The Wood Brothers’ sixth outing, One Drop of Truth, dives headfirst into a deep wellspring of sounds, styles, and influences. Whereas their previous outings have often followed a conceptual and sonic through-line, here the long-standing trio featuring brothers Oliver and Chris Wood along with Jano Rix treat each song as if it were its own short film. The plaintive, country-folk of the album’s opening track “River Takes The Town” gives way to The Band-esque Americana soul of “Happiness Jones.” The wistful ballad “Strange As It Seems” floats on a cloud of stream of consciousness, standing in stark contrast to “Sky High”—a Saturday night barnburner built upon stinging slide guitar funk. “Seasick Emotions” is rife with turmoil, yet “Sparking Wine” is jaunty and carefree. The end result is undeniably The Wood Brothers’ most dynamic recording to date.

“Often, when you’re making an album in the traditional way, there will be a unifying concept, whether that be in the approach to the music stylistically or lyrically in terms over the overall narrative. And even though there are some themes that revealed themselves later, this one is all over the place,” explains Oliver Wood. “What I really love about this record is that each one of these songs has its own little world. There are diverse sounds and vibes from one track to the next.”

Building off the success of their previous studio album, 2015’s ‘Paradise,’ which was dubbed “the warmest, most sublime and occasionally rowdiest Wood Brothers release yet,” by American Songwriter, the band found themselves at a fortuitous crossroads. Following a tour with Tedeschi Trucks Band, high profile festival dates and sold out headline shows, the band felt free from the cyclical album release, tour, write, record and do-it-all-over-again pressures of the traditional music business. With all three members living in Nashville affording easy access to each other and a wealth of local independent studios at their disposal, they started work in January of 2017 with a new approach.

“Instead of going into one studio and recording it all at the same time, we picked a couple of studios, and started to experiment,” says Chris Wood. “Sometimes we’d just make demos of songs to see if we got anything we liked. There was no pressure, and that really freed us up. We just did one or two songs a day, put it aside, let the songs simmer, and then we’d have a fresh perspective on what was working or not working. You need time to go by to gain objectivity.”

The band extended this approach to the mixing process, sending tracks to four different mixing engineers, each selected based on what the song demanded. Scotty Hard (who’s worked extensively with Medeski Martin & Wood, among others) was recruited for the “edgier, funkier tunes,” “Sky High” and “Happiness Jones.” Mike Poole (who worked on The Wood Brothers album ‘The Muse’) mixed “Sparkling Wine” and “Strange As It Seems.” Their old friend Brandon Belle from Zac Brown’s studio Southern Ground took on “Laughin’ Or Crying.” The remainder of the album was mixed by Grammy Award-winning engineer Trina Shoemaker, especially sought after by The Wood Brothers for her work with Brandi Carlile.

While the songs on ‘One Drop of Truth’ achieve the goal of standing on their own, a few common themes did, inevitably, emerge. Water—whether in a teardrop, a storm, a river or a libation—was being used as a metaphor in the search for truth and happiness. Chris Wood’s “Seasick Emotion,” one of two songs he sings on the collection serves as a prime example: “All the blue sky is gone / How can I get out of bed / This hurricane in my head / I’m just a boat in a storm / How can I know where to go / When everything that I know / Is already lost in the wind.”

“That one was written last fall during a hurricane, while at the same time the election was coming up, and there was all this crazy energy in the world,” Chris reveals. “I definitely got swept away emotionally by everything that was going on.”

Album opener, “River Takes the Town,” takes on both figurative and literal meaning. It was completed just as a series of hurricanes were decimating parts of the U.S.: “It’s been a few days since I heard any word from you / and I don’t sleep easy, I don’t sleep easy / and the rain keeps comin’, the rain keeps comin’ / nothin’s ever for certain / ’til the levee breaks down / the water comes in and the river / the river takes the town.”

“I remember hearing a news story about a flood in Shreveport, and I wrote the line ‘I hope the levee in Shreveport does what it’s supposed to do,’” explains Oliver. “I was writing literally, at first, about how scary it must be when people lose power and communication with those they love. But then the lyrics became a metaphor for something more interpersonal. And by the end of this summer, it seemed to take on new meaning yet again.”

