Tickets: $25

No one remembers when the neighbors started calling the McCutcheons to complain about the loud singing from young John's bedroom. It didn't seem to do much good, though. For, after a shaky, lopsided battle between piano lessons and baseball (he was a mediocre pianist and an all-star catcher), he had "found his voice" thanks to a cheap mail-order guitar and a used book of chords.

From such inauspicious beginnings, John McCutcheon has emerged as one of our most respected and loved folksingers. As an instrumentalist, he is a master of a dozen different traditional instruments, most notably the rare and beautiful hammer dulcimer. His songwriting has been hailed by critics and singers around the globe. His thirty recordings have garnered every imaginable honor including seven Grammy nominations.

He has produced over twenty albums of other artists, from traditional fiddlers to contemporary singer-songwriters to educational and documentary works. His books and instructional materials have introduced budding players to the joys of their own musicality. And his commitment to grassroots political organizations has put him on the front lines of many of the issues important to communities and workers.

Even before graduating summa cum laude from Minnesota's St. John's University, this Wisconsin native literally "headed for the hills," forgoing a college lecture hall for the classroom of the eastern Kentucky coal camps, union halls, country churches, and square dance halls. His apprenticeship to many of the legendary figures of Appalachian music imbedded a love of not only home-made music, but a sense of community and rootedness. The result is music...whether traditional or from his huge catalog of original songs...with the profound mark of place, family, and strength. It also created a storytelling style that has been compared to Will Rogers and Garrison Keillor.

Tickets: $20

The concert will feature the song of the Christmas Ship that brought Christmas trees to Chicago for many years. Noted as a fluent instrumentalist on six and twelve string guitars, Murdock combines ragtime, Irish, blues and folk styles with this flair for storytelling in songs. His musical influences span fifteen generations, and combine original compositions with traditional music. There is an amazing timelessness in this music. Great Lakes songs are made of hard word, hard living, ships that go down and ships that come in. The music is grounded in the work song tradition, from the rugged days of lumberjacks and wooden sailing schooners.

Murdock comes alongside with ballads of contemporary commerce and revelry in the grand folk style. Lee's fans have discovered a sweetwater treasure in his songs about the Great Lakes, finding drama and inspiration in the lives of sailors and fishermen, lighthouse keepers, ghosts, shipwrecks, outlaws and everyday heroes. In 2014, Lee Murdock formed a new band, with a sound unlike anything he's offered in the past. It all started with Joel Simpson, a friend who has been a Lee Murdock fan since the age of seven, or younger. Joel is a graduate of Elmhurst College School of Music, and is a multi-instrumentalist, playing dobro, mandolin, guitar, and other stringed instruments. They came to know each other better while working, each was teaching private lessons at Tobias Music Store in Downers Grove.

Bassist Mike Bradburn has toured the USA and Europe with the popular Chicago-based band, Dolly Varden. Percussionist Greg Smith soon joined the band, and the foursome has formed the backbone of Murdock's nineteenth CD, "What About The Water," released in September, 2014. Greg had a long and busy career working with another popular Chicago and touring band, The Dooleys. This show is going to be a delight.

Tickets: $20

The Donna Herula Trio is a Chicago-based folk blues group that has a passion for performing fun, lively and heartfelt versions of traditional blues songs as well as creating original songs that tip the hat to the tradition. The group includes Donna Herula (an award-winning singer/ songwriter, resonator slide guitarist, Chicago Blues Hall of Fame Inductee and guitar teacher at the Old Town School of Folk Music), Marc Edelstein (upright bassist and co-founding member of the bluegrass band Special Consensus) and multi-instrumentalist Tony Wittrock (guitar, mandolin and banjo).

Donna won "Best Traditional Blues Artist" and her album "Bang at the Door" won "Best Acoustic Blues Album" at the 2022 Independent Blues Awards. Her original song, "Bang at the Door" also won "Best AAA/ Alternative Song" at the 2022 International Acoustic Music Awards. According to Frank Matheis from Living Blues Magazine, Donna created an album with "the female perspective."

