Ordinary Elephant & Tim Easton at Rare Bird Farm

ORDINARY ELEPHANT International Folk Music Awards 2017 Artist of the Year Ordinary Elephant captivates audiences with their emotionally powerful and vulnerable songs, letting the listener know that they are not alone in this world. The collaboration of husband and wife Pete and Crystal Damore, their connection, and their influences (such as Gillian Welch, Guy Clark, Anais Mitchell) all meet on stage. “Two become one, in song…hand-in-glove harmonies surprise the listener with focused intensity and musical mastery,” says Mary Gauthier. The Associated Press is calling their latest album, Honest, “one of the best Americana albums of the year.”

TIM EASTON A mainstay of American roots music for more than 20 years, Tim Easton crafts songs that blur the lines between folk, blues, and workingman’s rock & roll.

It’s an honest sound influenced not only by the flat-pickers and folksingers who came before him, but also the arc of Easton’s own experience. Born within a stone’s throw of the Niagara River, he spent his childhood in upstate New York and midwestern Ohio, raised on the sounds of trailblazers like Doc Watson and Woody Guthrie. Following in his heroes’ footsteps, he grew into a modern-day troubadour, busking his way around Europe for the better part of a decade before heading back home to America. Although he eventually settled in East Nashville, his touring schedule continued to take him across much of the world, from barroom gigs in rural Alaska to festival appearances in Russia.