Upcoming Events
Doors open at 7:00 pm; show at 7:30 pm
Winter/Spring 2024 Season
Oswego Music Hall Ticket Information:
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Season Pass Holders purchase the entire season at a discount. They get the best seats in the house which are typically upfront tables. Anyone sitting with pass holders must purchase VIP seating.
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VIP seating (typically $5 above general seating) is preferred, forward seating. It is usually table seating.
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General seating is the balance of seating in the house. Any ticket level may sit there.
National Stage
Season Finale
Emerging Artists Showcase with Sam Robbins
May 11 $15 (free for members). Tickets available at the door. Optional dinner tickets can also be purchased at the door.
6:00 PM start time
Sam Robbins is often described as an "old soul singer songwriter." A Nashville based musician whose music evokes classic 70's singer songwriters like James Taylor and Neil Young, Sam adds a modern, upbeat edge to the storyteller troubadour persona. An avid performer, he has gained recognition from extensive touring and as one of the six 2021 winners in the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk competition, one of the largest and most prestigious songwriting competitions in the country.
A multi-instrumentalist from a young age, Sam began learning drums and piano, falling in love with guitar at age 13. He then started writing original music, recording his first CD during his sophomore year of high school, while playing open mics in his hometown of Portsmouth, NH.
Sam is a full time troubadour, playing over 150 shows a year across the country, including the MainStage at the Kerrville Folk Festival, the Dripping Springs Songwriter’s Festival, and as one of the “‘Most Wanted to Return” artists in the 2023 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.
Since moving to Nashville in September 2019 following his graduation from Berklee College of Music, Sam has made a splash in music city - performing at the Bluebird Cafe within a month of moving, and sitting in again at the legendary venue with Liz Longley in February, and was a winner at the Eddie's Attic Songwriter's shootout competition in Atlanta in early March 2020.
In 2018, Sam was able to audition on NBC's The Voice for Adam Levine, Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton and Jennifer Hudson as the first artist to perform a Jim Croce song on the show.
Sam considers himself a student of songwriting, constantly searching and learning about why songs have the impact they do. A 2019 graduate of Berklee College of Music's songwriting department, he has hosted many songwriting workshops and masterclasses, including at the Harvard Music Department and the Boys & Girls Club of Boston. In his performances and workshops, Sam explores the magic behind the craft of songwriting, and tries to help others express themselves through the unique and powerful medium of songwriting.
Sam's second album, Bigger Than in Between, was released in August 2022 to critical acclaim.
Website: https://samrobbinsmusic.com/home
Fall 2024 Season
Fall Season Pass $130
National Stage
Delaney Brothers Bluegrass
John Delaney's Birthday Celebration
September 14th $17-22
Back for the third consecutive year to open the Oswego Music Hall 2024 Fall Season, two-time SAMMY winners, Delaney Brothers Bluegrass is one of CNY's oldest and best-loved bluegrass bands. More than just bluegrass, their music is influenced by many other acoustic traditions such as country, folk, gospel, and celtic. Fans are treated to a musical experience that sets toes tapping and… John Delaney’s birthday celebration!
Website: https://www.facebook.com/DelaneyBrothersBluegrass/
National Stage
Alice Howe & Freebo
Cam Caruso opening
September 28th $17-22
Hailing from Newton, Massachusetts, Alice Howe is a force of nature in the world of folk. For starters, she found a treasure trove of influences within her parents’ eclectic record collection: from the blues of Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt and Taj Mahal to the folk of Joan Baez and Kate and Anna McGarrigle to the rock of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne. Their emotional honesty and evocative lyrics appealed to a girl feeling out of her time and compelled to write stories about her life, even during math class. Summers in Vermont at rustic camps or her family’s cabin also shaped her with tranquil days that nurtured her imagination and sharpened her powers of observation and reflection, paving the way for the future introspective songwriter she would become.
Her life took a momentous turn in Seattle. She was a Smith College graduate with a medieval European history degree working in the Dusty Strings Music Store, camping on the weekends and playing local gigs. Everything seemed comfortable, but an inner restlessness stirred, a calling beckoned, and she listened. She moved back to her hometown, broke off a longtime relationship and threw herself into being a musician, releasing a five-track EP You’ve Been Away So Long that she recorded just before leaving Seattle. It yielded a top song on Folk Radio, Homeland Blues, which gave her some momentum until another fortuitous circumstance got her truly rolling.
