the dated reference.”

Willis is hardly ashamed of looking backward for touchstones. “With this record I was trying to go with the styles of music that have really impacted my life, especially when I moved to Austin as a teenager, and make it country-sounding like Austin used to sound,” she says.

“Nick Lowe was a real north star for me on this record. ––Llike, ‘What would do Nick Lowe do?’ He was able to write modern songs that were like old songs—––that had a cool soul/R&B/Buddy Holly kind of a thing that had sounds from that early rock and roll era—––but that felt really fresh and exciting and now. I just love the A-B-C’s of rock and roll. Before everybody had to start piling on different things to make it sound different, it had all been done. With this record I was trying to go with the styles of music that have really impacted my life, especially when I moved to Austin as a teenager, and make it country-sounding like Austin used to sound.”

Nick Lowe may be Willis’ north star, but she’s been around just long enough to be a beacon for some acolytes of her own. That’s true even with appreciative fans from upstream in the generational river, like outlaw-era legend Ray Wylie Hubbard, who recently tweeted, “Kelly, you are the gold standard that I compare other artists to,” tTo which Kelly replied that she would put that in her bio.

“I know I’ve been around through many different phases of my genre of music. Whether it was the New Traditionalist, or Alt. Country or Americana. I ought to be able to write a book about it all. But in spite of my long career, I still think of myself as a teenager! I still feel like the underdog who’s trying to find her way”

That Willis still feels like that scrappy young comer, six albums and four kids later, is good news for anyone about to take a shine to the only slightly broken-hearted-feeling spunk of the new album. Blue definitely continues to be her color, but more than anything, she’s back feeling new.

Doors @ 7:00pm
Show @ 8:00pm
All Ages
Full Bar
Free On-Site Parking

RAY PRIM
Imagine Ben Harper and Ray Lamontagne heading over to Abbey Road in a cadillac convertible to pick up John Lennon and Paul McCartney so they can catch the tail end of The Reverend Al Green's sermon....

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

There are songwriters who chronicle life, and then there’s David Wilcox—an artist who metabolizes it. He has long been a quiet force in American folk music; a musician’s musician, a writer’s writer, and a seeker whose gift lies in making the personal feel universal.

With the upcoming release of The Way I Tell the Story (2025), Wilcox proves, yet again, that resilience isn’t just a survival skill—it’s an art form. The record shimmers with musical sophistication but leaves just enough space for the listener to feel what Wilcox has always done best: tell the truth, gently but without apology.

The music he’s creating now comes from a place that can’t be faked. In recent years, Wilcox’s life has been shaped by his wife’s Parkinson’s diagnosis—a shift that reordered his priorities and redefined his sense of time, love, and presence. But rather than retreat, Wilcox leaned in. “Times get tough, and music gets good,” he says, and means it. These songs don’t dramatize. They don’t resolve neatly. They sit in the complexity of living—open-eyed, unafraid, quietly brave.

Wilcox’s career began in earnest in the late 1980s, when his self-released debut The Nightshift Watchman caught the attention of A&M Records. His major-label debut, How Did You Find Me Here (1989), became an unexpected hit, selling over 100,000 copies largely by word of mouth and live shows alone—an unheard-of feat for a debut folk record. Critics took note of his deft guitar work and emotional clarity, but it was the unassuming wisdom threaded through his lyrics that truly set him apart. Rolling Stone praised his “soulful insight,” while The New York Times called his music “a kind of open-hearted therapy.”

What followed was a string of acclaimed albums—Big Horizon (1994), Turning Point (1997), What You Whispered (2000)—each one refining his reputation as a songwriter who knows how to say hard things in soft, lasting ways. Over the years, he’s shared stages and collaborations with artists like Shawn Colvin, Patty Larkin, Pierce Pettis, and John Gorka—fellow craftspeople committed to song over spectacle. But Wilcox has never followed the current. He’s followed the work, and in 2018 Wilcox won top honors in the 23rd annual USA Songwriting for his effervescent “We Make the Way by Walking” from his album, The View From the Edge.

That work has earned him quiet but enduring respect. His songs have been covered by k.d. lang and Tony Rice; his guitar work studied by those who understand that precision, when rooted in care, becomes its own kind of virtuosity. His influence runs deep, especially among younger artists trying to build something real in a world obsessed with surface.

Wilcox’s music still resonates, especially now, because it doesn’t try to outpace the moment. It meets it. In his world, craft is a form of care. Introspection is a public offering. And staying soft in a hard world isn’t a liability—it’s a kind of leadership.

For audiences seeking something more than noise, more than nostalgia, Wilcox’s songs remain a rare kind of company. Not flashy. Not loud. Just deeply, generously alive.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Internationally-acclaimed guitar virtuoso Trace Bundy must be seen, not just heard. His music is poetry in motion, using harmonics, looping, multiple capos, and his unique banter and stage presence to deliver an unforgettable live concert experience. Listening to his intricate arrangements is one thing, but seeing the fan-dubbed “Acoustic Ninja” play live confounds even the most accomplished music lovers as to how one person can do all that with just two hands and ten fingers.

Bundy’s unique career has brought him across the world, with concerts in 28 countries and counting – from high-tech performance halls in South Korea and Italy, to remote villages in Zimbabwe and Guatemala. He has independently sold over 150,000 albums on his record label, Honest Ninja Music. His video clips circulate virally at astonishing speed, with over 45 million YouTube views to date.

Trace was named “Most Promising New Talent” of 2008 by Acoustic Guitar Magazine, as well as winning third place in the magazine’s “Best Fingerstyle Guitarist” category the same year. Over his many years of touring, Trace has shared the stage with Brandi Carlile, Olivia Newton-John, Neko Case, Judy Collins, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Phil Keaggy, David Wilcox, David Knopfler (Dire Straits), Bill Nershi (String Cheese), Laurence Juber (Paul McCartney & Wings), Chris Hillman (the Byrds), and Stanley Jordan, among others.

Jimmy Leslie at Guitar Player Magazine blogs “It was easy to see why Bundy plays bigger venues on each tour. In his hands, the acoustic guitar is an imagination station, and there was no telling where he is going take the audience at any given turn. Thrilling stuff.”

Dave Kirby from the Boulder Weekly says “Possessing a staggering acoustic technique, on both right and left sides, Bundy has made his reputation as a next generation solo guitarist of serious repute.”

Audiocast Magazine from Austin, TX agrees: “Bundy’s live show is without a doubt an event that needs to be witnessed rather than told about. With such a jaw-dropping performance, Bundy’s live concert is a slap in the face that would leave a palm print on the memory of everyone in the audience.”

Take a minute to check him out and you’ll agree that Trace Bundy must be seen, not just heard.

Doors @ 7:00pm
Show @ 8:00pm
All Ages
Full Bar
Free On-Site Parking

Shake Russell/Dana Cooper Band -

In the late 70's, Shake Russell formed a band in Houston and was joined by hometown friend & fellow Songwriter/Musician Dana Cooper. Based in Houston, the duo enjoyed immense success and was given extensive airplay on local radio stations. Many of the melodies on "Songs On The Radio" album were recorded at Houston's KLOL.

For over a decade, The Shake Russell/Dana Cooper band garnered a large following in Texas as well as appearing on "Austin City Limits". Although their respective careers have since diverged to different regions of the country, each of them has continued to nurture their talent and maintain a successful, creative music career.

Dana Cooper -

In the 1970's, Cooper landed a record deal with Elektra Records and released his acclaimed self-tiled debut album in 1972. Backed by renowned LA studio musicians "The Section", including Leeland Sklar & Russ Kunkel, the album showcased Cooper's lyrical depth & virtuoso guitar playing. Through the 80's & 90's, he built his reputation on the club circuit while also collaborating with artists like Lyle Lovett, Kim Carnes, Susan Werner, Kim Richey, Hal Ketchum & more. Central to Cooper's unique artistry is his ability to connect with audiences through his authentic stories and warm stage presence.

Over his 50+ year career, Cooper has amassed a catalog of over 30 albums and continues to tour actively. His latest Release "The Ghost of Tucumcari" has garnered much critical acclaim and was voted #1 Album of 2024 on "Americana Highways" Readers Poll. Several established artists lent their voices to this album, including Lyle Lovett, Hayes Carll, Susan Gibson, Shake Russell, Darden Smith, Mando Saenz & Libby Koch.

"Few artists can claim to make music for 50 years and still do so with the same eagerness and enthusiasm that marked their initial efforts." Lee Zimmerman, American Songwriter

"Dana has a poet's eye for beauty and detail, a blues man's soul & a songbird's gift. He is remarkable." Hayes Carll - Songwriter/Musician

Shake Russell -

For more than 50 years, Texas singer-songwriter Shake Russell, has been entertaining audiences throughout the region and all over the United States with his unique Americana style of folk rock. Weaving sophisticated harmonies through his songs and drawing from various genres, Shake created a style of folk-rock that is uniquely his own.

Shake has released 30+ albums in his career and more to come. Shake’s recent releases, “Chasing the Song” & "Gold To Me", showcase a delightful array of original compositions that beautifully show the extraordinary talents of this singer-songwriter. To fully appreciate and comprehend the magnitude of Shake’s contributions to music, one need only listen to his life’s work. From his 1978 album “Songs on the Radio” to his latest “Gold To Me”, Shake’s music is a testament to the reasons why he is so widely celebrated as a Texas Music Legend!

"Shake Russell, like Mark Twain or Guy Clark, has the gift of making us think and feel deeply at the same time. He's a prolific pioneer and a true American Treasure." Chad Watson - Songwriter/Musician

"Shake's music walks right up to you, says howdy, and gives you a big hug. Nobody writes a better love song." Bruce Bryant - Ghost Ranch Films

Doors @ 7:00pm
Show @ 8:00pm
All Ages
Full Bar
Free On-Site Parking

Shake Russell/Dana Cooper Band -

In the late 70's, Shake Russell formed a band in Houston and was joined by hometown friend & fellow Songwriter/Musician Dana Cooper. Based in Houston, the duo enjoyed immense success and was given extensive airplay on local radio stations. Many of the melodies on "Songs On The Radio" album were recorded at Houston's KLOL.

For over a decade, The Shake Russell/Dana Cooper band garnered a large following in Texas as well as appearing on "Austin City Limits". Although their respective careers have since diverged to different regions of the country, each of them has continued to nurture their talent and maintain a successful, creative music career.

Dana Cooper -

In the 1970's, Cooper landed a record deal with Elektra Records and released his acclaimed self-tiled debut album in 1972. Backed by renowned LA studio musicians "The Section", including Leeland Sklar & Russ Kunkel, the album showcased Cooper's lyrical depth & virtuoso guitar playing. Through the 80's & 90's, he built his reputation on the club circuit while also collaborating with artists like Lyle Lovett, Kim Carnes, Susan Werner, Kim Richey, Hal Ketchum & more. Central to Cooper's unique artistry is his ability to connect with audiences through his authentic stories and warm stage presence.

Over his 50+ year career, Cooper has amassed a catalog of over 30 albums and continues to tour actively. His latest Release "The Ghost of Tucumcari" has garnered much critical acclaim and was voted #1 Album of 2024 on "Americana Highways" Readers Poll. Several established artists lent their voices to this album, including Lyle Lovett, Hayes Carll, Susan Gibson, Shake Russell, Darden Smith, Mando Saenz & Libby Koch.

"Few artists can claim to make music for 50 years and still do so with the same eagerness and enthusiasm that marked their initial efforts." Lee Zimmerman, American Songwriter

"Dana has a poet's eye for beauty and detail, a blues man's soul & a songbird's gift. He is remarkable." Hayes Carll - Songwriter/Musician

Shake Russell -

For more than 50 years, Texas singer-songwriter Shake Russell, has been entertaining audiences throughout the region and all over the United States with his unique Americana style of folk rock. Weaving sophisticated harmonies through his songs and drawing from various genres, Shake created a style of folk-rock that is uniquely his own.

Shake has released 30+ albums in his career and more to come. Shake’s recent releases, “Chasing the Song” & "Gold To Me", showcase a delightful array of original compositions that beautifully show the extraordinary talents of this singer-songwriter. To fully appreciate and comprehend the magnitude of Shake’s contributions to music, one need only listen to his life’s work. From his 1978 album “Songs on the Radio” to his latest “Gold To Me”, Shake’s music is a testament to the reasons why he is so widely celebrated as a Texas Music Legend!

"Shake Russell, like Mark Twain or Guy Clark, has the gift of making us think and feel deeply at the same time. He's a prolific pioneer and a true American Treasure." Chad Watson - Songwriter/Musician

"Shake's music walks right up to you, says howdy, and gives you a big hug. Nobody writes a better love song." Bruce Bryant - Ghost Ranch Films

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Family has always been at the center of things for Los Lonely Boys. Henry, Jojo, and Ringo Garza have been playing and touring together since they were teenagers. Three years ago, they decided to take a break to focus on their own growing families. But Summer 2022 saw them back at it again, returning to life on the road alongside The Who. The Boys have been making music together for seventeen years now, and they show no signs of slowing down or losing inspiration. Today, you’ll find them in the studio, working on their newest album.