Though emotional struggle is a recurring thread, so is the comforting truth of how much wisdom comes from the hard times. The song “Happiness Jones”, was based on a news article Oliver read about how our society is addicted to happiness, antidepressants, and the distorted “happy” reality social media can depict. As a result, people feel like it’s unnatural to be sad, yet. sadness can be a gift: “All of my wisdom came from all the toughest days / I never learned a thing bein’ happy / all of my sufferin’ came / I didn’t appreciate it / I never learned a thing being happy.”

While the majority of ‘One Drop of Truth’ was written and recorded as a group, the standout track “Strange As It Seems,” described by Chris as, “a classic Oliver song,” was an exception.

“I had recorded it a couple months before Chris and Jano added their parts, so I was excited to see what they would do with it. We talked a lot about it having a dreamlike quality to it. Chris has all these cool sound effects that he can make with the bowed bass, and then Jano played the melodica and the piano on it, and they added exactly the atmosphere that it needed,” explains Oliver. “Conceptually, I almost think of it like a Tim Burton movie, where you go to sleep, and you go into this dream world, to meet your lover, but you do so with purpose. You bring your wallet,you get dressed up, you’re going on a date. The idea being, that you rendezvous in the dream. One of my favorite things about any song is ambiguity, leaving it open to interpretation. Maybe the man and woman in this song are already married, and they’re on separate sides of the bed, and they’re disconnected, so they’re hoping to find a better version of a partner in their dreams. Or, maybe they are two lonely people, in separate places, finding each other in this dreamworld. But at the end of the song, the guy wakes up, and he goes down to the kitchen, and he’s with his wife and it’s a beautiful thing, and they dance in the light. So perhaps there’s also an element of hope, whether they’re lonely, or they’re disconnected, there’s still a connection there, sometimes you have to go to that other level to realize it.”

Fittingly titled, ‘One Drop of Truth,’ the latest entry in The Wood Brothers evolution finds three musicians being true to themselves. At a point in their career where most artists would be looking to strategically position themselves for even greater commercial success, they instead turned to artistic expression in service of the muse. In chaotic times when honesty is in short supply and ulterior motives seem to always be at play, The Wood Brothers put faith in themselves and ultimately their audience by writing and recording a collection of songs that is honest and pure. As they sing on the album’s title track: “Rather die hungry / than feasting on lies / Give me one drop of truth / I cannot deny.”

Please note: $1 of the ticket price goes to a charity chosen by the artist.

Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

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Call the box office to be added to wait list: (970) 879-5056 ext. 105.

Many musicians have day jobs to make ends meet. However, few artists maintain the lifestyle kept by Gregory Alan Isakov. The Colorado-based indie-folk artist is a full-time farmer who sells vegetable seeds and grows various market crops on his three-acre farm, while also tending to a thriving musical career.

“I switch gears a lot,” he says. “I wake up really early in the growing season, and then in the winters, I’m up all night. I’m constantly moving back and forth.”

Isakov had an easier time balancing his two passions while making his fourth full-length studio album, Evening Machines. In between farm duties, the multi-instrumentalist wrote and recorded in a studio housed in a barn on his property. Like the farm, this studio has a communal atmosphere, filled with instruments and gear stored there by musician friends—gear Isakov always leaves on, just in case inspiration strikes.

“Sometimes I couldn’t sleep, so I’d walk into the studio and work really hard into the night,” he says. “A lot of times I would find myself in the light of all these VU meters and the tape machine glow, so that’s where the title came from. I recorded mostly at night, when I wasn’t working in the gardens. It doesn’t matter if it’s summer or winter, morning or afternoon, this music always feels like evening to me.”

As its name implies, the dark indie rock and folk populating Evening Machines possesses a dusky hue. Hushed acoustic guitar and sparse piano combine for a moody foundation that’s amplified by ornate and heavy embellishments: distant electric guitars, keyboards, pedal steel, saw, percussion, strings, banjo, and some electronic drums. Lilting background vocals intertwine with Isakov’s watercolor-streaked murmur on “Powder,” while “Where You Gonna Go” applies haunting, echoing vocal effects to his voice.