"The music flows from acoustic blues through gospel, jazz, and ragtime, to the electric Chicago blues style, with nods to New Orleans, folk, and country influences." - Mark Thompson, Blues Blast Magazine

The Donna Herula Trio has performed on WFMT's Folk Stage, at the Folk Alliance Region Midwest conference as an "Official Showcase," and at folk and blues venues/festivals nationally and internationally, including the White Oak Folk Festival, CU Folk and Roots Festival, Lake County Folk Club, Two Way Street Coffee House, Trinity House, The Old Town School of Folk Music, The Focal Point, Indy Folk Series and the Lucerne Blues Festival in Switzerland.

"Herula delivers a set that is powerful, passionate, and a great listen." - Bill Wilson, Reflections in Blue

"A truly gifted virtuoso of the resonator guitar who also possesses the most stunning of voices. Herula is a Chicago born Blues artist of the highest order who not only sings, plays slide but also is a more than accomplished composer." - Peter Merrett, PBS 106.7 FM, Melbourne, Australia

"Black Ice" and [Donna's version of] Lucinda Williams' "Jackson" are the kind of masterful performances that I'd like to say should be mandatory listening in music class." - Peter "Blewzzman" Lauro, Mary 4 Music

Tickets: $22

David Francey wins 4th JUNO for "The Breath Between", winning Traditional Roots Album of the Year. David Francey's new album is a poignant yet beautiful reminder of the passage of time, or as David describes it in the title track, "the breath between the here and gone". It is introspective and intimate. "In a time of uncertainty, we managed to pull together a nice body of work which created much joy in the making." - David Francey

Although David has covered the themes of love and loss before, this album does so in a nostalgic and touching way, capturing a particularly reflective period in his life.

David Francey is a Canadian folk singer-songwriter. He will be performing as a trio. Past albums include Torn Screen Door, Lonely Road, Come Rain or Come Shine, A Star Above, Broken Glass, Long Long Road, Lucky Man, and All Lights Burning Bright.

Francey worked as a rail yard worker and a carpenter for 20 years. At age 45, he began a career in folk music, finding success on the folk festival circuit.

Francey's experiences in working-class life strongly influenced his 1999 debut album, Torn Screen Door, which featured the songs "Gypsy Boys", "Hard Steel Mill", "Working Poor", and "Torn Screen Door". Other musical themes include admiration of the natural beauty of the Canadian landscape and traditional folk themes of love and loss.

Tickets: $20

"Anne Hills is such an exquisite singer that it's understandable that people might be swept up in the pure beauty of her voice and thereby overlook her writing. That would be a mistake. For me, Anne's writing, in songs like 'Follow That Road' and many others, is as direct, melodic and deep as any work being done today. She is quite simply one of my absolute favorite songwriters." - Tom Paxton

As a singer, actress, writer, and musician Anne Hills has continuously built a reputation of merit. During her career, she has received numerous honors and awards including, most recently, the 2019 Woodstock Folk Festival Lifetime Achievement Award.

Tickets: $20

Connie Kaldor Trio - With her husband, Paul Campagne, and son, Gabriel - they put on quite a show. Connie's career is a three time Juno Award wnner.

"A masterful performer, wildly funny one moment, deeply personal the next." - The Boston Globe

"Big sky. Big impact. Big laughs, too. That's Connie Kaldor in a nutshell." - The Toronto Star

Kaldor performed with various theatre groups, including Theatre Passe Muraille, The Mummers and 25th Street House Theatre, until 1979, when she gave it up to start a full-time music career. In 1981, she founded her own independent record label, Coyote Entertainment, and has released eighteen albums.