The story of how the Garza brothers rode their bluesy “Texican rock & roll” sound from San Angelo, Texas, to worldwide fame is one of rock’s great Cinderella tales. The three young brothers formed a band, got signed to a major label, and had a hit single that propelled them to stardom. They sold 2.5 million records, won a Grammy, and received five more Grammy nominations in the span of their career.

The sons of Enrique “Ringo” Garza Sr. are a second-generation sibling band; their dad and his brothers played conjunto as the Falcones before the elder Garza formed a band with his sons. They were still teens when he moved them to Nashville, hoping to hit career paydirt. But their big break came after they returned to Texas and began playing Austin clubs in the early 2000s. One day, Willie Nelson’s nephew heard some demos. Next thing they knew, Willie showed up at a gig. Then he showcased them at Farm Aid, fronted recording time at his famed Pedernales Studio, and guested on their album.

Released in 2003 on startup label Or Records, Los Lonely Boys got picked up by Epic and re-released. Propelled by the No. 1 single, “Heaven,” it wound up selling over 2 million copies, spending 76 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 album chart, and earning them a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group.

Their dream-come-true rise was chronicled in the documentary Los Lonely Boys: Cottonfields and Crossroads, directed by fellow San Angelo native Hector Galán. Another dream came true for the Boys when Carlos Santana invited them to guest on his 2005 album, All That I Am. They also released Live at the Fillmore that year. Their father and Willie Nelson joined them on 2006’s Sacred, and in 2007, their cover of John Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” became the second single from the album Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur.

Their rise to stardom was certainly something to behold. But the story of how they’ve persevered in the face of subsequent challenges is just as compelling. In 2013, they canceled 43 shows and paused work on their last album, Revelation, after Henry was seriously hurt when he fell from a stage in Los Angeles. The scare caused all three brothers to re-examine not only how they make music, but how they conduct their lives.

“The whole experience was a wake-up call,” Jojo admits. “It reminded us of what’s really important.”

Once again, they affirmed that’s family. And music. For this trio, the two are inseparable.

The downtime of their hiatus served their hearts and their families well, but it also served to plant new seeds of creativity. “We grew as husbands and fathers during our time off. We wanted to be there for our families,” says Henry. Now in the studio working on their newest record, they are finding that inspiration comes from time at home as much as from time on the road. “Our new songs are about what is happening in everyone’s lives; topics of separation, the need for more love, and relating to one another.”

Now, with plans to release a new record in 2023, the Boys are entering a new era of their career. “Walking off the stage after our first performance this year, we cried together, hugged, and knew we would continue,” says Henry. “After a three-year hiatus, we are songwriting, recording, and touring together. It is a blessing to share the stage with my brothers. We lift each other musically and spiritually. We consider this Los Lonely Boys’ resurrection.”

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

ADAM & CHRIS CARROLL

Want to hear a good story? Listen to any Adam Carroll song. His Texas peers sure have, over and over again, and are quick to heap superlatives on a stoic artist whose compositions provide a solitary glimpse into a verdant imagination.

Jon Dee Graham says Carroll "may be the best songwriter that Texas ever produced," while Robert Earl Keen proclaims, "If all were right with the world, Adam Carroll would be the Townes Van Zandt of our age."

"His lyrics are like a good book: They take you somewhere and leave you better than they found you," says Terri Hendrix.

Slaid Cleaves calls Carroll "the quintessential small-town songwriter," adding, "Travel outside the cities of this country and you'll recognize the barbecue-joint waitresses, the rice farmers, the karaoke singers, the black-flag pirates and the hi-fi lovers of this land--you'll meet them all in Adam's true-to-life songs."

Now, with the release of two new albums--I Walked in Them Shoes is a solo effort, wile Good Farmer was recorded in tandem with his wife, Chris Carroll--there are more characters to meet, at once fascinating and familiar.

Carroll grew up in Tyler, Texas, which he describes as "pretty southern" compared to other Lone Star habitats, in the '70s and '80s. This led him to identify with great southern bards like Flannery O'Connor and Lucinda Williams, even if he felt a bit out of place in his hometown.

“I had a few friends, but I was very shy—still am,” he explains. “But I was pretty good at reading, so I tended to live in my head. I was kind of imagining writing stories for myself.”

Music was a constant in the Carroll household. Adam’s mom is a musician, while his dad had a killer record collection—John Prine, Johnny Cash, Jimmie Rodgers, and the like. Adam took piano lessons and sang in a choir, but when he purchased Neil Young’s Harvest as a senior at a North Carolina boarding school, he developed a fervent desire to play guitar.

That itch would get scratched at Tyler Junior College, where, Carroll recalls, “there was a really good guitar teacher, Frank Kimlicko.” Carroll worked in a coffee shop near campus that featured live folk music, and his appreciation for Prine deepened. When he went to see a Prine show at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, Carroll says, “I couldn’t believe how good he was. He was the first artist I saw live who met every expectation I had of a performer.”

Eventually, observers would come to say the same of Carroll. But it would take awhile for him to find his comfort zones.

"I've just always been kind of a reclusive guy,” he says. “I moved from Tyler to the Austin area, and I tried living in Austin for a little bit. I had a real hard time with it.”

But then Carroll ambled into Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos, a college town in between Austin and San Antonio. Opened in 1974 by Kent Finlay and located hard by a set of railroad tracks, Cheatham Street ranks among Texas’ foremost songwriting incubators, with George Strait, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Todd Snider, James McMurtry, Sunny Sweeney, Terri Hendrix, and Jamie Lin Wilson all cutting their chops on the honky-tonk’s stage.

“I just felt really at home there,” says Carroll, who wound up moving to San Marcos. (He and Chris now live in nearby Wimberley.)

“Night at the Show” from Carroll’s new solo album is a tribute to Finlay, who passed away on Texas Independence Day in 2015, while “My Only Good Shirt” is dedicated to Lloyd Maines, the legendary Texas producer (and father of Dixie Chick Natalie) who helmed several of Carroll’s records. Finlay’s daughter, Jenni, produced the album Highway Prayer, a 2016 tribute to Carroll that saw his tunes covered by the likes of Cleaves, McMurtry, Terri Hendrix, Jamie Lin Wilson, Walt Wilkins, and Hayes Carll. Musicians aren’t typically the subject of tribute albums until they’re dead or sick (Carroll’s neither); the fact that so many of Carroll’s peers jumped at the chance to participate in Finlay’s project is testament to his outsize influence.

That influence extends north of the Canadian border, where Carroll met his future wife at a music festival in her hometown of St. Catharines, Ontario, in 2012. They had each gotten sober, and connected over that commonality as their fellow headliners howled at the moon. Chris was already a fan of Adam’s music and was “blown away” when she saw him play. She wasn’t shy—and, unlike Adam, isn’t in general—about expressing her high opinion of him, which got him out of the psychological rut he was in at the time.

“Anytime anybody would tell me I was good as a writer or performer, I couldn't ever hear it and I couldn't say it to myself,” says Carroll. “I feared success. I had a hard time taking compliments. Chris was such a fan that her support has given me a new lease on looking at myself and my music. She believes in it so strongly that it's helped me to believe in it.”

She’s also helped him become a better musician, and the two have an easy chemistry that extends from Good Farmer to the road, which they traverse in an RV with their three dogs.

“Having Chris to play with has actually improved my solo playing,” he says. “I’ve had to learn more about being a guitar player. And her singing that accents a lot of my songs, it's making me want to be a better musician. I'm trying to learn harmony; she's really good at it. Playing with Chris is making me see that I can learn those things on my own now. I'm willing to do it because she's willing to do it. I'm trying to be a better guitar player to make her sound better, to be a complement to what she's doing."

LIBBY KOCH

Texas Americana singer-songwriter Libby Koch (pronounced "coke") is a “country meets soulful” (Free Press Houston), “feisty Texas songbird” (Country Music People) who “sings her story with a little twang, some slide guitar, and a lot of heart” (Texas Monthly). Libby is working on the follow up album to her critically acclaimed 2016 LP Just Move On (Berkalin Records). Working in Nashville with Grammy-winning producer Bil VornDick, she draws on legends from Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn to Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, among others, to craft “true cryin’ and leavin’ country songs.” Combining her country soul with a seventh-generation Texas troubadour’s storytelling skill, Koch fills her songs with intimacy and honesty. Like the most timeless country classics, they’re the kind that make you feel good about feelin’ bad.
 
Koch’s gospel-grounded and honky-tonk voice powerfully navigates the emotions inherent in an album about relationships, starting with the opening break-up trio, “Just Move On,” “You Don’t Live Here Anymore” and “Out of My Misery” — three diverse, retro-to-modern songs that ultimately convey more about the triumph of empowerment than the pain of loss. Tracked live with veteran players handpicked by VornDick, the album, her fourth, is a fine follow-up to her 2014 release, Tennessee Colony, which drew on her ancestors’ stories to address themes of family, faith and home. Calling it “a frisky blend of country, folk, bluegrass and gospel set to some mighty fine fiddle, banjo and mandolin” and labeling it “daisy fresh,” the Houston Press put Tennessee Colony on its year-end top 10 list.

Though Houston native Koch began writing songs in junior high school, she never considered doing so professionally until she attended law school at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, where she discovered she could hold her own in a city full of heavyweight talents. A job at a large Houston law firm convinced her music, not law, was her true calling, and eventually, she decided it was time to … just move on. 

Just Move On earned Libby three first-round GRAMMY ballot nominations in the Country Solo Performance, Country Song, and Country Album Categories.

CHUCK HAWTHORNE

Chuck Hawthorne was sitting in a Chicago airport next to his guitar case. He had been visiting friends for the weekend and was waiting on a flight back to Austin, where he had recently relocated following his retirement from the US Marine Corps. Another gentleman toting a guitar took the seat next to him and struck up a conversation. That man was Juno Award winning artist Ray Bonneville.

As the flight boarded, the two exchanged contact information, and Ray asked Chuck to send him some songs. Chuck had heard that line before and figured that airport conversation would be the last he heard from Ray Bonneville. But the next day, he emailed Ray a few songs anyway. Ray sent a reply that would change Chuck’s life and career. It read, “Let’s meet for coffee and discuss your record.”

The road that led Chuck to that chance airport encounter started on a cattle ranch in Amarillo and spanned the globe over 21 years of military service. Chuck developed his voice as a songwriter riding the Texas plains with his cowboy heroes Clifton Lowe and Alvin Hamrick, sailing the Adriatic sea and picking guitar aboard the USS Iwo Jima, writing Post 2 Gate in the basement of a Baghdad palace, and while experiencing the stories of the people he came to know in his hometown, his numerous deployments, and points in between.

The 11 songs on Chuck’s debut album, Silver Line, were produced by Ray Bonneville at Shine Studios in Austin, Texas, and feature a roster of stellar guest musicians including Eliza Gilkyson and Gurf Morlix. The record recently caught the attention of Michael Martin Murphey, who heard Chuck play at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. Murph has since invited Chuck to play shows with him at the Saxon Pub in Austin and the Franklin Theatre in Nashville, and along with Bonneville, he has become a musical mentor to Chuck.

Chuck Hawthorne is currently touring the country in support of Silver Line, which promises to put him firmly on the Americana map alongside the great songsmiths that now admire his work.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Sam Baker is a lyric writer, artist, and survivor. His songs are stories of everyday people facing everyday challenges: a young Mennonite welder who finds love, a ditch digger supporting his family, a veteran grappling with post-war life, a single mother driving around with a car full of baby junk, a widower writing ‘her’ name in the sand, and a straight-haired orphan in a house full of curls. They are survivors. Like Sam.

In 1986 Sam was on a train for Machu Picchu when a bomb exploded in the carriage he was riding in. Seven died. Through a series of miracles, and the help of everyday people doing their best--his angels--he survived.

Physical recovery was hard. Emotional recovery harder. Melody came to him--compelled him to turn an old guitar upside down so his gnarled hands could play. Slowly, the words came--one true line--“Sitting on the train to Machu Picchu, the passenger car explodes.” He made a record. Then another. There were glowing reviews, more records, awards in Rolling Stone; sold-out shows in Europe, Canada, and the US; songs in TV shows; and an hour with Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Sam was a singer.

Sam uses his art to tell his story--whether from a symphony in Oregon, an art gallery in Santa Fe, a large theater in Kansas City, a small room in The Netherlands, or a song-writer retreat with soldiers. He travels the world sharing his songs, grateful for each day, helping us see the beauty in little things and hope for things to come.

