Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $27 Advance & $32 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

ASSEMBLY OF DUST

with POSTMAN JACK AND THE SPECIAL DELIVERIES 

“As a child I can remember locking myself in my room with a big old set of headphones and listening to the Band's Music From Big Pink album over and over again,” said Reid Genauer, the lead singer and founder of the New York based quintet Assembly of Dust. “Besides loving the hell out of the music, I was intrigued with the production value in the recordings. As I listened I felt almost like I was there in the room with the Band at a moment of perfection. That intimate listening experience drew me in and is what inspired me to be a musician.”

Drawing on that influence and countless others, over the last ten years Assembly of Dust has crafted a unique sound that recalls the likes of the Band, Traffic and Neil Young. They have taken that early 70's Americana swagger, put their own funky spin on it, and earned comparisons to the next generation of Americana heroes including Ryan Adams, Mumford and Sons and Wilco. Hooky melodies, poetic lyrics, and a profound depth of musicianship promptedUSA Today to say Assembly of Dust has what it takes to "dazzle the Alt-Country universe."

The allure of spacious production value has clung with Genauer his whole life and when he listened to Ray LaMontagne's 2010 album God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise, he heard something that struck a chord deep within him. After just a few seconds sniffing around the liner notes he found the name he was looking for and within a couple of months Assembly of Dust was in the studio with engineer Ryan Freeland.

With three Grammy's on the shelf and credits that include musical luminaries like Bonnie Raitt, Joe Henry, and Art Garfunkel, Freeland's aesthetic was exactly what Genauer was going for on Assembly of Dust's fourth studio album Sun Shot. "I’ve always had a penchant for acoustic music” said the songwriter. “While Sun Shot isn’t an acoustic record by any stretch of the imagination it has the touch and nuances that allows the listener to be nearer to the music. It’s certainly a mellower record, it’s a vibey record, and it’s the most singer-songwriter record we’ve done."

While the recording processes used on Sun Shot harkens back to an analogue past, the rest of the project was decidedly technology driven. In the summer of 2012, as they struggled with the realities of financing an artistic venture of this scale, the band launched a crowd sourced funding campaign through Kickstarter. Looking back on it Genauer talks about the project as more of a spiritual journey than simply a fund raising exercise.

"When we went into it we were thinking of a black and white exchange of goods and services, but what we discovered was a weighty emotional interchange" he admitted. "The Kickstarter contributors demand something beyond a record and we found it to be a really intimate experience to craft special rewards for people who genuinely care about us and our music. It helped us truly appreciate the passion our fans feel for us and the depth of our community.”

Sun Shot is one part Singer-Songwriter, one part Alt- Country and one part Rock and Roll, but the thread tying it all together is Genauer's heartfelt and beautifully written lyrics. In 2009 the New York Times praised Genauer's songwriting skills as some of the most eloquent "to emerge in the long wake of the Grateful Dead” and the songs on Sun Shot may be the best work of his career.

The raw building blocks of Genauer's songs stand strong on their own and they are polished to brilliance in the hands of the band he’s surrounded himself with: Adam Terrell (Lead Guitar), John Leccesse (Bass), and two newer members Jason Crosby (Piano and Violin) and Dave Diamond (Drums). Together Assembly of Dust has created an album laced with the influences Genauer recognized as a child. It’s a recording with many rooms. Some are flashy and aloof, others bony and pale, but collectively they are Sun Shot.

Show 8pm // $24 Advance $27 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

MASON JENNINGS

with JACK SYMES

Minneapolis songwriter Mason Jennings shares his new video for the single, “Only Lovers Welcome” from his brand new album, Underneath The Roses out now via Loosegroove Records. Underneath The Roses is available on limited-edition colored vinyl and is available here.  Watch and share the video for “Only Lovers Welcome” here.  

Jennings writes that the songs from Underneath The Roses were, “Written in an unprecedented burst,” following the birth of his son, Western, in March 2022. Jennings explains, “I hadn’t written any songs in about a year. I had been dealing with the psychological after effects of the pandemic as well as the loss of my dad. So, when Western was born I didn’t expect to be writing much. But immediately he was responding to music in a very intense way. For this album, between May and November 2022, I wrote 48 songs! They certainly uplifted me and connected me with the creative spirit, and spirit in general, again. They cover all kinds of ground but, when I listen back, I think the central theme is overcoming fear with love.”

Jennings also released a video for, “No Ordinary Friend,” which he explains, “Depicts two of the most important decisions a person can make. One, whether or not they believe in a loving higher power and two, who they decide to choose as a life long romantic partner. This song is referring to both of those and the choices I’ve made.”

"Stone Gossard and Regan Hagar from Loosegroove Records helped me edit the 48 down to 11. I then enlisted the help of my Painted Shield bandmates to record the songs.” 

Jennings and Gossard are ongoing collaborators in the band Painted Shield, who released their 2021 debut album on Loosegroove, the influential indie label that Gossard founded back in 1994 issued records from acts such as Critters Buggin, Malfunkshun, Weapon of Choice and Devilhead, and was the launching point for Queens of the Stone Age’s debut album in 1998. 

Jenning’s previous album ‘Real Heart’ came out in January 2022 and received Triple/Non-comm radio across KCMP Minneapolis, WFPK Louisville, WPYA Birmingham, KRCL Salt Lake City, WMMM Madison, WQKL Ann Arbor, KCSN LA, KRVB Boise, WCLZ Portland, WDSE Duluth, WRLT Nashville, WXPN Philly, WXRV Boston, & WZEW Mobile.  

Press highlights include: American Songwriter, Relix, No Depression, Grateful Web, Take Effect 9/10 review, & Jam Bands  

Jennings adds “I called it Underneath The Roses because I feel like these songs are musical roses and when I look below them there are many thorns and so much dirt and soil. All of it was needed for them to come into existence and bloom. It’s been a long hard road of self-discovery and discernment for me the last few years and the roses wouldn’t be here without what lies underneath. Hope you enjoy the music!” 

Doors 5pm // Show 6pm // Ages 21+ // $22 General Admission

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

Show 8pm // $24 Advance $27 Day of Show // 21+

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

KR3TURE

with DRMWVR and AGUAMAYYIM

Show 9:30pm // Ages 21+ // $29.50 Advance & $35 Day of Show / $98 4-Pack

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

A Magical Two Night Celebration of The Days Between with

JERRY'S MIDDLE FINGER 

Show 9:30pmpm // Ages 21+ // $29.50 Advance & $35 Day of Show / $98 4-Pack

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

A Magical Two Night Celebration of The Days Between with

JERRY'S MIDDLE FINGER 

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $22 Advance & $27 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

T SISTERS

with ECHOES & ARTIFACTS

The T Sisters are a genuine sister group based in the creative hub of Oakland, California. The group is made up of Rachel and Chloe Tietjen, twins, and their older sister Erika. Distinguished by close harmonies, catchy melodies and potent lyricism, the T Sisters’ sound represents a continuum of music: from roots to pop influences, moments of stunning a cappella to swells of groovy indie folk. The sisters' contemporary yet classic sound invites a range of likenesses, from the Pointer Sisters and the Everly Brothers to modern family bands like the Avett Brothers and First Aid Kit. With their soaring sibling harmonies, sassy stage presence, and inventive songwriting, these three sisters embody a fresh and soulful take on folk/Americana music. 

Music and performance have provided a consistent backdrop for the sisters, having grown up with their musician father and dancer mother. The sisters began singing together as early as they could speak, and not long after they began to experiment with harmonies, gradually developing their ability to blend their voices as only sisters can. 

In 2008, after having been separated for a number of years, the sisters returned to the Bay Area to produce and perform in an original musical. They then co-founded Chthonic Theater, a performing arts collective through which they create and perform in original musical theater productions, lead local parades, and curate and host variety shows featuring local and touring artists. After the initial performance experiment of the musical, the sisters began to write songs together and develop their singing and harmonizing outside of the musical theater context, and have since delved deeply into their own soulful and contemporary interpretation of folk and Americana music. 

Rachel (vox, guitar, banjo), Chloe (vox, percussion) and Erika (vox, guitar) are all songwriters in their own right and switch off on lead vocals. While their voices blend seamlessly, each has a distinct singing and writing style. Erika weaves a story with attitude and will belt it out with the confidence and style of a pop diva. Rachel’s soulful and raw style is highlighted in her vintage blues-inspired tunes. Chloe sings her heartfelt and often poetic lyrics in a subtle country tone. The combination results in an eclectic repertoire unified by a landscape of close harmonies. 

In 2011, the T Sisters co-produced their first EP with renowned mandolin player Mike Marshall. In 2014, local Bay Area legend Laurie Lewis produced their first full-length record, and in 2016 the T Sisters self-produced their second full-length record, followed by live EP Live at Tiny Telephone in 2017. They are currently working on their next record. 

