New World Sinner

Amelia Day

Mike Dawes (Rescheduled from 7/26/2025)

Mike Dawes is an English guitarist known for composing, arranging, and performing multiple parts simultaneously on one instrument. He is hailed as one of the world’s most creative modern fingerstyle guitarist with a repertoire spanning solo viral video hits alongside mainstream chart success performing with Justin Hayward from The Moody Blues. Dawes was named “Best Acoustic Guitarist in the World” by Total Guitar Magazine / MusicRadar in both December 2017 and 2018 readers polls.Dawes’ recent solo album, ERA, spawned a viral hit with his arrangement of “One” by Metallica that has over 4 million YouTube views. His debut record, “What Just Happened?”, featured the fan favorite original, “Boogie Slam” and another viral hit with the Gotye song, “Somebody That I Use To Know” with almost 5 million YouTube views. Dawes is also featured on multiple Justin Hayward live releases such as Spirits...Live, which debuted at #2 on the US Billboard Chart. Dawes also a strong reputation as a music educator, acting as a columnist for Guitar World and Acoustic Guitar as well as teaching multiple guitar workshops all over the world. In addition to touring North America and Europe with Justin Hayward, Dawes has also toured with fingerstyle guitarists such as Andy McKee and Tommy Emmanuel. Dawes has also been a part of several ‘International Guitar Night’ tours.

Traveling Wilburys Tribute

Keller Williams

Virginian, Keller Williams, released his first album in 1994, FREEK, and has since given each of his albums a single syllable title: BUZZ, SPUN, BREATHE, LOOP, LAUGH, HOME, DANCE, STAGE, GRASS, DREAM, TWELVE, LIVE, ODD, THIEF, KIDS, BASS, PICK, FUNK, VAPE, SYNC, RAW, SANS, ADD, SPEED and CELL.   Each title serves as a concise summation of the concept guiding each project. Keller’s albums reflect his pursuit to create music that sounds like nothing else. Un-beholden to conventionalism, he seamlessly crosses genre boundaries. The end product is music that encompasses rock, jazz, funk and bluegrass, and always keeps the audience on their feet. Keller built his reputation initially on his engaging live performances, no two of which are ever alike. For most of his career he has performed solo. His stage shows are rooted around Keller singing his compositions and choice cover songs, while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, bass, guitar synthesizer and drum samples; a technique called live phrase sampling or “looping”.  The end result often leans toward a hybrid of alternative folk and groovy electronica, a genre Keller jokingly calls “acoustic dance music” or ADM.” Keller's constant evolution has led to numerous band projects as well; Keller & The Keels, Grateful Grass, KWahtro, Keller and the Travelin’ McCourys, Grateful Gospel and More Than A Little to name a few. Keller can be found playing clubs and festivals around the U.S. with these projects throughout the year. 

Club XCX Dance Party

Hells Belles (All Ages)

Tank and the Bangas

Tank and the Bangas explore the most tender and true parts of life’s journey. Unique and with a vibrance that could only come from New Orleans, the lead vocalist, Tank has stretched her vocals over quirky raps, poetry, and rich melodies since the release of their first album, Think Tank in 2013. Four years later, they had a viral breakthrough as the winners of the NPR Tiny Desk Contest — an eclectic performance that has since been praised by musicians like Miguel and Anthony Hamilton and has now amassed over 14 million views on YouTube. Now, Tank and the Bangas arrive with a new 3-part album The Heart, The Mind, and The Soul. With this offering, Tank opens up about the wisdom she’s gained from new beginnings, endings, and in-betweens. The concept of an album series came to Tank two years ago while traveling on a train with her group members. Its structure makes it different from the rest of the catalog, and so does the special emphasis Tank has put on her poetry, collaborators, and its cohesive sound. “It explores self-discovery, the journey to confidence, believing in your ability, matters of the heart, the mind, and just free thought flowing,” Tank says about the album. On The Heart, the first part to be released and produced by James Poyser, Tank flows back and forth between poetry and a velvety alto that deepens every thoughtful word as she riffs about her deepest sentiments on life. The opening track, “A Poem Is” boasts a feature from Jill Scott — an appearance that Tank is thrilled about especially because her mission with this release is to magnify poetry as a music genre. “I want for poetry to get that much more respect and for even more young people to get into the expression of poetry,” Tank expresses. “I want it to be seen as even more cool again.” Tank has always considered herself a poet first, but at the start of her career, she used singing to draw listeners into her music. This album is a return to that first love and one we can hear on “Open to Thy Self,” a song Tank penned in a cottage in The Netherlands and a standout track that gives us a look into her gentle inner monologue as she gives herself unconditional self-love through all of her phases. Tank created a different soundscape with each collaborator for each part of the project. Producer Iman Omari, known for his lo-fi dreamy loops, paid attention to every detail of each beat and brought out a more “vibey” side of Tank on The Mind. She built The Soul with producer and jazz musician Robert Glasper, who led free-formed recording sessions that made room for Tank to discover the melodies and let ideas flow. Out of all the music, she feels especially drawn to a song co-produced by Kaidi Tatham, called “This Black Girl.” It’s a self-proclamation of the beauty and transformative power of black woman/girlhood — along with the realities of combating the privilege of white women and misogyny. “I think it’s one of the best poems in history. Yeah, I said it,” Tank says. With The Heart, The Mind, and The Soul, Tank and the Bangas affirm the thoughts, feelings, and complexities of these key parts of self. ”I'm writing about my experience and feeling more open, free, and much more confident,” Tank says. “Before, even though I had such a big voice, sometimes I felt quieted. It feels good to stretch on my own terms.”