Attending the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance conference, she met Freebo who is a genuine folk, rock and blues icon who, after over 40 years of recording and touring with many of the great artists of our time (Bonnie Raitt 10 years, CSN, Maria Muldaur, John Mayall, Ringo Starr, Dr. John, Neil Young, & many more) is regarded as one of the most gifted singer-songwriters of today. He heard her play, and she made an impression. When they ran into each other again the next year in Kansas City at a national conference, a friendship formed, the start of a fruitful partnership. She accepted his offer to assemble a band, book a Bakersfield, California studio, and cut a full album.The final result covers a wide expanse of emotional ground, with Alice’s deeply personal lyrics chronicling a journey of grief, reflection, discovery and renewal — all painted with a varied musical palette ranging from haunting ballads to driving rock ‘n’ roll.
As a reflection of her evolution, the album Circumstance turned out to be everything she hoped for — a personal, soulful nod to her influences and the music she loves, all of it sung old-school without auto-tuning. In spirit it draws from admired singers — Alison Krauss or the 1970s Laurel Canyon circle — but its soul is pure Alice Howe.
Freebo’s compassionate concern for the world and people around him, as evidenced both in his lyrics and his open stage banter, has helped him connect with listeners worldwide. He will take an audience from insights about what kind of positive mark we hope to leave on the world upon our own passing with “Standing Ovation” to where you stand with your pets and your partner with "She Loves My Dog More Than Me." A musical evening with Freebo will be astute, insightful, clever, and truly melodic.
A formative childhood. A crossroads decision. A momentous reunion. A golden invitation to step inside musical history. A creative lull. Each circumstance led her to this point, with the road stretching ahead and singing its siren song.
Website: https://www.alicehowe.com
National Stage
Peter Mulvey
Mark Wahl Opening
October 19th. $17-22
Peter Mulvey has been a songwriter, road-dog, raconteur and almost-poet since before he can remember. Raised working-class Catholic on the Northwest side of Milwaukee, he took a semester in Ireland, and immediately 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 years gigging in the Midwest before lighting out for Boston, where he returned to busking (this time in the subway) and coffeehouses. Small shows led to larger shows, which eventually led to regional and then national and international touring. The wheels have not stopped since.
Nineteen records, an illustrated book, thousands of live performances, a TEDx talk, a decades-long association with the National Youth Science Camp, opening for luminaries such as Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, and Chuck Prophet, appearances on NPR, an annual autumn tour by bicycle, emceeing festivals, hosting his own boutique festival (the Lamplighter Sessions, in Boston and Wisconsin)… Mulvey never stops. He has built his life’s work on collaboration and an instinct for the eclectic and the vital. He folds everything he encounters into his work: poetry, social justice, scientific literacy, & a deeply abiding humanism are all on plain display in his art.
In late January 2019, Mulvey and his band, SistaStrings (Chauntee & Monique Ross) with Nathan Kilen on drums, decamped to their home turf, the Cafe Carpe, in Fort Atkinson, WI where they spent just five days making two records in the tiny back room. The live record, “Peter Mulvey with SistaStrings Live at the Cafe Carpe” is out now on Righteous Babe Records. It’s a celebration of a world that is temporarily on hold: a small folk club, packed with listeners, and a band shoulder-to-shoulder, playing and singing with intimacy and abandon.
Website: https://www.petermulvey.com/
National Stage
Carsie Blanton
November 2nd $25-30
Carsie Blanton is a songwriter with hooks, chutzpah, and revolutionary optimism. Inspired by artist-activists including Nina Simone and Woody Guthrie, her catalog careens through American popular song from folk and swing to pop-punk protest anthems.
With her unique mix of humor, soul, and political wit, and fifteen-plus years on the road, Blanton has amassed a dedicated fan base and a small menagerie of viral hits (Rich People, Shit List, Fishin’ With You). Her most recent album After the Revolution, produced by Grammy-winner Tyler Chester, was released in March, 2024.
Carsie Blanton is that rare artist who knows how to combine savvy stagecraft and airtight songs with a revolutionary spirit. Take her latest hit, “Rich People,” which swept TikTok by storm with over 3 million views and, true to its name, laid bare wealth inequality in the process. Songs like “Shit List” and “Dealin’ with the Devil” lampoon neo-Nazis and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, respectively, and indicate why she has been hailed as an artist who creates “beautiful, militant anthems,” with the ability to make ”revolution desirable to your body, even if your head resists it” (NPR, American Songwriter).
Despite the struggles she readily acknowledges, Blanton retains a sense of hope, which shines through in her songs and performances. “When you spend your time watching the news or social media, people seem cruel and stupid,” she says. “But I think that by a wide margin, people are good, and want to take care of each other.” Her songs "Be Good" and “Lovin’ is Easy" are steeped in that spirit, inviting us to “love everybody alive.”
After keeping her band afloat throughout lockdown with live-streamed ‘Rent Parties’, going viral with a song memorializing John Prine (“Fishin with You), and releasing a critically acclaimed mid-pandemic album (2021’s Love and Rage, “fighting fascism with big hooks and an even bigger heart" - American Songwriter), Blanton chose to bring some nuance to her success, with her recent exposé in The Nation, laying bare the economics of the modern-day music industry.