However, in a nod to the musician’s desire to strike a “balance of space and instrumentation,” these lush flourishes—loping banjo on “Dark, Dark, Dark,” ghostly pedal steel on “Was I Just Another One” and strings twirling through the waltzing “Southern Star”—enhance his precise, thoughtful arrangements. It’s an intimate album that encourages close listening and contemplation.

Evening Machines came together via an organic process rooted mostly in solitude and along side of engineer Andrew Berlin (Descendents, Rise Against). Isakov sketched out 35 to 40 songs himself during marathon studio sessions that could stretch up to 14 hours for many months. He recorded all the instruments and slowly intertwined the band: Steve Varney, Jeb Bows, John Paul Grigsby, Philip Parker, and Max Barcelow. A bevy of other contributors added additional sonic flourishes as well.

From there, Isakov whittled this large batch of music down to 12 songs, and spent a month in Oregon mixing Evening Machines with Tucker Martine (Neko Case, The Decemberists) and some final mixing with Andrew Berlin. “Andrew and I took many different approaches making this record—we used electronic instruments and more ambient sounds, and incorporated heavier elements,” Isakov says. “But I’ve always had a hard time mixing in the barn. It’s easier for me to mix something with a lot of space. That’s where Tucker was invaluable. He’s just got such an incredible approach and sense of sound.”

Isakov is no stranger to collaboration or traveling to hone his craft. In 2016, he released an album of his songs played in collaboration with the Colorado Symphony, and he tours regularly in the U.S. and Europe, performing alongside acts such as Iron & Wine, Calexico, Ani DiFranco, Passenger, Josh Ritter, Brandi Carlile, and Nathaniel Rateliff. But when the time came to make Evening Machines, Isakov discovered that his time on the road had started to take a toll.

“A lot of the music that was written for this record happened at a really difficult time of my life,” he says. “When I finished a six-month stretch in Europe I had a lot of time to be alone, and feel things that maybe I hadn’t in a long time, being on the road and with the lifestyle of touring. I experienced this new sensation of anxiety—this level of physical anxiety that I’ve been investigating ever since.” To cope, he turned to writing songs—“some of which were ways for me to ground myself during that time where it was really bad,” he says.

As an example, Isakov cites the album-closing “Wings In All Black,” a deeply personal song that’s about being resilient in the face of jarring loss. Still, not all of Evening Machines’ songs are this decisive: The album brims with elusive characters and slippery emotional situations, the kinds that linger long after their presence dissipates. “Did I hear something break?/Was that your heart or my heart?” he asks on “Caves,” while “San Luis” observes, “I’m a ghost of you, you’re a ghost of me.”

Yet Isakov’s lyrics themselves are vivid and deliberate—“I’ll leave you with this poem, about the galvanized moon and her rings in the rain,” he offers on “Too Far Away”—and devastate with economy. Take “Chemicals,” which observes, “You saw her bathing in the creek/Now you’re jealous of the water.” Whether addressing romantic love or human connection, has no easy answers.

Still, the album does have poignant resonance with current events. Take the string-swept opening track, “Berth,” which Isakov wrote and recorded during an all-night session. The original version of the song was 12 minutes long—and it wasn’t until Isakov and his brother, Ilan Isakov, started editing and cutting verses that the former realized “Berth” was “an immigration song, about landing in this country and throughout time”—something he knew well, as a native of Johannesburg, South Africa, who moved to the U.S. as a child.

“Writing songs is this delicate balance,” Isakov says. “My process has never been to start out saying, ‘I want to write a song about this. This is an important issue—or this is an important emotion that I’m going through—and I need to write a song about it.’ That has never happened; it’s never been part of my process. But you need to have a spark of all those, something visceral and something tangible as well to make something that sings well. Words have so much power on their own.”

Isakov’s words especially have resonated deeply both at home—he recently sold out a Red Rocks Amphitheatre headlining show—and around the world. His last studio album of new material, 2013’s The Weatherman, sold over 100,000 copies, and his entire catalog has sold well over 370,000 copies—an impressive amount for a musician who releases records via his own independent label, Suitcase Town Music.