The T Sisters have toured the country in support of their own music as well as in support of Amos Lee, The Wood Brothers, Todd Rundgren, and many more. They have had the honor of performing on ‘A Prairie Home Companion,’ singing the national anthem multiple times at San Francisco Giants games, and collaborating with diverse artists throughout the country in live performance. In spring of 2019, T Sisters participated in American Musicians Abroad, a selective State Department-sponsored program fostering diplomacy through music. The sisters performed and conducted workshops in the Middle East and North Africa emphasizing girls empowerment and the power of music to create social awareness and change.

While primarily known as recording and performing artists, the T Sisters have a background in theater that they have expressed over the years through original musical theater productions, variety shows, and community parades. During the recent Covid lockdown, T Sisters have created an exciting weekly show akin to classics like Hee Haw and the Gong Show called T Sisters Variety Hour. Each show features a specific theme, classic and contemporary songs, delightful props and backdrops, and the occasional phone-in special guest, plus the sisters’ campy banter.

Show 8pm // $15 General Admission

***This is a fully seated general admission show. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $24 Advance & $26 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

PHUTUREPRIMITIVE

with SPACESHIP EARTH and ENCOUNTERS

Phutureprimitive is the moniker of Bay Area producer and songwriter Rain. Early childhood photos reveal Rain sitting at the piano plinking keys, grinning from ear to ear... a true sign of things to come. 

The Phutureprimitive sound is mind melting sonic bliss. Lush melodies drift across intricate rhythms, groove heavy beats and warm, fuzzy bass lines. Often exploring a dark and dense palette, his music also manages to convey a sense of tranquility and beauty. Shimmering with cinematic qualities, his music ultimately speaks to the body, mind and soul. It's often said that Phutureprimitive is his own genre. 

The sound of Phutureprimitive has spread far and wide with performances From North and Central America, Western and Eastern Europe and Australia. 

Rain is also the owner of The Phuture Producer Method. An online portal for courses for learning EDM production and Song Builder Kits. 

"Music is medicine. Let's go on a journey together"

Show 8pm // $31 General Admission

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

RASH: A TRIBUTE TO RUSH

Since 2010, Rash: A Tribute to Rush has recreated the energy, the sound – the whole spectacle – of Rush live and in their prime. Seasoned performers all, this group of Rush fans came together with single-minded intent to perform their favorite Rush music and to sound as much like Rush as possible. Performing greatest hits and deep cuts with tremendous attention to detail, Rash will please the hardcore fan and casual listener alike.

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $20 Advance & $24 Day of Show // $17 General Admission 4-Pack

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

BOOT JUICE

with JIVE MACHINE

The evolution of Boot Juice has been a magnificent phenomenon to behold over the past few years. This seven-piece band from Davis has done things the old-fashioned way – earning everything they have with blood, sweat and tears shed on stages throughout the region. It’s been more sweat than anything else based on the practically inhuman volume of energy output they generate throughout the course of their relentless performances.

Boot Juice defies the typical assumption that a big band with horns is sticking to the well-worn path of funk and jazz. They certainly infuse those genres into the mix. More than anything though, this is an unabashed cosmic rock band intent on taking audiences into an alternate dimension of pure freedom and dance euphoria where the outside world ceases to exist. Their three-part vocal harmonies carry major impact with intoxicating doses of soul, blues and sultry appeal. The passionate musicianship and group synergy resonates in their pure sense of joy. Drawing favorable comparisons to the sound of The California Honey Drops and the spirit of the Talking Heads, you’ll have no doubt that the refreshing originality of Boot Juice always has a firm grip on the wheel.

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $17 Advance & $20 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

RUSHADICUS (RUSHAD EGGLESTON)

with THE SUBORBITALS and CHEVY DEE (solo)

Rushadicus (Rushad Eggleston) is a cellist provocateur and performance artist. After a formal music education, his work in the bluegrass, Americana and rock worlds garnered lofty awards and international recognition, yet failed to fulfill his goblin heart. After immersing himself in black metal for three years, Rushadicus emerged to give the word “Sneth Metal”, a new sound that defies all expectations, logic and form. It’s virtuoso improvisation and wild, immersive theater. It’s hilarious. It’s deeply disturbing. It’s great art that rejects the traditional forms of music and deconstructs the very idea of entertainment. It is the most unforgettable solo show you will ever witness. Don't miss him on Friday, August 23, 2024 at the Felton Music Hall with The Suborbitals + Chevy Dee (solo) in support.

In the meantime, the Cello Goblin is a legitimate internet sensation. Check him out:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rushadicus/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rushadicus
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rushadicus/

Show 8pm // $27 Advance & $32 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

MOONSHINE BANDITS

with BLAKE BANKS

Moonshine Bandits, the California duo of Dusty ‘Tex’ Dahlgren and Brett ‘Bird’ Brooks, are back with their new album Pour Decisions. The duo continues to champion their signature sound of backwoods bravado, country soul, keg-thumping beats, and hip-hop fusion. Pour Decisions is the grittiest, most spirited, and distinctly grassroots release of their sixteen-year campaign of musical badassery.

"Let’s face it, our fans love to party and so do we. With the amount of partying we all do, poor decisions can be made," said Big Tex with a chuckle, referring to the inspiration behind the album title. "We flipped it to ‘Pour Decisions’ to coincide with our new Bucked Up Whiskey brand. Now you can make the right 'Pour Decision' when you choose to pour a shot of our whiskey. Cheers!"

Pour Decisions takes its inspiration from the struggles and successes of America’s extraordinary era when dreams were being made while hunting for that elusive precious gem.

"This album is nothing like our past albums because we wanted to level up from the songwriting to the recording. We really stepped up our game in singing and songwriting on this project and it shows," said Bird about the new sonic direction. "The overall sound of the album is big and has a lot of energy. We used more live instrumentation than ever before, we even had a choir come in and sing on a track, everything was meant to sound bigger when we created these songs. I think the fans will see we all stepped up our game."

Big Tex adds, "We didn't cut any corners. In the past, we would have to worry about touring or timelines, but we're finally in a spot in our career that if we can 'dream it', then we can make it happen. We weren’t rushed, and we had the finances to do whatever we wanted on this album. We took our time with this and made sure to put the cherry on top of each song."

Pour Decisions features tracks like "I'm A Rebel," "I'm A Problem," "Silhouettes In The Sun," "Chasing Ghost," and "Can't Take My Hometown." The album showcases the Moonshine Bandits' signature style, with the tracks taking listeners on a journey filled with good, bad, and even some ugly experiences. Thematically, Pour Decisions pays homage not only to the band’s career journey but also, and profoundly, “a journey about the people we have come in contact with. The people that inspire our songs.”

The album is an ode to the brick-and-mortar, mom-and-pop’s, local friends, and corner watering holes that provided the foundation of everyday life, culture, and economics in America. Pour Decisions features 15-tracks that continue to show Moonshine Bandits paving their own lane. There aren't stops or boundaries, and with Pour Decisions, they prove that they still live by their code.

This is a genre-bending album from the featured guests to the sound and displays the band’s versatility with some special guests. Weed kingpin Afroman joins the group on "Roof Back" to fire it up for the West Coast, Josh Todd of Buckcherry unleashes some crossover rock fury on "Wild," and then American pride crashes head-on with hip-hop swagger on "I'm A Problem" featuring Canadian Juno Award-winning rapper Madchild. Somehow, it all comes together in one musical Molotov cocktail that Moonshine Bandits provide the spark for.

“We are very grateful to all of these super stars to take time out of their schedule to be part of an album that we truly believe in. We got wide variety of guest from Adam Calhoun to Krizz Kaliko, to Demun Jones, Brandon Hartt to help us bring out all the different influences. It feels like and old-school rap record where guys like E-40 or Tech N9ne would just have their friends jump on the album with them. This album is a stacked lineup of all-stars.”

Since their formation in Los Banos, California, in 2003, the Moonshine Bandits have continued a campaign of crossover genre-bending musical mayhem that appeals to the eclectic, color-outside-the-lines tastes of listeners. Their musical style has always been full-throttle and in your face. Just like the rumrunners, bootleggers, smugglers, and outlaws of old – the Moonshine Bandits provide a supply of goods for the demand, defying the mandates and trends of mainstream pop-culture.  

Pour Decisions is rebellious, anti-establishment, and a little bit symbolic of an elusive time when there actually was Honor among thieves. For the Moonshine Bandits, Pour Decisions is a lesson learned from experience, and it's their way of doing things.

Show 7:30pm // $10 at the door

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. 

