DARRELL SCOTT - Headliner
Multi-Instrumentalist and Singer-Songwriter Darrell Scott mines and cultivates the everyday moment, taking the rote, menial, mundane, and allowing it to be surreal, ever poignant, and candidly honest, lilting, blooming, and resonating. The words he fosters allow us to make sense of the world, what is at stake here, and our place in it. And ultimately, Darrell knows the sole truth of life is that love is all that matters, that we don’t always get it right, but that’s the instinctive and requisite circuitous allure of things, why we forever chase it, and why it is held sacred.
Darrell Scott comes from a musical family with a father who had him smitten with guitars by the age of 4, alongside a brother who played Jerry Reed style as well. From there, things only ramped up with literature and poetry endeavors while a student at Tufts University, along with playing his way through life. This would never change.
After recently touring with Robert Plant and Zac Brown Band (2 years with each), and producing albums for Malcolm Holcombe and Guy Clark and being named “songwriter of the year” for both ASCAP and NSAI, these days find him roaming his Tennessee wilderness acreage hiking along the small river, creating delicious meals with food raised on his property, and playing music. He often leads songwriting workshops to help people tell their own truths with their stories, and is as busy as always writing, producing, performing, and just plain fully immersing himself in life.
MICHAEL DAVES & JACOB JOLLIFF - Opener
Michael Daves and Jacob Jolliff are two of America’s premier bluegrass talents. After years of collaborating in various bands and informal settings they have teamed up as a formidable duo featuring high lonesome vocal harmony and fiery flatpicking. Their sound is an homage to the classic guitar-mandolin “brother duets” while leaving plenty of room for improvisation and inspired left turns. They effortlessly straddle the line between hard-core traditional bluegrass and experimental forms.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Michael Daves grew up playing bluegrass in the grand old tradition of staying up late & singing loud. Although he’s since moved north, the Southern roots permeate his music, however traditional or experimental. Heralded as “a leading light of the New York bluegrass scene” by the New York Times, Daves has garnered attention for his work with Chris Thile, Steve Martin, Tony Trischka, and others in addition to his solo performances. His album “Sleep With One Eye Open” with Thile earned a 2011 Grammy nomination.
Although he is best known as a roots musician, Daves gravitated toward experimental music and jazz while studying at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Relocating to Brooklyn in 2003, he began to crave the social interaction and musical challenges of bluegrass: "In Western Massachusetts, I was mostly doing jazz. By the time I moved to New York, I was ready to leave that behind, get back to my personal roots in bluegrass music. There were good jam sessions in New York and I was excited to reenter a regular jamming culture in the city. And I was getting back into rock music, too. The Brooklyn scene in 2003 and 2004 was pretty fertile. There was a lot of great, kind of raw, experimental rock music happening at that time, drawing me in, scratching an itch."
Jacob Jolliff has become one of the country's most notable contemporary mandolinists. He was a member of the beloved New England roots band Joy Kills Sorrow, while attending Berklee School of Music on a full scholarship. In 2012, Jolliff won the National Mandolin Championship in Winfield, KS. Now a fixture of the national bluegrass community, he has collaborated and shared the stage with Darol Anger, Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury, Jerry Douglas, Tony Trischka, and David Grisman among others. When Joy Kills Sorrow disbanded in 2014, Jolliff got the call to join Yonder Mountain String Band with whom he toured full time through 2019. In 2022 Jolliff released a self-titled Jacob Jolliff Band album and toured with Béla Fleck as part of My Bluegrass Heart.