The galvanizing spirit of her work is backed up by expertise. Blanton and her impeccably dressed “Handsome Band” bring skills betraying their long tenure as live musicians. Accompanied by Joe Plowman on bass, Patrick Firth on keys, and Sean Trischka on drums, their performances are a rich musical gumbo of genres, meandering from Americana and rock to cocktail jazz, Motown, and pop punk. With three-part harmonies thickening their sound, and kazoos leavening it, her dynamic sets range from slapstick jokes to call-and-response protest songs, making Blanton and her band “a festival presenter’s secret weapon, guaranteed to win over the crowd” (Promoter Roger Menell).
Blanton makes no attempt to disguise her far-left political leanings, but at the heart of her music is love, and her songs are capable of tethering us to our shared humanity across socio-political lines. No matter where they begin, every audience leaves her show transformed into friends and comrades, united in laughter, camaraderie, and hope.
Website: https://www.carsieblanton.com
National Stage
Abbie Gardner
TBD Opening
November 16th $17-22
Abbie Gardner is a fiery dobro player with an infectious smile. Whether performing solo or with Americana harmony trio Red Molly, her acclaimed tales of love and loss, both gritty and sweet, are propelled by her impeccable lap style slide guitar playing. Solo performances feature the dobro as a solo instrument, bouncing between a solid rhythmic backbone and ripping lead lines, all in support of her voice and songs. Her latest recording DobroSinger hit #11 on the Billboard Blues Chart. It’s intimate, real and raw - her dobro and voice recorded at the same time at home, without a band or any studio tricks to hide behind. You can hear every breath, every chuckle, as if you are in the room with her.
You might recognize Abbie from the female trio Red Molly. That’s where she’s honed her skills since 2004 – writing songs, singing and playing the lap-style resonator guitar often referred to as a Dobra. It’s typically an instrument that you’d find in the midst of a 5-piece bluegrass band, but here Abbie pushes the boundaries and uses it on her own without accompaniment. Here’s the record that she always dreamed of making. Using a tiny closet recording studio in her home in the shadow of NYC, Abbie gathered a collection of songs and recorded them raw – singing and playing without a band, without separating the voice from her instrument, and without any studio tricks to hide behind.
“DobraSinger is a naked little roller coaster of an album, when we get to hear how good Abbie Gardner really is. By turns awkward, raucous, fragile, and forceful, it sounds like Abbie is in the room with me, maybe sharing a stage and, honestly, I don’t know how to follow her. Nobody wants to follow her.” – Jonathan Byrd, Songwriter
Website: https://www.abbiegardner.com
National Stage
The McKrells
December 7th $17-22
Somewhere tonight, across the country or across the sea, a singer, sitting on a stool on a pub’s corner stage, is belting out a Kevin McKrell song, and the crowd is singing along. McKrell pioneered American Celtic music beginning in 1979 with Donnybrook Fair. The original trio’s 1982 album, “Tunnel Tigers,” remains a landmark of the form, with its blend of Clancy Brothers swagger and upstate NY attitude. McKrell honed his powerful performance style further in the 80s with The Fabulous Newports, a rambunctious harmony group known as much for its antics, cut-up comedy and long list of eventual members as for its sweet singing.
In 1998, McKrell—who has three solo albums to his credit—formed a powerhouse band under his own name, merging the Irish sensibility of Donnybrook with a steely, world class bluegrass edge. The McKrells toured harder than Donnybrook, bringing its music, with McKrell’s lusty vocals supported by hot string band picking, to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Folk, Irish and Bluegrass festivals and concert venues around the country.
Offstage, McKrell, is a respected painter, with his work hanging in many of the halls he’s haunted, here and in Ireland, Scotland and Italy.He is best known, though, for his indelible songs—classics like “Home In Donegal,” “ You and Me”, “I Miss the Rain” and the eternal “All of The Hard Days Are Gone”—which, in addition to the raft of pub singers mentioned afore, have been sung and recorded by artists like The Kingston Trio, Bob Shane, Hair of the Dog, Wood’s Tea Company ,Get Up Jack, from Ireland The Furey Brothers, Seamus Kennedy ,The Druids, The Dublin City Ramblers from Scotland North Sea Gas, from Australia Pat McKernan.
Website: https://themckrells.com/
NEW: Oswego Music Hall Guest Curator Program:
The Ontario Center for Performing Arts (aka Oswego Music Hall) offers its resources and expertise to facilitate programs produced and curated by others outside of its own calendar. Although we facilitate, endorse, and promote these events, they are otherwise independent of OCPA, and admission to Guest Curator events is not included in Music Hall season passes.
Oswego Music Hall
is supported by