Daniel Donato's Cosmic Country

There are a lot of musical influences and sources that Daniel Donato has drawn on during his career and that inform Reflector (Retrace Music), the Nashville guitaristsinger-songwriter-band leader's first all-original album. But within those, Donato has carved out a unique and individualized spot for himself, one that speaks to the deep American music heritage that inspires him -- and that he's pushing towards the future with inspired, intentional vigor. He calls it Cosmic Country, a moniker that's both self-descriptive and a statement of purpose. It's an organic rock band aesthetic with plenty of roadhouse twang; a showcase for Donato's instrumental virtuosity and facility for melodically infectious songcraft. Bridging Nashville and the Great West, Kentucky and mid-60s northern California, tie-dye and plaid, it's a world of his own, and a wide world of musical adventure at that. "I think Cosmic Country is a tale as old as time, really," Donato explains. "It's yin and yang in a musical form. It's three chords and the truth, and then on the other side it's exploration and bravery. I really went through a lot of years of grinding, and still am, to achieve this sound which is a vehicle for my personality, and the personality is a vehicle for my soul. So (Reflector) is more that than any other record I ever put out." Reflector's 15 songs offer 66 minutes of ecstatic musical immersion. It's an album in the classic sense of the word, tracks that are individually memorable but sound even better coming one after the other and make the sum greater than the total of its parts. "We're touching on a lot with this record, which is also why there's so many songs on it," acknowledges Donato, whose stinging Fender Telecaster tone is the strongest glue of continuity throughout -- and is positively screaming on tracks such as "Gotta Get Southbound" and "Dance in the Desert Pt. 2." "If you're the kind of person who wants to listen to a record and have a record be a companion with you, then Reflector is going to vibrate in your frequency." Donato's own musical frequency was tuned at a young age while growing up in Nashville. His father "picked around a guitar a small bit;” more importantly, he instilled in his son a discerning taste for quality music, filling his son’s ears with legendary music of all genres. The rock meanwhile, came from Guitar Hero; the game was crucial to broadening Donato’s vistas of listening to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughan, et al, as well as a particular attraction to Guns N' Roses' "Paradise City. "Those players stuck with me and gave me my first foundation of guitar," says Donato, whose father taught him his first chords on one of his old guitars. "I was a strange kid -- still am a strange person. I really didn't have any friends that got me, but the guitar understood me, and I had a vision for what my life could be." It was Papa Donato who suggested the fledgling and industriously minded (even at just 14) artist start busking in Nashville's lower Broadway area and outside concerts, for eight hours at a time on the weekends. After one of those sessions the two happened by Robert’s Western World, a legendary honky-tonk where local mainstay the Don Kelly Band was onstage – which was also Donato’s first time playing a Telecaster, through a Fender amplifier no less. "I played country songs and fell in love with it," says Donato, who became a member of the band, playing four hours a night at Robert's (464 shows in total). "Their songbook was that of my main influences still to this day -- Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Bob Wills, Marty Robbins, Bill Monroe, traditional bluegrass music, Hank Williams Sr. -- old-timey music with real stories and emotions that everybody has. It just hooked me right away." Another piece of the puzzle came through later in Donato’s teenage years -- the Grateful Dead, thanks to a high school American History teacher who gave him a pile of bootleg recordings when he was 18. "When I discovered Jerry Garcia, there's really never been anyone who writes like that," says Donato. "From there I went on to discover Bob Dylan and all the great writers and made me want to make that part of what I did as well." The whole package of player, singer, writer and band leader was in place when Donato began working on his own during 2018. It was on display via his first album, A Young Man’s Country in 2020 but refined on Reflector, which features all original songs and finds Donato and his band – Nathan Aronowitz (keyboards/vocals), Will McGee (bass/vocals) and Noah Miller (drums and percussion) --honed from playing more than 200 shows during 2022, after the Covid lockdowns had lifted. That allowed Donato to not just play again but also to road test the songs that would comprise the album and expand the audience. "We were home for less than two weeks between January and September of 2022," says Donato. "There was the existential necessity of going through a staggering amount of growth. All those shows and all those hours of experience really curated my values as an artist. That informed my composition, informed my band-leading...everything that goes into making music that has real value and impact." Donato had good help in achieving that on Reflector; he enlisted producer Vance Powell, a six-time Grammy Award winner whose eclectic resume ranges from Chris Stapleton and Martina McBride to Phish and Clutch to Buddy Guy and the Jack White universe of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather. They'd actually met when Donato was a teen playing at Robert's, and he remembers Powell telling him that "one day you're gonna make a record, and I want to work with you," which made him the perfect candidate to help Donato achieve his far-reaching vision this time out. "Vance was on damn near every record I enjoyed,” he notes. "He seemed like the only logical choice to take a band that has country songs and old-timey folky songs that also jams and organize it into a digestible piece."  It's hard to find a more concise summation of Reflector than that. It kicks off with the joyous Southern rock roll of "Lose Your Mind," a sound echoed in other tracks -- especially the harmony-laden "High Country" -- and gets high 'n' lonesome on "Halfway in Between." "Double Exposure's" slinky funk is accented by dueling guitar lines, while "Half Moon Night" and the instrumental "Sugar Leg Rag" feel like a contemporary incarnation of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. "Gotta Get Southbound," weighing in at nearly eight minutes, dances through its ebb and flow dynamics, and "Faded Lovin'" echoes the organic majesty of The Band. Donato and company get their cosmic on with both hip-swaying parts of "Dance in the Desert" -- one more acoustic, the other a trippy electric opus -- and the richly melodic odyssey "Weathervane." Reflector -- which features Nashville pedal steel legend Paul Franklin on four tracks -- also reflects "the work I did on myself and the work I did on my art" during the past three years, according to Donato. "I really started discovering new psychological and ritual domains I wasn't really aware of," he explains. "The whole concept of Reflector is of a duality. The entire world that you see externally is a reflection of your internal world, so you have this internal world you exist in and this external world you exist in, and that's what this work is about. I like dualities; it allows me to see where each side of the fence post is, and I can paint in the middle." The middle of anything has never sounded as engrossing and beguiling as Donato makes it on Reflector. These are songs that prompt a listener to hit "repeat" and that stick with you long after they've finished playing. They hit the heart, the soul, the mind -- and the cosmos, making it the kind of trip you won't want to end any time soon.