--

American Songwriter wrote “Jack Barksdale has insights and awareness far beyond people twice his age, and he’s able to put them into songs that touch listeners." NPR.org said “Jack Barksdale is special.” and Twangville added, “It’s hard to escape the impressive maturity of his musicianship and songwriting.”

Jack Barksdale is a folk/Americana singer/songwriter from Texas. Inspired by folk, rock, and blues legends, Jack started performing original music at the age of nine and has already shared the stage with Wynonna Judd, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Junior Brown, John Fullbright, and Hayes Carll.

Recently Jack signed a record deal with Truly Handmade Records, formed by the estate of Guy Clark. Jack released a full length album under the Truly Handmade label in June of 2025 featuring many notable guest artists. In September 2024 Jack released his 2nd EP “Out of Order and in October 2023 Jack launched a 7 song instrumental EP entitled Phantom Trails.”

To date Jack's music has garnered well over 5 million streams on Spotify.

In 2020 Jack launched a podcast focused on songwriters and songwriting called Jack Barksdale's Roots Revival Podcast.

Jack tours nationally and wows audiences with lyrics wise beyond his years. Jack plays guitar, slide guitar, harmonica, mandolin, piano, and ukulele, but identifies first and foremost as a songwriter.

His musical influences include Lead Belly, Howlin’ Wolf, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, and Willie Nelson.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

In regard to the Lone Star State’s finest tunesmiths, Bruce Robison lands at the top of the heap. His songwriting turned the heads of some of the industry’s biggest artists and took them to the top of the charts (The Chicks’ No. 1 version of “Travelin’ Soldier,” George Strait’s recording of “Wrapped” and the beautiful Tim McGraw / Faith Hill rendition of “Angry All The Time,” to name a few). While those achievements might be considered the pinnacle of a songwriting career to some, Robison has never been one to rest on his laurels. He is always creating.

In 2016, Bruce turned his focus toward his other passion project, The Next Waltz, a “virtual social house” of music, videos and interviews spotlighting the artists and songs that make up the pedigree of this generation’s cream of the crop. In his studio - The Bunker - located just outside of Austin, Robison hosts and records an evolving array of artists who share in his commitment to continue the tradition of collaborative creativity. Everything in Bruce’s studio is recorded on analog tape “with no digital shenanigans – just like back when music was good.” With a list of musician credits that could easily be mistaken for a hall-of-fame roll call, Robison delivers a truly organic listening experience that includes “happy accidents and all kinds of things that just feel real.

--

The best storytellers always do a careful dance. Details offered, details withheld. Drawing you in one raised eyebrow at a time, whispering here, bellowing there. Are you listening? These are secrets being told, not to mention joys, sighs, even – if you can detect them – sly bits of advice. Lean into it. Close your eyes. They’ll carry you softly home.

It’s a dance singer-songwriter Emily Gimble performs on her debut album “Certain Kinda,” with songs as soulful as they are winsome, broody as they are beautiful. It makes sense for a woman who grew up with music in her blood, singing and playing on-stage since she was seven years old. Maybe it couldn’t be helped: when your dad is Dick Gimble, beloved guitarist and upright bass player, and your grandfather is Johnny Gimble, one of the most beloved fiddle players of all time, there’s really no choice but to play, is there?

Piano beckoned Emily early on – in fact, the Austin Music Awards named her “Best Keyboards” of the city three times (2013, 2014, 2018) – as did another instrument, full of natural range and feeling: her voice. “A Case of the Gimbles,” the 2005 album she recorded with her father and grandfather, showcased her vocals and launched Emily on a national family tour, playing folk festivals and charming audiences across the country.

“The time I got to spend traveling around the country playing music with my Dad and Grandpa are the most cherished musical memories of my life,” says Emily. “It was then that I really started learning how to communicate through music, speaking with my dad and grandpa through solos and spaces on stage.”

It wasn’t long before other musicians started to take notice of Emily, including Marshall Ford Band, where she romped on some western swing, and Warren Hood and the Goods, where she explored jazz, country, folk and pop. In 2012, that band started touring nationally, then went on the road the next year with Hayes Carll as his backing band. 2013 would also see the release of a record, “The Warren Hood Band,” produced by Charlie Sexton, and in 2014, Emily joined the iconic, Grammy Award-winning country band, Asleep at the Wheel. It was an opportunity that put Emily in touch with a lot of her heroes: nothing beats playing on “Austin City Limits” (twice), except maybe for recording a duet with one of her idols, Merle Haggard.

A storied musical history, to be sure. But in many ways, Emily’s story was just beginning.

“On New Year’s Day of 2015, I was having dinner with some of my buddies, and we were going around the table with our resolutions. That’s when I suddenly burst out: ‘welp, I’m going to make a record this year. It’s time.’”

A week later, Emily got a call from Andrew Trube of Greyhounds, who invited her over to hear some new tunes. A week after that they were recording, holed up in a small house and recording space run by fellow musician Sam Patlove, near Austin’s 12th and Chicon St. corner.

“What came out of that day really shocked me,” admits Emily. “It brought tears of joy to my eyes when I heard it. I kept thinking of this project, this thing with Andrew, as a fun little experiment, unsure of what would come of it. But the four tracks we did on that first day made me completely fall in love. I kept listening, and it kept moving me.”

The song “East of Kerns” came out of those initial sessions, seducing the listener into a jazzy, blacktop road trip, letting us gaze out the window with a heart full of longing and a head full of memories. “With One Eye” finds Emily defiant and truth-telling, belting out proclamations to a frustrating lover before giving way to percussive, sultry vocals. “Canyons of Gold” is an arms-stretched-wide embrace of growing up, with a touch of gospel vocals for good measure. Title track “Certain Kinda” is soft and thoughtful by turns, assurances to a companion undercut by notes of ambivalence. “It’s a wonder that we ever made it,” Emily sings, but this album – cut, mastered, and mixed with the likes of Jimmie Vaughan is just the opposite.

“Certain Kinda” was mastered at Ardent Studios in Memphis, whose catalog includes the likes of Bob Dylan, The Raconteurs, and The Staple Singers (a huge influence on Emily), as well as Texan natives the Vaughn Brothers and ZZ Top. Well-honed musical ears will appreciate a production that feels unfussy but pristine, vintage but clean. It’s the result of a musician who’s spent decades learning her craft, and a lifetime building her musical family. If this arresting debut album is any sign, we’ll be hearing the name “Emily Gimble” for many years to come.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

The Acoustic Guitar Project is a global songwriting initiative that celebrates the power of creativity, community, and shared experience. In each participating city, a group of 5 songwriters are invited to spend one week with the same acoustic guitar, using it as the sole instrument to write and perform an original song. The guitar is signed and passed from artist to artist, creating a living, collaborative artifact that connects musicians across genres, backgrounds, and cities.

At its heart, the project is designed to inspire creativity by simplifying the songwriting process to the bare essentials, and to encourage a deeper connection between the artist and their art.

The live showcase brings these songs to life in an intimate, thoughtfully curated performance that reflects the spirit of creativity at the heart of the project. Led by Austin curator Natalie Price, the evening features a selection of local songwriters sharing the original songs they each wrote on the same acoustic guitar. Hosted at The 04 Center, this event invites audiences into a warm, listening-room atmosphere where storytelling, artistry, and connection take center stage. Attendees can expect a meaningful, one-night-only experience that celebrates the creative process and the power of shared musical spaces.

This showcase will feature Natalie Price, Suzanna Choffel, Gina Chavez, Naala, Sydney Wright & Amethyst Jonquille.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

When you listen to Over the Rhine, the supremely talented musical couple comprised of Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, you quickly fall under the spell of Karin’s timeless voice “which has the power to stop the world in its tracks” (Performing Songwriter). But then the songs start hitting you. Paste magazine writes, “Over the Rhine creates true confessional masterpieces that know neither border nor boundary” and included Bergquist and Detweiler in their list of 100 Best Living Songwriters. Rolling Stone recently wrote, Over the Rhine is a band “with no sign of fatigue, whose moment has finally arrived.” That’s quite a sentiment for a band celebrating 30 years of writing, recording, and life on the road. But as Karin Bergquist states, “There is still so much music left to be made.” Love & Revelation, the new album from Over the Rhine, is a record for right now. The songs have been rigorously road tested and burst at the seams with loss, lament, and resilient hope. The LA Times writes, “The Ohio based husband and wife duo has long been making soul-nourishing music, and the richness only deepens.”

-

Over the Rhine's 15th studio album Love & Revelation arrives in time for 2019, the duo's 30th continuous year of writing, recording and touring together. In that time, singer-songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler (who've been married for 22 years) have built a vivid, emotionally-charged body of work that has won them a deeply devoted following and critical acclaim.

Like its predecessors, Love & Revelation showcases the pair's timeless songcraft and understated yet soulful delivery. Those qualities are prominent on such memorable new songs as "Los Lunas," "Let You Down," "Broken Angels" and "Making Pictures," whose insistent melodies and striking lyrical imagery haunt the listener long after the music fades.

The 11-song Love & Revelation, which the rural Ohio-based duo and their “Band of Sweethearts” recorded with longtime engineer Ryan Freeland at his Stampede Origin studio in Culver City, CA, continues Over the Rhine's career-long embrace of its unmistakable creative values.

"Each record we've released is authentic to a particular time in our lives," Detweiler notes. "They're all mile markers on a long road that beckoned to us in our youth. Karin did a lot of the heavy lifting on this record in terms of the songwriting and really set the tone for the project. We help edit each other's work, and it was so great to sit at the kitchen table together and let songs come fully into being. It's not always easy, but it is rewarding, and ultimately very intimate work. I'm so grateful for our musical connection at this point in our lives and marriage."

Although the duo's usual producer, Joe Henry, was unavailable to work on the new album due to a writing sabbatical in Ireland, many of Love & Revelation’s all-star cast of musicians originally came to Over the Rhine via Henry:

Jay Bellerose, drums, percussion

Jennifer Condos, hollow-body bass

Greg Leisz, electric guitar, pedal steel, mandolin

Patrick Warren, keyboards, string arrangements

Bradley Meinerding, electric guitar, mandolin

Henry's influence is also felt in Love & Revelation's title. Bergquist continues: "Joe always used to sign off in his emails and letters with 'Love & Revelation, JH.' It was a little blessing he would offer—his wish, I suppose, being that anyone who came into his circle would know love and be open to being surprised. The

Even after three decades of record-making, Bergquist and Detweiler still find fulfillment and inspiration in the creative process. "The poet Christina Rosetti has a poem that begins, Does the road wind up hill all the way?," Bergquist explains, "She assures us that it does indeed, until the very end, but there are surprising rewards along the way nonetheless. We don't know that it ever really gets easier. But we will say the actual recording of the songs is a joy, and is something that we just get caught up in. The lion's share of this record was recorded in just three days, with a sympathetic group of musicians leaning in together. It's something you can get high on for weeks. But writing songs, the mixing process and fine-tuning things toward the end—it can be a bit harrowing as well."

"Priorities change as the years pass," Detweiler observes. "There's a line in one of the new songs, 'Betting on the Muse,' The fact that you still make me laugh is what I'm most proud of. That's probably the best definition of success we can come up with at the moment. Thank God we're still laughing."

"But honestly, there is a fair amount of grieving on this record too," Detweiler adds. "We aren't kids anymore, and we've buried people we love over the years. Nobody gets out of this world alive.”

"One song that I had been working on for years is 'Los Lunas,'" Bergquist notes. "It ended up being the first track on the record, and the narrator in the song states a simple fact at the outset: I cried all the way from Los Lunas to Santa Fe. We realized that we were grieving. And I think a lot of people are. Why are we grieving? We've lost loved ones. We've seen our friends struggling with loss—the loss of a child, or a partner. We've seen friends and family members struggling with chronic illness, or a daunting cancer diagnosis. As Willie Nelson wrote in one of his recent songs, It's not something you get over, it's just something you get through. A lot of these new songs are coming to terms with our realization that certain losses will be carried with us for the rest of our lives."

"We know a lot of people turn on the news and are in shock at what they are seeing," says Detweiler. "Beneath that shock is grief. We are grieving the fact that we aren't quite sure who we are anymore as Americans. Things are shifting and being revealed.”

"But then the record takes a turn," Bergquist points out. "Some things haven't changed. We still believe in love and revelation. We still believe in meaningful work. We keep going, and with the darkness falling, we still find reason to dance."

That attitude is shared by Over the Rhine's audience, which continues to

embrace the duo's music with a heartfelt intensity that transcends mere fandom.

