Coming Artists

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2025—MorningBird https://morningbirdsings.com/

The Iron Range duo MorningBird will perform for Grassroots Concerts at the Live Well Nightclub and Coffee Bar in the Journey Church, Nisswa, at 7:30 p.m., Friday, April 4.

Admission is $15 at the door for adults and $5 for children under 12 with listening attention, when accompanied by an adult.  Seating is first-come, first-served.  Show-time is 7:30 PM (doors open at 6:30)

Partners in life and music, multi-instrumentalists Rob Wheeler and Jill Burkes bring a rare chemistry to their eclectic performances. Rooted in free-spirited authenticity, their music provides a gospel edge within Appalachian harmonic structure.

Their songs often explore nature and incorporate a refreshing element of nature. They started out in 2020 as a duo with Rob on guitar, mandolin, harmonica, and stomp box and Jill on violin or guitar). For the Nisswa venue they expanded to include bassist Shane Kingsland.

The ensemble is string-driven, performing traditional as well as original tunes. “Right from the start their style is a refreshingly modernized throwback to duos and groups of the 60s and early 70s that carved out the more acoustic folk-storytelling songbook,” praised American Highways.

“Sometimes bands doing this type of music take time to find their footing, but these musicians are accomplished and ambitious,” said American Highways’ review of the 2024 debut album “Echoes in the Meadow.”

“They aren’t trying to emulate anyone. They add sterling additions to their performance to enhance the pleasure of listening to them. Each tune whets the appetite for more.

“This is quite the original. It’s an interesting listen. Even their covers are brightly performed. ‘Birds and Bees’ is a beautifully upbeat folk workout

with lots of excellent vocalizing and accompaniment. 

The members comfortably add a cross-current of folk with R&R spice. Jill Burkes’ lead vocal is exemplary.”

“When we were touring we camped in a canyon near Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota,” Jill said. “It was fall and the colors were peaking on the trees. We did some of our first writing together as a trio there, surrounded by meadowland grasses and vivid autumn colors.

We knew we wanted the album title to have a nature vibe to it. “We kept tossing around nature words. We landed on ‘Echoes in the Meadow.’ We liked the ring it had. We were making our own echoes in the meadow on that trip, and we also loved that the word echo doesn’t typically make someone think of a meadow landscape.”

SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 2025 —SPARKY & RHONDA RUCKER

https://sparkyandrhonda.com

Sparky and Rhonda Rucker, on tour from Tennessee, have scheduled a Grassroots Concerts at the Live Well Nightclub and Coffee Bar in the Journey Church, Nisswa, Sunday, 2 p.m.  

Doors open at 1 p.m. in the Journey Church, 5459 Lakers Lane (next to the school in Nisswa).

The Ruckers perform throughout the U.S. as well as overseas, singing songs and telling stories from the American folk tradition.

Sparky is internationally recognized as a leading folklorist, musician, historian, storyteller, and author. He accompanies himself with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, banjo, and spoons.

Rhonda is a musician, children’s author, storyteller, and songwriter. Her blues-style harmonica, piano, old-time banjo, and bones add musical versatility to their performances. 

Sparky and Rhonda take audiences on an educational and emotional journey that ranges from poignant stories of slavery and war to an amusing rendition of a Brer Rabbit tale or their witty commentaries on current events. Their music includes a variety of old-time blues, slave songs, Appalachian music, spirituals, ballads, work songs, Civil War music, railroad songs, and a few of their own original compositions.

Sparky and Rhonda have appeared at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well as NPR’s On Point, Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, and Morning Edition. 

The Ruckers have been featured tellers at the International Storytelling Center and Festival. Sparky is a natural storyteller, having grown up hearing his father, uncles, and other family members endlessly telling tales.

Sparky and Rhonda weave their music into captivating stories that the history books don’t always tell.

FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2025—ERIK KOSKINEN www.erikkoskinen.com

Erik Koskinen is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer whose music is not categorized by sub-genres. Stylistically he is on his own while heavily influenced by American roots music. 

Koskinen has reverently entered the anthology of uniquely crafted wry songs with the likes of Woody Guthrie and Ry Cooder while speaking as plainly as your neighbor. 

Erik is “as dazzling a guitarist as he is an evocative storytelling songwriter.”

—Minneapolis Star-Tribune