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August 2 - 3
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Although the 2020 Sugar Maple Music Festival is postponed to 2021, we’ve created a T-shirt to commemorate this historic year and the festival that wasn’t. Like our annual festival T-shirt, it features the stellar lineup we had booked for the 2020 festival, puts a mask on our fiddler graphic and reads “cancelled by COVID-19.” It comes in two styles, one color and multiple sizes.
We’ve created this shirt as part of a limited-time fundraiser for our nonprofit, which supports American roots music, dance and education and the musicians who keep it alive. Your donation of $50 or more will get you the shirt and help us continue supporting artists and music education during this challenging time. Our support now is based on virtual (on-line) Roots & Reasons and performance events. Please check out the Virtual Concert Calendar at the Sugar Maple Website.
We look forward to hosting live music events again when it’s safe for our musicians and roots music community and we are happy to report that the majority of those booked for the 2020 festival have agreed to be part of our 2021 lineup.
Reserve your shirt before August 30 by donating $50 or more, which you can make here. We also need you to send your order details (size, style, number, address) to us at fourlakesmusic@gmail.com so we can create the shirts and ship them to you.
Thank you for your support.
We’re all experiencing unprecedented disruption to our normal activities as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We’re making very difficult, but necessary decisions to cancel events, stay home and distance ourselves from each other for the time being.
These decisions are increasingly affecting almost all parts of our economy and the people who contribute to it every day. It’s particularly tough on small local business owners who often operate on slim margins while serving and supporting their communities in important and authentic ways.
As we at the Sugar Maple Music Festival reflect on these consequences, we know that independent musicians are also small business owners and are highly impacted by the effects of this pandemic.
Every day we are seeing large and small music festivals and shows necessarily cancelled, and we know that each cancellation means these musicians lose access to a major source of their livelihood and the loyal and new audiences who keep them afloat.
And yet, during times like this we look even more to music as a distraction, a healing salve and way to feel connected to others. The music we love provides us a glimmer of normalcy even as nothing feels normal.
So, although we may not be able to go out and hear these musicians live at this moment, there are other ways we can support them as we look to them to help us get through this challenging time:
At the Sugar Maple, we are, in particular, keeping those artists who have become part of our community in mind. As a fan and supporter of the festival and roots music, please check out and support the artists who were with us at the festival in 2019 and during the previous years – not to mention, our past and present Sugar Maple Concert Series artists. Artist websites where you can buy music directly are easily accessible through these links.
On a logistical note, our concert series events, which begin again on April 23, are still scheduled as planned as is the Sugar Maple Music Festival on July 31 and Aug. 1. We are watching the situation closely and know that health and safety are priority one. Please check our Facebook page and website frequently for updates and to learn about future shows and the talented musicians we work with.
A big shout out to those who make the music that gets us through
the tough times and the good times. Now it’s our turn to give back. Together
we’ll get through this.
Bob Batyko
President, Four Lakes Traditional Music Collective
bob@sugarmaplefest.org
High Noon Saloon and Sugar Maple Music Festival present The Revelers
High Noon Saloon
Sunday, March 15 at 6:30 pm
The Revelers, founding members of the Red Stick Ramblers and The Pine Leaf Boys — “unquestionably the two groups at the vanguard of the Louisiana cultural renaissance” — have joined together to form a Louisiana supergroup which combines swamp-sop, Cajun, country, blues and zydeco into a powerful tonic of roots music that could only come from southwest Louisiana.
As individuals, they are each in high demand having performed and recorded with T-Bone Burnett, Natalie Merchant, Linda Ronstadt, Preston Frank, Walter Mouton, Mamadou Diabate, the Duhks, Cedric Watson, and Tim O’Brien, to name a few. As a group they play with a sense of empathy and depth that can only be fostered after years of making music together. They have all appeared on the 2011 season finale of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, and they also were handpicked by David Simon (producer/creator, The Wire) to be featured musicians for the third and fourth seasons of HBO’s Tremé.
Long-time fans of the Red Stick Ramblers may find themselves very familiar with The Revelers: the powerful singing and songwriting of Chas Justus and Eric Frey, a mix of traditional Cajun and zydeco dance music, some of the swing that was such a strong focus of early RSR, the magical rhythm section chemistry of Glenn Fields and Eric Frey, and impressive musical virtuosity across the board.
Take what you know about the Red Sticks, add into the mix the crooning vocals of Glenn Fields, and the singing/songwriting of Blake Miller (founding member of the Pine Leaf Boys and unarguably the most prolific French songwriter coming out of Louisiana right now, the tightly arranged section of sax-fiddle-accordion, and you’ll start to get The Revelers’ picture.
The depth of this band has only developed from digging deeper into the dancehall traditions of Southwest Louisiana and emerging with an arsenal we call Louisiana Jukebox Music. Music critics are wont to categorize music into clear genre styles, but that’s not really the way folk traditions develop — things are passed around, the lines are blurred — and particularly in a culture as unique as that of SW Louisiana (we won’t use the old gumbo cliché, but you get the idea … ). The Revelers have embraced that musical truth in a way few bands have — the lines between traditional and original, Cajun, country, zydeco, swamp-pop, and the blues, are blurred, and wide-ranging styles are honed into an extremely cohesive performance.
The genre of swamp pop may bear some explanation. Little-known outside of Louisiana (but still quite popular in the region) it’s a music that’s nearly confined to the archives of the 50s and 60s, save for a handful of bands today. In short, swamp pop is Southwest Louisiana’s answer to the R&B and rock ’n roll that came out of New Orleans, Memphis and Detroit in the 50s. When that unstoppable sound reached Cajun and zydeco musicians, they caught the bug and played their own versions the only way they knew how — sometimes in French, and traded in their fiddles and accordions for horns and electric guitars. It’s a perfect example of how everything that comes from Acadiana is dripping with its own unique culture.
Hey gang! For a limited time, Sugar Maple gear is available from our partner, Bonfire! There are kid sizes, hoodies, tanks and t-shirts. Best of all, 100% of profits go toward the fest AND the items will ship directly to you!
Welcome to the 16th Annual Sugar Maple Music Festival! We are just days away…
Whether this is your first time or 16th time joining us, here are some tips and helpful information.
