This Weekend: Richard Thompson Doubles Down as Woodstock and Kingston Split the Bill
Some weekends you pick a lane. This is not one of those weekends — the valley is running two great shows at once and daring you to choose.
Start Thursday, July 9, with the hardest fork of the weekend. At Levon Helm Studios, Minnesota fingerpicker Charlie Parr brings his weathered, hymn-like country blues to the barn, with Welsh guitarist Gwenifer Raymond — a genuinely ferocious American Primitive player — opening. Meanwhile, up Tinker Street at Bearsville Theater, Grateful Dead conduit Jerry's Middle Finger works the immersive hall for the jam faithful. Two rooms, four miles apart, both worth it.
Then the barn plays its biggest card. British guitar giant Richard Thompson takes Levon Helm Studios for two nights, Friday and Saturday, July 10 and 11, with Americana songwriter Mary Gauthier opening both. Thompson in a seated room built for a few hundred, on Levon's own floor, is exactly the kind of show this region exists to host — remember the drill, gates 6:30, doors 7:30, music at 8.
If you'd rather your nostalgia loud and complete, Kingston counters Friday night. At UPAC, Band of Horses and Dinosaur Jr. share a bill with each act playing an album in full — a tailor-made pairing of aching indie anthems and J Mascis's wall of amp worship in the 1927 house downtown. It's the loudest ticket of the weekend and, in the region's biggest room, probably the easiest to get.
Bearsville isn't done, either: Saturday, July 10, Patty Griffin — one of the most quietly commanding songwriters working — takes the theater Grossman built.
And when the marquee names clear out, the weekend lands soft. Sunday, July 12, Texas songwriter Alejandro Escovedo returns to Levon Helm Studios, closing the run in the same room where it started. From punk lifer to string-swept balladeer, Escovedo in the barn is the kind of booking that makes you grateful this scene never confused "small" with "minor."
Here's why it matters: no single one of these shows would be a surprise in a major city. Getting all of them in one long weekend, inside a ten-mile radius, is the whole argument for living here. Pick your room. You genuinely can't lose.
Sources: Levon Helm Studios shows; Bearsville Theater summer lineup; Chronogram: 11 Essential Summer Concerts