With Evening Machines, Isakov is poised to reach an even larger audience, as it’s the first album he’s licensing to a larger record label, Dualtone. For the fiercely DIY musician—in addition to housing a studio, the barn doubles as a storage and distribution hub for Suitcase Town Music—linking up with Dualtone “wasn’t out of a place of need, but it was a place of curiosity,” he says. “I was like, ‘Well, I’ve never tried this. This could be really fun.’”

But despite this label backing, Isakov isn’t changing up his approach to music. He’ll still be touring around his farming season—and striving for a cohesive musical vision that feeds his soul. “Music helped me get through some of the hardest times,” Isakov says. “I always write in regards to an entire record. Trying to find the music that fits together as a whole piece was the most important thing to me.”

$1 of the ticket price goes to a charity chosen by the artist.

Photo credit: Rebecca Caridad

“The most admired jazz diva since the heyday of
Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.”
The New York Times

Dianne Reeves is the pre-eminent jazz vocalist in the world today — her arsenal of talents is richly on display in each and every song of her limitless repertoire. As a result of her virtuosity, improvisational prowess, and unique jazz and R&B stylings, Dianne has received five Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album, an honorary doctorate of music from Juilliard and was recently named a 2018 National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master. Dianne’s magical, timeless voice, exceptional personality and the sheer force of her performance mark her as a captivating world-class artist. Wynton Marsalis exclaims, “She has one of the most powerful, purposeful, and accurate voices of this or any time.” Dianne’s Grammy Award-winning album, Beautiful Life, epitomizes the spirit of her storied and extraordinary career, traversing many genres and collaborating with a diverse collection of artists. Adored by audiences and critics alike throughout the world, Dianne Reeves is a natural wonder not to be missed.

Photo by Odasan Macovich

SOLD OUT

Call the box office to be added to wait list: (970) 879-5056 ext. 105.

Family Concert, All Ages.

Since bursting to national acclaim after appearing as semi-finalists on America’s Got Talent and winning the top honors on TRU TV’s Fake Off, Lightwire Theater has gone on to enthrall audiences worldwide. Actors combine skill and grace with technological innovations to create moving light characters. People of all ages will be captivated by the dazzling visuals and unique menagerie of characters that magically appear out of the darkness.

For A Very Electric Holiday, Lightwire Theater combines the arts of puppetry, theater, and dance with the music of timeless holiday hits to tell a magical tale of friendship and hope. This show is absolutely one-of-a-kind and is destined to create an inspired and exhilarating holiday experience that will be a treasured memory for years to come.

DONOR PRE-SALE begins 10:00AM (MST) Thursday, December 12.
Details below for early access to purchase tickets. On sale to the public December 17 at 10:00AM (MST).

THE CASEY DONAHEW TRIO

7:25pm – 8:45pm

Though he seems like a natural when performing, Casey Donahew actually fell into music gradually. He grew up on a farm and his grandfather, who loved to play and sing, gave Donahew his first guitar. It wasn’t until college that he began writing songs. Soon after, Donahew began playing a regular acoustic gig at the Thirsty Armadillo bar in Fort Worth. Since those early days, this Burleson native has painstakingly carved out an impressive niche for himself in the country music scene, attracting a solid base of loyal fans. He’s topped the Texas music charts several times, released multiple albums independently, and forged a path all his own without the aid of a major record label. Casey fuses genuine, honest lyrics with contagious energy onstage which makes for an outstanding show. Celebrating fifteen years under his belt and just as many chart-topping singles to his credit, Donahew released the album 15 Years, The Wild Ride in 2017. He’s come a long way since those early days on that Armadillo stage, and he still loves to thrill crowds both big and small. Get ready for a unique and intimate music presentation with the Casey and Friends show, plus another special performance…only at MusicFest.

