RSVP: music@occasionalmusic.net or 505-980-6161 $15 suggested donation. 100% of proceeds go to artist. Lara Manzanares is an award-winning bilingual singer-songwriter of Northern New Mexican heritage. In addition to singing the Mexican boleros, rancheras, and corridos of her sheep-ranching childhood, Lara also composes her own style of music in both English and Spanish. Through a combination […]

Higher Ground Bluegrass is New Mexico’s premier Bluegrass band, known for its tight harmonies and tasteful instrumentation. Performing both original material and a variety of traditional and contemporary selections, the band’s philosophy is to find dynamic arrangements for its original material, and to add something new and unique to standard bluegrass tunes to make them […]

For three decades Grammy winner Mollie O’Brien and her husband, guitarist Rich Moore, have made it their mission to find, mine and reinvent other artists’ songs. As songwriters they add their own tunes to the canon of American roots music, boasting a fluid ability to make themselves at home in any genre. Rich, known for […]

Winner of the International Folk Music award for 2017 “Artist of the Year,” husband and wife duo Crystal and Pete Damore have been performing together as Ordinary Elephant since 2011. The duo’s sophomore release, Before I Go, produced at Santa Fe’s Kitchen Sink Studio, established them internationally. Their latest album, Honest, is widely lauded as […]

The first Swedish female artist to play Lollapalooza, Sofia Talvik’s seven full-length albums of original music are full of sparkle and melancholy. The singer-songwriter grew up in Sweden, but a recent 16-month, 37-state RV tour through the U.S. infused her unmistakably Nordic music with an Americana flavor. The adventure spurred a lot of emotions—triumph and joy, but […]

Bosque Music in Corrales presents this gifted and evocative songwriter-poet performing with his trio. Berkeley, a Santa Fean, has released six studio albums, one live album, and authored two books. His 2017 release was a novella comprising ten intertwining stories and an album of 10 accompanying songs (one for each story). And his 2018 EP […]

“Sometimes as darkly damaged as Lucinda Williams, at others as defiant and teasing as prime Peggy Lee, and always authentically Americana in the Gillian Welch tradition...”  —Los Angeles Daily News  This Boise-based songwriter leads a tight quartet that blends influences of surf-noir, early blues, classic country, folk, and 1960s era rock ’n’ roll. For well […]

Few musicians of any stripe so personify a musical genre as completely as Tony Furtado embodies Americana roots music. An evocative and soulful singer, the Portland-based artist is a wide-ranging songwriter and a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist adept on banjo, cello-banjo, slide guitar and baritone ukulele. He mixes and matches sounds and styles with the flair of […]

TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR for three decades Grammy winner Mollie O’Brien and her husband, guitarist Rich Moore, have made it their mission to find, mine and reinvent other artists’ songs. As songwriters they add their own tunes to the canon of American roots music, boasting a fluid ability to make themselves at home in […]

For three decades Grammy winner Mollie O’Brien and her husband, guitarist Rich Moore, have made it their mission to find, mine and reinvent other artists’ songs. As songwriters they add their own tunes to the canon of American roots music, boasting a fluid ability to make themselves at home in any genre. Known for his […]

Husband and wife duo Crystal and Pete Damore have been performing together as Ordinary Elephant since 2011, and just 6 years later won the prestigious International Folk Music award for Artist of the Year. The duo’s sophomore release, Before I Go, produced at Santa Fe’s Kitchen Sink Studio, established them internationally, with musical nods to […]

Winner of the International Folk Music award for 2017 “Artist of the Year,” husband and wife duo Crystal and Pete Damore have been performing together as Ordinary Elephant since 2011. The duo’s sophomore release, Before I Go, produced at Santa Fe’s Kitchen Sink Studio, established them internationally, with musical nods to Guy Clark, Anais Mitchell […]

One of the most musically accomplished & tasteful purveyors of traditional & contemporary Irish music, the husband-wife duo of Tommy and Saundra O’Sullivan own, run and book the famous O'Sullivan's Courthouse Pub, smack in the middle of Dingle, Ireland, home to many of the island's best musicians. Prior to opening the esteemed establishment in 2011, […]

Peter Mulvey has been a songwriter roaddog raconteur for as long as he can remember. Raised in working-class Milwaukee, he went to school in Ireland for a semester and began cutting classes to busk on Grafton Street in Dublin and hitchhike through the country, finding whatever gigs he could. Back stateside, he spent a couple […]

