Concert Previews Sept 12-14 Meadowlark Festival at Stone House Ridge Orchard
Hear Laura Stevenson’s acclaimed new album Late Great, which was released June 27, 2025: HERE
September 12-14, Meadowlark Fest attendees will experience a 1940s-era trailer stage tucked near a hundreds-year-old oak tree on historic Stone Ridge Orchard, complete with sweeping views of the Shawangunks and the Catskills.
WHO: Laura Stevenson, Cut Worms (solo), and Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage
WHAT: Meadowlark at the Barn
WHEN: August 22, 8pm
WHERE: Levon Helm Studios, 160 Plochmann Lane, Woodstock, NY 12498
TICKETS: $30-50 plus fees, LINK
Attendees for Meadowlark at the Barn will have the opportunity to purchase half-price festival tickets at the show.
The 2025 Meadowlark Festival lineup includes:
* “Dynamic” (Stereogum) indie rock band Sunflower Bean, who deliver a “masterclass in rock” (Paste);
* Songwriter Haley Heynderickx, who has 1.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify;
* Cut Worms;
* NPR Tiny Desk Concert, Newport Folk Fest, and Bonnaroo alums River Whyless;
* Daptone Records’ The Mystery Lights, who are “as good as it gets” (NME UK);
* the Hudson Valley’s Camp Saint Helene, who have had a song covered by Angel Olsen and who have been a KEXP Song of the Day;
* Daughter of the Vine, new project by Margaret Garrett of Mr. Airplane Man;
* favorites of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, macabre duo Charming Disaster, whose “woozy folk-pop plays around the edges of the Gothic” (Paste Magazine);
* Ryan Lee Crosby, who “brings influences from Africa and India to the Bentonia [Mississippi] sound” (Smithsonian Magazine);
* Driftwood Soldier, whose music brings to mind “a bluesy version of Nick Cave with a nod to Tom Waits” (WXPN);
Meadowlark supports organizations that advocate for farmers in the Hudson Valley and nationally, and who are aligned with our values of promoting food security and advocacy for local farms. These organizations include Rondout Valley Growers Association (RVGA), and Hudson Valley Center For Food, Culture & Agriculture. The festival takes place at Stone Ridge Orchard & Farmers Market, a 200-year-old working farm on 115 acres.
About Laura Stevenson
“Music is a resource we can tap into to heal ourselves,” Laura Stevenson says. She’s talking about her studies in a music therapy graduate program, but her explanation parallels the overarching message of her sixth full-length album Late Great — a record that finds Stevenson excavating the messy emotions of heartbreak for the first time.
In the four years since her self-titled album was released, Laura’s entire life has been upended by pandemic-era motherhood, a painful split, and navigating new loves. Her new album is about letting go, taking charge, and learning to rebuild from the deepest layers of your being: “It’s a document of loss for sure, but it also kind of draws the map of this exciting precipice that I’m standing on. I am making my own life now. With the record, with everything, this is the first time I get to call all the shots.”
Late Great (released on Jeff Rosenstock’s Really Records) was produced and mixed by John Agnello, with the live band tracking at The Building in Marlboro, NY – an old church that used to be a pay-what-you can model venue, a suitable space for an artist with DIY punk roots. “I added a million guitars,” recalls Stevenson, “I taught myself how to play the bass and made an orchestra of basses. I added percussion, synthesizers. I made it into something I really love. Poor John had to mix in like, 50 additional tracks per song.”
Late Great also features old friends and heavy hitters – Sammi Niss (Laura’s longtime drummer, who also plays in Real Estate), James Richardson (on bass and guitars), Shawn Alpay (cello), Kayleigh Goldsworthy (strings), Chris Farren (of Chris Farren) on synths, Kelly Pratt (of Beirut, Arcade Fire, Father John Misty on horns), Mike Brenner (of Magnolia Electric Company/Songs Ohia on pedal steel) and Jeff Rosenstock (piano, guitar, saxophone and arrangements.)
The result is a big, smoldering sound that makes you want to roll down your car windows and let the wind whip away your woes. “Honey” draws influences from Dolly Parton and Townes Van Zandt, but it builds into a shoegaze dreamscape of sparkly guitars and stacked vocals. “In my mix notes I just said ‘I want it to sound like 1,000 angels screaming and crying,’” Stevenson laughed.
In addition to working as a musician, Laura takes music therapy night classes, is completing 1,500 internship hours, and is raising a small daughter with a big personality. “She loves princess shit, but she also loves Black Sabbath – pretty stuff and evil rock and roll which is kinda perfect and very cool,” Laura says with a laugh. “I wear a lot of different hats, so life is pretty crazy, but I’m hoping I’m gonna look back in a couple of years and say, ‘how the fuck did I do all of that?’”
About Cut Worms
Max Clarke is the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and musician presently known as Cut Worms. Cut Worm’s new self-titled album continues Clarke’s exploration of what he calls “pop essentialism”. Mining the golden hits of yesteryear for a timeless sound, he contemplates age-old questions through a modern lens. Here, he leaves behind the legendary studio and sought-after producers for a more homegrown approach, working with a cast of gifted friends and collaborators. The result is a compact collection of daydream anthems that live between the summer’s hopeful beginnings and the season’s fleeting end.
Cut Worm’s self-titled LP broke out of the gates in 2023, landing Clarke on the Billboard charts for the first time ever. Receiving praise from Paste Magazine as “Clarke’s brightest entry yet, one of the best rock ‘n’ roll records of 2023.”
About Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage
Jeffrey Lewis and his various bandmates have perfected a scuzzy, urban style of indie-folk, developing from late-90s New York City bedroom tapes into a mighty 21st Century mash-up of folksy spiel and artsy garage, like Pete Seeger meeting Sonic Youth. UNCUT Magazine said, “Sublime… Lewis [moves] between melodic garage-punk and raw acoustic grooves to great effect. But it’s his terrific wordplay—sharp, funny, poignant and much more—that really dazzles.”
A born and raised denizen of the Lower East Side, Lewis’s home recordings were discovered by Rough Trade Records in 2001 (famed label of The Smiths, The Strokes, Belle & Sebastian and more) while Lewis was briefly living in Austin, Texas. Since the 2001 release of his first official album The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane and Other Favorites on Rough Trade Records, Lewis has toured the world and released numerous acclaimed albums on Rough Trade and other labels. He’s built a worldwide fanbase while regularly changing band names, most recently recording as Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage for Don Giovanni Records and Moshi Moshi Records. Of Lewis, David Berman (of Silver Jews) said, “Jeffrey is the best pure songwriter I know of.”
His 2025 album is The Even More Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis.
About Stone Ridge Orchard
The land that is now Stone Ridge Orchard has been a productive, diversified farm for nearly two hundred years. Tucked away in the Roundout River Valley between the Shawangunk Ridge and Catskill Mountains, they raise a wide variety of sustainably-grown gourmet fruits and vegetables on 115 scenic rolling acres.
The performance site will be under the shade of the farm’s iconic nearly 400-year-old oak tree, the jewel of Stone Ridge, next to a stand of some of the oldest apple trees in the region: McIntosh, Cortland, Golden Delicious, and Stayman.
In 2008, Elizabeth Ryan of Breezy Hill Orchard took over management of the orchard at Stone Ridge. Since then, Elizabeth has taken great care to give trees the care they need to produce flavorful, high-quality fruit. Breezy Hill Orchard sells fruit from Stone Ridge Orchard, as well as a large line of artisan baked goods and cider, at more than 20 farmers’ markets in New York.
