This Weekend: Cris Jacobs and Kentucky's Local Honeys Turn the Levee Loose

Clear your Friday. The best free ticket in the Kanawha Valley this weekend costs exactly nothing, and it's parked on the riverbank where it always is.

Live on the Levee returns to Haddad Riverfront Park on Friday, July 10, and the double bill is a quiet stunner: guitarist and songwriter Cris Jacobs headlining, with Kentucky's The Local Honeys opening. Opening acts hit the Schoenbaum Stage at 6:30, Jacobs at 8, and the whole thing — as with every night of Charleston's Moses Auto Group–presented summer series — is free to anyone who shows up with a lawn chair and a tolerance for July humidity.

Here's why it matters. Jacobs is the kind of player other players drive to see — a blues-steeped, soul-inflected guitarist with a road-tested band and a catalog that rewards close listening. The Local Honeys are the sleeper, though. The duo came up through Morehead State's traditional-music program just over the state line, and they make plainspoken Appalachian songs that sound like they've always existed. On a bill together, they bracket the whole spectrum of what this region calls "roots music" — the wired end and the woodsmoke end.

Context for the newcomers: Live on the Levee is a ten-week institution, running Fridays from late May through the end of July, and it has become the social clock of a Charleston summer. You do not RSVP. You do not buy a ticket. You wander down from the East End or over the South Side Bridge, you find your people near the food vendors, and you stay until the streetlights on Kanawha Boulevard come up. Road closures around the boulevard run into the late evening, and the Shanklin Garage opens for parking at five — so leave early, leave the car, and walk in.

If Friday's not enough, the East End keeps its own rhythm all weekend. The Empty Glass stays the reliable late-night option for anyone who wants four walls and a proper stage after the riverbank empties out, and Charleston's calendar of neighborhood happy-hour sets and open jams fills the edges. Across the river in Huntington, the clubs along Fourth Avenue are always worth a phone call.

But the headline is the Levee, and the headline under the headline is this: for one more month, Charleston throws a free concert every Friday night on the water, and this Friday it's a guitar hero and two Kentucky harmony singers who deserve a crowd. Be part of the crowd. The chairs are optional. The showing-up is not.

Sources: Herald-Dispatch — 2026 Live on the Levee lineup; WCHS — Live on the Levee schedule released; City of Charleston — 2026 Live on the Levee