With a coy smile, a wink to the back row, and carefree expertise, they spin their crystalline vocals through a loop pedal while strumming the weathered acoustic guitar they acquired for leading worship in high school. “I don’t believe in much anymore,” they announce to teary-eyed audiences, “except a little bit of everything. And you. And me. And that art can change the world simply by making us feel something.” 

LaJoye is a coast-to-coast singer/songwriter with Midwest roots, a classically-trained violinist with a proclivity for Broadway vocals, and a student of Americana music with a theology degree hanging in their studio. They’ve been writing and touring their own autobiographical folk/pop music for over a decade, but the virality of their 2021 anthem “Plowshare Prayer” secured them a permanent place in hearts and households across the world, as well as a peculiar career as a veracious songsmith with an unshakeable pastoral presence. Charming and banter-heavy, Spencer’s live performances at theaters, listening rooms, church sanctuaries, backyards, folk festivals, spiritual conferences, and queer clubs keep diverse audiences laughing one moment and weeping the next. 

Spencer has a lengthy catalog of recorded music documenting their journey from Christianity through disillusionment, the earliest EP of which won the 2014 WYCE Jammie Award for Listener’s Choice in Grand Rapids, MI. However, after coming out as gender nonbinary and finding peace as a post-Christian, Spencer changed their name and released Remember the Oxygen, a 4-song EP featuring the Denver String Machine with arrangements by China Kent. The collection includes two songs that won Spencer a place among the winners of the 2021 Kerrville New Folk Songwriting Competition. 

After appearing as an official showcase artist at Folk Alliance International 2023, Spencer released Plant a Piano, a solo EP of vocally theatrical piano ballads about decay, change, and beauty. As LaJoye’s first effort following the highly-anticipated and mammoth studio recording of “Plowshare Prayer,” this stark piano EP was an invitation for eager listeners to get up close and personal with Spencer and the craft of one song by one voice.

In February 2024, Spencer released Shadow Puppets, their first full-length album under their new name. The album was produced by Chris DuPont in Ypsilanti, MI, and is a clever synth-guided and lyric-driven departure from some of LaJoye’s more universally anthemic offerings. In 2024, Spencer was the winner of the Songwriter Serenade competition in Schulenburg, TX.

Reinforced with the will of the wild and strengthened by the stories of mankind’s struggles with desolation, Jeremiah Tall pulls his inspiration. Making his home in Bucks County, PA Tall finds himself writing the next chapter in his story. Three years since the debut LP Where The Lore Began, along with thousands of miles on the road, landed Tall on stages with greats such as Steve Earle, Gary Clark Jr. and Langhorne Slim. In addition to sets at The Philadelphia Folk Festival, Bethlehem's Musikfest, The Devils Backbone Hoopla and Oyster Ridge Music Festival. He now has his aim on a third release, From Bare Bones.  

From Bare Bones comes out swinging with a massive sound full of robust vocal arrangements and a full band instrumentation to back up Tall’s hard-hitting percussive strumming style. The familiar one-man band has also bolstered his live image to support a full line-up. Together Jeremiah Tall with The Lore allows a restyling of his foot-stomping workers howl of a sound.

When playing live, Aleksi Campagne floors audiences by singing while bowing his violin and leading his four-piece band. His original music blends folk songwriting with an edgy, multi-layered sound resulting from his unique combination of voice, violin and looping-effect pedals. In a full-page spread in the Montreal Gazette, Brennan Kelly described him as “not just a folksinger with a guitar!

Aleksi Campagne is uniquely qualified to offer a contemporary, indie-folk take on the time-honoured fiddle-singing tradition. At five years old, he began performing alongside his mother, Canadian folk icon, Connie Kaldor. At 19, Aleksi moved to Paris to study under jazz violin legend Didier Lockwood. At 21, Aleksi became the only student to have ever been accepted into the classical violin, the jazz violin and the jazz voice performance programs at McGill University. Since then, Aleksi had graced the lineups of some of Canada’ most beloved folk festivals—including the Mariposa Folk Festival, the Regina Folk Festival, and the Northern Lights Festival, among others.

McKain is one of our favorite artists at OYCH. We are so excited to have her back on our backyard stage!