"We think of the people who have found our music less as fans, and more as extended musical family," says Bergquist. "We didn't necessarily plan it this way, but our music has been very effective at creating community. People who find our music tend to invite it into their big moments: falling in love, walking down the aisle, giving birth, decorating for Christmas… All the way through to the hardest stuff, like a period of extended illness, putting loved ones in the ground and saying goodbye."

Indeed, every Memorial Day weekend, Bergquist and Detweiler host Nowhere Else Festival on their farm in Clinton County, Ohio, where they're in the process of transforming an historic 1870s barn into a performing arts center. The duo invites a variety of musicians, writers, filmmakers and visual artists to join them for a weekend of music, art and conversation. Those gatherings have been described as extended musical family reunions for the band and its fans.

"There are different questions a young artist can ask," Detweiler observes. "One is, 'What must I do to be famous?,' which swings the door open to all manner of destructive forces from both within and without. Another question is, 'What must I do to make this sustainable, to practice a craft for the long haul, to continue to grow over the course of an entire lifetime?' The second question has always been far more interesting to us. And to make a career sustainable, we had to establish a fair bit of independence early on.”

"We can, and will, reflect on the last 30 years of making music, and we'll lift a glass in 2019 to our 30th anniversary to be sure," says Bergquist. "But what's most important and more interesting to us is to think about what's ahead: the next 30 years.”

"Eventually we want to record much of our music in the barn, host concerts, workshops etc.," says Detweiler. "Our big idea moving forward is: Wouldn't it be great to make music in front of a great live audience and then sleep in our own beds every now and then?”

"For years people have been telling us that they find our songs healing," says Bergquist. "Or they come to Nowhere Else Festival, and describe the weekend as 'healing.' It used to always surprise us. But in recent years we have experienced it ourselves. We always feel better when the music starts. We can feel our bodies change. We breathe easier. We begin to believe that all may be well in the end."

"Maybe the best thing we can do for someone who is struggling is just to let them know they're not alone," Detweiler adds. "A good song can do that. So a

Karin concludes, “We are rhymers. And there is still so much music left to be made.”

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Decades of songwriting to process the joy and pain of living has led Skyla Rose to where she is today. Her upcoming singles, “Caffeine and a Dream” and “New Mexico” (recorded and produced by Mike Meadows) reflect a period of transformation that brought her back to the stage with a new perspective. 

The transformation came in fits and spurts starting in 2018 when a personal crisis led her to drive herself to New Mexico. After a week communing with the loneliness of the desert and the spirit of Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch, it became clear that things had to change. In her pursuit of stability, she had lost the music that made her who she was.

She quit a stable (yet boring) career to return to waiting tables and bartending, going back to school, playing music again, and starting over at age 30. She worked 2-3 jobs scraping by for years, but things made sense again. She had something to work towards and live for.

These years of hard work and transformation birthed a collection of songs that will speak to anyone who has ever wanted to change their life or return to a truer version of themself. Her smooth Americana melodies and guitar voicings weave together stories and images that will make you want to get in your car and drive to some new beginning.

--

Singer-songwriter Kristy Chapa has always known she’s meant to make music, even after years of trying to stay in the safe lane of teaching and administration. “Life is short,” she says. “I wasn’t going to spend it wondering ‘what if?’”A lifelong musician, Kristy started piano at three, taught herself guitar in middle school, and added flute and harp in high school, where she wrote her first song. From marching band to mariachi, each experience set the stage for the storyteller she is today—blending folk, Americana, and timeless lyricism shaped by artists like Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, and Madison Cunningham.

Though she studied English and Secondary Education at Texas State University, Kristy spent just as much time in the music building as any major, finding her voice through choirs, open mics, and small collaborations. The turning point came in 2020, when writing became both a refuge and a calling, culminating in her debut single “Where I’m Supposed to Be”—an Americana anthem about gratitude and resilience.

Since then, Kristy has worked closely with an artist manager and local music venues, learning the ins and outs of the business side while continuing to grow creatively. Her forthcoming 2026 single, “At His Best”—produced by David Beck in Martindale, TX—is a heartfelt tribute to her father, exploring memory, mercy, and the imperfect love that shapes us all.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Butch Hancock returns to celebrate Townes’ 82nd Birthday! This long standing birthday celebration makes its debut at the 04 Center! 

Join us in this annual tradition that will feature old friends, new compadres & special guests performing the songs of THE Texas Troubadour in an intimate experience not to be missed.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

JD GRAHAM

JD Graham's journey from addiction and prison to purpose and sobriety is the lifeblood of his music. With raw, soul-bearing songwriting and a voice hardened by truth, the Oklahoma native and former death metal guitarist turned Americana troubadour writes songs that hit where it hurts-and heal where they need to.
His 2023 breakout album Pound of Rust and 2024 follow-up Sergeant of Sorrow earned him spots at Mile 0 Festival, Born & Raised, Songwriter festivals and coveted listening rooms across the globe. 
A songwriter's songwriter, Graham doesn't just perform-he connects.

His highly anticipated new album Uppers and Downers
Is scheduled to release in March 2026. Produced by Jason Weinheimer and Graham, the album has a strong supporting cast of fellow Okies including John Fullbright, Jesse Aycock, Paddy Ryan and Stephen Lee. 

"I write to reach people-on a barstool, in a prison cell, or in a crowd. Human connection is the point."

MIKE MCCLURE

To look at the last few years of Mike McClure’s life is to understand that there has been a life-altering awakening. It’s been a time of reckoning, renewal and growth for the singer, songwriter, artist and producer — a five-year span that’s resulted in Looking Up, 10 tracks that find him getting sober, wrestling with insecurity, finding a new love for both himself and others, and working to understand the new light he’s found in discovering that the best moments in life come from being present.

“I started the climb up and out of unhappiness a few years back, which resulted in the end of a long marriage. I looked inside and called into light things like jealousy and fear. I would pour booze or drugs on top of things that hurt me instead of admitting these things and getting to the root cause. It’s been a hard couple of years, to say the least, but I feel as though I’m up and out of it. Now it’s up to me to continue to do the work that will keep me in this space,” he says.

To understand what Looking Up, as an album, means, it’s crucial to grasp the story beyond it. Mike got his start in Stillwater, Oklahoma, playing at the notorious "Farm" with legendary artists including Bob Childers, Tom Skinner, Steve Ripley, and Jimmy LaFave, and later was a founding member of The Great Divide. The band signed to Atlantic Records in 1998, and "I'd Rather Have Nothing," written by Mike and initially recorded by the band, was later recorded by Garth Brooks for his 2005 limited series box set, The Lost Sessions, which has sold over 2 million copies.

Mike was also the permanent producer for Red Dirt favorites Cross Canadian Ragweed, and "Fighting For," written by Mike and Cody Canada reached number 39 on the Billboard Hot Country charts. He has also produced albums by other artists including the Turnpike Troubadours, Tom Skinner, Jason Boland & the Stragglers, and many others. 

Two decades as a touring musician and nine albums of his own later, he’s taking a new route with Looking Up. He and his partner, Chrislyn Lawrence, created and produced the album on their own, at his Boohatch Studio in Ada, Oklahoma. It’s a different kind of collaboration for Mike, who worked closely with Joe Hardy, the famed ZZ Top producer and engineer, in the decade prior to Joe’s death in 2019.

“This album is different because I’m not doing it with Joe,” Mike says. “I met him in 2005, and we went on to collaborate up until his death last year. He was an absolute genius who taught me how to make a record. This time I’ve sat down with Chrislyn and not only has she given me a fresh look at how I do things, but she has also helped me grow so much emotionally that it bleeds over into the tracks.” 

Looking Up begins with “I Am Not Broken,” an anthemic track that realizes the past can be more than simplifying definitions. Later in the album, “Become Someday” offers the advice that who we are currently shouldn’t limit our possibilities, while “Dying to Try” is a reminder that the better version of ourselves is always waiting in the wings.  

“Distractions” revisits a previously recorded track, offering a stripped-down suggestion to not let diversions keep you from digging into the truth. There is one small, illuminating change to the current version, though -- the addition of the line, “You are not your past.”

“There is a place I get to when I’m fully inspired and my mouth is connected to my heart and it all just comes flowing out,” Mike says. “That’s what I’ve been looking for for a while. But I had to get down to what was in my heart again.”

“Holiday Blown” takes a deep look at addiction, told through a character sketch of a soldier back from a war and the repercussions of combat on everything around them, aiming to bring a bit of empathy to the table.

“My grandpa was a front line tank mechanic in WWII,” he says.”He was on the march to Berlin that toppled the Nazis. When he came home, he stayed drunk. I imagined all of the holidays that were blown by his drinking, as well as the ones I ruined myself.”

Both “Your Kind of Blue” and “Little Bit of Love” are tried-and-true love songs, while “Here I Am” continues the theme of the transformative effect love can have on a life. As he says: “It’s a little bit strange now / How in just one moment all your everything / It just has to change and you can’t go back to who you were / ‘Cause you are not the same.”  

“Orion,” the album’s centerpiece, finds the constellation working as a guiding force, providing an opportunity for introspection, as the night sky often does.  

“Sword & Saddle” looks at the importance of taking the time to listen and act with conviction. “Sometimes I am so sure of what side I’m on and can’t wait to get into battle,” he says. “I’m learning to show a little restraint and composure, which I suppose is growing up.” 

“This is the first time I’ve ever paid attention to politics,” he continues. “I think I was so in my own head, that I wasn’t really taking a look around to see what was happening with and to the 0ther people around me. I wrote this after seeing the way our ‘leaders’ were handling COVID-19, but it’s taken on a new light for me since George Floyd was murdered and I’m learning more about the experience of Black people in America. In some ways, it may have been the foreshadowing of my first awkward political conversations, that I’m now finally having at the age of 48.” 

Within these tracks, it’s clear that every piece of Mike McClure’s life is in the midst of changing — and he’s finally seeing that as a good thing. 

“I’ve been sober a year, and I’ve been doing yoga and meditation. I’m in a healthy and love-filled relationship,” he says. “I haven’t been home or in one steady spot very much for the last 25 years of being a touring musician. Since being off the road these past few months, we’ve been tending to a garden, raising chickens and writing again. Our hands in the dirt, healing, and learning ways to think about and talk about sobriety and life, with each other, with strangers, and especially with my two daughters—they’re 21 and 17. Being here at home with them, and being truly present for the first time, has allowed some healing to begin for us all. It’s been so peaceful and grounding. I'm really grateful for it all.” 

LOGAN MAC

Growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, Logan Mac was immersed in the sounds of traditional Country music and the unique vibes of the Red Dirt Music scene, which deeply influenced his musical style. From a young age, his love for songwriting and performing blossomed as he shared his melodies with loved ones.

Life took him on a varied path as he married his wife, Sierra, and embraced fatherhood with three beautiful daughters, balancing his time between his family and a career in the oil field and starting an excavation company .These experiences gave him a wealth of inspiration, allowing him to craft relatable and heartfelt lyrics that resonate with working-class Americans.

With a debut album set to be released in the fall of 2025, Logan Mac is eager to share his music with the world and looks forward to the support of friends, family, and fans as he embarks on this exciting new chapter.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

GABE LEE

Equal parts classic songwriter and modern-day storyteller, Gabe Lee has built his own bridge between country, folk and rock over the

course of three acclaimed albums. His latest release, The Hometown Kid, finds him distilling those sounds into something sharp and singular, examining his roots as a Nashville native along the way. Released October 28th via Torrez Music Group, The Hometown Kid is a record about arrivals and departures, homes and homecomings, the places we leave and the lessons we carry with us.

A mix of autobiography and richly imaginative character studies, The Hometown Kid finds room for southern piano ballads, amplified rock, intimate folk songs, and gospel rave-ups. The stories themselves are equally diverse. Laced with childhood memories and hometown references, the anthemic "Rusty" unfolds like a love letter from a restless road warrior to the city he's left countless times before. Songs like "Buffalo Road" (named after a country lane that Lee visited often during his teenage years, "just to sneak away with my friends, look at the stars, and be somewhere else") and "Wide Open" continue exploring the push and pull of one's birthplace. "Kinda Man" paints a different picture, with lyrics that detail the hard-won wisdom and half-baked follies of a salt-of-the-earth dishwasher who worked alongside Lee during his days as a bartender. A track that's equal parts country song and southern fable, "Never Rained Again" is a song about taking a rougher road that eventually leads to greener pastures, while the empathetic "Lonely" takes its inspiration from fellow songwriter Justin Townes Earle, who passed away during the lockdown of 2020.

"This album is about departing and returning to your hometown," Lee explains. "More specifically, it's about the discovery, searching, and maturing that comes not only with being gone, but with returning to the place you come from."

Raised by Taiwanese immigrants, Lee grew up surrounded not only by Nashville's rich legacy of country music, but also the classical songs and gospel hymns that his piano-playing mother performed weekly in church. "A lot of my friends' parents were musicians, too," he remembers. "Music was always around me, and it became the driving force for everything I did."

