Flat Bridge / Sircely & Lichtenstein

Name: Flat Bridge / Sircely & Lichtenstein
Start: 2025-12-18T19:30:00-08:00
Location: Rainshadow Recording

Schedule

Thu, 18 Dec, 2025 at 07:30 pm

UTC-08:00

Location

Rainshadow Recording | Port Townsend, WA

Doors at 7
Rainshadow Recording presents a double feature: Flat Bridge with Sircely & Lichtenstein. Flat Bridge is a North Carolina old-time stringband composed of Emma Rast on fiddle, Daniel Ullom on mandolin, and Joe Ellingson on guitar. The same night, PT’s own Matt Sircely and Kate Lichtenstein will offer their long-awaited debut duo performance of original songs with vocal harmonies and the rich tones of vintage instruments — fiddle, mandolin, guitar and tenor guitar. Together in partnership, the two ensembles create a supergroup which will transform the evening into an engaging triple-bill performance laden with plot twists and poetic lyricism.
Flat Bridge honed their music in the vibrant scenes of North Carolina: rowdy fiddle conventions, late night kitchen jams, and square dances. Their deep love for traditional fiddling and harmony singing creates music that is at once fun, immediate and heartfelt. As a duo, Emma and Daniel have toured all over the US, sharing stages with top-tier bands like The Onlies and Hard Drive, even backing up the Green Grass Cloggers. They recorded their debut album on a 4-track cassette machine in 2019. Guitarist Joe Ellingson is both a world traveler and core member of the Seattle acoustic music scene.
Kate Lichtenstein works as a square dance fiddler throughout the Northwest alongside the most accomplished players in the region. For years, she played guitar and sang with the Barn Owls, an influential Seattle stringband, and the Paradise Drifters showcase her original songs in an electric format. She currently serves as tutorial coordinator at Centrum’s Fiddle Tunes. Audiences know Matt Sircely for spreading his love of swing mandolin onstage with Hot Club Sandwich and for his instructional work at music camps. He shares his songwriting in solo shows and has toured in duo format with great bluegrass banjo players like Danny Barnes and Jeff Scroggins.
Together, Kate and Matt create sets which embrace a breadth of influences: acoustic and electric, old-time field recordings, forward-thinking improvisations, vintage folk and country classics. Throughout their careers, both have become regarded as musical pollinators, bringing songs and tunes to their respective musical communities. Now, they are uniting two extensive repertoires with a focus on their own catalogs of original songs. Their music covers a breadth of rhythmic grooves and textural blends of vocal harmonies as they accompany each other’s songs.
Altogether, the five musicians have been friends for decades. Kate Lichtenstein describes her veneration of Emma Rast: “Emma is such a rock star, building on deep Appalachian and bluegrass foundations of the Rast family band, considered staples of the music scene in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is a great lead and harmony singer, guitar player, one of my favorite fiddlers — I love listening to and learning from everything she does.”
Likewise, Matt Sircely holds Daniel Ullom in high regard: “Daniel is one of my favorite mandolin players in the world. I met him when he approached me as a youngster; I had the honor of contributing to his early development of timing and tone. Years later, I invited his trio to perform with me at the Cornish concert series in Seattle, the best acoustic band I ever had. And it’s so heartwarming to see him now, his endless stream of spectacular videos with his Lloyd Loar mandolin, the success of his recordings, his professional work with folks like Jake Eddy and the richness of hearing him play and sing alongside Emma. We hope everyone will join us at this one-of-a-kind show!”