Join traditional favorites High Country and Dix Bruce & Jim Nunally as the Freight welcomes the new year with our annual bluegrass gala, featuring hot pickin', a fabulous buffet, silly hats, and sparkling apple juice at the stroke of midnight! High Country's 1998 album, The Earthquake (Strictly Country), firmly reinforced its status as California's premier band in the Bill Monroe and Stanley Brothers tradition. With exciting, driving rhythms, deft picking, and soulful singing, High Country is led by Butch Waller, who saw his own solo mandolin album, Golden Gate Promenade (Rebel), gain acclaim in 1999. The band includes banjo player Larry Cohea, bassist Glenn Dauphin, fiddler Tom Bekeny, Bob Waller on guitar, and Jim Mintun on guitar and dobro. Sharing the entertainment hat with High Country are Dix Bruce and Jim Nunally, a duo in the true down-home style: two voices and two acoustic guitars, mixing folk, bluegrass, and country, spiced with humor, harmony, and hot picking. Their latest CD, The Way Things Are (Muzix), brings together original as well as traditional folk and classic Americana by Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, and others, all performed with a mixture of wit, energy, and sincerity.