Americana women thriving at the Uptown
By design or coincidence, it’s been a wonderful season for fans of female Americana artists at
Napa’s Uptown Theatre, and it continues to be.
The Wailin’ Jennys
In early March, The Wailin’ Jennys, the award-winning Canadian-American folk trio, played to
an adoring, cheering capacity crowd. The three women—Ruth Moody, Nicky Mehta and Heather
Masse—are known for their elegant harmony singing and instrumental versatility. They were
supported by Richard Moody (Ruth’s brother) on fiddle and mandolin, and by Ethan Sherman on
guitar.
The concert was a mix of favorites from their five previous albums plus new material that is
destined for an upcoming recording. Favorites from their repertoire included “One Voice,” a
beautiful cover of Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers and “Glory Bound” with its irresistible Hallelujah
chorus joined in a sing-along with much of the audience.
The loving bond between the Jennys and their fans was obvious from the start. This was a
knowledgeable crowd, versed in the band’s music and generous in its praise. The band members
are generous in return, not only to the audience but to the behind-the-scenes theater staff. It is
their habit to acknowledge by name the individuals responsible for sound, for lighting, for
catering, for merch and so on. Such acknowledgements are well deserved but unfortunately rare.
There were a few unexpected moments at the end of the performance. For their final encore, the
women stepped to the edge of the stage, past the microphones, to perform an unamplified a
capella song. For reasons known only to them, they broke out in laughter with the opening line.
They tried two more times and kept cracking up. These three pros had the giggles and were
helpless. They finally surrendered and returned to their instruments and finished the show. In
ordinary circumstances this might have been awkward and embarrassing. Instead, it was
endearing and accepted because of the band’s special relationship with their fans.
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are Americana royalty. Performing at the Uptown a week
after The Wailin’ Jennys, they likewise drew a packed house of knowledgeable, appreciative fans.
They were joined by bassist Paul Kowert, a founding and current member of Punch Brothers and
a welcome addition.
Fresh off their Grammy win for Woodland, the Best Folk Album of 2025, they performed a mix
of material from their six previous albums and a big helping of songs from the new recording.
Standouts from the latter included “Empty Trainload of Sky,” “What We Had,” “North Country,”
“Hashtag,” “The Day the Mississippi Died” and “Howdy Howdy.”
A high point of the concert was “Brokedown Palace,” a stunning Grateful Dead cover which
Welch and Rawlings regularly perform but have never recorded. As much as any of their
originals, it exemplifies the meticulous and frequently mournful vocal harmonies and stunning
Rawlings lead guitar work that set this duo apart. The heart of the song is the behind-the-beat
syncopation of the repeated “rock my soul” line of the Jerry Garcia original—and they nailed it
in harmony. The crowd loved it.
Mary Chapin Carpenter and Brandy Clark
Mary Chapin Carpenter will appear along with Brandy Clark at the Uptown on Friday, June 13.
They will likely perform both separately and together.
Given her northern upbringing, her liberal politics and her introspective acoustic approach to
songwriting and performance, Carpenter was an improbable candidate for country music
stardom. Yet over a nearly 40-year span she has won five Grammy Awards (out of 18
nominations), all in country music categories, as well as three wins at the Academy of Country
Music Awards and two at the Country Music Association Awards.
Over her career she has released 17 studio albums, the most recent of which is “Looking for the
Thread,” a collaboration with Scottish musicians Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. This is a a
full-on Celtic-influenced folk and folk-rock album, pipes and all. Think latter-day Mark
Knopfler. Two of the songs are even in Gaelic.
Her singles track record is remarkable, with 22 singles in the top 50 on the US country charts,
nine of which were in the top ten. Chart-topping singles included “Down at the Twist and
Shout,””I Feel Lucky,” “Passonate Kisses,” “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” and “Shut Up and Kiss
Me.”
Brandy Clark began her professional music career as a songwriter on Nashville’s Music Row co-
writing hits for Miranda Lambert and The Band Perry, among others. In 2014 she won the
Country Music Association Award for Song of the Year (a songwriting award) for Kacey
Musgrave’s recording of “Follow Your Arrow.” Clark’s performance career got off the ground a
few years earlier sharing gigs with Sheryl Crowe and Marty Stuart. Her first album, “Twelve
Stories,” was released in 2013. Three albums followed. Her most recent album,”Brandy Clark”
(2023), was nominated for five Grammys and won for Best Americana Performance.
As a composer working with long-time collaborator Shane McAnally, Clark wrote the score for
the 2022 Broadway musical “Shucked.” It was the winner for Outstanding Music at the Drama
Desk Awards and was nominated for Best Original Score at the 76 th Tony Awards.
Clark is first and foremost a storyteller—in her lyrics and in her on-stage banter. A fine singer
with a classic country voice, her star power, as one reviewer put it, is in the razor-sharpness of
her perceptions and her language.
Rhiannon Giddens
On Sunday, June 15, only two days after the Carpenter/Clark show, Rhiannon Giddens & The
Old-Time Review will play the Uptown.
Giddens is a phenomenon. She began at Oberlin Conservatory of Music heading for a career as
an operatic soprano. Early on she fell in love with Southern black string-band music and the
course of her life was dramatically altered. Playing the fiddle, clawhammer banjo and singing, in
2005 she founded the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time string band. In 2010, they won the
Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album, “Genuine Negro Jig.”
Three years later, at the encouragement of T Bone Burnett, Giddens pivoted again, this time to a
solo career. This led to “Tomorrow is My Turn (2015),” the first of five albums released over a
span of eight years. Two of these were in collaboration with her musical and then life partner,
Italian musician Francesco Turrisi.
Over the past decade, Giddens’ accomplishments and honors seem almost too much for any one
artist. For the sake of brevity, this is a compressed and very incomplete list without dates or
embellishment: She was the BBC Folksinger of the Year, she won the Steve Martin Prize for
Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, she was inducted in the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame
and she was named a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. She began hosting “Aria Code with Rhiannon
Giddens,” a Metropolitan Opera podcast, she composed the opera “Omar,” which received the
Pulitzer Prize in Music, she succeeded YoYo Ma as Artistic Director of Silkroad and she earned
an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an
Honorary Doctor of Music from Princeton.
At the Uptown Giddens will perform with The Old-Time Review, which includes former
Carolina Chocolate Drops collaborator Justin Robinson, and sounds like a strong echo of the old
band.
Detailed information and tickets for all shows can be found at the website.
David Kerns is a Napa-based music journalist and novelist.
