Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters Open Friday Night Folk’s New Season in New London

Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters Open Friday Night Folk’s New Season in New London on Sept. 18, bringing country, bluegrass, folk, and western swing to All Souls for the first concert of a nine-show season stretching into next spring.

The 7:30 p.m. concert pairs Gallatin’s lead vocals with one of the group’s defining sounds: Roger Williams on resophonic guitar. They’ll be joined by Williams’ son, JD Williams, on mandolin and vocals, and veteran bluegrass musician Bob Dick on bass and vocals.

Together, the quartet occupies a musical space somewhere between an old country record and a bluegrass picking session. Traditional country songs get stripped back to acoustic instruments. Bluegrass can soften into a ballad. Folk, western swing and Americana move in and out of the set without requiring anyone to stop and announce that the genre has changed.

It’s music built around voices and strings.

For Friday Night Folk, it’s also the beginning of another season in a New London concert tradition that dates back to 1989.

From Western Ranches to the New England Bluegrass Scene

Gallatin’s road to Connecticut didn’t exactly follow the standard path to becoming a New England folk and bluegrass performer.

Born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, she spent years moving around the American West, including time in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and California. Horses and music were both part of the picture. She worked at guest ranches, helped organize horseback riding programs and performed as an entertainer.

Gallatin later recalled spending about a dozen years working on ranches in the West, along with stints as a ski bum and bartender.

Music was there all along, but the career began to take a different shape after she encountered Connecticut musicians while spending a winter in New England in 1992.

The acoustic music community she discovered here offered something she hadn’t found to the same degree out West: a network of musicians and an established bluegrass scene.

So Gallatin packed her guitar into a Ford Econoline van and headed east in 1993.

Connecticut became home.

Over the years that followed, Gallatin recorded 10 albums and toured across the United States as well as Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Europe. Stillwaters has made multiple European tours, and the group has twice represented the United States as featured performers at the European World of Bluegrass convention in the Netherlands.

Her influences reach well beyond bluegrass. Gallatin points to the cowboy songs she encountered in the West along with country artists including Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn and the Everly Brothers.

That helps explain why an Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters show doesn’t fit neatly into one musical drawer.

The Sound of a Guitar Built to Be Heard

Then there’s Roger Williams.

Williams plays resophonic guitar, often called a Dobro, an instrument that can look vaguely familiar until you hear it.

Instead of relying solely on a wooden soundboard to amplify the strings like a conventional acoustic guitar, a resophonic guitar uses a metal resonator. The result is that bright, ringing, almost vocal sound closely associated with bluegrass.

Played horizontally with a steel bar, the instrument can slide between notes rather than simply jumping from one fretted pitch to another. In the right hands, it can cry behind a country vocal one moment and turn into a fast-moving lead instrument the next.

Williams has had plenty of time to figure out what it can do.

He began playing Dobro-style resophonic guitar in 1963 while still a teenager. Within roughly a year, he was performing with the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover at Boston’s Hillbilly Ranch, an important venue in the development of New England bluegrass.

His career since then has connected him with an extensive list of folk and bluegrass musicians, including Hazel Dickens, Joe Val, Mac Wiseman, Southern Rail, Mark Schatz, Wyatt Rice and others. His work has also taken him overseas numerous times.

Eventually, his musical path crossed Gallatin’s.

Their partnership grew around a shared affection for country standards, but rather than simply reproducing the arrangements of the originals, they began giving the songs an acoustic bluegrass treatment.

That contrast became part of Stillwaters’ identity: Gallatin’s country-rooted lead vocal out front, with Williams’ resophonic guitar winding around it.

A Father and Son Share the Stage

There’s another relationship inside Friday night’s lineup.

Mandolin player JD Williams grew up with Roger Williams as his father, which meant music wasn’t exactly something waiting to be discovered outside the house.

He learned multiple instruments early, eventually attending Berklee College of Music and developing a style that draws not only from bluegrass but from jazz and blues.

JD has since worked as a sideman and session player with musicians and groups around New England and New York, including Southern Rail, The Hot Flashes, The Cadleys and Connecticut songwriter Nathan Day.

He has also spent years performing alongside his father.

The smaller mandolin occupies a very different sonic space from Roger’s resophonic guitar, allowing the two Williamses to trade rhythmic and melodic roles while Gallatin handles the lead vocal.

The family connection isn’t just a footnote in the band’s biography. Years of playing together can create the sort of musical shorthand that’s difficult to manufacture in rehearsal. One player knows where the other is headed before he quite gets there.

Bob Dick Brings His Own Bluegrass History

Holding down the bottom end Friday night is Bob Dick, another musician whose history reaches deep into New England bluegrass.