Before he could launch his career as one of Nashville's hometown heroes, though, Lee first needed to leave town. Craving new horizons, he headed to Indiana, where he finished college with degrees in literature and journalism. Living in the Midwest gave him a renewed perspective on his Nashville roots, and when he returned home, he began writing songs that drew upon the narrative skills he'd sharpened as a student. His debut album, 2019's farmland, focused on his timeless melodies and deft delivery, while 2020's Honky Tonk Hell showcased a widescreen version of Lee's countrified sound. The reception was seismic. Rolling Stone praised Honky Tonk Hell as one of the "30 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2020," and Lee found himself sharing shows with Jason Isbell, Los Lobos, and other artists who, like him, embraced the full spectrum of roots music.

Lee recorded The Hometown Kid during his busiest year as a touring musician, finding time between shows to enter Farmland Studio — where he also created his two previous albums — with a band of country pickers and heartland rockers. Together, they laced his songs with electric guitar, upright piano, pedal steel, and fiddle. Most of the songs were tracked live, with Lee — his voice in sharp shape, fine-tuned by a schedule of rapid-fire gigs — delivering the most compelling performances of his career. After several days of recording, he'd inevitably hit the road again, bidding another temporary goodbye to Nashville. No wonder The Hometown Kid is so nuanced with its depiction of the comings and goings of a wandering soul — it was created amidst a backdrop of goodbyes, arrivals, late-night drives, early-morning wake-up calls, and life-affirming shows.

Like a collection of postcards sent from various stops along the road, The Hometown Kid is a snapshot of an artist in motion. It's the soundtrack to a journey that's forever unfolding, with Gabe Lee writing not only about where he's going, but where he's been, too.

WILL OVERMAN

Will Overman is a man coming into focus.

The Virginia-raised singer-songwriter spent the last four years watching his first solo album slide away in the rearview mirror. The life he had when he wrote and recorded The Winemaker’s Daughter is gone. His sophomore effort, Stranger, finds Overman with eyes fixed firmly on the dotted line unspooling ahead of him.

“The album is the most fully realized version of me,” the musician says. That’s evident in the tracks. “Virginia is For Lovers,” an earworm of a single released last year, is peak Overman — nuanced, specific, and catchy as all hell. “Held Up by a Woman,” the most recent single, builds on an acoustic foundation toward a powerful, cathartic, electric release. Meanwhile, the intensely autobiographical “The Bottom” finds Overman wrestling with relatable questions of doubt, life choices, relationships, and mistakes — all without providing easy answers.

Recent converts will find much to explore in Overman’s densely layered tunes. And longtime fans will be happy to hear that Overman’s signature traits — deft storytelling embedded in hooky tunes, anchored by precise lyricism and powerful delivery — are all present and accounted for on Stranger.

But don’t expect Overman to stay in one place, musically or otherwise.

Restless by nature, a traveler with a poet’s eye for mountains but a working man’s taste for road food, Overman’s always on the move. He comes by it naturally.

That’s because Overman spent his formative years as a child of two worlds. Summer surf sessions in Virginia Beach gave way to fall backpacking expeditions in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rinse, wash, repeat. Sunscreen and fly rods, flip flops and hiking boots. Two different landscapes. Two different soundtracks. Rock and pop where water meets earth, bluegrass and folk where trees meet the sky. Somewhere in between, maybe on the interstate between Virginia’s edges and its heart, that’s where the country music is.

Ask Overman about his influences, and he’s just as likely to say The Killers as the Avett Brothers. So it’s inevitable all those worlds would sonically collide inside Overman’s head. A live performance will probably include a harmonica. But you’ll also get a good old-fashioned rock show. Or is it alt-country? Alternative?

Impossible to say, and that’s just the way Overman likes it. That’s because the versatile singer-songwriter has some road behind him now. Has lived enough life to know it doesn’t matter what you call a thing as long as it does the job. And that’s what Overman’s songs do. Aided by unforgettable vocal delivery, Overman fires each track directly at the heart by way of the ears.

Overman is as hard to pin down as his music, a trait illustrated in the album bookend “Landlocked Heart.”

“He lived out of a bag, will read my epitaph,” the song begins. “Ten years on the road, not much to show but a show. Late nights in a van, I don’t know where I am. Loading in and loading out, I never get to see the town.”

It’s an accurate description of a life Overman’s passionate about — playing live music for a real audience. Between brief stays in Nashville, the musician ceaselessly roams the country, solo and with his band. He’s also toured with acts like Boy Named Banjo, Austin Plaine, Justin Wells, and Jonathan Peyton. Notable headlining gigs include the State Fair of Virginia and Artisphere Music and Arts Festival, while a powerful set at Ocean Fest won new fans.

It’s not easy, but it’s real, and it’s true — things the maturing artist values more than anything else these days.

So yeah, Overman’s coming into focus. But he’s moving too fast to stay there long. And anyway, what’s the point of sitting around?

MASON LIVELY

Austin, TX based Country/Americana artist Mason Lively has a sound that’s simple yet complex, easy-feeling but gritty and weathered, inspiring yet heartbreaking. It’s no stretch to say that there’s a song for every emotion in Mason Lively’s catalog.

Born in Victoria, Texas, but raised just outside of town in the rural community of Inez, Mason grew up in a country music atmosphere. Though he enjoyed and was exposed to many types of music, he would obsessively listen to artists far beyond his years, like Willie Nelson, The Eagles, and Merle Haggard to name a few. Growing up, while also being influenced by Pop, Folk, Soul, Blues, and Classic Rock, Mason started to take interest and study the songwriting of artists from his home state’s music scene. Mason claims that song-writing "snuck up on him" around then.

Years later, with the release of his 2018 debut album “Stronger Ties”, Lively and his band hit the road, touring all over Texas and the regional south, while opening up for Country music’s biggest stars. Lively then released his sophomore self-titled album on March 19th, 2021, Co-produced by Wade Bowen. Songs from that album, including “Love Ain’t Done A Damn Thing”, have accumulated millions of listens and streams. Mason released his 3rd record, “Burn The Ground”, on July 12, 2024. The title track, “Burn The Ground” was also featured in season 2 of the hit show “Landman” on Paramount+.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

With a quarter million miles under her belt and counting, North Carolina native Emily Scott Robinson travels the dusty highways of America's wild country, capturing the stories of the people she meets and expertly crafting them into songs. Robinson received critical acclaim for her debut album Traveling Mercies-- Rolling Stone named it one of the “40 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2019.” In 2021, Robinson signed with Oh Boy records, the label founded by the legendary John Prine, and released her follow-up album American Siren. It made numerous “Best of 2021” lists including NPR, Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, and No Depression. In 2022, Robinson released a collaboration for theater called Built on Bones, a song cycle written for the Witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth, featuring artists Alisa Amador and Violet Bell.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Bob Schneider

Austin, Texas-based singer-songwriter and former frontman of The Ugly Americans and The Scabs, Bob Schneider is one of the most-celebrated musicians in the live music capital. Combining diverse styles, Schneider’s music spans genres, blending elements of folk, rock, rap, funk, bluegrass, reggae and country with the more traditional singer/songwriter aesthetic. In short, FRUNK.

Schneider has won more than 59 Austin Music Awards including Best Album, Best Songwriter, Best Musician, and Best Male Vocals making him the most decorated artist in Austin’s storied music history.

Schneider’s fan base reaches far beyond the city limits of Austin. He started gaining national recognition with his major-label debut for Universal Records, Lonelyland. A fiercely-independent artist, Schneider opted to start his own label, Shockorama Records, which has afforded him the freedom to make the music his fans love, on his own terms.

Schneider’s live performances, both solo and with the band, are legendary. A two-time performer on his hometown’s famed Austin City Limits television show, he is also in the 20th year of his residency at The Saxon Pub. All told, he plays over a hundred shows a year and he doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.

Mitch Watkins

Mitch Watkins discovered the guitar at age 13. Only months later, he was gigging with a surf band in McAllen, Texas. He hasn't stopped since. His musical journey has taken him down many stylistic pathways, and to the far corners of the globe. He is most grateful for his talents and successes, and humbled by how much more there is to learn.

"A man for all musical seasons."

- Jazz Times

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

THE ASK ME ANYTHING TOUR

A seated, interactive, concert experience. Guests will be able to ask questions during the set, hear stories Donavon has never told before, come up on stage to jam for a song, request songs you’ve always wanted Donavon to play, and so much more.

Exclusive merch items, original paintings by Donavon, and clothing from The Barn 808 will be available! Don’t miss it!

For nearly four decades Donavon Frankenreiter has been travelling the globe, first as a professional surfer and now as a musician. Born in Southern California, Donavon spent most of his youth chasing waves, turning pro at the age of 16. 
 These days instead of surf competitions, it’s concert halls that brings Frankenreiter to town, where he entertains audiences with his unique blend of laid-back grooves, philosophical lyrics and soulful delivery. 
 You can find him touring the world with his three-piece band and still catching waves anytime he can.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Will Hoge has a career whose milestones include Number One hits, Grammy nods, major-label record deals, and hard-won independence. Years before Americana music received its own category at the Grammy Awards, Hoge was on the frontlines, helping to pilot and popularize the genre's blend of American roots music. In the current digital era dominated by influencers seeking shortcuts to stardom, Will Hoge proudly treads the scenic route, immersing himself in the journey rather than fixating on the destination.

Will Hoge released Sweet Misery, the Grammy-nominated artist’s 15th studio album in August.

On Sweet Misery, Hoge reminds listeners that he isn’t afraid to break new ground - all while giving a keen nod to his rock and roll roots with the kind of grace and purpose that only comes with experience - without the baggage of predictability.

In Will's own words - “Following the re-recording and re-releases of Carousel and Blackbird On A Lonely Wire I found myself really wanting to make a louder, hooky, rock-n-roll band record again. Good stories, big choruses, shit to make you play it loud and drive fast with the windows down. I was without a band so I enlisted a crew of folks who I love - folks that I believed could really help bring out the bigger ideas in the songs. I hope folks will find some headphones and give it a good, loud listen. Top to bottom, the way albums should be listened to.”

—

After years of collaborating in bands, Blake Brown shifted his focus to his own project: Blake Brown & The American Dust Choir. The intention was to create a project with full flexibility where he could play solo, duo (with his wife and mainstay member Tiffany), and with a rotating cast of musician friends. Rooted in acoustic sounds and characterized by seemingly simple, but nuanced melodies and heartfelt lyrics, Brown ignites a sense of bold honesty across a catalog of sincere songs spanning the genres of Singer-Songwriter, Folk, Rock n’ Roll, Indie, and Americana. Throughout many years of establishing himself in the Colorado music scene, the American Dust Choir has included members of The Fray, The Films, American Football, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Tennis, and Wovenhand. Marked by a captivating subtleness, Brown’s music and stage presence draws in his audience and leaves them wanting more.

March of 2018 found the band releasing its debut full-length album, Long Way Home; a ten-song collection of well-crafted, Indie-Americana works produced by Joe Richmond (Churchill, American Authors, Bon Iver). Upon the release of the album, the band performed multiple official showcases at SXSW in Austin, TX, including Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater supporting Keith Urban. Following SXSW, Brown went on the road supporting Justin Townes Earle as an acoustic duo. Arriving home from tour, the band continued to perform regional festivals in the Rocky Mountains and performed with such acts as Rayland Baxter, The Band of Heathens, ZZ Ward, and Son Volt. Brown also appeared at Moeller Nights GAS Feed & Seed Festival IV in Davenport, Iowa alongside Early James and Ruston Kelly. Songs “Fever Dreams” and “Between the Lines” were licensed to MTV while “Kissing Knives” was featured in The CW hit series, In The Dark.

On the heels of Long Way Home’s success and maintaining their momentum, Blake and band returned to the studio to record Turning Tides again with Producer/Engineer Joe Richmond. The band continued to add to its repertoire, this time approaching a less straightforward Americana sound, and striving for a more minimalistic and spatial sound with high sonic production influenced by Brown’s love for Daniel Lanois, U2, and The Cure. Turning Tides was released in Fall of 2019. Upon its release, the band continued to play locally and regionally, all while picking up steam nationwide and performing in high reputable venues such as Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, Rockwood Music Hall in New York City, and SPACE in Chicagoland.

Just as all pistons were firing, years of hard work came to a screeching halt when the COVID-19 pandemic was announced. It was due to this new found era of unlimited time that Brown found himself in a state of self-reflection and reassessment. During this uncertain time, he found a sense of comfort and familiarity in picking up his guitar and returning to songwriting basics.

