STEEL PULSE
Widely considered one of the world's greatest reggae bands, Steel Pulse formed in 1975 in Birmingham, specifically the inner city area of Handsworth, and initially had problems finding gigs due to their "radical" Rastafarian politics. Luckily, the punk movement was opening up new doors all over Britain, and reggae naturally found a spiritual kinship with its white counterpart. Thus, the group began opening for punk and new wave bands like the Clash, Generation X, the Police, and XTC, building a broad-based audience in the process. Steel Pulse started out playing authentic roots reggae with touches of jazz and Latin music; its 1978 debut, Handsworth Revolution, is highly regarded as a landmark of British reggae. By the late 1980s, Steel Pulse had won a Grammy, earned a worldwide audience, and were working full-fledged crossover territory. They subsequently returned to a tough-minded, rootsy sound and have added touches of dancehall and hip-hop along the way. Above all, Steel Pulse are known for performing well written, Afro-centric songs that are rebellious without being negative or inflammatory. KEB' MO'
Keb' Mo's music is a singular mix of the raw, old-fashioned country blues and contemporary nods to soul and pop. His folksy guitar playing and soulful voice have earned him a following that encompasses both blues aficionados and mainstream audiences. Born Kevin Moore in Los Angeles to parents of Southern descent, he was exposed to gospel music at a young age, joined an R&B band in his 20s, and cut his first solo album in 1980 for Casablanca, which promptly folded. He played in various bands for years, but it wasn't until 1994 that he released his self-titled debut album as Keb' Mo', which featured two Robert Johnson covers, 11 songs written or co-written by Moore, and lots of guitar and banjo work. His second album, Just Like You, featured a full band and expanded into rock-based territory, a move that won him his first of several Grammys and catapulted him to fame. Several discs would follow, all well received by critics and an ever-expanding audience alike. We are proud to welcome Keb' Mo' for his first Thirsty Ear Festival performance. NATHAN & THE ZYDECO CHA CHAS
Well known to Thirsty Ear Festival veterans, zydeco is the fast and furious accordion-driven dance music of the Creole people of South Louisiana. With its trademark rubboard percussion, electric guitars and R&B influences, zydeco is distinct from the fiddle-driven music of neighboring Cajuns. In the hands of a dedicated musician and songwriter such as Nathan Williams, zydeco is one of the most expressive sounds in roots music. Nathan's down-home parables are delivered with surprising musical turns and a distinctive Caribbean lilt that reaches back to the very beginnings of Creole culture in Louisiana. Growing up in a Creole-speaking home in St. Martinville, Williams eagerly sought out the music of zydeco originators such as Clifton Chenier, often hovering by the window-sized fan at the back of the dance hall he was too young to enter in order to hear his idol. Later, he dedicated himself to learning the accordion, an infatuation that blossomed into an illustrious career spanning seven albums, two decades, and countless accolades as one of zydeco's reigning masters.

ATTENTION ZYDECO LOVERS: In Louisiana, the rollicking “zydeco breakfast” is a popular pastime. So we're bringing a little of that flavor to Thirsty Ear. In addition to Saturday's closing main stage set, Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas will play a special, separately ticketed Zydeco Brunch in the Grand Hotel from noon to 1:00 on Sunday--a fundraiser for Southwest Roots Music. If you've got a VIP All Pass, you're already covered. Otherwise, make sure to pick up a ticket. With only 70 spots available, this will surely sell out. BÉLA FLECK & TOUMANI DIABATE
One of the premiere banjo players in the world, eight-time Grammy winner Béla Fleck has earned nominations in more categories than anyone in Grammy history--including jazz, country, classical, pop, bluegrass, and spoken word. Tenures with progressive bluegrass band Newgrass Revival, the genre-busting Flecktones and Strength in Numbers have been punctuated by numerous ongoing collaborations, including his latest with Toumani Diabate, one of the most important musicians in Africa. Hailing from Mali, Diabate plays the kora, a West African harp that an astonishing 71 generations of his family have played. Like Fleck, Diabate is internationally renowned for his depth and versatility. The two musicians' collaboration is featured in the award-winning Throw Down Your Heart, a documentary of Fleck's journey through Africa to explore the roots of the banjo. RICHIE HAVENS
Richie Havens' soulful voice first emerged during the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s, cemented itself in the popular consciousness at Woodstock in 1969, and has continued to inspire audiences for more than three decades. Havens has used his music to convey messages of brotherhood and personal freedom, and views his calling as a higher one. Born in Brooklyn, Richard P. Havens was organizing his friends into street corner doo-wop groups at an early age, he performed with the McCrea Gospel Singers at 16, and four years later left Brooklyn to seek out the artistic stimulation of Greenwich Village, where he performed poetry, drew portraits, and stayed up all night listening to folk music in the clubs. It was only a matter of time before he picked up a guitar, which led to a record deal with Verve and an unforgettable performance at Woodstock that would change his life forever. As the festival's first performer, he held the crow d spellbound for nearly three hours, and was called back for encore after encore. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual "Motherless Child." That song became "Freedom," one of the great anthems of the Woodstock generation. The subsequent movie release brought Havens' music to millions, and he's been a vital force on the folk scene ever since. We are proud to welcome one of folk music's genuine icons to the Thirsty Ear stage. SAMANTHA CRAIN & THE MIDNIGHT SHIVERS