Dick is a Berklee alumnus and a founding member of the long-running Blackstone Valley Bluegrass Band. Earlier in his career he played with several regional groups before joining Front Range in 1991.

Front Range went on to tour nationally and in Europe, with Dick recording six albums with the group.

His work eventually extended beyond performing. Dick founded Appleland Recording Studios in Northbridge, Massachusetts, and became a producer and recording engineer. His credits include Front Range’s One Beautiful Day, which received the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Gospel Recording of the Year honor in 1995.

That means Friday’s quartet isn’t Gallatin surrounded by anonymous backing musicians.

There are decades of New England acoustic-music history standing beside her.

A New London Folk Tradition Since 1989

The room has some history, too.

Friday Night Folk began at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Congregation in New London in 1989, bringing traditional and contemporary folk performers to southeastern Connecticut.

The names that have passed through the series over the decades amount to a substantial piece of modern folk history.

John Gorka has played there. So have Tom Chapin, Richard Shindell, Patty Larkin, Cheryl Wheeler, Gordon Bok, Bill Staines, Bill Morrissey, Vance Gilbert, Utah Phillips, Sarah Lee Guthrie and Aztec Two-Step, among many others.

But Friday Night Folk was never conceived simply as a concert promoter.

Its stated mission connects music with social and environmental justice, and the series has used benefit concerts to support grassroots organizations working in southeastern Connecticut.

Past beneficiaries have included FRESH New London, Save the Sound, the Southeastern Connecticut Community Land Trust, refugee resettlement organization Start Fresh and other local causes.

That relationship between folk music and activism has a long history of its own. American folk traditions have carried labor songs, civil rights songs, antiwar music and environmental messages for generations. Friday Night Folk keeps that connection visible rather than treating “folk” simply as an acoustic musical style.

The result is something New London doesn’t have many equivalents to: a recurring concert series where nationally and regionally established performers play in an intimate community setting rather than a nightclub or large theater.

Nine Concerts Carry Friday Night Folk Into Spring

Gallatin and Stillwaters aren’t simply playing another date on the Friday Night Folk calendar. They’re opening its 2026-27 season.

The series continues Oct. 9 with Crys Matthews, followed Nov. 13 by the Connecticut Hope Collective for World Kindness Day in a benefit for FRESH New London.

The Rivergods arrive Dec. 11, followed by Geoff Kaufman on Jan. 8.

A February benefit concert, Sounds of Justice: From Seeger and Odetta to Today!, directly taps the relationship between folk music and social movements. March brings Troubadours of Connecticut with Kala Farnham, Lara Herscovitch and Charlie Widmer.

Windborne follows April 9, with Joe Jencks closing the season May 7.

Season tickets are available for $125.

Individual tickets for Gallatin and Stillwaters are $20 in advance or $25 at the door.

For people who can’t make it into Unity Hall, Friday Night Folk also plans a livestream through the All Souls New London YouTube channel, with donations encouraged.

But inside the room Friday night, the new season begins the old-fashioned way: four musicians, a collection of acoustic instruments and songs that have traveled a long way before arriving on Jay Street.

More information is available at the Event Website link below.

To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.

Details

Event: Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters — Friday Night Folk 2026-27 Season Opener
Date: Friday, Sept. 18, 2026
Time: 7:30-10 p.m.
Location: Friday Night Folk at All Souls UU, Unity Hall
Address: 19 Jay St., New London, CT 06320
Performers: Amy Gallatin, vocals; Roger Williams, resophonic guitar and vocals; JD Williams, mandolin and vocals; Bob Dick, bass and vocals
Music: Country, bluegrass, folk, Americana and western swing
Tickets: $20 in advance; $25 at the door
Season Tickets: $125 for the 2026-27 Friday Night Folk season
Livestream: A livestream is scheduled to be available through the All Souls New London YouTube channel on the night of the concert. Donations are encouraged.
Accessibility: All Souls describes its Jay Street building as fully accessible, with wheelchair spaces and assistive listening devices available.
Parking: All Souls has an on-site parking lot, including designated accessible parking. Additional parking is available at the adjacent courthouse lot on Cottage Street.
Refund Policy: Refunds are available up to 14 days before the event.
2026-27 Season: Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters, Sept. 18; Crys Matthews, Oct. 9; Connecticut Hope Collective for World Kindness Day, Nov. 13; The Rivergods, Dec. 11; Geoff Kaufman, Jan. 8; Sounds of Justice: From Seeger and Odetta to Today!, Feb. 12; Troubadours of Connecticut, March 12; Windborne, April 9; Joe Jencks, May 7.

Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.