ROGER CREAGER: THE PIANO MAN SHOW

9:05pm- 10:30pm

Roger Creager is an adventurist; he does not like to sit still while the world passes by. Whether it’s climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, jumping off his boat to snorkel with wild dolphins, snow skiing in the Rockies, catching tuna 100 miles from shore, piloting his airplane to far-off concerts, spear-fishing around oil rigs, surfing in Costa Rica, running with the bulls in Spain or playing music through the Italian countryside, he tries to get the most out of what the world has to offer. All of this finds its way into Creager’s music and live shows. Those who get hooked on his charisma and high energy come back show after show, year after year, and record after record. Creager is very fortunate that his music career allows him this lifestyle. But he gives it back by putting his life experiences, infectious high energy and zeal for adventure right back into his songwriting and performances. Creager may travel the world, but he never strays far from his small-town South Texas roots. His latest EP “Gulf Coast Time” is certainly a slice out of Creager life. Creager grew up outside of Corpus Christi and has always maintained a love of saltwater. Be prepared to enjoy all sides of Creager’s talent including the iconic Piano man show, Big tent blowout and “Big Cabo Fest” duo with Kevin Fowler…only at MusicFest.

General admission tickets are $65.

Donors of $500 or more to the 2020 Strings Annual Fund (10/1/19-9/30/20) get pre-sale access! Make your donation now to purchase tickets to this and additional shows to be announced this winter. You’ll also get pre-sale access for the entire summer festival (to be announced in 2020).

DONATE

Learn more about MusicFest.

DONOR PRE-SALE begins 10:00AM (MST) Thursday, December 12.
Details below for early access to purchase tickets. On sale to the public December 17 at 10:00AM (MST).

FLATLAND CAVALRY

7:25pm – 8:45pm

At some point between Lubbock and Midland, the land shifts from endless cotton rows and rich farmland into pump jacks and mesquite tree filled pastures. Lubbock roots-country outfit Flatland Cavalry straddles that line between the Panhandle and the badlands of West Texas with their bright, earthy country ballads and gritty folk ramblers. Vocalist and chief songwriter Cleto Cordero’s honest, smooth songwriting revolves around the vernacular world of West Texas that he’s constructed with dusty, sun-soaked character sketches, brooding self-evaluations, and candid love songs that all have the ability to turn into sing-along anthems. Formed in the fall of 2012, the quintet was rounded up by Cordero after stretches of acoustic outings around the Panhandle town of Lubbock. With guitarist Reid Dillon, fiddler Wesley Hall, bassist Jonathan Saenz, and drummer Jason Albers joining Cordero, Flatland quickly garnered the attention of the masses with the release of the debut EP, Come May, in the spring of 2015. Building off the success of Come May, Cordero and company released their full-length follow-up Humble Folks in 2016. In January 2019, the band turned heads once again with their sophomore album, Homeland Insecurity, providing an appreciation for all the sharp detail and high-spirited emotions of today. Flatland will be gracing the mountain with these emotions in 2020!

THE PANHANDLERS DEBUT:
Josh Abbott, William Clark Green, Cleto Cordero, John Baumann

9:05pm- 10:30pm

Josh Abbott keeps one foot in the Texas music scene and the other in the national country world. Josh won four times during the inaugural Texas Regional Radio Awards with his upbeat brand of country that still leans on classic instrumentation – particularly banjo and fiddle – to affect a raucous, roof-raising attitude. He has launched three singles onto the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart (including “Oh, Tonight” featuring Kacey Musgraves), nabbed a Top 10 album with the 2012’s Small Town Family Dreams and reached No. 12 with the 2014 EP Tuesday Night. Abbott’s latest album, Until My Voice Goes Out, is by contrast, a hopeful look into the future, a roll-up-the-sleeves-and-move forward embrace of life and its potential. Experiencing life at its fullest includes taking risks, Abbott does that successfully in Until My Voice Goes Out, incorporating strings and a horn section for the first time. The approach layered both a glassy classicism and a ragged soul on the well-oiled JAB framework. Abbott is a determined force of nature, and his ability to lead has been a hallmark since inception. Enjoy his rare collaboration with the “806 Crew” plus a “new” project to be announced and performed this January – Only at MusicFest.

General admission tickets are $65.

Donors of $500 or more to the 2020 Strings Annual Fund (10/1/19-9/30/20) get pre-sale access! Make your donation now to purchase tickets to this and additional shows to be announced this winter. You’ll also get pre-sale access for the entire summer festival (to be announced in 2020).