With a new view on the preciousness of life, Blake, Tiffany, and their daughter left Colorado and relocated to Nashville, Tennessee. Shortly after settling into Nashville, and with a new batch of songs, Blake and Tiffany hit Cartoon Moon Recording Studio with Producer Ken Coomer (Uncle Tupelo/Wilco) in East Nashville. On production and drums duty, Coomer brought a lively perspective to the songs. With Blake on guitars/vocals, Tiffany on keys/piano/vocals, Sam Wilson on guitars and Scotty Huff on bass, the result is a 5 song EP titled, Don’t Look Back. Don’t Look Back was released September 30, 2022 with complimentary reviews and premieres from The Bluegrass Situation (BGS), Lonesome Highway, Atwood Magazine, Americana UK, and more…

Brown is now based in Austin, Texas and recently released his latest full length album, Show Me The Light, on October 4, 2024. The album is Produced by Grammy Nominated Producer, Chris Frenchie Smith (Jet, Meat Puppets, Built to Spill, and more). Singles and the album are featured in The Bluegrass Situation (BGS), Americana U.K., and Rolling Stone.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

From their beginnings in mid-Sixties Ohio as a group of friends playing cover tunes to the present-day unit featuring the propulsive team of drummer Scott Thompson and bassist Jared Camic, keyboard master Randy Harper, guitar ace/vocalist Jeff Zona and Pedal Steel/Saxophonist John Heinrich, PURE PRAIRIE LEAGUE continues to embellish the rich 50-plus year history of one of Country-Rock’s pioneering forces. As one reviewer recently wrote: “PPL’s sound combines sweet memories with edgy, contemporary muscle. Their vocals are as strong as Kentucky moonshine and the musicianship and performance skills are as sharp as a straight razor”.

 Their eponymous first album – featuring the Norman Rockwell/Saturday Evening Post cover that introduced fans to PPL’s trademark cowpoke “Sad Luke” – has been hailed as a “major early influence in the emerging popularity of Country-Rock music”. Their second effort, the multi-platinum “Bustin’ Out” brought us the Craig Fuller-penned classic “Amie”, along with other gems of the genre. With “Two Lane Highway”, nine more albums and countless shows, a legacy has been forged and enriched, highlighting contributions from several noteworthy members, including original co-founder George Ed Powell, Cincinnati’s legendary Goshorn Brothers, Country Hall of Famers Gary Burr and Vince Gill, award-winning writer Jeff Wilson (3 Top-20 singles), top Nashville session vocalist Curtis Wright, and a host of other guest appearances from Chet Atkins, Johnny Gimble, EmmyLou Harris, David Sanborn, Don Felder, Nicolette Larson, Rosemary Butler, Jenifer Wrinkle, Jeff (Birdman) Kirk, Mat Britain and many more.

 Now in their sixth decade, Pure Prairie League continues to lead the way for the new generation of Country/Rockers such as Keith Urban, Nickel Creek, Wilco, Counting Crows and so many others that cite PPL as a major influence.

 With the release of their new album “Back On Track” PPL brings it all back home with a dozen new songs that complete the circle begun in 1970 and continues to this day.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Depending on who’s talking, Walker Lukens is “one of the best songwriters in Texas” (Free Press Houston), “a non-sexually threatening version of Prince” (Austin Chronicle), and “a rhythmic sound effect master” (All Songs Considered). So does that make him pop? Rock? “Who cares!” says NPR of the Austin-based singer, songwriter, and producer. “Walker Lukens is loyal to only one category: excellence.” Walker is also the co-creator and host of the songwriting-confessional podcast called, coincidentally, Song Confessional, and co-owns Paradise Lunch, a recording studio where he produced his fourth studio record, Accessible Beauty, which is out this summer.

--

Acclaimed indie singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mobley returns with a sprawling, epic concept album, "We Do Not Fear Ruins," via Last Gang Records / MNRK Music Group. Written, performed, and produced by Mobley himself,this release continued the sci-fi concept album foreshadowed in his previous music and video releases, following the mysterious dissident Jacob Creedmoor. Traversing cinematic art rock, indie ballads and progressive, psych pop, Mobley’s sound mirrors the vast scope of his story's narrative. Championed by Billboard, Alt Nation, American Songwriter, KCRW, Rolling Stone and more, he continues to impress audiences nationwide with his immersive and captivating live shows.

Doors @ 6pm
Show @ 7pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

45 years.

It seemed to go by in a blur, pounding the road, seeing the world, raising babies and sending them to college, mowing lawns, romances, marriages, high school drama, endless airports, the nights at the Hollywood Bowl, the night at the Red Barn in Louisville dodging various barroom projectiles, frozen diesel lines, blast furnace desert heat, hours of practice, late nights and early mornings, and lots and lots and lots of laughter.

No laptops, no cellular phones, no Google, no downloads, no Skype, no Tweets, no Apple, no Microsoft, no texting, no electric cars, no Uber. A different world. But there were three young men with drive and wit who wanted to keep a special music alive. They believed in preserving the heritage of Western Music and presenting it to a new generation. They believed in entertaining, and they did so… entertaining themselves as well as the audience! And they believed in creating original Western Music to continue the tradition, not just seal it in amber as a museum piece. What they did not realize at the time was that they would be doing the same thing 45 years later.

45 years ago, Ranger Doug, Too Slim and the late Windy Bill Collins played that first date on the bitter cold evening of November 11th, 1977 at Herr Harry’s Frank N’ Stein Rathskeller in Nashville, and small listening room dates followed. By August of the following year demand was building, and while Windy Bill left, Woody Paul joined, and the true professional beginnings of the band began at the Kentucky State Fair, where the trio played 10 days for $2500 - and bought their own rooms and meals out of that!

A first wave followed, including appearances on Austin City Limits; recording contracts with Rounder, then MCA, then Columbia; guest appearances on the Grand Ole Opry leading to membership in 1982; and a three-year run on The Nashville Network with a TV show called “Tumbleweed Theater,” which yet in turn led to a seven-year run on public radio with “Riders Radio Theater. People Magazine, interested in the Riders phenomenon, ran a story which happily caught the eye of a Hollywood producer.

And so the second wave broke, sending the boys to Hollywood to star in “Riders In The Sky” on CBS for a year on Saturday mornings, introducing them to yet another generation. More recordings, endless show dates, and television appearances followed for a decade before the fine folks at Pixar called and asked the quartet – by this time they had been joined by Joey the Cowpolka King – to sing a tune called “Woody’s Roundup” in the movie “Toy Story 2.” Thus, the third wave began, highlighted by a number of projects for Disney, including two albums, both of which won GRAMMY Awards!

The creation of satellite radio has recently given them a new platform, as they continue to produce episodes of the award-winning “Classic Cowboy Corral” on Sirius/XM.

Still more road dates and recordings (several on their own Riders Radio Records label) and other film and television projects have filled the days and weeks and years, and since the quartet has slowed up very little, the numbers begin to add up: an astonishing 7,200+ appearances, 35 years on the Grand Ole Opry, 40 records albums (well, now CDs,) and tours of all 50 states and all over the world.

Honors accumulated as well. In addition to the two Grammy Awards, Riders received numerous awards from the Western Music Association, including the highest: membership in the Western Music Hall of Fame; numerous Wrangler awards from the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum; awards from the Academy of Western Artists; enshrinement in the Walkway of Western Stars, and more. What began as a celebration of classic Western Music and an evening of hilarity has become a career, and that career has become a legend, one which, 40 years on, shows no signs of stopping or even slowing down much.

Ranger Doug, Too Slim, Woody Paul and Joey the Cowpolka King… 45 years on, “The Cowboy Way.

Doors @ 7:00pm
Show @ 8:00pm
All Ages
Full Bar
Free On-Site Parking

On the honey shores of Cape Cod in a beach shack during the summer of 2020, Courtney Marie Andrews found self-love and her voice. Every morning, she’d walk 6-8 miles around the back trails of an island and meditate on her life, perusing old memories and patterns like browsing a used bookshop. That summer of introspection led her to a joyous sense of beginnings and ends. When she let love for herself in, she therein let the outside love in, too—the summer feeling, the swaying cypress, the full moon, and the possibility of healthy love. This phase came only right after one of her darkest, though, where being alone with oneself was the most terrifying thing you could do. After more than a decade on the road, the Phoenix-born songwriter, poet, and painter finally had the space to process all the highs and lows of a life of constants. She was finally ready to make a record of triumph, while not completely forgetting the years that made her. Produced with Sam Evian at his New York studio, that record is Loose Future, out October 7 on Fat Possum Records. Her guideposts were lots of harmonies and alternative percussion. The rest was pure exploration. At Flying Cloud Recordings, she dipped in the creek every morning before proceeding for the day. She wanted to embody the feeling of letting love in. Taking the dip is what letting love in feels like. Sometimes you plunge, and sometimes you walk slowly in.

--

Nashville's Taylor Zachry is getting set to release his debut solo album, aptly titled Songs I've Had Forever. He plays in the beloved Nashville band Blank Range and has toured with artists like Courtney Marie Andrews, Erin Rae, Yola, Rayland Baxter, and Jonny Fritz to name a few. In 2020, he teamed up with producer Ryan McFadden (Torres, Meg Elsier, Parker Millsap) to start recording his own songs. What started as a straightforward Nashville indie-folk record morphed over the following years into an exploration of Taylor himself, both the person and the artist.

Over the course of making this album, both Ryan and Taylor faced some of life's most defining events: family deaths, marriage, falling in and out of love, truly staring in the face of life's biggest and toughest truths. In the words of Ryan, "Nothing but truth holds up after five years of life’s tumbling."

The resulting album, Songs I've Had Forever, is truth at its core. It is a record that feels as if it arrived from somewhere else - dug up from a mysterious basement somewhere or one that magically appeared in your collection. It is for fans of Neutral Milk Hotel, The Microphones, Sparklehorse: these enigmatic projects that feel like a window into something more.

Taylor has become known in circles of Nashville for his unpredictable and nearly indescribable live shows that blend songs from his record with semi-improvised and intensely refreshing performances using cassette tape loops, a Barbie karaoke machine, and other objects.

In the words of producer Ryan McFadden:

"The record began to sound unearthed more than constructed. We no longer knew the guys who built it and therefore we could love it without ego, and judge it without ego, the work had nothing much to do with us. Feeling the freedom in that, we wondered how to separate from a creation in real time, to have objectivity without distance. Taylor started trying to answer that question in his live shows. Not improvisation but somehow to be an immediate audience member to his own performance. What he learned from those shows he brought back to the studio. We put on the original tapes, worked intuitively and found a path that allowed us to finish the record."

Songs I've Had Forever has the potential to be indie canon. The kind of record you return to again and again, that changes and ages with you and always offers something more.

It's maybe best summed up by fellow Nashville musician and producer, Jerry Bernhardt (Courtney Marie Andrews, Erin Rae, Ron Gallo), in a note to Taylor after he first heard the record: "It speaks to all that is holy to me in music...So natural, absolutely next level. You have created such a world with this collection of songs. A bent, hallucinogenic, enchanting and inviting world."

Taylor has opening dates on an upcoming Courtney Marie Andrews tour in Spring of 2026 in both the US and EU.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

A Grammy-winning American guitar player and rock & roll Hall of Famer, Jorma Kaukonen is best known as a founding member of psychedelic rock legends Jefferson Airplane and cult blues-rockers Hot Tuna. His fingerstyle guitar method, which is rooted in blues, folk, and Americana, has made him an influential figure and in-demand instructor -- he operates his own guitar camp. In addition to his work with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, Kaukonen is a prolific collaborator and successful solo artist who has released albums at a steady pace since the late 1970s, including River of Time (2009), Ain't in No Hurry (2015), and The River Flows (2021).

Jorma Kaukonen was born and grew up in Washington, D.C., where he first turned to the guitar. He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early '60s, playing backup to singer Janis Joplin in local clubs. In 1965, Kaukonen became a founding member of Jefferson Airplane, which soared to fame in 1967. Though Kaukonen's songs and vocals were not prominently featured in the band, his distinctive guitar-playing was crucial to its sound.

