We’re having a hootenanny! Join us at the Matthews for Rhythm and Brews, our new summer series celebrating American roots music!

Not only do we have an incredible lineup of performers, check out these ala cart items, available at the Matthews day of show:

• Crow Peak Brewery is on-site to keep the libations flowing and…wait for it…each ticketholder (21+) receives a token for one free flight of beer! (Additional drinks available for purchase).

• Plus, our friends at The Original Spearfish Breakfast House will be serving up some of their seriously delicious food, available for purchase throughout the evening.

Jason Dea West

American poet, songwriter and troubadour

Wednesday, June 21
Doors: 7 pm | Show: 8 pm

Jason Dea West is an American troubadour who sings what he lives and lives what he sings. Wests’ poignant lyrics are brilliantly blended with vintage country, folk and blues, and timely sensibilities. From epic guitar and harmonica instrumentals to humorous song as story, Jason never strays very far from the anarchic punk-folk roots of his beloved former band Barefoot Surrender and his celebrated current band Intuitive Compass.

Jason’s younger days as a busker and freight train hopper fostered his keen sense of road-inspired American musical history. Jason toured extensively with guest musicians and bands throughout the lower 48 States and Alaska, appearing in barn dances and taverns, theaters and music festivals, the circus and vaudeville circuits, on radio and in film. He has shared the stage with the likes of Lost Dog Street Band, The Resonant Rogues, Larry And His Flask, Hot Damn Scandal countless others.

Dea West has worked with several renowned recording engineers, including Scot Hackwith, Dennis Dragon, Dan Emery and Steven Hart, producing several studio albums and a recent live “Magnolia Session” via Anti-Corp Records of Nashville, TN which placed #15 on the Billboard Bluegrass charts in October 2020.  In 2021 West began work on two new EPs, one “Lost Camp Dreams”, with Scott Hackwith at Cassette LA which is officially available December  30th of 2021, the second EP to be released later in ‘22 shall remain mysterious until further notice.

Jason belongs to the wild lands and what is left of the American countryside…

The Barn Swallows

The Barn Swallows is a band based in Bisbee Az, formed in 2022. With a new EP available at live shows, the band is currently recording a live album with Max Harms at The Garage to be released this spring. Though only together for a short time, they have a national tour this summer they will be playing from Texas to Virginia, through the Midwest, and on the west coast. Some highlights include performing At the Camel in Richmond VA, The Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City SD, Matthews Opera House in Spearfish SD, at The Britt Festival in Jacksonville, OR and at The Cotati Accordion Fest in Cotati CA.

With a full schedule and new songs, The Barn Swallows are on a roll. Their instrumentation is comprised of guitars, mandolin, clarinet, accordion and upright bass. Featuring original compositions and vocal harmonies, the sound ranges from American folk to traditional jazz. Committed to authentic expression and having a good time while lamenting the tragic world, The Barn Swallows deliver a healthy helping of heart-full honesty with a contagious melodic sensibility and soaring harmonies.

We’re having a hootenanny! Join us at the Matthews for Rhythm and Brews, our new summer series celebrating American roots music!

Not only do we have an incredible lineup of performers, check out these ala cart items, available at the Matthews day of show:

• Crow Peak Brewery is on-site to keep the libations flowing and…wait for it…each ticketholder (21+) receives a token for one free flight of beer! (Additional drinks available for purchase).

• Plus, our friends at The Original Spearfish Breakfast House will be serving up some of their seriously delicious food, available for purchase throughout the evening.

Jeffrey Martin and Anna Tivel

Saturday, July 29
Doors: 7 pm | Showtime: 8 pm

Jeffrey Martin

Portland, Oregon’s Jeffrey Martin is a minister’s son who can build a house with his bare hands and holds a master’s degree in English. He worked his way through school as a carpenter, then, following graduation, spent four years teaching high school.

It was during that time that his career as a songwriter came into bloom. Struggling to strike a balance between his increasingly rigorous Northwest/West Coast touring and his efforts to get teenagers to love words as much as he did, Martin found himself in the tricky position of having to choose between his two passions.

