WILKESBORO – On Dec. 5, MerleFest, presented by Window World, has just added one other huge list of performers to its already stacked 2023 lineup, which featured headliners like The Avett Brothers and Maren Morris. Going down April 27 to 30, 2023, on the campus of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, MerleFest attendees may have the prospect to see boogie-rock masters Little Feat, next-generation guitar slinger Marcus King, living country music legend Tanya Tucker, Miko Marks’ mix of country, blues, southern rock and gospel, and lots of more take to the festival’s multiple weekend stages. 2023 will mark MerleFest’s thirty fifth festival and can honor Doc Watson’s one centesimal birthday yr.
To rejoice the historic milestone event, organizers intend to feature MerleFest’s unique history and present unique collaborations to honor the festival’s founding folk icon. From the flatbed trailer stage on the 1988 Eddy Merle Watson Memorial Festival to today, and searching into the longer term, MerleFest will proceed to attract fans from all around the world to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains each spring to make music, moments, and memories together.
Along with those mentioned above, the next bands and artists have been added to the MerleFest 2023 lineup: AJ Lee & Blue Summit, Alison Brown, Andy Cohen, Anna Lynch, Bee Taylor, Brothers Comatose, Chris Jones & The Night Drivers, Cole Chaney, Compton & Newberry, Dom Flemons, I Draw Slow, Lightnin’ Wells, The Local Honeys, Nigel Wearne, Stillhouse Junkies, Taylor Rae, Terry Baucom’s Dukes of Drive, Todd Albright, Tommy Prine, Yasmin Williams, and The Youngers.
These newly added artists will join MerleFest’s previously announced lineup: The Avett Brothers, Maren Morris, Black Opry Revue, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Peter Rowan, Andy May, Banknotes, Carol Rifkin, Charles Welch, Donna the Buffalo, Jack Lawrence, Jeff Little Trio, Jim Lauderdale, Joe Smothers, Kruger Brothers, Laura Boosinger, The Local Boys, Mark Bumgarner, Mitch Greenhill & Mitch’s Kitchen, Pete & Joan Wernick, Presley Barker, Roy Book Binder, Scythian, T. Michael Coleman, The InterACTive Theater of Jef, The Waybacks, Tony Williamson, and Wayne Henderson.
MerleFest 2023 Tickets can be found now. For general admission passes, in addition to patio seating, reserved seating, camping, parking, and more, please visit merlefest.org/purchase.
Little Feat is the classic example of a fusion of many styles and musical genres made into something utterly distinctive. Their good musicianship transcends boundaries, uniting California rock, funk, folk, jazz, country, rockabilly, and Latest Orleans swamp boogie right into a wealthy gumbo, that has been leading people in joyful dance ever since. It began in 1969 when Frank Zappa was smart enough to fireside Lowell George from the Moms of Invention and tell him to go start a band of his own. Soon after, Lowell connected with Bill Payne, which stirred up sparks. They then found drummer Richie Hayward. They were quickly signed by Warner Bros. and commenced working on the primary of twelve albums with that venerable company. The primary album, “Little Feat,” featured the instant-classic tune “Willin’,” and the follow-up album “Sailin’ Shoes” added “Easy to Slip,” “Trouble,” “Tripe Face Boogie,” “Cold Cold Cold” and the title track to their repertoire. Paul Barrére, Kenny Gradney (bass), and Sam Clayton (percussion) joined up, and the latter two remain rock-solid members of Little Feat’s rhythm section.1973’s “Dixie Chicken” gave them the title track and “Fat Man within the Bathtub,” pretty much as good a blues as any rock band has ever written. Their profession to that time was summed up with the live “Waiting for Columbus,” truly the most effective live albums rock has ever heard. Fifty years on the road cost them Lowell George, then Richie Hayward and Paul Barrére, however the music has carried them forward. If you spend your life on the road you’ll be able to get eaten up by the stresses, or you’ll be able to hold on to your music and your pals and the enjoyment of the people out front and keep the priorities straight the way in which the Featsters have. Little Feat in 2023 is: Bill Payne, keyboards and vocals; Sam Clayton, percussion and vocals; Fred Tackett, guitars and vocals; Kenny Gradney, bass; Scott Sharrard, guitars and vocals; and Tony Leone, drums. Fifty years on, they’ve been up they usually’ve been down they usually know where they belong—standing or sitting behind their instruments, playing for you. And anything’s possible because the top just isn’t in sight.