FREE at Santa Fe Library Southside, 6599 Jaguar Dr., Santa Fe, NM 87507. Bring the kids! Akeem is a 9th-generation Nigerian drummer whose mission is to keep alive traditional Yoruba stories, rituals and mythology through drumming, storytelling and dance. He leads an engaging, interactive African drumming program that engages both kids  and adults in conversation about […]

Jazz icon Bill Frisell’s four-decade career as a guitarist and composer has been cited by Downbeat as "the best recorded output of the decade.” "Frisell has had a lot of practice putting high concept into a humble package,” writes the New York Times. “Long hailed as one of the most distinctive and original improvising guitarists […]

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that two ultra-talented, hugely curious, phenomenally music-literate musicians have teamed up to stir a plethora of musical spices into a shared gumbo. Needless to say, its gonna be tasty.  Spearheading the emerging generation of Cajun and Creole musicians, CEDRIC WATSON is a fiddler, vocalist, accordionist and songwriter of enormous […]

Agalu - an ensemble with roots in Oshogbo, Nigeria that keeps alive traditional Yoruba stories, rituals and mythology through drumming, storytelling and dance - will be performing FREE near the entrance to SITE Santa Fe in the Santa Fe Railyard. Led by Akeem Ayanniyi, a ninth-generation practitioner of the Yoruba talking drum, Agalu features the […]

Agalu – an ensemble with roots in Oshogbo, Nigeria that keeps alive traditional Yoruba stories, rituals and mythology through drumming, storytelling and dance – will be performing FREE at De Vargas Park during Santa Fe's Fiesta celebration. Led by Akeem Ayanniyi, a ninth-generation practitioner of the Yoruba talking drum, Agalu features the traditional talking drum, […]

Peter Mulvey has been a songwriter roaddog raconteur for as long as he can remember. Raised in working-class Milwaukee, he went to school in Ireland for a semester and began cutting classes to busk on Grafton Street in Dublin and hitchhike through the country, finding whatever gigs he could. Back stateside, he spent a couple […]

“One of our most truly poetic songwriters.” --No Depression Jeffrey Foucault has spent the last decade mining the darker seams of country and blues, producing a string of spare and poetic albums of rare power while garnering accolades internationally for a tersely elegant brand of songwriting set apart by itsinherently warm throaty delivery, hauntingly honest […]

Jeffrey Foucault has spent the last decade mining the darker seams of country and blues, producing a string of spare and poetic albums of rare power while garnering accolades internationally for a tersely elegant brand of songwriting set apart by itsinherently warm throaty delivery, hauntingly honest and poetic imagery, and weather-beaten cool. In addition to […]

NM-raised KATE  VARGAS has received praise from Billboard, NPR, Noisey, and the Huffington Post for her folksy storytelling and darkly melodic, reverb-washed sonic palette of dream-pop, dusty folk and junkyard blues, all carried by rough-hewn vocals and guitar playing. The NYC-based artist has played venues as varied as Ireland’s Westport Folk & Bluegrass Festival, the Troubadour in […]

For the past 50 years, BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet has been making some of the most potent and popular Cajun music on the planet. Born out of the rich Acadian ancestry of its members, and created and driven by bandleader Michael Doucet’s spellbinding fiddle playing and soulful vocals, BeauSoleil is notorious for bringing even the […]

Master of all things stringed TONY FURTADO is teaming with multi-instrumentalist STEPHANIE SCHNEIDERMAN for an evening of virtuosic, flexive folk & Americana. Few musicians a musical genre as completely as TONY FURTADO embodies Americana roots music. An evocative and soulful singer, the Portland-based artist is a wide-ranging songwriter and a virtuoso adept on banjo, cello-banjo, […]

Few musicians of any stripe so personify a musical genre as completely as TONY FURTADO embodies Americana roots music. An evocative and soulful singer, the Portland-based artist is a wide-ranging songwriter and a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist adept on banjo, cello-banjo, slide guitar and baritone ukulele. He mixes and matches sounds and styles with the flair of […]

