The Berkeley Old Time Music Convention cooks up an irresistible lineup, featuring legendary folk revivalists, New Lost City Ramblers, plus the East Bay's own all-gal old-time outfit, The Stairwell Sisters. This evening is guaranteed to plant a grin on your face and a song in your heart!

Way back during the folk revival heyday in 1958, Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley (since replaced by Tracy Schwarz) formed the old-time string band known as the New Lost City Ramblers. Striving to recreate old time country instrumental techniques, the trio took their repertoire and arrangements from vintage hillbilly and blues records of the 1920s and '30s. Their distinctive performances, featuring fiddle tunes, murder ballads, political songs, and love songs, interspersed with witty commentary, have made them long-time favorites on the festival circuit and have been captured on a long series of Folkways albums (two of which were nominated for Grammies). True keepers of the flame, the Ramblers reconvene now and then over the intervening years, staunchly preserving the southern roots of traditional American music, and helping to popularize it across the U.S. and around the world.

Driving stringband music, sweet country harmonies, and red-hot buckdancing: the Stairwell Sisters open tonight's performance with their usual wild, good-time show. Infectious foot-tapping is sure to spread like wildfire when Lisa Berman (dobro), Stephanie Prausnitz (fiddle), Evie Ladin (clawhammer banjo and clogging), Martha Hawthorne (bass), and Sue Sandlin (guitar and tiple) take the stage.