Part of the Canadian Wave, Connie has performed alongside talents such as Stan Rogers, Ferron, and Valdy, and contributed to a newly emerging and distinctly Canadian sound. In the early 1980s, Kaldor opened for Stan Rogers in a tour across the United States and the two musicians played the Canadian Workshop together at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas in June 1983, after which Stan Rogers died in a plane crash returning home from the festival.

In 1985 she received a Most Promising Female Vocalist Juno Award nomination (now called the Juno Award for Breakthrough Artist of the Year) for her album Moonlight Grocery and in the year 2000, her album Love is a Truck was nominated for a Juno in the Folk Roots category. She has won the Juno Award for best children's album three times, in 1989, 2004, and 2005.

In 2005, she was invited to perform at the Saskatchewan Centennial for Joni Mitchell as well as the Queen of England. In 2006, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2009, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Regina. She also received an Alumni Association Honour Award from the University of Alberta. In 2014, she became the first songwriter to receive a Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2020, her song, Seed in the Ground, was selected as one of 20 songs for the Canadian Music Class Challenge in honour of the Juno Awards 50th anniversary.

Kaldor and her husband, music producer and Hart-Rouge member Paul Campagne, have two sons and live in Montreal. She now performs with her husband and two adult children, Aleksi Campagne and Gabriel Campagne. She jokes that, "Shari Ulrich and I, I think we're the only two people in the Canadian music scene that actually gave birth to their backup bands."

Tickets: $20

In 2007, Albertan songwriter Scott Cook quit his job teaching kindergarten in Taiwan and moved into a minivan. He's made his living as a troubadour ever since, touring almost incessantly across Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, averaging 150 shows and a dozen summer festivals a year, and releasing seven albums of plainspoken, keenly observant verse along the way.

His latest collection Tangle of Souls comes packaged in a cloth-bound, 240-page hardcover book of road stories and ruminations, equal parts introspection and insurrection. The album spent two weeks at #1 on Alberta's province-wide community radio network CKUA, and earned Scott his third Canadian Folk Music Award nomination, for English Songwriter of the Year. Its second single "Say Can You See" was the second most-played song of 2020 on Folk Alliance International's folk radio charts, and took top honours for the folk category in both the 2020 UK Songwriting Competition and the 2020 Great American Song Contest.

He's been back on the road full-time since January of 2022, living in a campervan named Roadetta with his sweetheart Pamela Mae on upright bass and vocals, visiting 43 states and 8 Canadian provinces, and broadcasting solar-powered livestreams from the back of the van. In 2024 they're touring Australia and North America, and recording an eighth album for release in the fall.

Heather Styka writes intricate stories into her songs and sings them with a voice that might make you think of Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday, but she describes herself as a cross between Leonard Cohen and Patsy Cline. Her songs and stories belong squarely in the folk and Americana traditions, but they're also gritty country and catchy pop, a nice mix. Onstage, she's energetic and intimate, quirky and funny.

After growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Styka moved to the city to study creative writing, meanwhile honing her song craft among Chicago's long-standing folk community. "Chicago has such a rich musical history, especially with places like the Old Town School of Folk Music," Styka explains. "I was definitely steeped in that tradition." Her 2011 release "Lifeboats for Atlantis" brought her to national attention, hitting #3 on the FOLK-DJ charts. Styka's honest, image-heavy songs have garnered her a number of awards, including being a New Folk Finalist at the Kerrville Folk Festival (2015, 2017) and official showcases at Folk Alliance International, NERFA, SWRFA, and FARM.

Armed with a guileless, unvarnished delivery, she's equal parts wordsmith and entertainer. Styka's energetic shows feel as intimate and candid as late night conversation, peppered with a quirky sense of humor and confessional storytelling.

Heather Styka was the first place winner in the Big Top Chautauqua Songwriting Competition, and then second place in the Great Lakes Songwriting Contest. A two-time finalist at the Kerrville Folk Festival, she continues to earn accolades...and most recently, an advanced degree! She wins admirers by rendering the beauty and hardship in life into song, somehow making us all feel like we're in it together.