Observer Editor
48th Annual Ann Arbor Folk Festival: The Ark
Jan. 24 & 25 (different programs). A major highlight of the local musical year, with 2 nights of performances by established and rising stars representing a wide spectrum of vernacular musical idioms. This year’s festival kicks off with a show at the Ark on Friday Jan. 17 (see Nightspots listing). Tonight’s headliner is Waxahatchee, the stage name of Katie Crutchfield, an Alabama-bred indie folk-rock singer-songwriter whose bright, lilting voice & poetic lyrics have earned her comparisons to Lucinda Williams. “Her mind is alive and humming, and her language leaps out at you with its hunger,” writes Pitchfork critic Jayson Greene in a review of her 2024 album Tigers Blood. Also appearing: Josh Ritter is a singer-songwriter from Idaho whose blend of evocative, moody ballads and scrappy, vividly projected country-rockers has provoked comparisons to everyone from Townes Van Zandt to Nick Drake to Ryan Adams. Novelist Stephen King named Ritter’s 2006 CD The Animal Years the best album of the year, calling it “mysterious, melancholy, [and] melodic” and singling out the 9-minute “Thin Blue Line” as a “strange and gorgeous” highlight featuring “the most exuberant outburst of imagery since Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.’” Jobi Riccio is an acclaimed up-and-coming country-rock singer-songwriter from Colorado whose music takes inspiration from the likes of Joni Mitchell & Sheryl Crow. Stereogum reviewer Marissa Moss named Riccio’s debut album, Whiplash, her number one country album of 2023, adding “this is the kind of album where you leave knowing an artist better than you ever thought you could in less than 40 minutes, and learn a thing or two about yourself in the process.” Adeem the Artist is the stage name of Adeem Bingham, a non-binary country singer-songwriter from Tennessee who Brandi Carlile once called “one of the best writers in roots music.” Bingham plays a self-described brand of “queer country” that often takes aim at the jingoism and machismo of mainstream country music. Afro Dominicano is a Brooklyn-based 6-piece world music ensemble that plays an invigorating blend of perico ripiao, merengue, and other Dominican folk music mixed with reggae, funk, and African rhythms. Emcee is Old Crow Medicine Show frontman Ketch Secor. 7 p.m., Hill Auditorium. Tickets $48–$250 in advance at the Michigan Union Ticket Office (734-763–TKTS) & theark.org and at the door.
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