Grammy Award-nominated artist, performer, and songwriter Marcus King was downright destined to play music. By eight years old, the fourth-generation Greenville, South Carolina native performed alongside pops, grandpa, and his uncles for the primary time. Logging 1000’s of miles on the road as “The Marcus King Band,” he established himself with unparalleled performance prowess and a dynamic live show. In between packing venues on his own, he performed alongside Chris Stapleton, Greta Van Fleet, and Nathaniel Rateliff along with gracing the bills of Stagecoach and more with one seismic show after the subsequent. Along the way in which, he caught the eye of Rick Rubin and signed to American Recordings.
Plugged into his old man’s dusty amp with a ’59 Les Paul in hand, Marcus got down to make a rock ‘n’ roll record in 2022. He didn’t disguise his ambitions in any respect. He didn’t hold back. He didn’t take into consideration anything but writing from the gut, shooting from the hip, and playing straight from the guts. Joined by Auerbach, he made the form of rock ‘n’ roll record that makes arenas shake, and it’s called “Young Blood” [American Recordings/Republic Records].
Edgy. Classic. Country. A defining voice of music and a modern-day legend, two-time 2020 Grammy winner Tanya Tucker continues to encourage artists today. Born in Seminole, Texas, Tanya had her first country hit, the classic “Delta Dawn,” on the age of 13 in 1972. Since that auspicious starting, she has turn out to be probably the most admired and influential artists in country music history, amassing 23 Top 40 albums and a stellar string of 56 Top 40 singles, ten of which reached the No. 1 spot on the Billboard country charts. Tanya’s indelible songs include a few of country music’s biggest hits comparable to the aforementioned “Delta Dawn,” “Soon,” “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane,” “It’s a Little Too Late,” “Trouble,” “Texas (After I Die),” “If It Don’t Come Easy” and “Strong Enough To Bend.” Tanya can be the recipient of diverse awards, including two CMAs, two ACMs, and three CMT awards. In 2020, Tanya received two GRAMMY® Awards for Best Country Album: “While I’m Livin’ ” and Best Country Song: “Bring My Flowers Now.” In the autumn of 2020, Fantasy Records released Tanya Tucker — “Live From The Troubadour” on October 16, the one-year anniversary of Tanya’s historic, standing-room-only set from which it originates. Tanya was within the midst of resurgent visibility and acclaim generated by her Brandi Carlile and Shooter Jennings produced “While I’m Livin’” album released two months earlier — so the temporary stand in front of the West Hollywood tastemaker crowd took on a palpable air of significance. As someone who’s been center stage for greater than 50 years, Tanya is donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the album on to The Troubadour. In October 2022, “The Return of Tanya Tucker, Featuring Brandi Carlile,” a documentary that chronicles the resurgence in Tucker’s profession following the success of her 2019 album “While I’m Livin’,” shall be released in theatre’s globally via Sony Pictures Classics. Later this yr, Tanya will even star in a recent holiday movie, “A Nashville Country Christmas,” slated for Paramount and CMT networks.
The Wall Street Journal has described it as a “genre and industry-defying mission.” NPR declared it a “multilayered experience.” The Latest York Times commended the movement as carving out a recent path in country music. All tell the story of Miko Marks’ resurgence as she deftly blends country, blues, southern rock, and even gospel to create a sound and experience that has literally brought every audience to its feet. This recent sound along together with her warm and soulful spirit catapulted her right into a community of change together with her doing greater than breaking ground — she’s shattering it. It’s a serendipitous realization that Marks was meant to be here, at the moment, on this moment, for good.
After releasing her critically-acclaimed album, “Our Country” (via Redtone Records) in March 2021, Marks dove headfirst into an industry that previously never fully embraced her. She closed out 2021 together with her EP release, “Race Records,” which shined a light-weight on the arbitrary divisions forced upon artists and audiences within the early days of music marketing within the Forties. In January of this yr, Marks was named to CMT’s Next Women of Country Class of 2022 and by April, she stood alongside five other artists and managers chosen to take part in the inaugural Equal Access Development Program, a program designed by m theory and CMT to foster and support marginalized communities underrepresented within the genre of country music.
“Feel Like Going Home” is an amalgamation of where Marks has been and where she goes. What she has learned and what she desires to teach. It’s an innermost have a look at the ebb and flow of her past, present, and future. It’s the stories she desires to tell but hasn’t been capable of speak into existence ever before. The messages are profound: healing, restoration, and distinctly individual.