Felton Music Hall Presents:

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $30.50 Advance & $35 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

An Evening of Music and Comedy with CREED BRATTON & LIVE BAND

Show 8pm // $20 Advance / $25 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

Show 8pm // $24 Advance $27 Day of Show // 21+

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

RANDOM RAB

with KORESMA

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $22 Advance & $37 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

THE MESSTHETICS AND JAMES BRANDON LEWIS

Joe Lally was onstage, playing at full throttle, when he realized that his band had found a true kindred spirit. It was the fall of 2021 and the Messthetics — the instrumental trio of Lally on bass, his former Fugazi bandmate Brendan Canty on drums and guitarist Anthony Pirog  — were at Brooklyn venue the Bell House, digging into their uptempo riff workout “Serpent Tongue.” Joining them for the piece was a special guest, acclaimed jazz saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, making only his second cameo with the group after a drop-in at another New York show back in 2019. That first meeting had been a success, but this time, Lewis’ presence sparked something new.

“It pushed the song like crazy,” Lally recalls of a passage when Lewis and Pirog began trading fiery solos. As the intensity kept building, the bassist felt simultaneously challenged and exhilarated. “You’re just holding on and going, ‘It sounds great,’” he remembers telling himself. “‘Just keep going.’”

That imperative — the sense that there was more to explore within what began as an ad hoc union among the four musicians — lingered after the performance ended. Now, Lewis, Pirog, Lally and Canty are ready to unveil their first full-length album as a quartet. Recorded in just two days in December 2022 at Takoma Park, Maryland, studio Tonal Park, with engineer Don Godwin, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis features nine tracks that capture the combustive chemistry Lally originally sensed onstage while expanding the collaboration in all directions. Across the album, due out on March 15th via the legendary Impulse! label, the quartet can be heard locking into a hard, swaggering funk groove on “That Thang,” cradling a wistful, jazz-like theme on “Asthenia” or rocketing into ecstatic art-punk overdrive on “Emergence.”

Canty relishes the way the album preserves a feeling of real-time musical conversation. “In a world that can be perfected in a myriad of ways using computers, it's super important to allow the thing you've honestly reacted to, to live,” the drummer says. “So I've spent a lot of time, since that first initial recording, protecting this recording. We did try to mix some of it, but we really left it as rough mixes for the most part.”

“Sometimes you'll play a record live and it just doesn't translate like it does onstage,” Pirog adds. “But this was just one of those moments where we were just prepared enough, everyone was open to being loose enough, that we just sat down and made it happen really fast.”

Evidence of that spontaneity runs throughout the record. Listen to the way Canty and Lewis play a tumbling, stop-start duet against Pirog and Lally’s tight descending vamp at the end of opening track “L’Orso” or how Lewis and Pirog improvise together atop a dubby groove during “Three Sisters,” urging one another toward thrilling new peaks.  

Even when the guitarist and saxophonist solo sequentially, as on closing track “Fourth Wall” — where Lewis ends his statement with a gritty wail and Pirog answers with a snarling, soulful line — you can hear a certain charge passing between them. 

“The duality of them playing together — all these melody lines and then egging each other on during the solos — was super liberating,” Canty says of Pirog and Lewis’ interplay. “And for me as a drummer, I felt like I could literally just be a utility player, just to support.”

Though the configuration heard on The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis is relatively new, it builds on long-standing musical relationships. Lewis and Pirog first met around a decade ago at a session led by free-jazz drummer William Hooker and instantly hit it off, going on to work together extensively in Lewis’ own groups. “Since day one of knowing Anthony, me and him just fit,” says Lewis, now widely acclaimed as one of the most compelling bandleaders on the contemporary jazz scene. “We looked at each other after that William Hooker session, and we was like, ‘Damn, this shit is on point.’”

Lally and Canty of course share a similar brotherhood, rooted in the 15 years they spent touring the world as the supple yet rock-solid rhythm section for Washington, D.C.’s iconic Fugazi. “I play differently with Joe than I play with anybody else,” Canty says. “He creates this foundation that I call a very sturdy jungle gym for all of us to play on. He keeps it dubby and rhythmic, and there’s a lot of times where there’s a sixth sense — there's things that happen between us when we're playing that there’s no accounting for except for the fact that we've been playing together for 30 years.”

Lewis likens the experience of playing with Lally and Canty to his work with various jazz elders. “The way I revere them is the same way that I revere playing with Jamaaladeen Tacuma or playing with William Parker,” he says, citing a pair of esteemed veteran bassists. “It's a certain road experience that you can't get in school.” He also appreciates that he can hear the rich musical heritage of their hometown in their sound. “Growing up in the D.C. area, Brendan and Joe are familiar with go-go, with all of the stuff from the area,” he says. “So I will say that the time feel — it don't get no better than that. It's like a well-oiled machine playing with them.”

That steady rhythmic backbone, coupled with Pirog’s omnivorous guitar approach — which draws on jazz, punk, free improvisation and everything in between — gave the Messthetics a huge sonic palette right from the start, showcased on both their self-titled 2018 debut and 2019’s Anthropocosmic Nest. But Pirog had always been curious what his friend Lewis might add to the band, leading to him extending the invite for the saxophonist’s initial 2019 sit-in, which took place at New York’s Winter Jazzfest. 

“James was just someone who I felt had the right energy to add another texture to the group, and immediately we already had a good interplay going from playing in his groups,” Pirog says. “I also just wanted to share this group that I've been working with, with him because he was so generous with me.”

Once the quartet established a rapport onstage, the Messthetics followed up with an invitation to team up for an album, which Lewis quickly accepted.

“Every time I played with them, there was a vibe and it was a good chemistry,” Lewis says, looking back on his early appearances with the group, which eventually led to a one-off studio track that appeared on the saxophonist’s 2023 LP Eye of I. “They hit me up and they're like, ‘Yo, man, would you want to record a full record?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ because the vibe was so natural.”

The Messthetics spent a few months in the fall of 2022 assembling and arranging material as a trio before meeting with Lewis for just one day of rehearsal prior to the recording in December. Even with minimal prep time, the material evolved considerably. Lewis added a lush, spiraling melody to the chorus section of “The Time Is the Place,” originally called “Meters Groove” in honor of the song’s Canty-written central riff, a crisp seven-beat strut. And Lewis was the key element that unlocked Lally’s “Railroad Tracks Home,” joining the bassist on the second pass through the theme and turning the subtle, swinging mood piece from something, in Lally’s words, “dirge-y and dark” to “a light-bringing thing.” 

The seven-and-a-half-minute “Boatly,” meanwhile, made room for each member of the band to explore his full dynamic range, with brushed drums and a ballad-like texture segueing into a breathtaking coda — which Pirog cites as his favorite moment on the album — where Lewis unleashes fierce cries and brawny blasts over a cyclical 6/8 theme as Canty works up to a cymbal-bashing climax.

The fervor of Lewis’ playing both here and elsewhere on the record clearly points back to John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, firmly rooting the album in the soil of the classic Impulse! catalog, despite its thoroughly contemporary feel. Lally says he can’t wait to see his band’s name next to the unmistakable orange, white and black Impulse! logo. “Looking at a record and I'm on impulse! with Alice Coltrane?” he adds with giddy disbelief. “It's like being on Otis Redding's label.”

“I’m trying to be cool about it,” Canty says with a laugh of being associated with such a storied catalog. “Hopefully nobody’s going to figure out that I’m the imposter in the temple.”

Thankfully, it’s hard to imagine today’s listeners thinking in those restrictive terms, as the album is arriving at a time when the borders of genre are blurrier than ever. Lewis, for one, relishes the chance to plug into the power of the Messthetics’ punk-adjacent milieu. “I think that’s ultimately why I said yes” to pursuing the full-length, he says. “I love nuanced stuff, but I also like the ability to really just put out some energy. When you hear the Messthetics by themselves, that shit is cranking. And I'm always signing up to crank.”

Judging by the enthusiastic response the Messthetics and their esteemed guest have received during more recent live meetings, listeners are similarly eager to hear what happens when brilliant players like these stretch themselves through collaboration.

“I feel like, more and more, there’s an audience for exploration,” Canty says. “And I really hope this record’s part of that.”

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $22 Advance & $25 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

GRATEFUL DUB a Reggae-infused tribute to the Grateful Dead

with Special Guest ROOTS OF CREATION

RoC (Roots of Creation) has taken on a unique new project: Grateful Dub: a Reggae-infused tribute to the Jerry Garcia & The Grateful Dead. Combining their longtime love for Reggae-Dub style music and the Grateful Dead, RoC reworked some of the world’s favorite Dead tunes into a new studio album. RoC had the pleasure of working in the studio with the legendary 5-time Grammy winner Errol Brown who was Bob Marley’s sound engineer for this project. Grateful Dub is also being performed live in its entirety at festivals, theatres, and clubs around the country, and features rotating live special guests that has included Melvin Seals (Jerry Garcia Band), Scott Guberman (Phil Lesh), Zach Nugent, RyMo, AG, & Paul W. (Slightly Stoopid), G. Love (G. Love & Special Sauce), Mihali (Twiddle), Dan Kelly (Fortunate Youth) and others. Grateful Dub captures the spirit and magic of the Grateful Dead, while laying it down Reggae-Dub style.

