Sundy Best will ring in 2027 at Manchester Music Hall

The Prestonsburg duo, freshly named to the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame's 2026 class, takes the Lexington room on New Year's Eve with Hunter Flynn opening.

Somewhere in Lexington a group text is still arguing about New Year's Eve. Sundy Best just settled it for a lot of people.

The Eastern Kentucky duo plays Manchester Music Hall on Thursday, Dec. 31, with Hunter Flynn opening. The show starts at 9 p.m., which leaves a comfortable runway to midnight, and tickets run $59.05 to $89.95 through Ticketmaster. The date was announced Oct. 29, and a Sundy Best show on the last night of the year is not the kind of ticket that waits around for you to make up your mind.

Manchester holds about 1,100 people. That's big enough to feel like a party and small enough that the back of the room can still hear every word of the singalongs, and with this band the crowd usually knows every word.

If you're new to them: Sundy Best is Nick Jamerson and Kris Bentley, friends since elementary school in Prestonsburg. They formed the duo after college and moved to Lexington in August 2010, according to their Wikipedia entry. Jamerson sings lead and plays guitar, and Bentley keeps time on a cajón. The sound pulls from country, Appalachian folk, bluegrass, rock, soul and R&B. The 2014 album *Bring Up the Sun* is the one plenty of people around here can still sing front to back.

There's a gap in the story. The pair announced their break-up in March 2018 and then came back in October 2020. Since the reunion the hometown honors have kept coming. The Kentucky Music Hall of Fame named Sundy Best to its Class of 2026, calling the duo's sound a blend of country, rock and Appalachian influences. The Hall broke the news as a surprise, on a Saturday night at Manchester Music Hall. That makes New Year's Eve in the same room feel a little like a victory lap.

It wasn't the Hall's first nod, either. It honored the duo with a temporary wall exhibit back in November 2023. This fall the Kentucky Apple Festival in Paintsville tapped them as a headliner, just up the road from where the two of them grew up.

A New Year's Eve in the room where they learned they were Hall of Famers.

The bill is listed as Folk and Indie, which undersells it a bit. A Sundy Best show runs on Jamerson's voice and Bentley's hands on the box, and most of the energy comes from the people in the room singing back at them. On New Year's Eve, with a countdown at the end of the night, that's the whole point.

The practical stuff: doors and the countdown details will come from the venue, but the music starts at 9. Hunter Flynn gets the room warm first. Buy early if you're bringing a crew, because once the group text agrees it'll be a big order.

Lexington has a lot of ways to spend Dec. 31. Few of them end with two Prestonsburg kids, now Hall of Famers, leading a sold-out room into the new year.

Sources: Sundy Best - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Sundy Best to join Class of 2026 - Kentucky Music Hall of Fame (kentuckymusichalloffame.com); Sundy Best Honored with Special Exhibit - Kentucky Music Hall of Fame (kentuckymusichalloffame.com); Sundy Best, Andress to headline Apple Festival music shows - Paintsville Herald (paintsvilleherald.com); Sundy Best New Year's Eve Party - Ticketmaster (ticketmaster.evyy.net); Sundy Best at Manchester Music Hall - JamBase (jambase.com)