Special Guest: Joe Westerlund.

Band: Sinclair Palmer, Isa Burke, Riley Calcagno, Courtney Crumpler

Fiddler and studio multi-instrumentalist Omar Ruiz-Lopez (Violet Bell) is launching a month-long residency and series of shows at The Artscenter in Carrboro, NC, starting 1/4/26. 

Joined by a different backing band, each show will have its own theme and sound. 

$25 door, seated shows.

Joe Westerlund - http://www.joewesterlund.com/

Under his own name, Joe Westerlund has emerged as an intuitive improviser and composer during the last decade, scoring deep meditative practice over the course of three full-length solo records. After all, Westerlund—a longtime student of Milford Graves—has now spent more than a quarter-century gleaning lessons from folk musicians and avant-garde icons, from close friends and challenging strangers alike. He served as the dynamic backbone of Megafaun, the North Carolina trio that he cofounded, and initiated collaborations with Arnold Dreyblatt, On Fillmore and Justin Vernon. As a session drummer, he has worked as the pulse beneath the plaintive Americana of Watchhouse, Daughter of Swords, and Jake Xerxes Fussell and been a textural anchor for the folk abstraction of Califone. Currently, he tours and records primarily in an improvisational trio, Setting (with Jaime Fennelly and Nathan Bowles), as a duo with trumpeter Trever Hagen, and as a solo artist on Psychic Hotline. His latest release, Curiosities from the Shift, is Westerlund’s definitive statement so far: a playful exploration driven by beats but not bound by them.