Sometimes the pursuit of our greater humanity involves jumping into life head first. That’s what McKain Lakey does. You can tell by her songs. 

Armed with George the trusty road cat, a carful of instruments, and all the fight of a rambling, rural-raised, queer femme wanderer, McKain Lakey is one to be reckoned with. She’s the rare human who feels as comfortable wielding a chisel as she does a guitar, who can be as often spotted behind the soundboard in a crowded venue as discussing the intersections of race and gender in old time music with a classroom full of 5th graders. 

Described by What’s Up Magazine as “a time capsule unearthed, fine-tuned and re-imagined”, Lakey draws creative inspiration from far corners of the American music tradition, tracing the lines of musical lineage that connect Old Time to Rockabilly, Country to Cajun to Dixieland. She’s a dedicated student of tradition, but at once unafraid to stare down convention through the modern lens of her lived experience.

Award-winning, Detroit singer-songwriter Mike Ward is known for his lyrically-centric, vocally-charged folk songs. While growing up in Port Huron, Michigan, he listened to the Irish music of his heritage and sang in several choirs before digesting the influential sounds of Simon & Garfunkel, Dylan, Springsteen and Prine. These days, he finds inspiration in the works of Jason Isbell, Sarah Jarosz and Scott Cook. His intimate songwriting echoes through empty city streets, country roads and family portraits. It also resides in the hidden spaces between joy and tragedy, love and loss.

Ward brings a unique perspective to his songwriting after having spent 40 years working in the advertising industry while continuing a lifelong passion for hockey, which resulted in his infamous nickname “PsychoWard.” His debut album, We Wonder, released in 2018, was named “Best Folk Album of 2019” by Phil Maq of 89.3-FM (WHFR).

In 2019, Ward immersed himself into the songwriting community in Detroit as well as Folk Alliance Region Midwest (FARM) and several online groups. This led to an association with David Roof of Rooftop Recording as well as collaborations with some of Michigan’s finest songwriters and musicians who would contribute mightily on his future projects.

Ward released his second album in 2021, “The Darkness and The Light”, as a thoughtful way to highlight past struggles, including regret and loss, and champion the need for hope in a changing world. The album landed at #33 on the Folk Alliance International (FAI) folk charts in March 2021.

In Spring 2023, Mike released his fourth album “Love Never Rests”, which features 11 introspective tracks that examine observations about life, love and loss along with relationships of the past, present and future. All stories are told through his emotive viewpoints of wisdom and gratitude. Recently, Mike was named a finalist in the Rocky Mountain Songwriting Contest for the song "Currency of Forgiveness" .

August 2024 Mike has released a new six-song project titled "Still Troubled" containing two new songs and four previously released songs all dedicated to the social fabric of the country.

This is a big one, folks! Not just one exciting Over Yonder debut, but two …

Equal parts classic songwriter and modern-day storyteller, Gabe Lee has built his own bridge between country, folk and rock over the course of three acclaimed albums. His latest release, The Hometown Kid, finds him distilling those sounds into something sharp and singular, examining his roots as a Nashville native along the way.

Raised by Taiwanese immigrants, Lee grew up surrounded not only by Nashville's rich legacy of country music, but also the classical songs and gospel hymns that his piano-playing mother performed weekly in church. "A lot of my friends' parents were musicians, too," he remembers. "Music was always around me, and it became the driving force for everything I did."

Before he could launch his career as one of Nashville's hometown heroes, though, Lee first needed to leave town. Craving new horizons, he headed to Indiana, where he finished college with degrees in literature and journalism. Living in the Midwest gave him a renewed perspective on his Nashville roots, and when he returned home, he began writing songs that drew upon the narrative skills he'd sharpened as a student.

King Margo is Lucciana Costa and Rachel Coats, who grew up 40 minutes apart but didn't meet until many years later in the middle of a Kentucky field.

Both women spent their twenties building a steady rotation of live shows, studio work and a gun-for-hire reputation as multi-instrumentalists. Rachel was selected to join several international touring artists in the folk-pop realm on bass and vocals. Lucciana focused on songwriting and composition, spending half a decade in Los Angeles honing her craft and scoring films and commercials. Eventually Lucciana and Rachel found themselves in Nashville, both hired for the same touring band where they met for the first time. They connected instantly, both musically and personally, and the seeds for what would eventually become King Margo were planted.

