“Paper Wings blends two distinct voices and impeccable skills as instrumentalists to create a modern, unified vision built on Appalachian traditions.” -No Depression.

Paper Wings is an Nashville based Indie-Folk duo featuring Emily Mann and Wilhelmina Frankzerda. They released their first self-titled album in 2017 consisting of traditional & original songs inspired by classic duet harmonies and old-time Appalachian sounds. In 2019, their second and most recent album “Clementine” hit the scene with a bang featuring a stunning collection of all original songs inspired by love, longing, self-reflection, and finding sympathy in nature. Self published and self produced, “Clementine” received wildly positive reviews in admiration of their striking vocal blend, inventive writing, and distinctive way of weaving traditional sounds into their music.

Paper Wings plays the 2021 Sugar Maple Music Festival Friday, August 6.

Buffalo Nichols will play the Sugar Maple Music Festival on Saturday, August 7, 2021

For all the moonlighting he’s done in other genres over the years, Carl Nichols always comes back to the blues. At various points in his career Nichols has played gospel (despite being an atheist), West African music (despite being born and raised in Milwaukee) and, as one half of the acclaimed folk duo Nickel & Rose, Americana (despite having some deep reservations about that genre’s long history of appropriating black music without always welcoming black musicians). None of those gigs, however, extinguished his desire to play the kind of traditional, acoustic blues he grew up admiring.

Maybe on some level he’s pathologically drawn to spaces where he’s an outsider. As a twentysomething black musician, Nichols is all too aware that the modern blues scene doesn’t look much like him, but he never outgrew his childhood love of the music. “It seemed cool to me when I was young,” he says. “You’d just hear people like Lightnin’ Hopkins or R.L. Burnside, and they just seemed cool. That’s why anybody gets into music, because it speaks to them.”

And it continues to speak to him, so much so that he’s tabled Nickel & Rose just as the duo was establishing itself as a major folk festival draw to pursue his dream of returning the blues to its songwriter roots. “I think a lot of what’s been lost in the blues since the early ’60s is the black experience, so I try to sing about that,” Nichols says. “I can’t escape racial realities, but I’m also aware that my audience is different than me, so the way they receive my message is different. I have this nostalgia for an era where blues musicians sang about their experiences to their own people, but that audience isn’t there now.”

It’s a challenge, he admits, but there’s power in crossing racial and generational divides. And on a personal level, he sees Buffalo Nichols as a form of justice for the music he’s always loved. “I want to redeem the blues after all the experiences I went through when I was younger,” he explains. “When I first started getting into the blues, my mom would take me to blues shows, and inevitably there’d be some old white guy there who would try to take me under his wing and explain ‘the rules’ of the blues to me. It chased me away. “I always related to the blues,” Nichols concludes. “I grew up in abject poverty. I experienced racism. And when I would sit down with a blues record, I could hear that in the songs. Now I want to be that person that I never got to see on stage.”

Ray Bonneville is a hard driving, blues dipped, song and groove man writing about the people on the fringe of society. Ray’s vibe is loose and soulful, with a greasy guitar style, horn-like harmonica, smoky vocals and pulsing foot percussion. In 1999 he won the Juno award (Canada’s Grammy) and was nominated twice more. Ray’s song “I am the Big Easy” was the most played song by American folk DJs, and won “Song of the Year” in 2009. Ray won the International Blues Challenge in 2012 in Memphis.

Ray played the Sugar Maple Concert Series in 2019 and captivated the room with his songs and stories. You can catch Ray at the 2021 Sugar Maple Music Festival on Saturday, August 7.

The Sugar Maple Music Festival, with the help of a grant from Dane Arts, is pleased to announce another session in the Virtual Roots & Reasons Series. 

One of the brightest young talents to emerge in Cajun, Creole and Zydeco music over the last decade, Cedric Watson is a four-time Grammy-nominated fiddler, singer, accordionist & songwriter with seemingly unlimited potential.

Friday, March 12, 2021
5:30 pm CST
Streaming live on Facebook

Originally from San Felipe, TX, Cedric made his first appearance at the age of 19 at the Zydeco Jam at The Big Easy in Houston, TX. Just two years later, he moved to south Louisiana, quickly immersing himself in French music and language. Over the next several years, Cedric performed French music in 17 countries and on 7 full-length albums with various groups, including the Pine Leaf Boys, Corey Ledet, Les Amis Creole with Ed Poullard and J.B. Adams, and with his own group, Bijou Creole.

With an apparently bottomless repertoire of songs at his fingertips, Cedric plays everything from forgotten Creole melodies and obscure Dennis McGee reels to more modern Cajun and Zydeco songs, even occasionally throwing in a bluegrass fiddle tune or an old string band number. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he is also a prolific songwriter, writing almost all of his songs on his double row Hohner accordion. Cedric’s songs channel his diverse ancestry (African, French, Native American and Spanish) to create his own brand of sounds.

Cedric’s albums are a tapestry of pulsing rhythms and Creole poetry, and his live performances are unforgettable, all at once progressive and nostalgic.

“To propel our Louisiana culture into the future seems to be quite a task, but if one lives for the music as Cedric does, the path seems effortless. These songs may well be early brushstrokes of a life’s worth of possibilities, not only for himself, but also for the identity survival of a culture.” -Michael Doucet

February is the month when we normally gather to enjoy music while raising money in support of United Way at the annual Bluegrass Benefit. For many years, the Barrymore Theatre in Madison has opened its doors for the event, and we are grateful for their generosity.  

Of course, there’s no event this year and we desperately miss gathering with our community to enjoy live music.

As we continue protecting ourselves and each other during the pandemic, we urge you to consider donating to United Way and other organizations that provide much-needed support to members of our community.

Until we can again gather safely for live music, there are other ways to listen to music and support artists whose ability to make a living has been upended during the past year. For starters, check out the Sugar Maple virtual concert calendar for great online performances.

We look forward to getting together with our music community again, hopefully in the not too distant future. Until then, be safe and support each other!