Adam Carroll just may be the best songwriter you’ve never heard before. His music has been a household staple at Over Yonder Concert House for years, and we couldn’t be more excited that he and his wife Chris are stopping in to share some songs.

Want to hear a good story? Listen to any Adam Carroll song. His Texas peers sure have, over and over again, and are quick to heap superlatives on a stoic artist whose compositions provide a solitary glimpse into a verdant imagination.

Jon Dee Graham says Carroll "may be the best songwriter that Texas ever produced," while Robert Earl Keen proclaims, "If all were right with the world, Adam Carroll would be the Townes Van Zandt of our age."

Carroll grew up in Tyler, Texas, which he describes as "pretty southern" compared to other Lone Star habitats, in the '70s and '80s. This led him to identify with great southern bards like Flannery O'Connor and Lucinda Williams, even if he felt a bit out of place in his hometown.

Now, with the release of two new albums--I Walked in Them Shoes is a solo effort, wile Good Farmer was recorded in tandem with his wife, Chris Carroll--there are more characters to meet, at once fascinating and familiar.

We are really f’n excited for this one!

American songwriter Tim Easton was born on the Canadian border in upstate New York and spent his formative years living in Tokyo, Japan and Akron, Ohio. Traveling early and often, he learned the ways of the road and rails and spent 7 years as a bonafide troubadour, making his way around Europe, playing the streets and clubs, living in Paris, London, Madrid, Prague, Dublin, and wherever he laid his hat. It was this period of time when he developed his songwriting style - folk based storytelling and personal traveling tales, often peppered with bold confessions or "tell it as it is" reality. Rolling Stone Magazine praised him as "having a novelist's sense of humanity."

Returning to his roots in North America, moving to New York City and then Los Angeles, he signed with New West Records and released five critically acclaimed solo albums starting with 2001's "The Truth About Us," which featured three fourths of WILCO as the backing band. Invitations to be a support act from mentors Lucinda Williams and John Hiatt arrived. Easton settled in the burgeoning art and music scene of Joshua Tree, California between worldwide tours. After becoming a Father and re-locating to Nashville, Easton recorded an album for THIRTY TIGERS ("NOT COOL" 2013), which accented the stripped down Memphis & Sun Studios sound of the Tennessee Three. His next album 2016's "AMERICAN FORK," was a grand departure from his previous efforts, featuring a fully flushed out backing band with elaborate songs arrangements. Next came "Paco & The Melodic Polaroids," a stripped down, direct to lacquer LP of love songs to his beloved Gibson J-45 named "Paco." That was followed up with 2020's full band recording "You Don't Really Know Me," beginning a new relationship with Oklahoma based Black Mesa Records, which will re-release "Not Cool" and Easton's solo debut "Special 20" on vinyl in 2023. In between composing songs for his next original album and the re-issue projects to be released, a twenty song interim project called "NORTH AMERICAN SONGWRITER" will arrive early in 2023. This double LP--the first two volumes in a series--will feature acoustic recordings of favorite songs from his vast catalog of original material. Worldwide tour dates are a constant addition to the Tour page of TimEaston.com.

Easton reached the milestone of having 100 Published original songs which he celebrated by releasing 100 solo performance videos on 100 consecutive days, all posted on his personal YouTube channel.

He currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee.

Our buddy Brian Oberlin of Full Cord is coming through for a solo show!

Brian Oberlin is an internationally acclaimed mandolin player and educator. During his decades long professional career, Brian has been playing swing, bluegrass, and Italian classical as a solo mandolinist and vocalist. Brian celebrated the release of his 20th album in May, 2016; Troubadour which features Brian playing solo and singing original music. Along with the myriad of award-winning bands (GER Mandolin Orchestra with Mike Marshall and Twin Mandolin Slingers with Evan J. Marshall) and ensembles he has collaborated with throughout the United States and Europe, Brian is also the founder and director of the River of the West Mandolin Camp, the Great Lakes Mandolin Camp and the Oregon Mandolin Orchestra. Brian was a top ten finalist at the 2013 Telluride Troubadour Contest, an instructor/performer at the 2012, 2013 and 2017 International Mandolin Academy in Italy, a featured soloist at the 2014 EuroFest Plucked String Festival in Bruchsal, Germany, and a featured soloist at the 2015 Mandolin Upgrade festival in Berlin, Germany. When he is not performing, Brian teaches music to children and adults at art centers, cultural events, festivals, camps, music schools and academies.

We are excited to have Nick Dittmeier back at Over Yonder Concert House!

Nick Dittmeier & the Sawdusters understand that to stay relevant, country and Americana—like any long-running musical genres—must be unceremoniously leveled from time to time. Blasted by a cold steel wrecking ball, and reassembled into new forms atop the rubble. And what better moment for a scheduled demolition than with all of planet Earth in a holding pattern, straddling the deep chasm between past and future. Into this void arrives Heavy Denim, an album that artfully sidesteps any slavish, formulaic adherence to roots-music traditions.

“At the height of the pandemic” Dittmeier says, “it became clear to me that—with everything we’d been through—there was going to be a different mind coming out the other side. As a band, we decided we weren’t going to try to go back and replicate who we were, or the reality we were living before covid. A lot of people were fixated on getting back to quote-unquote normal, but to me it seemed pretty obvious that wasn’t even on the table.”

Forcing themselves out of their comfort zones, Dittmeier & the Sawdusters began stripping back their roots-rock bluster and leaving room for new textures: drum machines, loopers, synths. Heavy Denim finds Dittmeier and the Sawdusters fearlessly reinventing their sound. The album is in the tradition of Dire Straits’ spacey, synth-anchored early-’90s country curveball On Every Street; Alabama Shakes’ transformation from gritty Southern neo-soul revue to danceable indie-rock darlings on Sound & Color; and the symphonic R&B and art-folk Sturgill Simpson wove on the astral loom that is A Sailor’s Guide to Earth. With its refreshing creativity and sonic adventurousness, Heavy Denim is one of those rare and wonderful records that expands the boundaries of its genre.