Look out, it's time to bust out and cut loose with the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention! Kicking off the festivities in fine style tonight with some of the most soul-stirring music around are Appalachian ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams, autoharp virtuoso Evo Bluestein, and the Bay Area's own irresistible goodtime gals, the Stairwell Sisters.

Born and raised in a small mountain community in Madison County, North Carolina, Sheila Kay Adams carries on the tradition of English, Scottish, and Irish ballads that crossed the Atlantic with her ancestors in the mid-1700's. Sheila performs the songs with the same intensity and the same powerful voice passed down through seven generations of her family, interspersing the music with stories about her childhood and community. An award-winning author, Sheila was also a technical advisor and singing coach for the film Songcatcher.

Evo Bluestein was born into a musical family. His father (the late Gene Bluestein) being a professor of folklore at the University of Minnesota and California State University, Fresno, Evo was extremely lucky to encounter great tradition-bearers like Dewey Balfa, Tommy Jarrell, Bessie Jones, and Jean Ritchie during his early years. He plays 10 different instruments, but is best known for his virtuosity on the autoharp, and has designed his own 'harp called the Evoharp.

Driving stringband music, sweet country harmonies, and red-hot buckdancing: the Stairwell Sisters offer all this and more when they bring their passion for old-time country songs and rowdy fiddle tunes to the Freight for a wild, good-time show. Energetic musicianship and tight vocal arrangements are the order of the hour 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 with their fiddle tunes from Alabama to Scotland, old songs of trains, boats and possums, and new songs of trial and work, loss and love, and all-night parties.