Doors 6:30pm // Show 7:30pm // Ages 21+ // $32 Advance & $37 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

HOODOO GURUS

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $20 Advance & $24 Day of Show

***This is a fully standing general admissions show. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

RED SHAHAN

“Let’s keep the lonely places, lonely as long as we can …”

As career trajectories are measured, Red Shahan has covered a hell of a lot of ground in the three years since the release of his debut, Men and Coyotes — not to mention since his salad days a decade ago, when he began haunting the Lubbock club circuit and made the fateful decision that music would be his life’s path rather than baseball, rodeo, or firefighting. After a few more formative years of honing his chops and confidence as a songwriter, singer, and versatile musician in different projects throughout the region, he relocated to Fort Worth and began focusing in earnest on launching a solo career and recording the album that would serve as his official introduction to the Texas music world at large. Men and Coyotes was originally released in the summer of 2015 with little fanfare, but the red-headed troubadour with the lonesome howl and penchant for somber portraits of busted boom towns and gritty, white-knuckled anthems wasn’t long in hitting his stride and building a loyal audience the old-fashioned way: organically, from the ground up.

That grassroots success would in turn land him both a booking deal with the Beverley Hills-based Paradigm Talent Agency and the honor of being the first artist signed to fellow Texas artist Randy Rogers’ Big Blind Management roster. The next thing Shahan knew, he was playing his first official showcase at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville. After the set, a duly impressed English gentleman with shoulder-length silver hair approached him to enthuse, “You guys were great!” Shahan thanked him, but didn’t learn until after the fact that he’d just met Robert Plant. “It was such a dark-lit room that I didn’t even recognize him,” Shahan confesses today with a self-effacing chuckle. “I guess I dropped the ball on that one!”

Clearly, the gifted young troubadour from Bluff Dale, Texas is already off to a great start — and Shahan’s now poised to reach an even bigger audience with the March 30 release of his sophomore album, Culberson County, on Thirty Tigers. But as the new album’s title track makes pointedly clear, far from being swept away by any of his forward momentum to date, Shahan is still proudly rooted heart, mind, and soul in the West Texas earth from which he sprang. And yes, he’s still got a thing for coyotes, hearing in their wild cries not just the music of wide open spaces, but a defiant note of stubborn resiliency that speaks to his own instincts as a hardscrabble independent artist compelled to write about the all-too-often unsung — and unseen.

“If anybody ever had a ‘spirit animal,’ I would definitely say mine is a coyote,” he insists. “It’s just a very resilient animal — something that thrives off of the bottom rung of what people leave behind.”

But as much as he admires the metaphoric potential of the scrappy underdog, as a storyteller Shahan is far too honest to ever cheapen his narratives with false hopes. In “Culberson County” when he sings, “let’s keep the lonely places / lonely as long as we can,” his wish is tempered with the realist’s fatalism that the wilderness and coyotes can’t hold out forever, because “it won’t be long before they pave it down and just the highways whine.” Likewise, even though he loves his native Lone Star State as much as any other former college rodeo performer who grew up on a cattle ranch, more often than not when Shahan sings about Texas, he’s not rhapsodizing about bluebonnets and carefree nights at the dancehall.

“I really like to try to paint a picture of the real Texas, because there’s a lot of stuff about Texas that people don’t talk about,” he says. Take, for example, the album’s harrowing “Enemy” — a documentary-style report from the frontlines of backwoods meth country. “I mean, I’m with the next guy that wants to throw on a pearl-snap shirt and hoot and holler over a case of Busch Light, but at the same time … how often are those people really happy? Because a lot of them come from some really hard and darker sides of Texas, and those are the things I want to bring light to.” Other tales from that dark side include “6 Feet,” about an incarcerated drug dealer dreading the cartel justice awaiting him on the other side, and “How They Lie,” whose opening verse unspools a world of heartbreak: “Sister’s in the backseat crying to her daddy, ‘When we gonna move back home?’ / He said it’s not our house now, Daddy made a few mistakes and now they’ve taken everything we own / Sign the wrong dotted line in a stack of papers and everything is gone.”

Just for the record, Shahan (who recently became a first-time daddy to a baby girl) has never been cheated by an oil company out of a family farm, let alone buried a bag of stolen drug money in the desert. But he infuses those stories with as much conviction as he does his more personal and “confessional” fare such as “Hurricane” and “Idle Hands,” two songs that address the emotional tug-of-war of a traveling musician weighing the temptations of the road against the comforts of home (and fidelity.) And although much of Culberson County may be as unapologetically, well, grim as Men and Coyotes, there’s a handful of songs here that reveal a lighter touch and even a flash of tongue-in-cheek humor. In the opening “Waterbill,” a broke musician’s lament served over a rollicking bed of Creedence-worthy riffage, Shahan finds himself stranded on the side of the road in Bandera, too drunk to call for help but just sober enough to dread spending the night in mountain lion country, because “I hear they love a redhead delight.” In the rollicking singalong “Someone Someday” (a rare co-write for Shahan, penned with Brent Cobb and Aaron Raitiere), he sings a line about “rubbernecking all the outlaws” that lands as both a laugh-out-loud commentary on the modern Texas/Americana music scene and a playfully self-aware admission of his own aspirations and insecurity. And then there’s the politically charged (albeit by Shahan’s admission, deliberately non-partisan) fist-in-the-air anthem “Revolution,” which really isn’t funny at all — but it does flat out rock.

Like any self-respecting Texas singer-songwriter worthy of the title, Shahan can hold his own playing any of his songs solo acoustic, just like he writes them. But Culberson County is no one-man show. Like Men and Coyotes before it, this is very much a full-band affair, with Elijah Ford (an acclaimed solo artist in his own right) returning to the producer’s chair, Matthew “Paw Paw” Smith (formerly with Ryan Bingham) back behind the drum kit and Shahan’s old Lubbock buddy Parker Morrow on bass. Shahan himself played rhythm electric and acoustic, while special recruit Daniel Sproul was called in to handle most of the lead guitar for the sessions. Guests on the album include fellow Texas songwriters Charlie Shafter and Bonnie Bishop on background and harmony vocals, as well as Shahan’s own mother, Kim Smith, who sings on the song “Memphis.”

It was his mother who taught Shahan his first chords on guitar, telling him, “If you want to learn more, you can take this and go from there.” “I just wanted to have her on the album as a way of saying thank you for always supporting and believing in me,” he says. “She was a little hesitant at first, but she knocked it out of the park.”

The same can be said for everyone else on the record, too, which of course made it especially hard for Shahan to have to wait more than a year after its completion for its belated release date this spring — really the only concession (necessitated by the kind of big-picture scheduling and strategizing that comes into play anytime an artist breaks through to the next level) that he’s had to make to date in his career. He candidly admits that, left entirely to his own “blow-and-go” impulse, he might well have had three records out by now — and hopes that maybe he will come this time next year. But right now, he couldn’t be happier to finally get to share Culberson County with his fans — especially those who already know the handful of songs the band has previewed live well enough to request them by name.

“People will say ‘Are you going to play ‘Revolution’ tonight?’ And I’m like, ‘How do you even know that song’s called ‘Revolution’?” he marvels with a laugh. “But it’s been very cool to see that, and I’m just really excited to get the whole album out now and to get people’s reactions and input to the rest of the songs. We’re all extremely proud of this record. I still feel like we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we’re capable of yet, but … this is a great window into what’s to come.”

Show 8pm // $30 Advance $35 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

FALCO & BOOK PLAY JERRY GARCIA

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

Show 8pm // $25 Advance // $30 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

1. LA LOM

2. The Los Angeles League of Musicians, LA LOM, are an instrumental trio formed in Los Angeles in 2021. They blend the sounds of Cumbia Sonidera, 60’s soul ballads and classic romantic boleros that emanate from radios, backyard parties and dance clubs of Los Angeles with the twang of Peruvian Chicha and Bakersfield Country.

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $27 Advance & $30 Day of Show

***This is a fully seated general admissions show. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

BEN OTTEWELL & IAN BALL (of Gomez)

Ian Ball and Ben Ottewell of the British band Gomez are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their sophomore album, "Liquid Skin," with a US tour this fall. The tour kicks off on October 1, 2024, at The City Winery in Boston and includes several other dates across North America.

