The Red Wing Roots Music Festival at Natural Chimneys Park. (Photo by Chester Simpson)
Red Wing Roots Festival, a family-friendly celebration of music, features kids events and activities and bike rides in the park. Red Wings V was held in Natural Chimneys Park on July 14-16.
The Steel Wheels started their own boutique, summer music festival in the shadow of Natural Chimneys Park in Mt. Solon, Virginia. And called it Red Wing Roots Music Festival. They bring in artists that they love and that influence them, and the different sounds that they think everyone should be listening to.
The Steel Wheels: www.thesteelwheels.com
Local tour dates:
Oct. 15 The Hamilton, Washington, DC.
With a youthful appearance, talented guitarist and singer Billy Strings has exploded onto the scene with an energy that’s makes a crowd rowdy.
Billy Strings: www.billystrings.com
Local tour dates:
July 22 Deep Roots Mountain Revival, Masontown, WV
Sept. 19 The 8 X 10, Baltimore, MD
Sept. 20 Black Cat, Washington, DC
Guitarist and lead singer, Robert Greer of Town Mountain from Asheville, NC, tunes up his guitar backstage before their show.
Town Mountain: www.townmountain.net
Local tour dates:
July 22 Deep Roots Mountain Revival, Masontown, West Virginia
Jan Fabricius, Tim O’Brien, and Steve Earle (L to R) backstage before Tim’s performance at the Red Wing Roots Music Festival. Tim toured and recorded with Steve Earle’s Bluegrass Dukes in the early 2000s.
Tim O’Brien: www.timobrien.net/home
Local tour dates:
Sept. 10 Birchmere Music Hall, Alexandria, Virginia
CW Stoneking fell in love with the blues when he was in his teens. Born in Katherine, in Australia’s remote Northern Territory, CW was the son of an American school teacher with a passion for music. He vividly remembers being 11 years old and stumbling across Living With The Blues, an early blues compilation, in his father’s collection: “When I first heard it I thought it was kinda funny music”, he told a Dutch interviewer a few years ago, “because it was so deconstructed and not really adhering to any rules that I’d been told music [should] fit into. And the more I listened to it, I just liked it more and more.”
CW Stoneking: www.cwstoneking.com
Local tour dates:
July 28 DC9, Washington, DC
Stephane Wrembel is a French born jazz guitarist best known as a composer and performer of Gypsy Jazz, but he is also heavily influenced by world music. In 2011, he again collaborated with Woody Allen, composing “Bistro Fada”, the theme song for Allen’s film Midnight in Paris.
Stephane Wrembel: www.stephanewrembel.com
Jon Stickley fronts The Jon Stickley Trio, a progressive ensemble from Asheville, NC. They are rooted in the traditions of bluegrass, but they perform Gypsy jazz and folk-punk as well.
Jon Stickley: www.jonstickley.com
Local tour dates:
Sept. 13 Gypsy Sally’s, Washington, DC
Here’s Jon Stickley with his new wife Julers Stickley!
The “Guitar Masters,” hosted by Jon Stickley: (L to R) Billy Strings, Jon Stickley, and Stephane Wrembel.
Lake Street Dive is a multigenre band that was founded in 2004 in Boston, MA. The band consists of Rachael Price (lead vocals), Mike “McDuck” Olson (trumpet, guitar), Bridget Kearney (upright bass), and Mike Calabrese (drums). They met while attending the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. The band was named after a street with many dive bars in Olson’s hometown of Minneapolis, MN.
Lake Street Dive: www.lakestreetdive.com
Steve Earle & The Dukes: Steve Earle is an American rock, country and folk singer-songwriter, record producer, author, and actor. Steve began his career as a songwriter in Nashville and released his first EP in 1982.
Steve Earle: http://outlaw.steveearle.com
For more info on the Red Wing Roots Festival, including details on next year’s festival, visit its website at www.redwingroots.com.