Much to the delight of his fans, music won the day. Now, with three intensely lyric-driven albums under his belt, two of which were released on the Portland indie-label, Fluff & Gravy Records, Martin has developed a loyal and growing audience, both domestically and abroad. Prior to the halting effects that a global pandemic placed on his ability to do so, Martin kept a restless touring schedule. It’s taken him on several laps around the U.S. and Europe and landed him on stages with luminaries from the genre including Courtney Marie Andrews, Joe Pug, Gregory Alan Isakov, Jeffrey Foucault, Sean Hayes, Peter Mulvey, Amanda Shires, Colter Wall, Ruth Moody, Caitlin Canty, and others.

Jeffrey Martin writes music that probes the depths of the human experience and doesn’t shy away from its darkest corners. His songs can feel like short stories from literary giants like Steinbeck, Burroughs, or Cormac McCarthy and possess a raw intensity that comes from seeing his subjects up close. All the struggle, hurt, strife, and heartbreak that comes from living in this world are laid bare and unvarnished, yet somehow, Martin manages to mine and make space for what beauty remains.

Presently, Jeffrey Martin is writing for his fourth full-length album at a deliberative pace and making plans to enter the studio to record this winter. He’s recently signed with Tommy Alexander of the Wassermann Agency and has returned to the road for an extended 52-date tour of the US and Canada. An extensive summer tour originally planned for 2020 is now scheduled for 2022 and will include stops in the U.K., Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, and Ireland.

Anna Tivel

Oregon-based songwriter Anna Tivel’s newest album Outsiders starts with a lens so wide that we have left the planet to look back from a great distance at the turmoil and beauty of our shared humanity. From there, the lens pulls close and unfolds in a gripping collection of stories so often ignored. Tivel’s flawed and honest characters move through a landscape of hurt and loss, of small triumph and big love. In 11 songs full of recognition, veracity and hope, Tivel’s watchful and empathetic eye details the undeniable ache of living.

Outsiders, look up / The night is dark but brilliant and it turns out we are not so different

Recorded almost entirely live to tape in Rock Island, IL with producer and multi-instrumentalist Shane Leonard and engineer Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens), the album is a truly collaborative exploration. Tivel gathered the same vibrant group of friends from her acclaimed record, The Question, which NPR heralded as “one of the most ambitious folk records of 2019.”

The track “Black Umbrella” is a winding story that follows a small-town robbery and a bystander who tries to help only to fall under the weight of misconception and old, broken systems. “It’s a song about all the ways we fail to really see each other,” Tivel shares, “about poverty and desperation, race and power, history, opportunity, and otherness.”

Throughout her work, Tivel has emphasized storytelling and this album is no exception, building on the strength of her ability to observe and reflect with a clear-eyed empathy. Inspired by authors from Steinbeck to Morrison, Didion to Dubus, she imbues her songs with attentive detail and a dreamlike quality that leaves the ordinary feeling both palpable and poetic. “Tivel’s characters are common but unforgettable,” NPR’s Ann Powers writes, “Her images linger, and become populated with the energy of the real.”

Outsiders was released by Mama Bird Recording Co. on August 19th, 2022.

We’re having a hootenanny! Join us at the Matthews for Rhythm and Brews, our new summer series celebrating American roots music!

Not only do we have an incredible lineup of performers, check out these ala cart items, available at the Matthews day of show:

• Crow Peak Brewery is on-site to keep the libations flowing and…wait for it…each ticketholder (21+) receives a token for one free flight of beer! (Additional drinks available for purchase).

• Plus, our friends at The Original Spearfish Breakfast House will be serving up some of their seriously delicious food, available for purchase throughout the evening.

Steep Canyon Rangers

Grammy-Award Winners

Friday, August 4
Doors: 7 pm | Show: 8 pm

The Rangers are made up of Graham Sharp on banjo and vocals, Mike Guggino on mandolin/mandola and vocals, Nicky Sanders on fiddle and vocals, Mike Ashworth on drums and vocals, Barrett Smith on bass, guitar, and vocals, and Aaron Burdett on guitar and vocals. Steep Canyon Rangers have been on a journey that is uniquely their own. The band started in college at UNC-Chapel Hill, then dove head first into bluegrass in its most traditional form, and over the years has risen to the top of the bluegrass genre headlining top festivals such as Merlefest and Grey Fox Bluegrass. Only to then be discovered by Steve Martin, famous actor and banjo player. Martin has taken the Rangers on over a decade-long tour introducing them to hundreds of thousands of new fans and giving them prime-time TV exposure. This has helped SCR become the most recognizable modern name in bluegrass music. The band has continued to tour extensively on their own, without Martin, and has expanded their genre into country, jam, and Americana. The Rangers are big players in the bluegrass/country and Americana scene today. They are often compared to predecessors The Band, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and the modern Zac Brown Band.