Gomez, known for their eclectic blend of rock, blues, and experimental sounds, achieved significant acclaim with "Liquid Skin," following their Mercury Prize-winning debut, "Bring It On." The anniversary tour will feature performances of tracks from "Liquid Skin," along with other fan favorites and possibly some new material. 

The tour promises an intimate experience as Ball and Ottewell perform as a duo, supported by the special guest artist, Buddy. This setup aims to highlight the unique vocal interplay and songwriting prowess that have defined Gomez's music over the years.

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $24 Advance & $30 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

HOT 8 BRASS BAND

The New Orleans-based Hot 8 Brass Band draw on the traditional jazz heritage of their hometown, alongside more modern styles, including elements of funk, hip hop, rap, and its local variation, “bounce.” The collective earned a win in the 64th Annual Grammy Awards 2022 for their feature on John Batiste’s ‘Album of The Year', following the nomination of ‘The Life & Times Of…’ for ‘Best Regional Roots Album’ in 2013.

Transcending genres and trends, Hot 8 have performed and collaborated with the likes of Jon Batiste, Blind Boys of Alabama, Basement Jaxx and Alice Russell, and provided live support for Mos Def, Lauryn Hill and Mary J Blige. Since forming they have established a decade-long affiliation with actor/BBC 6Music DJ Craig Charles, among other tastemakers, DJs and journalists worldwide. After a festive appearance Live at Maida Vale for Lauren Laverne (BBC 6 Music), the Hot 8 Brass Band performed for Jools Holland's annual Hootenanny on BBC Two to welcome in 2019. Later that year, after taking to the stage at the BRIT awards in February, Hot 8 Brass Band were invited on the European leg of George Ezra’s tour.

With multiple sell-out shows at London’s Roundhouse and Brighton’s Dome, Hot 8 continues to share their acclaimed releases. Albums such as 'Vicennial...', 'On The Spot' and 'Take Cover', are brought to the stage, honoring their city’s musical traditions, while forging their own powerful legacy. Mixing an old-school street brass approach with funkier currents and hip hop vocals, Hot 8’s magnificent originals are juxtaposed with fresh versions of Snoop Dogg, Stevie Wonder, The Specials and of course their anthemic take on Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”.

The recent passing of Bennie Pete, the beloved co-founder and sousaphone player for the outfit, will be honoured in true New Orleans fashion with ‘The Bossman Tour 2023’, paying tribute to his “galvanizing force” as a “leader, teacher and mentor”. Fellow bandmates add that  “Bennie was an inspiration to [the] band and to many other musicians, and the entire musical and cultural community.”. The dates will celebrate the late Bennie’s “greatest wish.. that New Orleans culture lives on for future generations”. This parade follows the success of the Mardi Gras 2020 and 'Take Cover' 2019 tours.

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $27 Advance $30 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

STEELY DEAD

Show 8pm // $26 General Admission & $22 General Admission 4 Packs

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

FOREVERLAND - THE ELECTRIFYING TRIBUTE TO MICHAEL JACKSON

Since 2009, Foreverland has been mesmerizing audiences around the country with their larger-than-life tribute to the one and only Michael Jackson.
Featuring three dynamic vocalists, a powerhouse rhythm section, and the hardest working horn section in the biz, Foreverland recreates hits from the Jackson 5 era through the end of Michael’s incredible career in a way that honors the King of Pop’s musical genius and legendary showmanship like no other tribute band has ever done.

Show 8pm // $30 Advance & $35 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

AARON WATSON

For over 20 years now, Aaron Watson has traveled the land as country’s ultimate underdog troubadour – a truly independent artist with the spirit of the American frontier in his veins, and a self-made empire to match. 

Working without corporate backers, he has nonetheless reached the Top 10 of Billboard’s Country Album chart five separate times – an impressive feat by any standard – and that includes his triumphant 2015 set, The Underdog, which landed at Number One. Matching sold-out shows across the country with homegrown hits, he’s followed suit at country radio, making history in 2017 with “Outta Style” and “Run Wild Horses.” But despite the success, the Texas native remains a fighter punching far above his weight, constantly defending his right to be in the ring. And with his new album, Unwanted Man, he reminds all who care to listen that it’s just fine by him.

“It's not like, ‘Is there any gas left in the tank?’” Watson says, explaining the tireless drive behind his 18th studio set. “This is just who I am. I still without a doubt believe I haven't written my best song yet, and I kind of feel like I'm just getting started.”

Still pushing into the wind, Unwanted Man finds a creative renegade continuing to do what he does best, now working at the most “dangerous” level of his career. Counted out time and time again, the singer-songwriter reaffirms his steadfast commitment to his craft, and takes his go-it-alone spirit to new levels.

Eleven songs were written at home in the early months of the pandemic – with Watson’s “90-percent solo” writing style serving him well. He then co-produced the set with his drummer and studio mate, Nate Coon, and even shot the album cover himself, using his iPhone after his photographer contracted COVID-19. And then, just as the album was set for release, Watson suffered the first vocal injury of his career, with mandatory voice rest adding yet another wrinkle of adversity. But it was all taken in stride. This artist is used to weathering storms.

“You just have to roll with the punches,” Watson says, knowing full well what that means.

Seventeen years into his journey, Watson reached a hard-to-comprehend milestone in 2017, becoming one of the only independent artists to crack country radio’s Top 10 in the last half century. “Defying gravity” with his free wheeling country rocker, “Outta Style,” he had a bonafide hit and almost two decades of sold-out momentum on his hands, reaching a pinnacle that should have sent him to the next level – yet still, Watson found the mainstream gates difficult to unlock.

Luckily, his fans didn’t care. They never stopped coming out, whether it was a massive stadium show like RodeoHouston or a nameless dancehall on some dusty interstate off ramp, and in the time since, that truth not only sustained Watson, it became the bedrock of Unwanted Man.

“Because of these fans, I don't feel like an unwanted man,” he explains. “I built my career at the honky tonks, and I'm not mad at anyone – I don't have time. But it does motivate me to get back in there shake things up again. There are a lot of people out there who like what I do, so for them – and for myself – I’m going to keep pushing forward. That’s what this is all about.”

With its raw vocals and minimal production, the album’s title track sets Watson’s quest in motion, kicking off Unwanted Man with a thank you to his supporters. As it swells into a two-stepping romantic romper, his knack for hiding big themes in personal lyrics shines through … and not for the last time.

Cut in January 2021 in Tyler, Texas, it’s the first album Watson has recorded in his home state in a decade, and reflective themes of an outsider’s life in spotlight pepper the set – always presented as he sees fit. 

With its grungy garage-rock vibe, “Cheap Seats” follows the thematic lead of “Unwanted Man,” pledging allegiance to the common concertgoers who remain his inspiration – rather than some faceless focus group. Elsewhere, “Old Man Said” recounts the tender wisdom that helped guide Watson to manhood, and with a soft touch of heartland rock, “Crash Landing” finds a weary traveler looking to rest his heart.

Meanwhile, “Dancing Around the Truth” breathes fresh energy into the familiar one-last-time love song, “What’s Left of Me” tallies up the impact of time and tribulation, and the album ends on a Paul McCartney-inspired singalong, complete with sweeping strings epic emotions (“Once In a Life”).

Each one features the inventive songwriting and one-of-a-kind melodies of a true, untamed artist, striving to bring a singular vision to life, no matter the cost. And with the working-musician’s anthem, “Heck of a Song,” Watson promises to never stop.

Looking back, that’s the true theme of Unwanted Man. That at this point in his long career, Watson knows who he is, and he’s not about change. It might not be an easy road – or even one you can find on a map most of the time. But he’s free, and he knows it.

“I'm right where I wanna be,” Watson says. “No one can put any labels on me. And I tell a lot of younger artists, ‘Listen, there's enough room at the table for all of us. This is not a sprint. This is a long distance race.’”

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $27 Advance $30 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

WILLIE WATSON

Soon before Willie Watson turned 18, he met God in an apple orchard. Or at the very least, he met there a man named Ruby Love, the older friend of a high-school buddy who had an enormous Martin guitar and a seemingly bigger understanding of the American folk songbook. Watson was existentially thirsty: A high-school dropout from upstate New York’s Finger Lakes, he was fast on his way to his first heartbreak and in a first band that didn’t take itself seriously enough. But that night in an apple orchard that had always seemed magical, at a graduation party for one of his bandmates and best friends, Watson and Love sang a few of those old songs together—“Worried Man Blues” and “Tennessee Waltz.” It was the first time Watson had cried while singing, the first time he had made the connection between making music and making sense of his life. He never saw Ruby Love again, but within months of that foundational 1997 rendezvous, he met the musicians with whom he’d soon start Old Crow Medicine Show. Call it revelation, fate, resurrection, whatever you will; for Watson, more than a quarter-century later, it was a duet with the divine. 

