Amythyst Kiah books The Attic at the State Theatre for January

The Rounder Records songwriter plays the State Theatre's 500-capacity upstairs room on Tuesday, Jan. 12, and tickets are on sale through the theatre's box office.

Mid-January in State College is the quiet stretch: students trickling back, the bars half-full, the calendar thin. Amythyst Kiah just put something worth leaving the house for right in the middle of it.

Amythyst Kiah plays The State Theatre – The Attic on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2027. Doors are at 7 p.m., the show starts at 8, and tickets are $49.10 through the State Theatre box office. The date was announced Nov. 3. The Attic holds 500, which puts a songwriter of Kiah's reach in a room far smaller than the ones she often plays.

Kiah's music lands where folk, indie and country overlap, and her most recent full-length is *Still + Bright*, released on Rounder Records. She has spent the last stretch carrying that record a long way from home. The *Still + Bright* tour took her across the UK and Ireland early this year, with stops including Glasgow's Celtic Connections festival on Jan. 24, Belfast on Jan. 28 and Dublin's Whelans Upstairs on Jan. 29. Back in the States, the Twin Cities' Parkway Theater has her on Friday, Nov. 13, in a show presented by The Current, the Minnesota public radio station.

A 500-cap room on a Tuesday in January is about as close as you will get to hearing Kiah the way her songs were written: up close.

We did not find a new album announced for 2027, so expect the State College set to lean on *Still + Bright* and the songs that came before it. That is not a complaint. Records like this one tend to get better the longer they live on the road, as the arrangements loosen and the band finds the corners of each song, and by January Kiah will have been playing this material for a long time.

The room is the other reason to go. The Attic is the State Theatre's upstairs space, a smaller, more intimate option than the main stage downstairs, and it suits artists whose shows depend on the audience actually listening. A Tuesday in January also tends to draw the people who really want to be there, not the ones who wandered in.

Practical notes: the 7 p.m. doors give you time to get in, get a drink and settle in before the 8 p.m. start. The State Theatre's own ticketing page is the place to buy; at $49.10, this one sits at the higher end of what the Attic usually charges, but it is also one of the stronger bookings the room has landed for the new year.

If you have been meaning to catch Kiah and kept missing her on bigger festival bills, this is the one. Circle Jan. 12, buy early, and plan to be in your seat by eight.

Sources: Americana UK: Amythyst Kiah brings her 'Still + Bright' tour to the UK and Ireland (americana-uk.com); Parkway Theater: Amythyst Kiah - Still + Bright (theparkwaytheater.com); Amythyst Kiah - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); State Theatre tickets (tickets.thestatetheatre.org); JamBase listing (jambase.com)