Nashville based Colin O'Brien is a master of the acoustic guitar.  His compositions harken to Leo Kottke, whilst his dancing feet groove in the wake of the late John Hartford, who O'Brien also sites as a primary songwriting inspiration. 

Colin plays concert stages, festivals, clubs and private events throughout the United States and occasionally abroad, if she sounds good. His live shows feature his multi-instrumental virtuosity, amazing percussive dancing on his amplified board and his straight to the point songwriting, sometimes hilarious, always moving. 

Rachael Davis is felt before she is seen or heard, like a pressure drop or a disturbance in the force. The room suddenly gets...jollier.  Peals of uproarious laughter inevitably follow, from her and from those around her.  Exclamations of "HOLY CRAP!" descend like little hailstorms of love and mirth.  And when she stops telling stories about her beloved family or her crazy life long enough to sing a song, you feel the resonations of her deeply empathetic message deep in your subconscious:  this is music for healing, for realizing darkness exists but never letting it run your business.  For more than 30 years, starting back with her family band in the north woods of Michigan, for formative years in the Boston music scene, and continuing into the present as a beloved Nashville fixture, Rachael has been weaving orbs of commanding melody, ensnaring enraptured audiences around the nation, whether alone, or with any number of collaborators, including vocal nightingale trio the Sweet Water Warblers, and her husband Dominic John Davis, master of the bass (as opposed to bassmaster). Before you get the impression it's all fun and games....listen closer.  There is a serious dedication to craft in her near-operatic vocals, her guitar work, her banjo scholarship, and her commitment to the language and traditions of folk music, while pushing it to new fresh places. 

Rachael Davis recordings are rare in this stage of life, having dedicated more time to both the art of performance and the art of raising her frankly delightful children, but a few have escaped: Minor League Deities (2000), Live In Bremen, Germany (2004), Antebellum Queens (2008), Bandbox Jubilee (2014), plus releases with Shout Sister Shout! (2008) and The Sweet Water Warblers (2020). And, great news, more recordings are coming very soon!  A new compilation released in November of 2023 called A Few Good Ones is available now and contains two unreleased songs from about a decade ago that were recently unearthed, and brand new sessions are under way for a long-awaited upcoming release . 

 The world needs more Rachael Davis music, and Rachael Davis needs more of the world, to put down their sorrows and raise a communal voice in celebration of the hilarious beauty of life.  You know how something embarrassing or awful happens, and we say, oh we'll laugh about it later?  Rachael knows life is short:  laugh now.

The Rough & Tumble, a dynamic duo comprised of Mallory Graham and Scott Tyler, have been captivating audiences with their unique blend of dumpster-folk and thrift store-Americana for over a decade. The Pennsylvania-born Graham and Central California's Tyler have a knack for weaving together elements of joy, sorrow, comedy, and drama in their music, leaving audiences on the edge of their seats. On November 24, 2024, the band released their new record, Hymns for My Atheist Sister & Her Friends to Sing Along To.

Writing and performing together since 2007, Mallory Graham and Scott Tyler inevitably formed The Rough & Tumble in 2011 as the friends turned into bandmates. In 2015, after a bad Nashville landlord left them without heat for twelve days during an ice storm, the bandmates-turning-spouses decided to hit the road. They sold everything they could, bought a sixteen-foot camper (despite the warning of their families and the lot salesman), packed up their instruments, their dogs, and a couple of small trinkets shaped like elephants and mice that they couldn’t part with, and hit the road. They’ve been touring relentlessly ever since with their two 100 lb rescue dogs, Mud Puddle and Magpie Mae, in spite of multiple burnt up axles, busted tires, and consistent water leaks.

It takes determination and stamina to live this hardscrabble lifestyle, but not as much as it takes for them to stay still. With some luck and old-fashioned working together, you’ll be able to see The Rough & Tumble pull their camper into your town to do what they do best; speaking up until they’re heard. We suggest you do the same.