As told in the talking-gospel masterpiece “Reap ’em in the Valley,” that scene is the transfixing finale of Watson’s self-titled debut as a songwriter and as a human at last making music to make sense of his life. Yes, Watson has released two albums since he left Old Crow Medicine Show a dozen years ago and since his long-term collaborations with David Rawlings and Gillian Welch. 

But those records, both titled Folk Singer, were sets of tunes he knew, interpretations of the songbook he has diligently mined since even before that night in the apple orchard. At 44, however, he feels that Willie Watson is his first-ever true album, having finally lived and lost and simply witnessed enough to know he has something to sing with his exquisite rural tenor. Watson has not abandoned those old songs entirely. He dazzles during a robust take on the forever-curious “Mole in the Ground” and treats “Harris and the Mare,” the standard of tragic Canadian singer Stan Rogers, with total tenderness. But by and large, these are his stories of heartbreak and hurt, backlit by the corona of hope that only growth can provide. 

Every memory, Watson likes to say, is surrounded by a shroud of sadness, whether it’s good or bad. And there are lots of memories in a life, all mixed: Though the band he started soon after that night with Ruby Love long gave him a purpose and career, it conscripted him into a role as an old-fashioned folkie, forever stuck playing a part that got tiring. Marriage and fatherhood became boons in their own time, but they kept him bound to Los Angeles, its sprawl and selfishness causing a country boy like Watson to lose himself again. And there was the stereotypical excess of it all, too, the habits of hard living nearly breaking Watson in his 30s. 

But after he lost those relationships, he slowly got sober and faced himself head on, working to be honest about the traumas of his childhood that had helped create the troubles of adulthood. Sobriety, though, was never enough for Watson. He wanted that shift to prompt change and growth, to force him into situations that were beneficial because they were uncomfortable and challenging. That, in many ways, is the motivation of these nine songs and the only album he’s ever felt deserved to bear his name. 

In 2020, Watson began convening with Morgan Nagler, an actress and songwriter he’d met years earlier through Rawlings. They’d discuss an idea and then often sit in silence, scratching away at it separately as Watson wriggled around on a couch, as if wrestling with his past in the real time of the present. Sometimes playful and sometimes persecuted, the songs that emerged looked

backward to move ahead, dealing with disappointments in phrases of crisp rhyme and sly wordplay. 

A post-pandemic solo tour had left Watson feeling drained by the idea of being some standalone entertainer, onstage alone taming crowds who had forgotten how to listen amid extended isolation. He knew he wanted a band for these songs, but he understood they only needed to be the framing beneath them, supporting rather than distracting from these reckonings with self. Alongside producers Kenneth Pattengale and Gabe Witcher, respectively of Milk Carton Kids and Punch Brothers, Watson assembled a modest ensemble of aces who were largely new to him but would respond to the songs intuitively and without intrusion—bassist Paul Kowert, guitarist Dylan Day, drummer Jason Boesel, fiddler Sami Braman. (Careful listeners may note cameos from Benmont Tench and Sebastian Steinberg, too.) Start to finish, these songs sound like moments of mutual discovery, the entire group arriving together to look at Watson’s life and realize something about and for themselves. 

“Real Love” harkens back to those days in rural New York, with Watson opening himself to the wreckage that comes with falling for someone for the first time. He is fragile but resolute here, pressing on in spite of vestigial pain. “Sad Song” thrums like some muted and modern Jimmie Rodgers number, as Watson tries to play-act happiness one more time for a society that’s just wanted him to grin and sing. Echoing the rippling and beautiful despair of Gordon Lightfoot, the gorgeous “Play It One More Time” examines the fleeting salve of music itself, or how the help it gives us can fade when we’re not truly hearing. 

And then there’s the hotrod acoustic opener, “Slim and the Devil,” a wits-sharp adaptation of the Sterling A. Brown poem “Slim Greer in Hell.” After being disgusted by the imagery of white nationalists taking over the streets of Charlottesville, Watson pulled a book called "The Black Poets" off his shelf, and the first page he opened was Brown's poem. The story of a Faustian bargain made with St. Peter at the pearly gates in exchange for one more earthly adventure, it’s a sly contemplation of the meaningless deals we make to endure when we all know what’s inevitable. For Willie, the story is second to the honor aimed at the poet himself "because history has told me that all the people in his position have been robbed by white folk artists and completely cast aside." And then there is “Already Gone,” a devastating if elegant survey of the damage we leave behind as we make bad choices, as we force people to leave our lives. “There’s no hearts to break here,” Watson offers before the knockout. “They’re already gone.” 

These days, Watson looks askance at his old reputation and knows other people do, too. “‘I thought you were just some nice little singer who sang in the little fucking cowboy hat,’” he deadpans, characterizing the perception he knows he has in many ways courted. And he recognizes that people probably don’t think he can write his own songs of meaning and depth, since he spent so long reworking those of others. For a long time, he bought that, too. But the hat is off, as is the desire to be a mere entertainer or interpreter. The nine songs on Willie Watson find a bona fide songwriter dealing with the difficulties of his past to suggest a renewed future; what’s more, he uses his keen and expansive understanding of an old lexicon to add his own new entries to it. As with the best folk songs, you will recognize your own burdens here. As with the best folk singers, you will feel compelled to sound them out, too. Who knows, maybe you’ll even meet God in an apple orchard.

Show 8pm // $29.50 Advance / $32 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

LA SANTA CECILIA

Santa Cecilia (named after the patron saint of musicians) was formed in 2007 as a  sextet. Its founding members were guitarist Gloria Estrada, accordionist and  requintista Pepe Carlos, bassist Alex Bendaña, percussionist Miguel "Oso" Ramírez,  drummer Hugo Vargas and lead vocalist Marisol "La Marisoul" Hernández. The band  members were born or came to the United States when they were very young. While  they all grew up with traditional forms of Latin music at home, they were also  exposed to the sounds of American pop culture: rock, soul, blues, jazz, jazz, funk,  punk, ska, reggae and other sounds of the world that were playing on the airwaves  and in the neighborhoods. They performed at block parties, bars, coffee shops and,  from time to time, as opening acts for out-of-town artists and at festivals.  

Los Angeles-based Santa Cecilia is a Latin rock band that draws inspiration from  music around the world, using Pan-American rhythms from Colombian and Mexican  cumbia, bossa nova, rumba, bolero and tango, and combining them with rock, soul,  R&B, ska, jazz and even klezmer. Children of Immigrants, their acclaimed 2013  debut album, Treinta Días, offered an upbeat yet intensely personal take on Latin  life, and released the hit single "Ice el Hielo," which became an anthem for the 14  million undocumented inhabitants of the United States and paved the way for the  band to win a Grammy for Best Latin Rock Album. In 2017, La Santa Cecilia released  Amar y Vivir, an audiovisual album composed of cover versions. The set was  recorded live in the streets, plazas, cantinas and theaters of Mexico City. The  eponymous 2019 mini album was recorded as a tribute to the parents of three of the  band members, who had passed away in the previous 18 months. Its closing track  is a cover of the Bessie Smith blues standard "Nobody Knows You When You're  Down and Out." Two years later, La Santa Cecilia released "Quiero Verte Feliz". The title track was recorded in collaboration with singer-songwriter Lila Downs. 

The group recorded their first eponymous EP in 2009. Aside from their superb  songwriting and performances, the CD revealed something else that was different  about this band: They wanted to be part of their community. They sponsored "paint  parties" where they played and designed and hand-painted their CD covers with  friends and fans, using materials ranging from recycled newsprint to wrapping paper,  cardboard and more. No two covers were alike, making them objects d'art. The  band's music spread throughout the city and local listeners invited them to play more gigs and festivals. Their incendiary live performances garnered them a fanatical fan  base, and music from the EP ended up appearing on the cable TV series Weeds, in  the documentary Re-Encounters (about Oaxacan artist Alejandro Santiago) and  elsewhere.  

La Santa Cecilia's second EP, Noche y Citas, was released in 2010 and garnered  more critical acclaim, and the group began touring Mexico and eventually North  America. Their third EP included four covers and one original song. The covers  ranged from Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love" and U2's "One" to "Love Came Here" by  the late Lhasa de Sela and "Viento" by Caifanes, showing not only their variety, but  their commitment to a wide variety of music.  

