Just one more week to get your early-bird two day passes to the 16th Annual Sugar Maple Music Festival!  On sale here through May 31.

Wood & Wire’s hand-hewn approach to creating and making music reflects vital writing and instrumental contributions from all four band members: guitarist Tony Kamel fashions fierce solo licks to accompany his lead vocals; mandolinist Billy Bright provides a propulsive backbeat and exuberant treble lines; banjo virtuoso Trevor Smith peppers each song with intricate, swirling countermelodies; and bassist Dom Fisher undergirds it all with a joyful playing style that steadies the beat while adding buoyant embellishments in all the right places.  Together, through words and music, they find a distinctive sense of place that distinguishes them from other bluegrass and roots bands active today.

Catch Wood & Wire at the Sugar Maple Fest Friday, August 2.

Milwaukee-based Nickel&Rose occupy the intersection of several traditional musical flavors: folk, juke-joint blues, and American roots music, with a perceptible seasoning derived from West African and classic country sources.  Theirs is a unique take on the Americana sound that fits squarely in the timeless traditional mode, and yet pushes boundaries with intoxicating rhythms and transgressive lyrics.  If you were to encounter Nickel&Rose in a Milwaukee or Chicago club, you would stay, order another beer, and then, intrigued and entranced, you’d stay a bit longer and order another, until the band was out of songs and the club was ready to close.  Bassist Johanna Rose lays down an unerring, melodic beat, while guitarist Carl Nichols dazzles with solo forays that toggle from lightning-fast picking displays to soulful solo explorations that somehow mash up Leadbelly, Django and Johnny Cash, behind beguiling lead vocals and languid, yet spot-on harmonies, always in service of hypnotic original songs.  Their song “Americana” has inspired rapturous feature-length articles in the music press.  This is a band on the rise – catch them at the Sugar Maple Festival while you can!

~Written by Brad Wolbert

She is often categorized as contemporary folk, but in truth there seems to be no American musical style that Eilen Jewell can’t make her own.  With her wonderfully enticing and soulful voice, she infuses everything from country weepers to rockabilly ravers, blues torchers to seductive lounge-noir gems with feeling and taste.  A native of Boise, Idaho, Eilen comes to the 2019 Sugar Maple Festival by way of Santa Fe, Los Angeles and Boston, tours in North America, Europe, the UK and Australia, appearances at SXSW and on NPR, and a series of well-received albums dating back to 2005, including a new album of originals forthcoming in late summer of 2019.

Eilen and her band, which includes husband Jason Beek on drums, combine strong original material with familiar and obscure classics plucked from a surprising range of blues and country subgenres.  By turns wistful, jaunty, scorching or heartbreaking, Eilen finds the beating heart of every song and delivers it with unflappable elegance and with a voice described by NPR as “sweet and clear…with a killer instinct lurking beneath the shiny surface.”

~written by Brad Wolbert

We’re thrilled to welcome Mollie O’Brien and Rich Moore to the North Street Cabaret on Thursday, November 8 at 8 pm as part of the on-going Sugar Maple Concert Series.

Grammy Award winner Mollie O’Brien became known to the rest of the world as a singer’s singer when, in 1988, she and her brother Tim released the first of three critically acclaimed albums for Sugar Hill Records (Take Me Back, Remember Me and Away Out on the Mountain). Eventually, Mollie recorded five equally well-received solo albums (Tell It True, Big Red Sun and Things I Gave Away for Sugar Hill Records, and I Never Move Too Soon and Everynight in the Week for Resounding Records). Additionally, she was a regular on the nationally syndicated radio show A Prairie Home Companion from 2001 through 2005. She’s long been known as a singer who doesn’t recognize musical boundaries, and audiences love her fluid ability to make herself at home in any genre while never sacrificing the essence of the song she tackles. O’Brien has primarily focused her efforts on the fading art of interpretation and the end result is a singer at the very top of her game who is not afraid to take risks both vocally and in the material she chooses.

Husband Rich Moore has busied himself in the Colorado music scene for many years. While staying home with the kids when Mollie and Tim toured, he held a day job and continued to perform locally with a variety of Colorado favorites, including Pete Wernick and Celeste Krenz. Not only is Moore known to produce some of the funniest onstage running commentary, he’s also a powerhouse guitar player who can keep up with O’Brien’s twists and turns from blues to traditional folk to jazz to rock and roll. He creates a band with just his guitar and, as a result, theirs is an equal partnership.

Tickets on sale here

Just a few more hours to get your early-bird two day passes to the 15th Annual Sugar Maple Music Festival!  On sale here through May 31.

Mid-2017, The Tillers holed up at Candyland Recording Studio in Dayton, KY with producer Mike Montgomery (Jeremy Pinnell, The Breeders) and tracked ten new songs, live to 2” tape. The recordings showcase the diversity of their writing and musicianship, from hard-tackle thump to tender graceful melody – lightening-fast banjo to intricate guitar flat picking, plaintive fiddle, deep anchoring bass and clear tenor harmonies. Fueled by life, family, history, travel and politics, the new self-titled LP is the band’s most engaging record to date. Singer-songwriter-guitarist Sean Geil says of the new record, “This album is definitely more aggressive than past efforts. At our core we are still a traditionally rooted string band, but I’d say our punk rock roots are more visible on this album. And the addition of Joe Macheret on fiddle has added a new dynamic and allowed us to explore new territories as well as fill out the overall sound.”

Catch the Tillers at the Sugar Maple Fest Friday, August 3.