DONATE

Learn more about MusicFest

Widely considered a feminist icon, Grammy winner Ani DiFranco is the mother of the DIY movement, being one of the first artists to create her own record label in 1990. While she has been known as the “Little Folksinger,” her music has embraced punk, funk, hip hop, jazz, soul, electronica and even more distant sounds. Her collaborators have included everyone from Utah Phillips to legendary R&B saxophonist Maceo Parker to Prince. She has shared stages with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Greg Brown, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti, Chuck D., and many more. Her most recent studio album Binary was released in June 2017 on Righteous Babe Records. Her memoir No Walls and the Recurring Dream was released in May 2019, and DiFranco released a No Walls Mixtape alongside the book, offering a new take on songs related to the memoir.

Rejecting the major label system has given her significant creative freedom. She has referenced her staunchly-held independence in song more than once, including in “The Million You Never Made” (Not a Pretty Girl), which discusses the act of turning down a lucrative contract, “The Next Big Thing” (Not So Soft), which describes an imagined meeting with a label head-hunter who evaluates the singer based on her looks, and “Napoleon” (Dilate), which sympathizes sarcastically with an unnamed friend who did sign with a label.

After recording with Ani in 1999, Prince described the effects of her independence. “We jammed for four hours and she danced the whole time. We had to quit because she wore us out. After being with her, it dawned on me why she’s like that – she’s never had a ceiling over her.”

Her lyrics are rhythmic and poetic, often autobiographical, and strongly political. “Trickle Down” discusses racism and gentrification, while “To The Teeth” speaks about the need for gun control, and “In or Out” questions society’s traditional sexuality labels. Most recently, the 2016 single “Play God” has become a battle cry for reproductive rights. Rolling Stone said of her in 2012, “The world needs more radicals like Ani DiFranco: wry, sexy, as committed to beauty and joy as revolution.”

Over the years she’s performed at countless benefit concerts, donated songs to many charity albums, and given time and energy to many progressive causes. She has learned from and demonstrated beside Gloria Steinem, Jesse Jackson and Dennis Kucinich. In 2004, she marched in the front row of the March for Women’s Lives along with Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo, Whoopi Goldberg, and many others, later performing on the main stage. She has beaten the drum for voter registration and turnout with “Vote Dammit” tours in multiple presidential election years, including most recently in 2016. She’s currently on the board of Roots of Music, an organization that provides at-risk youth with support and musical education in New Orleans, and the creative council of EMILY’s List, which helps elect pro-choice Democratic women to office.

As an iconic songwriter and social activist, she has been the inspiration for woman artists and entrepreneurs for over two decades. She has been featured on the covers of SPIN, Ms., Relix, High Times, and many others for her music and activism. She is the idol of empowered women who came of age in the 90s and continues to bring younger fans into her fold. From Alice Walker to Amy Schumer, Ani is respected by wordsmiths across milieux and generations. She blazed the trail for self-directed artist careers and has been cited by musicians from Prince to Bon Iver as an inspiration to release their own art outside of the major label system.

Ani has been the recipient of many honors and awards, including a Grammy, the Woman of Courage Award from the National Organization for Women, the Gay/Lesbian American Music Award for Female Artist of the Year, and the Woody Guthrie Award. At the 2013 Winnipeg Folk Festival she received their prestigious Artistic Achievement Award, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Winnipeg. In 2017, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from A2IM (a nonprofit trade organization that represents independent record labels) and the Outstanding Achievement for Global Activism Award from A Global Friendship.

Tickets start at $55.

Photo by GMDThree

Music’s ultimate inside outsider. Or is it outside insider? There is only one Sam Bush.

On a Bowling Green, Kentucky cattle farm in the post-war 1950s, Bush grew up an only son, and with four sisters. His love of music came immediately, encouraged by his parents’ record collection and, particularly, by his father Charlie, a fiddler, who organized local jams. Charlie envisioned his son someday a staff fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry, but a clear day’s signal from Nashville brought to Bush’s television screen a tow-headed boy named Ricky Skaggs playing mandolin with Flatt and Scruggs, and an epiphany for Bush. At 11, he purchased his first mandolin.