With growing popularity at home and abroad, La Santa Cecilia signed with Universal  and reduced the core group to La Marisoul, Bendaña, Carlos and Ramirez. Their  debut album, Treinta días, was released in May 2013 and became the most played  debut of the week on Billboard's Latin Pop Albums chart and won the Grammy Award  for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album in February 2014. The band hit the  road, playing Bonnaroo, SXSW and many other festivals. They shared the stage  with Elvis Costello, Stevie Wonder and Los Lobos. In March, less than a month after  winning their Grammy, the band released Someday New. Their single "Cumbia  Morada" hit the charts in its first week. In addition, a cover of the Beatles' "Strawberry  Fields Forever" was a hit. Another version of "Ice El Hielo" appeared on the album;  the song was used in the FX series “The Bridge”. 

La Santa Cecilia worked on the road, taught songwriting workshops and were  selected as one of two opening acts for Café Tacuba's 25th anniversary tour. They  also became an international headliner in their own right before returning to the  studio. In August 2015, they released a pre-release single in English, "I Won't Cry  for You," and followed it up with "Nunca Mas (Never Again)" in December. The full  Buenaventura album was released in February 2016. The album featured  appearances by Enrique Bunbury, Fito Páez, members of Los Lobos and  Milwaukee's Latino Arts Strings Program.  

The band deepened its collaboration with producer Sebastian Krys and signed to his  Rebeleon Entertainment label. The result was the most ambitious recording of their  career to date. They decided to record an "audiovisual album" in Mexico City. La  Santa Cecilia started out as a street band in Los Angeles, singing rancheras and  boleros, as well as pop, soul and rock songs in Spanish and English. To reflect this  across the border, they recorded each song - 11 versions, one original - in the plazas,  parks, bars and theaters of the great metropolis. Each song was recorded live and  accompanied by a video. The material reflected their roots. There were versions of  rancheras, boleros and mariachi classics by some of Mexico's best composers, such  as Violeta Parra, Consuelo Velázquez (composer of the song "Bésame Mucho") and  Tomás Méndez, as well as modern songs by Café Tacvba, Juan Gabriel and Smokey  Robinson. La Santa Cecilia has also had the collaboration of Mon Laferte (Chilean  singer-songwriter), Noel Schajris (Argentine-Mexican singer), Eugenia León and  Rebel Cats (rockabilly). The band previewed Amar y Vivir with three videos, all  released on the same day in April 2017, including a cover of the title track, "Amar y  Vivir" (written by Velázquez), featuring Mexican rock band Comisario Pantera. The full album was released in mid-May. It reached number 28 on the Top Latin Albums  chart and received a Grammy nomination for Best Latin Pop Album. 

La Santa Cecilia returned in 2019, with a self-titled full-length. Produced once again  by Sebastian Krys, the album was written in the midst of loss and grief: three of the  parents of the band's four members had passed away in the previous 18 months. Its  first single and video, "Winning," was released in July. Mixed by Grammy-winning  Dave Pensado, the track was an '80s-inspired surf-rock that addressed the idea that,  in the early 21st century, people were more likely to live online rather than experience  it, dulling and replacing our reactions to tragedy, disaster and the struggle for justice  with clickbait that would be easily replaced during the next "trending" news cycle.  The recording also included a groundbreaking version of the Bessie Smith classic  "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" to close the set. Saint Cecilia was  released in mid-October.  

Although the band toured for the first few months of the new year, they were forced  off the road and into quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021.  They reappeared in October 2021 with the single "Quiero Verte Feliz," recorded in a  rare collaboration with singer Lila Downs. The cut served as the final track (and title  track) on the band's eight-track album that appeared in November; and was  nominated for a Grammy and Latin Grammy for Best Tropical Vallenato / Cumbia  Album in 2022 and 2023. 

During 2021 and 2022 La Santa Cecilia toured several cities throughout the United  States and Mexico with her tour "Quiero Verte Feliz". This tour consolidated their  musical career, performing in venues such as The Goldfield, Sacramento; UC  Theater, Berkeley; Lunario del Auditorio Nacional; CDMX, among others. In addition  to getting 2 sold outs at The Regent California and his first Sold Out in Mexico City  at the emblematic Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris. Likewise, 2022 served as a  year of new music for the Mexican-American band, who produced their ninth album  titled "4 Copas: Bohemia en la Finca Altozano", released on April 14, 2023; from  which titles such as "Dos Botellas de Mezcal", "Copa Rota", "El Andariego",  "Almohada" and "Cuatro Copas" can be heard; 

La Santa Cecilia continues with its harvest of successes, new music and  presentations. They have managed to expand their music to more and more corners,  performing at large scale festivals in Latin America such as Vive Latino on March  18th and 19th in Mexico City and the Tecate Pa'l Norte festival on March 31st in  Monterrey, Mexico. In addition to achieving an important step in their career by  arriving for the first time in Europe, specifically in Spain, where they will participate  in the Rio Babel Festival in Madrid and the Pirineos Sur Festival in Lanuza on July  1 and 8 respectively. In addition to two individual dates such as O grove at the  Nautico on July 2 and Sala Sidecar in Barcelona on July 7.

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $27 Advance & $32 Day of Show / $112 Ledges 10 Year Anniversary VIP EXPERIENCE

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

NOAH GUNDERSEN W/ ABBY GUNDERSEN: LEDGES 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY 

Marking the 10th anniversary of his acclaimed album, Ledges, Noah Gundersen will play an intimate, stripped-back show with his sister Abby Gundersen playing fiddle.

It’s a strange thing to have a living artifact of your younger self. To observe the manifestations of a younger you’s inner life. To be honest, it’s often cringy and anxiety inducing. With the benefit of hindsight, our shortsightedness and misplaced fears and hopes seem so obvious. 

As I look back, ten years later, to the person I was when I made Ledges, I see a young man full of ambition and naivety, desperate for validation and a sense of belonging. I see a boy with a singular vision and a hell of a lot to learn. 

They say you have your whole life to make your first record and 18 months to make your second. Although Ledges isn’t technically my first album, for all intents and purposes, it feels like it. It was the one I spent years writing. Some songs were written on a mattress on the floor of a rented room I shared with a friend, in a run down old house I moved into when I left my folks place at 17. Some I wrote in my first apartment in Seattle. One was written in the early hours of the morning, waking up on a friends couch to a simple, beautiful piano arrangement Abby wrote. One, after the unexpected heroin overdose that resulted in the death of a friend. Another, after briefly reigniting an old flame, only to watch it quickly burn out. 

Everything was new back then. The colors were brighter, the highs higher, the lows lower. Falling in love felt like the first time. Heartbreak felt like the end of the world. Ideas felt important and the future was a big, empty canvas.

There’s a lot of self importance in all of this and ultimately this is just some record that some kid made. But to that kid this record felt like his whole world. And like all records, it’s a little snapshot in time. And how lucky we are to have snapshots, photographs of moments and memories that ground us in the reality we’ve lived.

I don’t want to live in the past. But I’m grateful this marker of how it once was. A little simpler, a little cleaner, a whole lot of potential. And maybe that’s a reminder that I’m living in that potential, right now. This is the future I imagined and hoped for. This is the person I am now. And it’s nice to be able to look back and see how far I’ve come. And if you found this record 10 years ago, I hope you can listen back with the same gentle hindsight.

Doors 7pm // Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $32 General Admission

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

YOU SHOULD BE DANCIN' - A TRIBUTE TO THE BEE GEES

Show 8:00pm // Ages 21+ // $24 Advance & $30 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $32 Advance & $37 Day of Show

***This is a fully seated general admissions show. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

LARRY CAMPBELL & TERESA WILLIAMS

Love always. Love forever. Love until the end of time. The Great Cosmic Playlist is testimony to the endurance of an emotion that is easy to conjure but hard to maintain. But for Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, who have been coupled consciously since 1986, love is more than a pop song; they are the bards of the long term committed relationship.

``As soon as I saw her, I knew she was the one,’’ says Larry. That epiphany occurred in a Manhattan rehearsal studio. Teresa, an actress and vocalist not long removed from Peckerwood Point, TN,  had been pulled into a singing contest.  Larry, the New York City native with a burgeoning reputation for his virtuosity on any instrument with strings, was brought in to play pedal steel guitar. ``For me, it was love at first note,’’ she says. Together they went on to capture a greater prize.

From the beginning, they shared a musical sensibility; Larry courted her with a Louvin Brothers mix tape. The more they played together, the deeper it grew. Whether it was Larry joining in on the music with Teresa’s family and neighbors under the tree where they were married (``Larry melded perfectly,’’ says Teresa), or Teresa belting bluegrass songs on the bus with Larry and the rest of Bob Dylan’s band as they traveled between gigs (``It was very fulfilling,’’ recalls Larry) , the couple’s rapport grew richer. ``I found a connection I had never experienced before,’’ says Larry. When Dylan’s manager, Jeff Kramer, suggested that they make hay with this natural duo, he expressed a thought that had been already brewing in Larry’s head. But Larry wasn’t ready. ``I had to start seeing myself as a singer and songwriter before I could take that step.’’ The couple took another decade, much spent playing with Levon Helm and his band at his legendary Midnight Rambles in Woodstock,  before Larry and Teresa elevated their rapport to the next level. 

