Brother Elsey, Jenny Owen Youngs, and more on Mountain Stage – Charleston , WV, WV

GUEST ARTISTS: Brother Elsey, Jenny Owen Youngs, and more TBA (click each artist name to learn more)

Ticket Information

Available to Mountain Stage Members Friday, August 2 at 10a.m. ET
Public on sale Friday, August 9 at 10a.m. ET

All tickets to this show are e-tickets and will be emailed to you upon purchase. Open up the pdf and the QR code on your ticket will be scanned at the door. This event will also be offered as a livestream.

Watch the livestream!

Mountain Stage livestreams are free, however, there are some incredible folks out there who’d like to show their support through a donation-based, pay-what-you-want “ticket” for the livestream. This is a donation-based “ticket” to show some love for the program and is not a ticket to the live event.

You’ll be able to catch the show from the comfort of your home (or wherever you wish) Sunday, November 3, 2024 – at 7 PM ET at mountainstage.org.

Brother Elsey

There’s something unique in Brother Elsey DNA. Comprised of siblings Brady (vocals and guitar), Beau (bass), and Jack Stablein (lead guitar), plus honorary kin Dalton Thomas (drums), these sons of Detroit have spent their lives working together to create a blueprint of musical connection, using sharp songcraft, a celestial-roots sound, and pure Midwestern grit to suss out common truths of the human condition. Freely mixing rock, folk, and country in ways both grounded and atmospheric, rugged yet serene, the quartet are now signed to Nashville’s River House Artists, and it’s time to reveal their family secrets. Named for the Stablein brothers’ great-grandfather, early gigs in high school led to Dalton joining in college, and a whirlwind of hard-earned grassroots growth. Along with a series of self-written and self-produced singles and EPs, a heavy self-booked tour scheduled culminated in tours alongside major acts like alt-rock icons The Wallflowers, Allen Stone, the War and Treaty, and Young the Giant, plus the transcendent 2021 EP debut, You Don’t Know Anything. After relocating to Nashville and expanding their road-warrior reputation, a new chapter now begins, fusing their unconventional sound with a knack for tapping the common well of humanist spirit. Featuring lofty soundscapes, husky-but-piercing vocals, blood harmonies, and down-to-earth craftsmanship, Brother Elsey’s new material both explores the emotions that guide (and restrict) modern life, and sharpens their unique brand of ethereal folk rock. Produced by Drew Long and recorded at East Nashville’s Ivy Hall, tracks like the cinematic “Passing Through” meet with patient observations (“Babylon”) and pent-up nervous energy (“Red Tape”), as the family band emerge on the national scene. Featured at the 2023 Americana Music Festival and beyond, Brother Elsey will also star in the film Dandelion (set to debut at SXSW 2024), and plan to tour with both Boy Named Banjo and SUSTO in the coming year.

Jenny Owen Youngs

In the decade since Jenny Owen Youngs last released a full-length album, she’s toured the world, co-written a #1 hit single, launched a wildly popular podcast, landed a book deal, placed songs in a slew of films and television series, moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles to coastal Maine, and gotten married, divorced, and married again. She’s done everything, it seems, except release another album….until now.

Avalanche, Youngs’ exceptional debut for Yep Roc records, offers up an achingly beautiful exploration of loss, resilience, and growth from an artist who’s experienced more than her fair share of each in recent years. Produced by Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, The Hold Steady, Cassandra Jenkins, Josh Ritter) and written with a series of friends including S. Carey, Madi Diaz, The Antlers’ Peter Silberman, and Christian Lee Hutson, the songs are deceptively serene here, layering Youngs’ infectious pop sensibilities atop lush, dreamy arrangements that often belie the swift emotional currents lurking underneath. Her performances, meanwhile, are riveting and nuanced to match, gentle yet insistent as they reckon with the pain of regret and the joy of redemption, sometimes in the very same breath. The result is the most raw and arresting release of Youngs’ remarkable career, a brutally honest, deeply vulnerable work of self-reflection that learns to make peace with the past as it transforms doubt and grief into hope and transcendence.

— Anthony D’Amato

Matt Pond PA

In the wake of the luminous album The Natural Lines, Matt Pond has decided his next move is to return to the beginning—to the ideas and instincts that led him to music in the first place.

“The original ethos was to collaborate with anyone at any time,” he says. “I’m getting back to that.” He’ll also go back to recording under his own name, once again referring to the band as Matt Pond PA.

Pond’s name itself evokes the natural world in which his songs are so often set, with their evocative lyrics about the sometimes jagged edges of love, the pros and cons of connection, and the agony and ecstasy of memory. He has always mapped the universal emotions of being alive onto the contours of his own stories. That’s much of the reason his work is so resonant.

But he believes the process should not be fraught; just the opposite. Making music, even if the themes are sometimes darker than they are bright, should feel organic and good.

“The real point is to try and enjoy the experience of making all these things,” he says.

He started writing pieces of songs on his own in a cavernous loft in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. When he realized a friend played the cello, he saw a way to take the next step. They added four other musicians, and Matt Pond PA was born. (The PA refers to Pennsylvania, of course.)

Through 13 albums (among them Emblems, Several Arrows Later, The Dark Leaves, The State of Gold, and Still Summer), EPs (like Winter Songs, Spring Fools, and The Freep), a soundtrack (for the indie film Lebanon PA) and their fair share of tours, festivals, and shows, the band has always been a living, breathing organism—one that’s constantly changing. (One notable mainstay: Pond’s longtime right-hand man, Chris Hansen.)

“I named the band after myself, but the fact is that this is a complete collaboration,” Pond says. “Everyone I’ve worked with lives in my head and in these songs.”

He’s now headquartered in the heart of the Hudson Valley, where it’s easy to connect and commune with the elements of nature that got him started. But his songs are more emotionally anchored in the present than ever before—the better to look toward the future.