Laurie Lewis brings the Right Hands to Martin Marietta Center in April

The California bluegrass lifer, a 2024 IBMA Distinguished Achievement honoree, plays downtown Raleigh on Saturday, April 3, 2027.

Raleigh has a habit of treating bluegrass like a home sport, and the room for it next spring is a big one. Laurie Lewis plays the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, April 3, 2027, at 7:30pm, a date that went up on October 26. Tickets are on sale now through Ticketmaster.

Five months out is early to be thinking about an April Saturday, but it is the right time for this one. The Martin Marietta Center holds 2,277, and a fiddler-singer with Lewis's standing among bluegrass and folk audiences tends to draw the kind of listeners who buy early and want to sit together.

For anyone who has only caught her name on a festival poster: Lewis has been at this a long time, and the industry has noticed. In 2024 she was named a recipient of the International Bluegrass Music Association's Distinguished Achievement Award, and that same year she released TREES, which Grateful Web counted as her 24th album. Twenty-four records in, she is still writing her own material rather than coasting on a catalog, and still touring it.

She usually travels with her band the Right Hands, the lineup that has carried her shows at places like the Floyd Country Store in southwest Virginia and on public radio's Mountain Stage. The ticket listing for Raleigh bills the night as Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, which means the full string band rather than a duo set.

Her songs lean on the West. Lewis is a Californian, and on the folk podcast Basic Folk she talked through her music as a bluegrass love letter to California — coastlines, redwoods and the people who live among them, filtered through a music most of us associate with the Blue Ridge. That push and pull is part of what makes her interesting in a North Carolina hall: the instrumentation is familiar to anyone who grew up around fiddle tunes here, but the landscape in the lyrics is a continent away.

Expect a show built on songs and harmony singing more than breakneck picking contests. Lewis is a bandleader who gives the tune room, and the Right Hands are there to serve the song. If your bluegrass diet runs mostly to the late-night jam crowd, this is a different and quieter pleasure, and a big hall with good sound suits it.

Twenty-four records in, she is still writing her own material and still touring it.

The ticket link also carries the PineCone name, the Raleigh nonprofit that has spent decades keeping traditional music on downtown stages, and a booking like this one is squarely in its lane. For a town that hosts the bluegrass world each fall, a spring Saturday with one of the music's most respected voices is a good way to keep the conversation going between festivals.

The practical bit: it is a Saturday-night show at 7:30, early enough for dinner downtown first. Buy now if you care where you sit, and bring someone who still thinks bluegrass is only banjos.

Sources: Laurie Lewis to Receive 2024 IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award – On Tour with New Album (Grateful Web) (gratefulweb.com); Laurie Lewis Releases TREES — Her 24th Album (Grateful Web) (gratefulweb.com); Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands at the Floyd Country Store (The Crooked Road) (thecrookedroadva.com); Laurie Lewis and Right Hands, Mountain Stage (WFDD) (wfdd.org); Laurie Lewis: Bluegrass Love Letter to California, Basic Folk ep. 337 (castfox.net); Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, Raleigh, Apr 3 2027 (Ticketmaster) (ticketmaster.evyy.net); JamBase listing (jambase.com)