The New York Times praises her as "a promising young storyteller with fealty to ragged, country-driven indie-pop and an alluring dark streak.... A voice that traverses the space between Gillian Welch and Regina Spektor." With a blow-your-hair-back vocal presence that occasionally yields to whisper-soft vulnerability, Samantha Crain's folksy arrangements, which are both gorgeous and eerie, coexist with a knack for narrative storytelling and lyrics that are as likely to detail disaster and despair as they are community and reconciliation. A Choctaw from Woody Guthrie's home state of Oklahoma, Crain's sound—fleshed out by the texture-driven aesthetic of the Midnight Shivers—manages to simultaneously evoke the deeply rural and southern, but also the itinerant and urban. Crain's latest disc, Songs In The Night, is due this summer. INDIGENOUS
Mato Nanji's warm, dusty voice and soaring guitar have always provided the heartbeat of this band from South Dakota's Nakota Nation. Indigenous began as a family project, and the band's debut was recorded in his parents' basement with bassist brother Pte, drummer sister Wanbdi, and percussionist cousin Horse. Together, over a decade, the family cemented Indigenous' reputation. But in 2006, "everybody decided to go their own way, leaving me to carry on Indigenous," Nanji says. "Playing with my family for 10 years was a lot of fun, but it was time to grow.... Now the songs I'm singing are more personal, the sound of the band has broadened, and we were able to explore all the influences that are woven into that sound - blues, soul, R&B and even country — more than ever. The guitar playing is more controlled. On top of all that, I've grown as a singer. What it amounts to is that Indigenous is a brand new band." The band's latest release, Broken Lands, teems with Nanji's ringing, sustained notes, artfully bent strings, and bottleneck guitar. "Broken Lands makes me feel like I did when Indigenous was just starting out," Nanji says. "We were excited about making music and making records.... Now Indigenous is a new band again, and I feel that same excitement." MARY GAUTHIER
We first cottoned onto Mary Gauthier back in 2001, before she became widely recognized as one of Americana's most respected lyricists. She had just released her classic Drag Queens in Limousines and, based on the intensity and pure craftsmanship of the songs, we immediately booked the unknown singer-songwriter for the Thirsty Ear Festival. She stole the show. Since then the Louisiana native has been signed to a big label, toured with the best songwriters (Willie Nelson and Guy Clark among them), and recorded a string of poetic, highly acclaimed discs. "Her songs are a strange mix of half-spoken, half-sung talking blues," writes the London Times, "often laugh-out-loud tales of addicts, victims and losers, of cheap motels and failed love affairs." Between Daylight and Dark is her latest Lost Highway release. KENNY BROWN
Musician magazine praises him as "simply the best white slide player you might ever hear," and if you've seen Kenny Brown live or heard him play on records by R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and any number of Mississippi bluesmen, that's not a hard pill to swallow. In concert and on his solo discs, the self-released Goin' Back To Mississippi and Stingray, Brown delivers a ripping brand of rock-&-roll that marries the Mississippi Hill Country stomp he created with R.L. Burnside with the country-inflected sounds of the early Stones. Brown is also a killer acoustic player, and will follow Steel Pulse's main stage set with an acoustic late-night set on Friday in the Grand Hotel. ROUND MOUNTAIN
Round Mountain's Char and Robby Rothschild have been playing music together for most of their lives. Based in Santa Fe, their background ranges from Balkan and West African styles to traditional Appalachian music, from classical to funk. While they have played extensively together and separately in many ensembles and projects, including Ottmar Liebert, Prince Diabate, Panjea, and Old Moscow Circus, this configuration marks the crystallization of their own music using the traditions that have inspired them. Expect original songwriting that draws from many extremes: beautiful acoustic numbers, wild bagpipes, trumpet and accordion played by one person at the same time, Bulgarian zydeco, klezmer, and Malian rhythms, to name a few. FELIX Y LOS GATOS
Made up of some of the best session musicians from the New Mexico blues and jazz scene, Felix y Los Gatos was born of the high-octane sounds keyboardist Dave Barclay started making when he brought a button accordion to a blues jam. Fusing zydeco, New Mexican rancheras and outlaw country with the improvisation of jazz and swing, Felix y Gatos has refined its sound with over 500 gigs in its two years of life. The band recently opened for BeauSoleil in Santa Fe with a typically high-energy set, and has just released its debut Zydeco Tonight disc on Santa Fe's own Frogville Records. SOULMAN SAM & THE SOUL EXPLOSION
"Soulman Sam" Evans began his singing career in Memphis, competing in competitions and singing in the church choir. He grew up in the same neighborhood as Otis Redding, Issac Hayes, B.B. King, Albert King and Al Green. He eventually landed a job singing with the Bar-Kays, and he was supposed to be on the flight that killed Otis Redding and most of the original Bar-Kay group. Luckily Sam survived and was offered a recording contract with Memphis' famed Stax Records, a deal that fell through when Sam gave up singing and moved to Alaska to help his brother, whose wife suffered serious health problems. He started singing R&B again in 1999, formed a band, and began opening for the likes of James Brown and Gladys Knight. Now a resident of Santa Fe, Sam is joined by drummer Tom Briggs, guitarist Steven Murali Levine, bassist Jen Rund, and trumpeter Tom Rheam, who has played with Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Charles Mingus. SHARON GILCHRIST & FRIENDS
Originally from Southlake, Texas where she grew up steeped in bluegrass music, Gilchrist has performed with a long list of artists, including the Peter Rowan & Tony Rice Quartet, Uncle Earl, the Santa Fe All-Stars, Josh Rouse, and Mary & Mars. No matter what the context, the common thread is music that denotes a unique artistry and voice. Sharon hosts Saturday's late-nite jam, brought back this year by popular demand, featuring a variety of Santa Fe's finest artists.

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