With bassist Jack Casady, Kaukonen formed a spinoff duo from the group in 1970 called Hot Tuna, and this became his primary musical vehicle after Jefferson Airplane split in 1973. Hot Tuna recorded a series of albums on which Kaukonen sang and played guitar until 1978. After that, Kaukonen worked as a soloist and with such groups as Vital Parts (1980). Kaukonen reunited with Casady in Hot Tuna during the '80s, and both participated in the 1989 reunion of Jefferson Airplane. A Hot Tuna reunion album appeared the following year. Kaukonen remained active as the 20th century ended and the 21st began, regularly touring and recording in different configurations before finding a home with Red House Records , which released acclaimed efforts like Stars in My Crown, (2007), River of Time (2009), Ain't in No Hurry (2015), and The River Flows (2021). ~ William Ruhlmann & James Christopher Monger, Rovi

—

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

During the creative explosion that was country music in the 1990s Suzy Bogguss sold 4 million records with sparkling radio hits like “Outbound Plane”, “Someday Soon”, “Letting Go”, “Drive South”, and “Hey Cinderella". But you can’t peg Suzy that easily…

In the midst of her country popularity she took time off to make a duets album with the legendary Chet Atkins. In 2003 she made an album of modern swing music with Ray Benson of Asleep At The Wheel. An album of original music in 2007 landed her at number 4 on the jazz charts. Her folk music roots show through in her frequent appearances on public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion, in the Grammy she earned for her work on Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster, and in her critically acclaimed album and book project from 2011, American Folk Songbook. In 2014 she released Lucky, a collection of songs written by Merle Haggard and interpreted through Suzy’s crystal vocals from the female point of view. Her latest offering, Prayin’ For Sunshine, is an Americana tour de force with all songs written by Bogguss. She continues to tour the world, both on her own and with fellow country radio divas Terri Clark and Pam Tills as “Chicks With Hits” and more recently, with Kathy Mattea on their Together At Last tour. So yes, you can call her a country singer if you want, but really that’s just the beginning.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

“There was no ‘a-ha’ moment,” says Jonathon Linaberry, “no life-changing revelation, no singular flash of inspiration. It was just a fierce, steady, undeniable energy, a force of nature I had to wrestle and wrangle with for years until I could harness it.”

It’s easy to understand, then, why Linaberry—better known as The Bones of J.R. Jones—would call his mesmerizing new album Slow Lightning. As its title would suggest, the collection is raw and visceral, pulsating with an understated electrical current that flows just beneath its seemingly placid surface. The songs are restless and unsettled here, often grappling with doubt and desire in the face of nature and fate, and frequent collaborator Kiyoshi Matsuyama’s production is eerily hypnotic to match, with haunting synthesizers, vintage drum machines, and ghostly guitars fleshing out Linaberry’s already-cinematic brand of roots noir. The result is a moody, ominous work that’s equal parts Southern Gothic and transcendentalist meditation, an instinctual slice of piercing self-reflection that hints at everything from Bruce Springsteen and Bon Iver to James Murphy and J.J. Cale as it searches for meaning and purpose in a world without easy answers.

“I felt very lost at the time I was writing these songs,” Linaberry confesses. “It was a moment of deep crisis and anxiety, but I knew the only way out was through, which meant I just had to bring myself to the table every day and put in the work.”

Linaberry’s no stranger to putting in the work. Born and raised in central New York, he got his start playing in hardcore and punk bands before becoming enamored with the field recordings of Alan Lomax, who documented rural American blues, folk, and gospel musicians throughout the 1930s and ’40s. Inspired by the unvarnished honesty of those vintage performances, Linaberry launched The Bones of J.R. Jones in 2012 and, operating as a fully independent artist over the course of the ensuing decade, released three critically acclaimed albums along with a trio of similarly well received EPs; landed his songs in a slew of films and television series including Suits, Daredevil, Longmire, and Graceland; and toured the US and Europe countless times over as a one-man-band, playing guitar or banjo while simultaneously stomping a modified drum kit everywhere from Telluride Blues to Savannah Stopover. Along the way, Linaberry also shared bills with the likes of The Wallflowers, G. Love, and The Devil Makes Three, soundtracked an Amazon commercial helmed by Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi, and earned praise from Billboard, American Songwriter, and Under the Radar, among others.

After living in constant motion for the better part of ten years, though, Linaberry found himself at an unexpected standstill in 2021. At the time, he and his wife had recently relocated from Brooklyn to an old farmhouse in the Catskills, and the change of pace was both rewarding and challenging all at once.

“It’s a pretty remote, rural area we moved to,” Linabery explains, “the kind of place where spring is just a continuation of the cold, grey, muddy, brown of winter. I was exhausted by the seasons, working on songs nine hours a day in the attic, and it all felt very isolated and insular.”

Where the most recent Bones of J.R. Jones release, 2021’s A Celebration, drew inspiration from a trip into the vast, desert expanses of the American southwest, the songs that began taking shape in upstate New York this time around were more difficult to pin down, seeming to come and go of their own accord.

“That’s where the notion of ‘slow lightning’ was born,” Linaberry explains. “It’s about a power you can’t control, a force that’s bigger than you and follows its own path no matter how badly you want to mold or direct it. That’s what this record felt like, and it’s something I had to figure out how to embrace.”

That kind of all-consuming power is palpable from the start on Slow Lightning, which begins with the boisterous “Animals.” Gritty and insistent, the track taps into something primal and uninhibited, learning to trust its gut and make peace with aiming high and sometimes falling short. “Well my heart’s just trying to kill me,” Linaberry sings over roiling guitars and drums. “It always vibrates above / With always grand notions / But it plays in the mud.” Like so much of the album, it’s a testament to resilience, to letting go of failure and pressing on even when things feel hopeless. The bittersweet title track explores tenacity in the face of disenchantment, while the lo-fi “Blue Skies” insists on reaching for hope regardless of the cost, and “The Flood” conjures up a wistful portrait of survival and loss as it builds from a dreamy blur into a searing crescendo.

“I remember lying in bed in the dark hearing the coyotes laughing out in the field behind our house just before they killed something,” Linaberry recalls. “It was so haunting and eerie, but at the same time, you’re just so totally in awe of what’s happening right outside your window, this elemental moment of life and death all wrapped up together.”

Despite the looming sense of danger that permeates the album, Slow Lightning still manages to find moments of humor and levity. The darkly romantic “I’ll See You In Hell” revels in a love so strong it carries on through eternal damnation; the sardonic “I Ain’t Through With You” gets high on an addictively toxic relationship; and the relentlessly taut “Heaven Help Me” surrenders to overwhelming infatuation, with Linaberry recalling, “Love is the kind of thing that will keep you warm / That's what she said / As she was burning down my home.”

In the end, though, it’s perhaps the breezy “Salt Sour Sweet” that best encapsulates the spirit of the record, with Linaberry looking back on a lifetime of love and heartbreak, dreams and disappointment, success and failure, and ultimately recognizing that it’s the grand sum of them all that make us who we are. “It’s the salt sour and sweet / That holds,” he sings in an airy falsetto. Call it maturity, call it self-awareness; it’s the kind of wisdom that can only arrive on a bolt of Slow Lightning.

--

Having spent every Wednesday night for two years playing at a little hotel in Sydney called the Hollywood, this unsigned songwriter took a leap of faith and headed to the U.S. for the first time to play SXSW. Just a few months later, she signed a record deal with Verve (UMG), moved to Hollywood California, to release her debut album Omaha.

Falls has spent the time since its release traversing the length and breadth of the United States, crossing continents, playing shows, and writing the songs that would become her new album. 

Recorded with Grammy Award winning producer Joe Chiccarelli at iconic Sunset Sound Recorders in LA, and largely shaped by their love of Americana music, the songs on her new record elegantly capture both the thrill and the fallout of following through on a dream. Illustrating life on the road and the feeling one gets when you no-longer know where home is anymore.

Onstage, it’s clear that Falls wears her heart on her sleeve, with her emotionally fueled live performances drawing rave reviews. She is fast developing an impressive live resume, growing a sizable and loyal fanbase here in the United States and her native country Australia. Her songs have been featured in several national US ad campaigns for national brands and have also received prominent television syncs in the US and Australia. 

Featured in Billboard Magazine’s “Tomorrow’s Hits” and recent winner of the International Songwriting Competition in the Americana category, with her intimate yet catchy Indie Folk/Americana and sweet vocal harmonies, Falls is quietly making a name for herself in 2025.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

David Nail’s candor cuts like a laser through star-making propriety, a ritual of predictable answers to predictable questions, recited by artists averse to the controversy that truth can bring.

True, he is respected up and down and beyond Music Row. He’s written or co-written multiple hits. Critics laud his singing too: The late, revered Chuck Dauphin, for one, marveled at Nail’s ability to turn an “ordinary lyric and arrangement” into a “tour de force,” adding, “simply put… he is not one of us.”

So he’s got rock-solid credentials. And he earned them despite a refusal to present himself in a false light. His songs pull no punches in evoking the demons with which he has wrestled through much of his life. As Nail explains, it’s not so much an act of courage to write about depression and its effects. Rather, it is simply who he is; he says, in conversation and through music, what he must say.

In Nail’s own words, “My philosophy has always been, I just hope to have a good enough year that I can have a next year while staying as true to myself as I possibly can.”

Doors @ 6pm
Show @ 7pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Americana/folk stalwart Slaid Cleaves has been putting out highly acclaimed records for 25 years now, consistently delivering songs that strike people's hearts and become part of their lives. Together Through the Dark is no different. Producer Scrappy Jud Newcomb and Cleaves teamed up for the third time in early 2022 between Covid surges to record a new batch of songs, Slaid's first in five years. Familiar themes of struggle and resilience will be a surprise to no one. As Scrappy puts it, “This album speaks to the hopeful, the hard working, the battered, confused, and the sad. But above all to the believers in the city of freedom that we heard in the stories of our youth and all those FM radio hits.” Watch for single releases to radio and streaming services in early 2023 in anticipation of a March 3rd worldwide album release.

Joseph Hudak of Rolling Stone Country calls Cleaves “a master storyteller, one influenced not by the shine of pop-culture but by the dirt of real life.”

The music of Texas-based singer/songwriter Slaid Cleaves is rooted in traditional country and folk forms, but is distinct enough to have held interest amidst a sea of singer/songwriters since the 1990s. While he released a handful of recordings during the early '90s, he gained significant notice with No Angel Knows, which was released on Rounder's Philo subsidiary in 1997. Joined by former Lucinda Williams guitarist and producer Gurf Morlix, Cleaves combined his interest in folk songs, early rock and roll, and traditional country music into an amalgamation of styles becoming known at that time as Americana. Not surprisingly, the album rode high into the charts at Americana-formatted radio stations across the U.S. and Canada that year and set the tone for the rest of his career.

In his hometown of South Berwick, Maine, Cleaves began playing keyboards in garage bands while still in high school. His first band, founded in 1980 by childhood friend Rod Picott, was dubbed The Magic Rats. After the lead singer was kicked out of his next band, The Classifieds, Cleaves started singing cover songs behind his Hammond Porta-B organ in local road houses, hotel lounges and bowling alleys while still in his teens. After reading in Rolling Stone about Bruce Springsteen's inspirations for the Nebraska album, he climbed into his parents' attic to rediscover the treasure trove of albums which he recalled hearing as a child – Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry - and which became guides to the budding songwriter. While in college, where he studied English and philosophy, he learned a few guitar chords and spent a school year in Ireland, where he began to write and sing his own songs and joined the league of buskers on the streets of Cork.

After a few post-college years in Portland, Maine, fronting the alt-country band, The Moxie Men, Cleaves and future wife and business partner Karen set out on a career adventure, moving to Austin in late 1991. Despite the echelon of acclaimed singer-songwriters like Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Lucinda Williams, Robert Earl Keen, Butch Hancock, and Joe Ely, all centered around the Austin scene at the time, Cleaves was eventually able to make a name for himself there. In 1996, he began his collaboration with Morlix, who liked Cleaves' homemade demo tape and ended up serving as producer for five albums, starting with 1997's No Angel Knows.

During the following decade Cleaves began touring relentlessly throughout North America, the UK, and the Netherlands, while releasing three more acclaimed albums, starting with the career-defining Broke Down in 2000, followed by Wishbones (2004) and then a collection of covers of friends' songs, Unsung (2006). With an eclectic, bare-bones combo he was well received at major folk festivals including, Newport Folk Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival, Strawberry Music Festival, and Kerrville Folk Festival (where he had been a “New Folk” winner in 1992).

After signing with Jimmy LaFave's Music Road Records, he issued Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away (2009, featuring liner notes from fan Stephen King), the two-disc Sorrow & Smoke: Live at the Horseshoe Lounge (2011), and Still Fighting the War (2013), produced by beloved Austin guitarist Scrappy Jud Newcomb. The title song was inspired in part by Craig F. Walker's Pulitzer-winning photo-essay depicting a Marine's harrowing return to civilian life. The album was praised as "one of the year's best albums" by American Songwriter and "carefully crafted, . . . songs about the struggles of the heart in hard times" by the Wall Street Journal. The New York Daily News called his music "a treasure hidden in plain sight," while the Austin Chronicle declared, "there are few contemporaries that compare. He's become a master craftsman on the order of Guy Clark and John Prine."