All This Time is the couple’s fourth album since taking that leap, following Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams (2015), Contraband Love (2017), and Live at Levon’s (2023). All This Time , says Larry, ``feels more intuitive to me than the earlier records, less experimental, evidence that we’ve grown more aware of who we are and what we have to offer.’’ What they offer, evidently, is an intensely romantic album. Songs like Desert Island Dreams, Ride With Me, The Way You Make Me Feel, and I Love You fairly burst with the joy of love, while others recognize love’s humbling power. ``All I want, all I need, is right in front of me,’’ testifies one song. ``I still tremble at your name,’’ says another. 

It's not hard to recognize All This Time as a post-Covid album. Larry and Teresa had a hard pandemic. Before Teresa left for remote Tennessee to nurse her father through his last illness,  Larry came down with a double-barreled blast of Covid, and Teresa was quarantined. Isolated in Woodstock before treatments had been developed, Larry struggled.  ``Teresa pulled me through,’’ he says. ``I  held his hand over the phone,” she offers.  Teresa says Larry’s lyrics often help her decipher what’s on his mind, but it doesn’t always take a codebreaker to recognize the songs on this album as love letters sprouted in a harsh spring. ``When you told me that you need me/ After all we've been through/ I still think about the love we have to give/ I think about you.’’

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $56 Advance & $60 Day of Show

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

TREVOR HALL

Trevor Hall and The Great In-Between marks the start of a new era for musician Trevor Hall. Releasing September 15th, 2023 on Hall’s own 3 Rivers Label, the highly-anticipated record delivers a future-folk masterpiece anchored in Hall’s beloved style, while simultaneously bringing a refreshing new sound to the forefront. Created solely within the confines of a barn-turned-studio in his own backyard, this record marks the first of Hall’s career where he helmed every aspect of the production process. Penned without external influence and from a purely creative and explorative space, Trevor Hall and the Great In-Between unveils raw and unfiltered facets of Hall that remain undiscovered. 

Hailing from a small island in South Carolina, Hall was raised in a musical family and began formally studying classical guitar in high school at Idyllwild Arts Academy. Quickly thrust into the world of major labels, Hall signed a record deal at the young age of sixteen. After realizing the restrictive nature of such deals, he decided to pave his own way and reclaim his artistic freedom. Starting in 2017, he began releasing music independently. Since then, Hall has sold hundreds of thousands of albums and amassed billions of streams, leaving an indelible mark on the lives of countless listeners. His memorable live performances have graced venues around the world, including multiple sold-out headline shows at the historic Red Rocks Amphitheater. Hall currently resides in Colorado with his wife, author & photographer Emory Hall, as well as his son.

Show 8pm // Ages 21+ // $20 Advance & $24 Day of Show

***This is a fully seated general admissions show. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

JEFFREY MARTIN

On a small corner lot in southeast Portland, Oregon, Jeffrey Martin holed up through the winter recording his quietly potent new album Thank God We Left The Garden. Long nights bled into mornings in the tiny shack he built in the backyard, eight feet by ten feet. What began as demos meant for a later visit to a proper studio became the album itself, spare and intimate and true. Recorded live and alone around two microphones, Jeffrey often held his breath to wait for the low diesel hum of a truck to pass one block over on the busy thoroughfare. During the coldest nights, he timed recording between the clicks of the oil coil heater cycling on and off.

Martin's fourth full length album, Thank God We Left The Garden comes out on Portland's beloved Fluff and Gravy Records Nov __. He produced and engineered it himself, recalling, "There was a magic quality to the sounds I was getting in the shack with these two cheap microphones, some lucky recipe of time and place that allowed my voice and the way I play guitar and the shape of these new songs to come together with the kind of honesty I was craving."

So much has happened in the world since the release of his previous album One Go Around (heralded by No Depression as 'the poetry of America'), and Jeffrey has filled the time doggedly, but happily, touring the US and Europe, watching it all unfold in a stream of small town conversations and city sprawl. In a moment where depth is so often traded for the instantaneous, where tech billionaires are building rockets to escape the planet, where the dead-eyed stare of artificial intelligence is promising to existentially upend our world, and where divisiveness in our culture is breeding delusional levels of certainty, Jeffrey Martin's new record feels like a hopeful and fully human antidote.

There are holes in all the side walls where the wind it brings the rain in
And the gold crowns have been found out to be brass that has been painted
There are holes in all our bibles where we make secret compartments
To hide the broken treasures we smuggled out of the garden -Quiet Man

The sounds feel warm, close, and refreshingly real, all held up by the richness and rare candor of Jeffrey's voice. Production is restrained mostly to his guitar and vocals, with flashes of classical guitar for a tumbling wash of melody and low end color. Martin's voice sits high above everything, reaching into new melodic territory that goes beyond his earlier work. "I feel like I've only just learned how to sing," Martin said. "Like I've been chasing this record since my very first recordings. I wanted to really see what I could do, just my guitar and my voice and little else. I don't think it was conscious. I think maybe it was a reaction to the pace of life these days. The churning news and entertainment and politics and violence of it all. I needed to know that even in this day and age, just a few simple ingredients still hold up."

Beloved Portland-based guitarist Jon Neufeld added electric guitar to three tracks. Sticking to the same less-ismore approach, his playing skillfully and subtly elevates the lyrical intention. Neufeld's touch is best displayed on Red Station Wagon, a searing story about one man's transformation from a narrow-minded bigot into a person who feels deep remorse for the ugliness of his youth. In his transformation he discovers the clarity of empathy and compassion. The devastating and redemptive four minute song contains the emotional arch of an entire film, and each turn is beautifully punctuated by Neufeld's guitar. In addition to his guitar work, Neufeld mixed and mastered the album, and was such a crucial part of the final feel of the record that Martin also credited him as a producer.

"Jon and I really produced this album together," he said. "Me in the shack, and then him in his studio working with what I brought him as he mixed and mastered. It was such a treat to work with him. I brought this pile of rough songs and he was able to dial it in and make up for my complete lack of recording know-how. I love the performances I got, but Jon's magic is what helped them breathe and truly come to life."

No less lyrically weighty than his previous work, Thank God We Left The Garden holds a new kindness and easy solace that feels timeless and full of generosity. The title is a paradoxical nod to Martin's own spiritual conclusions, a theme that is subtly woven throughout the album. The son of a pastor, he touches on his religious upbringing then carries us well beyond his past where the weight of his deepest questions are free to unfold.

"It's always bothered me how uptight religion gets around the messiness of our human natures, always trying to tell people they're broken and flawed from the get go. The only God I can imagine is one who is overjoyed with the mess. Who revels in the edgeless mystery. I imagine hanging around with angels all day gets boring pretty fast. So maybe we got the story wrong. Maybe we were supposed to leave the Garden all along. Maybe that was the first good thing we ever did. After all, I can't think of anything that has an ounce of meaning or dimension that doesn't come from failure."

This is an album that craves your full attention, best experienced as a whole. Each song further illuminates the scene until you find yourself resting in the strangely comforting tangle of aliveness and meaning (and full spectrum of being alive./what it means to be alive.). At its core Thank God We Left The Garden is an album made of questions, humble and nuanced, a reverent celebration of the asking.

In my mind there's a garden, full of beauty and darkness
Full of sorrow and sweet things where my heart can be honest
In that garden there's a fruit tree and I eat from it daily
The same that Adam and Eve ate / what does that make me? -Garden

Whether singing about his own internal landscape, telling a story of someone else's, or reflecting on the elusive relationship between scarcity and contentment, Martin's writing never pushes the listener away, never points a finger. He sings of things we can all pin a memory on, holding the rough shorn gem of human experience up to the light.

There's a treasure that we all know but we can't have it / It's a place beyond the measure of our minds
It is where we go when we forget we're living / It is where we go when we forget we die . . .
And all the tools we use to feel important / they are useless as a sailboat in the sky
Where old bones and heart aches are forgotten / It's a place we don't have words to describe
The sun will rise like it always does on the day that I die
The world will spin, the sun will go on burning
Never even knowing I was alive
-There Is A Treasure

Thank God We Left the Garden will be released on Fluff and Gravy Records in the fall of 2023. Subsequent touring will carry Jeffrey Martin through all of the US, Canada, and Europe.

Show 7:30pm // Ages 21+ // $22

***This is a standing room general admissions show. There will be a limited number of chairs located in the back of the concert hall. Seating will be first come first served. The restaurant will be open for dinner starting at 4pm.

Felton Music Hall Presents:

MIKE RENWICK'S HOLIDAY DELUXE