Mountain Stage with Kathy Mattea

The name Hot Tuna invokes as many different moods and reactions as there are Hot Tuna fans — millions of them. To some, Hot Tuna is a reminder of some wild and happy times. To others, that name will forever be linked to their own discovery of the power and depth of American blues and roots music. To newer fans, Hot Tuna is a tight, masterful duo that is on the cutting edge of great music.

All of those things are correct, and more. For more than four decades, Hot Tuna has played, toured, and recorded some of the best and most memorable acoustic and electric music ever. And Hot Tuna is still going strong — some would say stronger than ever.

It has been said that the music Jack and Jorma play was transformative and that they injected an energy into their sound full of constant improvisation taking the compass on a joyride.

With his warm, textured voice and rootsy songwriting aesthetic, Ireland's Mick Flannery burst onto the international scene in 2005 with his debut album, Evening Train. The record won praise and showcased Flannery's sound, which was drawn from American folk, rock, and Irish traditions. He built upon his initial buzz, hitting the Top Ten in Ireland with albums like 2008's White Lies, 2012's Red to Blue, and 2016's I Own You.

Born in 1983, Flannery grew up in Blarney, County Cork, where he was introduced to folk and blues music at a young age by his mother, a singer/songwriter. By his teens he was writing his own songs inspired by an eclectic mix of artists like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Nirvana. After high school, he worked days as a stone mason while further developing his talents by taking a music management and production course at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa in Cork. Following his time at school, Flannery embarked on a tour of America, a trip that found him spending time in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Nashville, where he earned grassroots praise for his evocative, literate songs. Returning to Ireland, he issued his debut album, 2005's Evening Train. Written as part of a project for Flannery's music production course and initially conceived as a musical about two brothers, Evening Train was released to widespread acclaim and helped land Flannery a contract with EMI.

Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno play old-soul roots music, fluidly melding a backbone of Appalachian traditional music with fresh iconic melodies and the tightly wound vocal harmonies of indie folk.

Both Leva and Calcagno, now just out of college, grew up steeped in old-time music, Leva in Lexington, Virginia and Calcagno in Seattle, Washington. After meeting in 2016 they soon collaborated on Leva’s debut record, Time is Everything, which Rolling Stone wrote “shone a light on the past without giving up its place in the present.” 

In support of the record, they embarked on an extensive tour that stretched to the most northern reaches of Canada and overseas to Europe. Over the course of these varied and occasionally lonesome shows and travels, the pair developed their collaboration into a distinct sound that led to the imagination and writing of their new eponymous record, Vivian Leva & Riley Calcagno, out now on Free Dirt Records.

Acclaimed Americana/blues guitarist William Lee Ellis was raised in the deep roots of American music. Named after his godfather, legendary bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, Ellis grew up in a musical family — his father, Tony Ellis, was one of Monroe's Blue Grass Boys.

Growing up in Kingsport, Tennessee, was as close to bluegrass heaven as you could get — some of Ellis' earliest memories include trips to Appalachian musician Tommy Jarrell's home with his father and being bounced on his godfather's knee. It was only natural for him to take up the guitar, and Ellis spent his adolescence backing his fiddle- and banjo-playing dad at bluegrass festivals and contests across the country.

In college, Ellis took his musical studies in a new direction, spending the better part of a decade playing classical guitar and earning a master's degree in classical performance from the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music (CCM). While there, Ellis chanced upon a musician who would change his life: Piedmont blues giant Reverend Gary Davis. Folk-blues revivalist Andy Cohen introduced Ellis to Davis' intricate finger-picking style, which fascinated the classically-trained guitarist. "Davis was a great sacred bluesman, and that's a genre I love dearly," Ellis says. "A combination of the heavenly and the hellish … full of tension and drama."

Montreal-born Grenadian-Canadian Kaia Kater's jazz-fueled voice and deft songcraft have garnered acclaim from NPR's Tiny Desk, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and No Depression. Through her artful banjo playing and lush songwriting, Kater draws on influences rooted in Quebec, the Caribbean, and Appalachia, all of which reflect the diversity of her background; her family’s deep ties to the Canadian folk music scene; her college years spent soaking up Appalachian music in West Virginia; and her father’s experience growing up in Grenada, arriving in Canada in 1986, after the U.S. invasion. 

Kater released her first EP, Old Soul (2013), when she was just out of high school. Since then, she’s gone on to release three more albums, Sorrow Bound (2015), Nine Pin (2016), and Grenades (2018).  For the JUNO-nominated and Polaris Music Prize long-listed Grenades, Kater leaned into a wide array of sounds and styles in order to convey a broad range of emotions and topics, most notably her Caribbean ancestry and her father’s experience as a refugee in Canada. In 2020 Kater took part in the Slaight Music Residency at the Canadian Film Center, released a new single, and wrote original music for The Porter (BET+ 2022), for which she garnered a Canadian Screen Award for Best Original Song in a Drama Series. Kater's next album, recorded in Montreal with Joe Grass as co-producer, will land in late 2023.