Folk Music Legend Tom Paxton Celebrates 80th Birthday with Mountain Stage in Elkins This Saturday.

“Mountain Stage with Larry Groce” returns to Elkins, WV this Saturday, August 12 as the closing concert of the Augusta Heritage Festival.

The show will take place at 7:30pm at the Harper-McNeeley Auditorium in the Myles Center for the Arts on the campus of Davis & Elkins College. Scheduled to appear are folk-music icon Tom Paxton featuring The DonJuans– the duo of Don Henry and Jon Vezner, both accomplished songwriters and performers. Also on the bill is bluegrass mainstay and Augusta instructor Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, guitar-hero Bill Kirchen, also a past Augusta instructor, plus folk duo Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer and an emerging roots group with ties to Elkins and the Augusta Workshops, The Early Mays.  

Tickets are $25, general admission, and are available online, by phone at 304.637.1255, and at the Augusta Heritage office.

Tom Paxton is one of the most prolific songwriter/performers in recorded music history, with songs covered by artists including Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, The Weavers, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Willie Nelson, John Denver, Sandy Denny and The Move, among many others.  A four-time Grammy nominee and recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from The Recording Academy in 2009 and an ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award (for Folk) in 2002, Paxton has made six appearances on “Mountain Stage” since 1986.

Paxton’s new album, “Boat in the Water,” is produced by Grammy winners Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, who are also scheduled to be a part of the “Mountain Stage” program in Elkins. “Boat in the Water” is a fitting addition to a career that first took off in the fertile turf of New York’s Greenwich Village in the ‘60s, where his contemporaries included Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk and Joan Baez.

With movies like the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (in which Paxton is portrayed as a soldier in uniform singing “The Last Thing on My Mind”) and the recent induction of Joan Baez into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the ‘60s Village folk scene has been the focus of renewed attention. Tom will be celebrating his 80th at The Birchmere on October 28th and in NYC at  Pace Univeristy October 29th.

RSVP to our Facebook Event.

Follow Mountain Stage on Instagram and Twitter to peak behind the scenes.

Sign up for our e-mail newsletter to get periodic updates, discounts and playlists from the Mountain Stage office.

Did you know Mountain Stage Members get seven days of exclusive pre-sale access to all Culture Center shows? To support Mountain Stage directly with a sustaining gift, please click here.

See all of our upcoming live events at MountainStage.org/shows.

Credit Polly Whitehorn

/