Some people call him a preacher, others a poet, a singer, a guitar player, a redneck, but he declares: "I am only an actor strutting and fretting across the stage. I still have to use a shovel. I still have to dig in the dirt. But, I’ll tell you what, I have two beautiful children, a piece of land in Franklin, TN and more music on the way. No one knows what tomorrow will bring, but songs are sung by those who continue to sing."

Grayson Capps was conceived in the back seat of a Pontiac Tempest in Brewton, Alabama, and first saw the light in a delivery room in Opelika, Alabama the morning of April 17, 1967. This was the year Woody Guthrie and Otis Redding died and the year of the summer of love. The sixties hit Alabama in the seventies and left poignant memories in Grayson's brain. The weekends are

what stick with him the most. "There was an array of eccentrics, channeling Cannery Row or Greenwich Village, coming in and out of my life at this time. They were writers, painters, musicians, vagrants and ne'er do wells reciting poetry, philosophizing, singing, dancing and drinking.

Grayson graduated from Tulane University in 1989.. While studying in New Orleans, Grayson started playing guitar and became a fulltime musician. He played all over the US and Europe. Capps was driven from his home in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina--where he’d lived for the past 20 years. No small tragedy to endure, Grayson responded stoically by keeping a stiff upper lip and his eye on the road. During this period of time he toured incessantly, including an appearance at Bonnaroo and two European tours. He then cut his follow up album, Wail & Ride . On the recording, he addresses the Katrina experience with the poignant song, “New Orleans Waltz.” He’d follow that release with a sparse acoustic collection he’d recorded while still living in New Orleans entitled Songbones . In 2008, Grayson offered up the first album with his touring band, The Stumpknockers, to wide critical acclaim. At the close of 2009, he’d also release his first DVD, a “live” solo acoustic performance from a concert at The P aradiso in Amsterdam.

Check him out at GraysonCapps.com

AMERICAN SONGWRITER Says : "Take the poetry of Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt, combine with Steve Earle’s edgy attitude and stir with a little cup of the bayou-blues (think Howlin’ Wolf) and you start to get a taste of Capps’s scrumptious gothic gumbo."

BLURT Says : “Although his distinctive sound is rootsy at its core, a Dixie-fried amalgam of twangrock,Memphis soul, and roadhouse blues, Capps' Tennessee-Williams-meets-Charles-Bukowski lyrical style is equal parts Southern Gothic and Los Angeles noir. His songs are literate, imaginative, and sometimes magical, his storytelling skills matched by an uncanny sense of musical history that will grow on you like kudzu vine."

Plenty of tickets available at the door.

Intensity, Ahleuchatistas get it! Presently a duo of guitar and drums, I heard Ahleuchatistas at the Big Ears fest, and they literally blew me away. Guitarist Shane Perlowin is one of the most articulate,voraciously eclectic young players I've heard in a long time. Drummer Ryan Oslance reminds me of a young George Hurley of Minutemen fame, an absolute percussive maelstrom. John Zorn was impressed enough to sign them to his Tzadik label. As you may have gathered this is not a bluegrass show, but the adventurous amongst you will be richly rewarded.

You have to see the Ahleuchatista's website, which starts with a great video taken from their recent Easter European tour.

Ahleuchatistas on Myspace

Ahleuchatistas on Facebook

"Artists who mine a cross-pollination of rock, country and folk aren’t uncommon these days, but few do it as deftly as Rain Perry.” Performing Songwriter

We are delighted and proud to welcome back one of the premier Irish traditional bands you will hear anywhere. Paul Brock and Manus McGuire, two of Ireland's most celebrated traditional musicians, front a very impressive band indeed.

Learn more about the Brock McGuire band on their website!

Alan Jabbour was born in 1942 in Jacksonville, Florida.  A violinist by early training, he put himself through college at the
University of Miami playing classical music.  While a graduate student at Duke University in the 1960s, he began documenting
oldtime fiddlers in the Upper South.  Documentation turned to apprenticeship, and he relearned the fiddle in the style of the Upper
South from musicians like Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Virginia, and Tommy Jarrell of Toast, North Carolina. He taught a repertory of
oldtime fiddle tunes to his band, the Hollow Rock String Band, which was an important link in the instrumental music revival in the 1960s.

After receiving his Ph.D. in 1968, he taught English, folklore, and ethnomusicology at UCLA in 1968-69.  He then moved to Washington, D.C., for over thirty years of service with Federal cultural agencies.  He was head of the Archive of Folk Song at the
Library of Congress 1969-74, director of the folk arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts 1974-76, and director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress 1976-99. Since his retirement, he has turned enthusiastically to a life of
writing, consulting, lecturing, and playing the fiddle.

Superb instrumentalist, acclaimed teacher of instrumental skills, gifted performer, award-winning folklorist, Ken Perlman is surely a welcome addition to any festival or concert-series lineup. Ken is both a pioneer of the 5-string banjo style known as "melodic clawhammer," and a master of fingerstyle guitar. He is considered one of the top clawhammer players in the world, known in particular for his skillful adaptations of Celtic tunes to the style. On guitar, Ken's sparkling finger-picked renditions of traditional Celtic and Southern fiddle tunes are simply not to be missed.

He draws his material from traditional sources -- the music of Scotland, Ireland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island and the American South. His approach to the music, however, is highly innovative. He has developed many new instrumental techniques, and much of his repertoire has never before been played on 5-string banjo or guitar.

"For Old-Time music enthusiasts, Alan Jabbour and Ken Perlman are rock stars, without the microphones and trendy hair." The Falmouth Enterprise