Mark Hummel

Grammy Nominee, Blues Award Winner, Author, Harp Man Mark Hummel had a banner year in 2014.  Grammy Nominated for his Remembering Little Walter CD he produced and performed on, Mark also won Best Blues CD and Best Traditional Blues CD at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, TN. Mark's The Hustle Is Really Onclimbed to #2 and stayed in the top five for four months on the Living Blues Radio Charts. Hummel's book "BIG ROAD BLUES:12 Bars on I-80" garnered rave reviews and was nominated for best Independent Book release.     Mark Hummel started playing harmonica in 1970 and is considered one of the premier blues harmonica players of his generation. Thanks to over thirty recordings since 1985, including the Grammy nominated 2013 release Blind Pig recording Remembering Little Walter (part of the Blues Harmonica Blowout CD series).  Mark Hummel's Blues Harmonica Blowout™ started in 1991 and have featured every major legend (Mayall, Musselwhite, Cotton, etc.) on blues harp as well as almost every player of note on the instrument - a who's who of players.     Hummel is a road warrior - a true Blues Survivor. Along the way, he has crafted his own trademark harmonica sound - a subtle combination of tone, phrasing and attack combined with a strong sense of swing. Mark has been with Electro Fi Records since 2000, releasing five CDs. Thanks to Mark's earlier albums, constant touring and appearances at the major blues festivals, he's firmly established his solid reputation around the US and Europe.