 

We’re having a hootenanny! Join us at the Matthews for Rhythm and Brews, our new summer series celebrating American roots music!

Not only do we have an incredible lineup of performers, check out these ala cart items, available at the Matthews day of show:

• Crow Peak Brewery is on-site to keep the libations flowing and…wait for it…each ticketholder (21+) receives a token for one free flight of beer! (Additional drinks available for purchase).

• Plus, our friends at The Original Spearfish Breakfast House will be serving up some of their seriously delicious food, available for purchase throughout the evening.

Nick Shoulders
Best Western Tour

Here to put the “Try” in Country

Saturday, August 26
Doors: 7 pm | Show: 8 pm

Wielding an ethereal croon and masterful whistle crafted from a lifetime chasing lizards through the Ozark hills, Nick Shoulders is a living link to roots of country music with a penchant for the absurd. Combining his family’s deep ties to regional traditional singing with his years of playing to crowded street corners, Nick has sought to forge a hybridized form of raucously clever country music; born of forgotten rocky hollers and bred to confront the tensions of the 21st century South. As evidenced by his surreal album art and anachronistic songwriting, Nick’s creative output is steeped in the complicated history of his beloved home of rural Arkansas, but crafted as a conscious rebuke of country music’s blind allegiance to historical seats of power and repression. With a kind word and a mean yodel, Nick hopes to put the ‘Try’ in country.

Dean Johnson

For over ten years, Dean Johnson’s rustic tenor and simply strummed acoustic guitar have been perking up ears around the PNW and beyond. Dean has gradually built a devoted fan base — strictly through live performances — singing existential cowboy waltzes, ballads about wishing one could find a way out of heaven, honest confessionals, and other heartbreakers from a unique perspective. His first album, Nothing for Me, Please, was released on May 5th, 2023, on Mama BirdRecording Co.

 

We’re having a hootenanny! Join us at the Matthews for Rhythm and Brews, our new summer series celebrating American roots music!

Not only do we have an incredible lineup of performers, check out these ala cart items, available at the Matthews day of show:

• Crow Peak Brewery is on-site to keep the libations flowing and…wait for it…each ticketholder (21+) receives a token for one free flight of beer! (Additional drinks available for purchase).

• Plus, our friends at The Original Spearfish Breakfast House will be serving up some of their seriously delicious food, available for purchase throughout the evening.

Willi Carlisle

Tuesday, September 26
Doors: 7 pm | Show: 8 pm

WILLI CARLISLE is a poet and a folk singer for the people, but his extraordinary gift for turning a phrase isn’t about high falutin’ pontificatin’; it’s about looking out for one another and connecting through our shared human condition. Born and raised on the Midwestern plains, Carlisle is a product of the punk-to-folk music pipeline that’s long-fueled frustrated young men looking to resist. After falling for the rich ballads and tunes of the Ozarks, where he now lives, he began examining the full spectrum of American musical history. This insatiable stylistic diversity is obvious in his wildly raucous live performances, where songs range from sardonic trucker-ballads like “Vanlife” to the heartbreaking queer waltz “Life on the Fence,” to an existential talkin’ blues about a panic attack in Walmart’s aisle five. With guitar, fiddle, button-box, banjo, harmonicas, rhythm-bones, and Willi’s booming baritone, this is bonafide populist folk music in the tradition of cowboys, frontier fiddlers, and tall-tale tellers. Carlisle recognizes that the only thing holding us back from greatness is each other. With a quick wit and big sing-alongs, these folksongs bring us a step closer to breaking down our divides.

“Willi Carlisle’s latest is good for what ails ya, whatever ails ya.”
-Arkansas Times

“I’ll be damned if the heartstrings don’t get a firm tug.”
-Music Mecca

“A rave-up raconteur and a seasoned troubadour in the vein of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott or Utah Phillips, Carlisle sings big, feels everything, spins yarns and takes you to the heart of American characters”
-WMOT — Best of AmericanaFest 2022