2017's Ghost on the Car Radio, on his own Candy House Media label, found Cleaves teaming up with Mr. Newcomb for a second time to present an album of vivid snapshots of regular folks dreaming, loving, scraping by and getting old in small town America.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Lera Lynn is an acclaimed singer-songwriter whose haunting voice, cinematic soundscapes, and genre-defying style have earned her a devoted cult following. Blending Americana, indie rock, folk noir, and art pop noir, she has crafted an unmistakable sonic identity that is both timeless and ever-evolving. Lynn first gained wide recognition for her music featured on HBO’s True Detective (Season 2), where her atmospheric songs and on-screen performance left an indelible mark on viewers.

A fiercely independent artist, Lynn has built a career on thoughtful songwriting, poetic lyricism, and meticulous production, all while nurturing a direct relationship with her fans, running her own independent label, Ruby Range Records. Beyond her own albums, she has composed and produced music for video games, podcast theme songs, and films, collaborated with a vast array of artists, and produced records for others. Her music has been placed in countless films and television series, further cementing her ability to create evocative, cinematic soundscapes. On stage, she has toured from California to Eastern Europe and everywhere in between, delivering mesmerizing performances that captivate audiences worldwide.

Now, 10 years after True Detective, Lynn revisits that pivotal era with True Sessions, a three-song EP reimagining the music that introduced her to a wider audience. This special release serves as a heartfelt gift to her fans, offering a glimpse into how far she has come while honoring the raw, moody essence of those songs.

But Lynn is not one to dwell on the past. On April 18, she will officially announce her ninth studio album, Comic Book Cowboy, set for release on September 19. Expanding her stylistic repertoire while sharpening her singular sound, this album plays with contrasts—gritty realism versus idealized heroism, and the absurdity of living up to a fantasy. It explores the tension between self-perception and the roles society expects us to play, capturing the struggle of wrestling with one’s own mythology.

Both self-aware and even subtly comedic at times, Comic Book Cowboy stands out as an anthem for anyone striving for authenticity in a world so full of expectations. It delivers the moody, immersive textures Lera Lynn fans have come to love while pushing into uncharted sonic territory. Lush production, dynamic arrangements, and deeply introspective lyrics weave together to create an album that feels both familiar and refreshingly new.

With Comic Book Cowboy, Lynn reaffirms why she remains one of the most compelling independent artists of her generation—an artist unafraid to evolve, take risks, and forge her own path, all while staying deeply connected to the fans who have supported her every step of the way.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Jason Eady writes songs that feel lived in. Raw, acoustic driven Americana music rooted in the South and shaped by years on the road. With a storyteller’s eye and a stripped-down sound, he delivers timeless truths in plainspoken poetry.

--

To quote Robert Keen, “it’s the little things.” John Baumann has that songwriters eye. His songs are populated with those little things from life. Familiar things that draw you in, paint pictures in your mind and make you say, "wish I would have thought of that". That's the great thing about this kind of songwriting, it’s not flashy in any kind of way, except it’s emotional depth. - Bruce Robison

Since his debut EP in 2012, John Baumann has established himself as equal parts brilliant songwriter and captivating entertainer. He’s released four solo records, landed cuts with other artists - from Kenny Chesney to the Randy Rogers Band - and continued to cement his budding reputation as a distinctively talented singer-songwriter. He is always working on new material, maintaining a steady run of tour dates with his band and as a solo performer, while also a member of the acclaimed group The Panhandlers. Richard Skanse (Lonestar Music Magazine) writes: "Too soon for accolades? Nah, More like right on time. And so long as he keeps gunning for the horizon and doesn’t succumb to the middle of the road, there oughta be a lot more of ’em coming not too far down the line."

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Good things, it’s often said, come to those who wait. And yet, as one of the great poets of our time also famously observed, the waiting is the hardest part.

Both truths have been proven once again on the journey to singer-songwriter Mindy Smith’s sixth studio album Quiet Town, which brings a treasured musical voice back into the spotlight.

Fans can look forward to hearing new songs from Quiet Town as well as beloved tracks from her previous albums during her live performances.

A good rule of thumb when going to a Mindy Smith concert, bring a hanky, a tissue or an extra sleeve. Your tear ducts don’t know the difference between laughing tears and crying tears and you’ll likely be doing both. “Humor is how I compensate for singing so many sad tunes back-to-back,” says Smith.

Mindy Smith is a Long Island-born, Americana award winning, Dove nominated, Nashville based singer-songwriter with a clear and honest passion for Americana, jazz, pop, rock, blues, and folk. As a recording artist, she has sold over 750k albums and singles and amassed over 175 million streams to date. She has played some of the most prestigious festivals in the world including Cambridge Folk Festival, Maverick Festival, Newport Folk Festival, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, MerleFest, Austin City Limits, South by Southwest, Bonnaroo and more. Smith has also appeared on The Grand Ole Opry over 20 times.

Her original songs have been recorded and released by the likes of Alison Krauss, Lee Ann Womack, Faith Hill and most recently Danny Burns ft Sam Bush. Mindy has performed with and toured alongside the likes of Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, John Prine (US AND UK Tour), Nickel Creek (US Tour), and Mary Chapin Carpenter (US Tour. Most recently, Smith was the featured vocalist on Kenny Chesney’s charting single, “Better Boat”.  Says Chesney, “if you just close your eyes and listen to her voice -- I’m speaking for me --she brings calm, she brings a sense that it’s all going to be all right. [T]o me, when I hear her voice, it’s like an angel, her voice is so--what’s the word?—‘genreless.’ It’s bigger than all of us.”

“Her voice carves melodies so sharp and fine you can almost see them…” – New York Times

“Smith’s best songs sound like little miracles.” – USA Today

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

The position that Radney Foster enjoys in the music landscape is remarkable. Mainstream country music and independent Americana tend to occupy separate orbits. Yet for 37 years, Foster has thrived in both as a songwriter, recording artist, live performer and producer. His songs—solo, with Foster and Lloyd and recorded by other artists—have topped the country, Americana, and AAA charts alike.

Foster developed his best-of-both-worlds sensibilities growing up in the small West Texas town of Del Rio, where he absorbed music from both the local pop radio station by day and the renegade country from border station XERF by night.

He first gained attention as half of the duo Foster & Lloyd. who, with “Crazy Over You” became the first duo in history to top the Country charts with their debut single. Their music appealed as much to college rock listeners looking for an edgy roots sound as it did country fans craving tradition, and they went on to release three ground-breaking albums for the label. He then established himself as a solo artist in the early 90’s with his critically acclaimed release Del Rio, Texas 1959.

Known as a songwriter’s songwriter, his songs have been recorded by everyone from Keith Urban and the Chicks to Hootie & the Blowfish and George Benson. His own hits like “Just Call Me Lonesome,” “Nobody Wins,” and “Texas In 1880” continue to be played on radio and by bands around the world.

His most recent project For You To See The Stars is in two parts, a book of short fiction, and a companion CD of the same name.

Foster has written eight number one hit singles, including his own “Nobody Wins,” and “Crazy Over You” with duo Foster & Lloyd. His discography contains countless cuts by artists ranging anywhere from country (Keith Urban, The Chicks, Brooks and Dunn, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) to contemporary (Marc Broussard, Hootie & The Blowfish, Kenny Loggins, Los Lonely Boys, George Benson) and his songs have sold 50 million copies worldwide. He was recently inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

He recently reunited with the Randy Rogers Band to produce their new album Homecoming, nearly 20 years after he produced the band’s debut Rollercoaster, and subsequent two albums.

Foster’s most recent project For You To See The Stars is in two parts, a book of short fiction, and a companion CD of the same name. He has appeared in film, TV and stage including as host of CMT Crossroads, in the feature film Beauty Mark, on stage in the acclaimed musical “Troubador.” He is currently working on another book of fiction, as well as developing film and TV projects.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce, the “Jack O” and “Pierce” who make up the seminal duo Jackopierce, are celebrating 35 years of making music that has amassed a loyal following of millions of fans across the country and the world with a super high-energy live show and what the Dallas Morning News has called “spotless harmonies.”

Having just released their first studio project 'Feel This Good' in 5 years, Jackopierce is poised and ready to get back on the road full-time.

Jackopierce formed in 1988 in Dallas as theater students at SMU. The duo steadily made a name for themselves, especially with two of their signature tracks, “Vineyard” and their version of the classic “Please Come to Boston.” They released ten studio albums (two for major label A&M), toured three continents, nine countries, and 45 states - amassing millions of loyal fans along the way . Over the years They have shared the stage with John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band, Matchbox20, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers, Sheryl Crow, Toad the Wet Sprocket - to name a few. After a five-year breakup, the guys reunited in 2002 to test out the waters. They were very warm and city by city, Jack & Cary got back out there to play for grateful fans that thought they would never see them again. The two now have a totally renewed creative vigor, mutual respect and deep gratitude for their fans.

These good vibes shine through on their 25th anniversary live album “Live 25.”

It’s definitely been a creative time for the duo, and celebrating the past inspires the guys to move forward in new, inventive ways. To freshen up the live show, Jackopierce started creating uniquely intimate “Destination Shows.” These shows are a whole new fan experience where people can enjoy gorgeous scenery, share delicious food & wine and have “campfire”- type access to their favorite band. It’s a vacation and concert in one. Each Destination Show provides a unique experience dedicated to the local culture: Napa/Sonoma vineyards at sunset, a ranch in Austin Hill Country, high society in Dallas, a two-mile-high a private club in Aspen, amazing history at the Biltmore in NC, a 14,000 square foot hacienda in San Miguel de Allende, MX - and the list goes on. July 27, Jackopierce will host their first 7th Destination Show in Martha’s Vineyard and they’ll be back for their fourth annual Destination Show in San Miguel in April 2020.

“We have been doing destination events for 10 years now and they have been a huge hit with our fans and have allowed us to make so many great new ones along the way,” said Cary Pierce. “I think these events continue to grow and sell out because people want more than "just a show” - they want an experience. They want to create lasting memories, explore a new place or visit an old favorite. In some cases, we're offering them a trip of a lifetime. We're finding there a lot of people that really value these experiences.”

Jackopierce has celebrated numerous career milestones including the T-Bone Burnett produced A&M debut album “Bringing on The Weather,” being a part of one of the world’s largest live events with close to 400K people in attendance at the 1997 Blockbuster RockFest at Texas Motor Speedway alongside artists No Doubt, Counting Crows, and Matchbox Twenty, performing on Conan O’Brien in 1992 with the Max Weinberg Band backing them up and sitting in the chairs on the Rosie O'Donnell Show.

“Even after 35 years I feel like we're just getting started,” said Cary Pierce.

Doors @ 7pm
Show @ 8pm
Full Bar
Free On-site Parking
All Ages

The Cleverlys is a one-of-a-kind, unique comedy and music experience. From the groups humble beginnings in the Ozark Mountains, to currently headlining festivals and PAC's all over the country, even performing regularly on the coveted Grand Ole Opry stage. One thing is for certain, there is no other show like this out there.

Dr Digger is the master churner of all things buttery and smooth. "His comedy is a hybrid of Homer and Jethro and the office" said Rolling Stone Magazine.

"If Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, and Spinal Tap spawned a litter of puppies, it would be The Cleverlys" says the New York Times.

"The group has evolved over the years and the comedy and musicality is the best it's ever been. Our show is now on the top shelf." says Digger Cleverly.

The group is comprised of Dr. Digger, his Son, Ziggy Cleverly, his nephews, Steven Tyler Dale, Plug,and Sock Cleverly.

This group is a master class of comedic timing, showmanship, and world class musicianship.

--

Best known for the wildly popular viral video series, “Guy On A Buffalo,” Jomo & The Possum Posse have made a name for themselves with their unique blend of cynicism, dead-eyed soul and anti-machismo honky-tonk.

Three-time Winners Best of Fest Frontera FestThe band is led by Jomo Edwards, who’s award-wining lyrics tend to skate the line between the sardonic and the arcane. In September 2021, Jomo took home first place in Merlefest’s Chris Austin Songwriting Contest.

In 2020, the band was selected “Best of Fest” at FronteraFest for the 3rd year in a row at the long-running Austin Fringe Festival. The band’s original programs highlight their brand of original music and comedy and are shown exclusively at this live theater event.

The band released their third full-length studio album, Take a Number, Satan in 2019 on CD, vinyl and digital. The album received excellent critical reviews, including an Englishman’s review that described many aspects of the album as “fine.” The band believes “fine” to mean “really good” in British version of the language, but they could be wrong.

The album was featured in 2020 on Jack Ingram’s Texas Music Scene.

In 2017, the band released LIVE AT THE HIGHBALL on Get Off My Lawn Records features 18 tracks and captures the energy of the band’s live shows.

Recorded at The Highball (Alamo Drafthouse) on South Lamar in Austin, the band performed a significant portion of its set synchronized to video projected on a massive screen behind them.

Jomo & The Possum PosseTheir second studio album, Local Motive was released in 2016 and skews heavily toward roots rock & roll.