As a teen fiddler Bush was a three-time national champion in the junior division of the National Oldtime Fiddler’s Contest. He recorded an instrumental album, Poor Richard’s Almanac as a high school senior and in the spring of 1970 attended the Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. There he heard the New Deal String Band, taking notice of their rock-inspired brand of progressive bluegrass.

Shunned by some traditionalists, New Grass Revival played bluegrass fests slotted in late-night sets for the “long-hairs and hippies.” Quickly becoming a favorite of rock audiences, they garnered the attention of Leon Russell, one of the era’s most popular artists. Russell hired New Grass as his supporting act on a massive tour in 1973 that put the band nightly in front of tens of thousands.

At tour’s end, it was back to headlining six nights a week at an Indiana pizza joint. But, they were resilient, grinding it out on the road. And in 1975 the Revival first played Telluride, Colorado, forming a connection with the region and its fans that has prospered for 45 years.

Bush has released seven albums and a live DVD over the past two decades. In 2009, the Americana Music Association awarded Bush the Lifetime Achievement Award for Instrumentalist. Punch Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Greensky Bluegrass are just a few present-day bluegrass vanguards among so many musicians he’s influenced. His performances are annual highlights of the festival circuit, with Bush’s joyous perennial appearances at the town’s famed bluegrass fest earning him the title, “King of Telluride.”

“With this band I have now I am free to try anything. Looking back at the last 50 years of playing newgrass, with the elements of jazz improvisation and rock-&-roll, jamming, playing with New Grass Revival, Leon, and Emmylou; it’s a culmination of all of that,” says Bush. “I can unapologetically stand onstage and feel I’m representing those songs well.”

After celebrating their 40th anniversary with the cleverly titled 2013 live album >Disconnected In New York City, the hard working, constantly touring band – David Hidalgo, Louie Perez, Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano and Steve Berlin – leaps headfirst into their fifth decade with an invitation to join them as they open fresh and exciting new Gates of Gold, their first full length studio album since 2010’s Tin Can Trust (a Grammy nominee for Best Americana Album) and second with Savoy/429 Records.

The dynamic songwriting, deeply poetic lyrics, thoughtful romantic and spiritual themes and eclectic blend of styles on the 11 track collection has resulted in an American saga in the rich literary tradition of legendary authors John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. Yet true to form, these typically humble musical wolves started in on the project without any grand vision or musical roadmap. Over 30 years after Los Lobos’ major label breakthrough How Will The Wolf Survive? – their 1984 album that ranks #30 on Rolling Stones list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s – their main challenge when they get off the road and head back into the studio is, as Berlin says, “trying not to do stuff we’ve already done. To a certain extent, we are always drawing from the same multi-faceted paint box, and we sound like what we sound like. We’re proud of what we feel is an honest body of work. We just want to keep finding new ways to say things.”

In the band’s early recording days – those years just before and after “La Bamba,” their worldwide crossover hit from the 1987 film which reached #1 on the U.S. and UK singles chart – they prepared for album recording sessions with top producers like T-Bone Burnett with pre- production that included multiple rehearsals and “outlining” what the project was going to be.

Louie Perez, the “poet laureate” and primary wordsmith of Los Lobos, once called their powerhouse mix of rock, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues and traditional Spanish and Mexican music “the soundtrack of the barrio.” Three decades, two more Grammys, the global success of “La Bamba” and thousands of rollicking performances across the globe later, Los Lobos is surviving quite well – and still jamming with the same raw intensity as they had when they began in that garage in 1973.

Two gifted singer-songwriter guitarists team up for a night of acoustic tune trading:

Anders Osborne’s six-string virtuosity, inventive musicality, and poetic songcraft underpin an ever-expanding three-decade career punctuated by critically acclaimed studio albums and extensive live touring.

Americana and roots singer-songwriter Jackie Greene is a jack-of-all-trades, and an artist who can croon over soulful piano ballads as much as he can shred a bluesy guitar solo (like he did as the lead guitarist for The Black Crowes in 2013).