A hard-touring troubadour with a heartfelt, largely autobiographical folk-rock repertoire, Hinds' exquisite third full-length, Where Do We Go From Here, recorded at Alabama’s legendary FAME Studios (Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding etc.), has him poised to gatecrash the mainstream. “I want people to get a sense of comfort from my music, knowing that they’re not alone. […]

“The Carter Family for the millennial generation” is how the Boston Globe describes Damn Tall Buildings, a bluegrass trio dipping its musical toes into swing, ragtime, jazz, and country. The influences are old as the hills, but the infectious dance energy is decidedly young. In their early days, Damn Tall Buildings didn’t rehearse – they […]

Born in Indiana and raised in California, at age 14 Hamilton played in a surf band called The Regents. For a 45-rpm record they were about to make, the band needed a B-side, so Dirk whipped out "Truck" the night before the session. It was the first song he ever wrote and it stunk.“I began […]

Agalu – an ensemble with roots in Oshogbo, Nigeria that keeps alive traditional Yoruba stories, rituals and mythology through drumming, storytelling and dance – will be performing FREE near the entrance to SITE Santa Fe in the Santa Fe Railyard. Led by Akeem Ayanniyi, a ninth-generation practitioner of the Yoruba talking drum, Agalu features the […]

A true New Mexico musical gem, Max Gomez splits his time between his beloved hometown of Taos and Los Angeles, when he’s not on the road touring. He apprenticed in the rarefied musical micro-climate of northern New Mexico, where troubadours like Michael Martin Murphey and Ray Wylie Hubbard helped foster a Western folk sound both […]

One of the preeminent bluegrass and Americana artists, Grammy winner Laurie Lewis is a versatile singer, guitarist and fiddler who came of age in the 1970s Bay Area bluegrass scene, where she submerged herself in both region's historic progressivism and its hardcore commitment to musical tradition: primarily the gospels of Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley. […]

Boasting a rich, sultry and soulful voice, Anna brings a fresh, groovy vibe to originals, standards and modern R&B. Largely self-taught on guitar, Anna started learning songs that she heard her father play growing up, mainly from folk singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne and James Taylor. Towards the end of high school, she began her musical […]

One of the preeminent bluegrass and Americana artists, Grammy winner Laurie Lewis is a versatile singer, guitarist and fiddler who came of age in the 1970s Bay Area bluegrass scene, where she submerged herself in both region’s historic progressivism and its hardcore commitment to musical tradition: primarily the gospels of Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley. […]

John Gorka is a world-renowned singer-songwriter who got his start at a neighborhood coffeehouse in eastern Pennsylvania in the late 1970s, encountering legendary folk troubadours Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton, Claudia Schmidt and the like. Their brand of folk-inspired acoustic music inspired him to write and perform his own songs at NYC’s legendary Fast Folk circle […]

John Gorka is a world-renowned singer-songwriter who got his start at a neighborhood coffeehouse in eastern Pennsylvania in the late 1970s, encountering legendary folk troubadours Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton, Claudia Schmidt and the like. Their brand of folk-inspired acoustic music inspired him to write and perform his own songs at NYC’s legendary Fast Folk circle […]

Standing firmly in the long beautiful shadow of Woody Guthrie, Crys Matthews is among the brightest stars of the new generation of social justice music-makers. A powerful lyricist whose songs of compassionate dissent reflect her lived experience as what she lightheartedly calls "the poster-child for intersectionality," Justin Hiltner of Bluegrass Situation called Matthews’s gift "a […]

Ordinary Elephant has spent the better part of the last decade on a never-ending tour that’s earned married couple Crystal & Pete Damore widespread critical acclaim. In 2017, the duo took home the International Folk Music Award for Artist of the Year on the strength of their breakout album Before I Go. Two years later, they […]

Ordinary Elephant got stuck on icy I-40! So Friday's SANTA FE show has been moved to Sunday, Nov. 10 at 4PM. All tickets will be honored Sunday. If you would prefer a refund, please email ThirstyEarFest@gmail.com. So sorry for the inconvenience, but we hope to see you Sunday. Folk duo Ordinary Elephant has spent the […]

Join us to celebrate the release of A Pail Full of Fire in a truly magical setting. David Berkeley’s gift as a songwriter is in finding light through darkness, the hope in the hardship. His gift as a performer is in weaving hilariousstories in between his heartbreaking songs. Berkeley has been called a “musical poet,” by […]