Join Hubby Jenkins for a live online performance September 22
Show is first in Sugar Maple supported “Virtual Roots & Reasons” series

Hubby Jenkins, who mesmerized the Sugar Maple Music Festival audience in 2019, is a talented multi-instrumentalist who endeavors to share his love and knowledge of old-time American music. Born and raised in Brooklyn he delved into his southern roots, following the thread of African American history that wove itself through America’s traditional music forms. As an integral member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and later Rhiannon Giddens band, Hubby has performed at festivals and venues around the world, earning himself both Grammy and Americana award nominations. Today he spreads his knowledge and love of old-time American music through his dynamic solo performances and engaging workshops.

The Sugar Maple Music Festival, with the help of a grant from Dane Arts, is proud to support Hubby’s live online show (link to performance) on Sept. 22 at 7 pm CST where he will read a “Create your own adventure book,” perform songs and talk about his music.

Hubby’s show is the first in a series of online shows supported by the Sugar Maple Music Festival – performances and conversation about the music with a number of diverse artists including an October 4 (10 am CST) performance by Piedmont Bluz, and an in-depth interview and concert by Grammy nominated solo artist, songwriter and Native Daughters member Amythyst Kiah scheduled for October 10.

Watch our Facebook page for details on all the upcoming shows.  

We’re excited to bring the Amythyst Kiah Trio to the stage for their very first Sugar Maple Music Festival performance. Born in Chattanooga and based in Johnson City, Amythyst Kiah’s commanding stage presence is matched by her raw and powerful vocals—a deeply moving, hypnotic sound that stirs echoes of a distant and restless past.

Accompanied interchangeably with banjo, acoustic guitar, or a full band, her eclectic influences span decades, finding inspiration in old time music, alternative rock, folk, country, and blues.

Our Native Daughters, her recent collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell (Birds of Chicago), has delivered a full-length album produced by Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell, Songs of Our Native Daughters (out now on Smithsonian Folkways). The opening track, “Black Myself”, written by Amythyst, was recently nominated for a Grammy for Best American Roots Song.

Mark your calendars for Saturday, Aug. 1 when the Amythst Kiah Trio takes to the 17h Annual Sugar Maple Music Festival stage.

~written by Kimberly Schmitt

Looking for a great holiday gift for the music lover in your life? Then we have the gift for you!

Sugar Maple Music Festival 2020 tickets will be on sale for one day only this year – Cyber Monday on Dec. 2. For just $20, you’ll be able to purchase a weekend pass for the July 31 and Aug. 1, 2020 event.  It will cost you $50 at the gate, so mark your calendar and don’t miss this chance to get huge savings.

Tickets go on sale here at 12:01 a.m. Monday, Dec. 2

Confirmed artists for the 2020 Sugar Maple Music Festival include the Amythyst Kiah Trio! Born in Chattanooga and based in Johnson City, Amythyst Kiah’s commanding stage presence is matched by her raw and powerful vocals—a deeply moving, hypnotic sound that stirs echoes of a distant and restless past.

Accompanied interchangeably with banjo, acoustic guitar, or a full band, her eclectic influences span decades, finding inspiration in old time music, alternative rock, folk, country, and blues.

Our Native Daughters, her recent collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell (Birds of Chicago), has delivered a full-length album produced by Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell, Songs of Our Native Daughters (out now on Smithsonian Folkways). The opening track, “Black Myself”, written by Amythyst, was recently nominated for a Grammy for Best American Roots Song.

This year’s line-up also includes Appalachian Road Show, a group honoring the music, traditions and history of the Appalachian people and regions.  The group is comprised of banjoist Barry Abernathy, mandolinist-extraordinaire Darrell Webb, Grammy-award winning fiddler Jim Vancleve, and legendary upright bassist Todd Phillips.  On guitar is Zeb Snyder, a young phenom taking acoustic guitar circles by storm.

And we have confirmed Robbie Fulks will be back at the Sugar Maple fest performing a Doc Watson Tribute!  Robbie Fulks is a singer, recording artist, instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter. His most recent release, 2017’s Upland Stories, earned year’s-best recognition from NPR and Rolling Stone among many others, as well as two Grammy nominations, for folk album and American roots song (“Alabama At Night”).  Robbie is a long-time friend of the festival (2004, 2007, 2009 and 2012) and we’re thrilled to welcome him back.

Any one of these performances would be worth the ticket price alone!

More artists to be announced…stay tuned!

The Sugar Maple Concert Series is thrilled to welcome Ray Bonneville to the North Street Cabaret Friday, November 15. Tickets here!

Packing his 9^th studio album, At King Electric, acclaimed songwriter and master of the groove, Ray Bonneville has a pack full of new songs to share.

Ray Bonneville is a poet of the demimonde who didn’t write his first song until his early 40s, some 20 years after he started performing. But with a style that sometimes draws comparisons to JJ Cale and Daniel Lanois, this blues-influenced, New Orleans-inspired “song and groove man,” as he’s been so aptly described, luckily found his rightful calling. 

Born in Quebec, his family moved to Boston when he was 12. He served a year in Vietnam as a Marine, struggled and overcame drug addiction, earned a pilot’s license in Colorado, then moved to Alaska, then Seattle, and Paris and New Orleans. But it took a close call while piloting a seaplane across the Canadian wilderness to make him decide it was time to get busy writing songs – gritty narratives inspired by a lifetime of hard-won knowledge set against his gritty, soulful guitar and harmonica playing.

He’s since earned many accolades, including a Juno Award for his 1999 album, Gust of Wind. His post-Katrina ode, “I Am the Big Easy,” earned the International Folk Alliance’s 2009 Song of the Year Award, and in 2012, Bonneville won the solo/duet category in the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge. He has guested on albums by Mary Gauthier, Gurf Morlix, Eliza Gilkyson, Ray Wylie Hubbard and other prominent artists, and shared songwriting credits with Tim O’Brien, Phil Roy and Morlix, among others. Slaid Cleaves placed Bonneville’s “Run Jolee Run” on his lauded 2009 album, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away.

An Austin, TX resident since 2006, Bonneville still puts the rhythms and soul of New Orleans into much of his music. His songs carry a groove and momentum that’s uniquely his — and will always be a part of him, no matter where he roams.

American Songwriter describes Eilen Jewell as, “one of America’s most intriguing, creative and idiosyncratic voices.” The Boise, Idaho songwriter is one of a kind.

That singular voice springs forth from a woman of more than one mind, and she taps into many of them on Gypsy (August, 2019 Signature Sounds Recordings). By turns personal and political, pissed off and blissed out, Jewell’s first album of original material since 2015 expands brief moments of joy into lifetimes, and distills epic sentiments and persistent doubts into succinct songs.

Jewell seamlessly blends heavy electric guitars and dirty fiddles on the rollicking country rocker “Crawl” with the sweet and understated horn section of the tender “Witness. “79 Cents (The Meow Song)” skewers sexism and discrimination with pointed humor over a circus bed of musical saw and horns.

Longtime fans who love Eilen Jewell in classic country mode will delight in the pedal steel driven “These Blues” and the sole cover on Gypsy, “You Cared Enough To Lie,” written by fellow Idahoan and country legend Pinto Bennett.

Rather than pulling artist and listener this way and that, the tensions within and between these twelve tracks propel Eilen Jewell’s eighth studio album forward as a remarkably cohesive full-length.

Eilen plays the 16th Annual Sugar Maple Music Festival on Saturday, August 3, 2019.