Meadowlark at the Barn
Schedule
Fri, 22 Aug, 2025 at 08:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
160 Plochmann Lane, Woodstock, NY, United States, New York 12498 | Woodstock, NY
Gates: 6:30PM / Doors: 7:30PM / Show: 8:00PMMEADOWLARK AT THE BARN
The Hudson Valley’s own Meadowlark Festival travels from the orchard to the barn to bring a lineup of past and present performers to give fans a taste of the Meadowlark experience. This September, attendees will experience a 1940s-era trailer stage tucked near a hundreds-year-old oak tree on historic Stone Ridge Orchard, complete with sweeping views of the Shawangunks and the Catskills. This year’s curated lineup includes rising indie rock, psychedelic rock, and American roots music artists this September 12-14 at Stone Ridge Orchard.
Attendees for Meadowlark at the Barn will have the opportunity to purchase half-price festival tickets at the show.
LAURA STEVENSON
“Music is a resource we can tap into to heal ourselves,” Laura Stevenson says. She’s talking about her studies in a music therapy graduate program, but her explanation parallels the overarching message of her sixth full-length album Late Great — a record that finds Stevenson excavating the messy emotions of heartbreak for the very first time. “When I started this new career path a few years ago, I kind of quieted my own healing relationship to music, just because I honestly didn’t have time, but this record was me getting back to it. This was me processing, and reconnecting with that part of myself and it carried me through.”
In the four years since her self-titled album was released, Laura’s entire life has been upended by pandemic-era motherhood, a painful split, and navigating new loves. Her new album is about letting go, taking charge, and learning to rebuild from the deepest layers of your being: “It’s a document of loss for sure, but it also kind of draws the map of this exciting precipice that I’m standing on. I am making my own life now. With the record, with everything, this is the first time I get to call all the shots.”
Late Great is Stevenson’s first album to be released on life-long friend and collaborator Jeff Rosenstock’s Really Records. “Laura has always had this supernatural ability to write these abstract lyrics that cut straight to your heart,” says Rosenstock, “but the feeling of perpetual heartbreak on this record is more pointed, universal and vulnerable than anything she's ever done before and it hits so hard.”
Late Great was produced and mixed by John Agnello, with the live band tracking at The Building in Marlboro, NY - an old church that used to be a pay-what-you can model venue, a suitable space for an artist with DIY punk roots. “It’s where I recorded the last one when I was about 5 months pregnant,” she recalled, “the first time I felt the baby kick, I was sitting on the couch in the control room listening back to some vocal takes.” This was a comfortable place to capture the energy of a full band, and afterwards Stevenson had several months to revamp the songs at home. “I added a million guitars,” recalls Stevenson, “I taught myself how to play the bass and made an orchestra of basses. I added percussion, synthesizers. I made it into something I really love. Poor John had to mix in like, 50 additional tracks per song.”
Late Great also features old friends and heavy hitters - Sammi Niss (Laura’s longtime drummer, who also plays in Real Estate), James Richardson (on bass and guitars), Shawn Alpay (cello), Kayleigh Goldsworthy (strings), Chris Farren (of Chris Farren) on synths, Kelly Pratt (of Beirut, Arcade Fire, Father John Misty on horns), Mike Brenner (of Magnolia Electric Company/Songs Ohia on pedal steel) and Jeff Rosenstock (piano, guitar, saxophone and arrangements.)
The result is a big, smoldering sound that makes you want to roll down your car windows and let the wind whip away your woes. “Honey” draws influences from Dolly Parton and Townes Van Zandt, but it builds into a shoegaze dreamscape of sparkly guitars and stacked vocals. “In my mix notes I just said ‘I want it to sound like 1,000 angels screaming and crying,’” Stevenson laughed.
“Not Us” shares the heartbreaking story of a couple watching others breaking up around them, only to face the impossible reality that their union was the next to crack. Later, on “Middle Love,” Laura offers the image of two drivers’ licenses sitting together on a notary’s desk as a couple separates: “A click of a pen, and the stroke of a hand, and there’s no longer you and me.”
“I Couldn’t Sleep” tackles the nervous energy of opening yourself up again to someone else and being somehow relieved that the experience wasn't what you built it up to be, while “Short and Sweet” captures the complications of being swept into a new relationship, as deceptively light as a balloon on a string: “Don’t tie it too tight / Don’t tie it at all / I cannot lose what I never had / I never knew I wanted that.”
In addition to working as a musician, Laura takes music therapy night classes, is completing 1,500 internship hours, and is raising a small daughter with a big personality. “She loves princess shit, but she also loves Black Sabbath - pretty stuff and evil rock and roll which is kinda perfect and very cool,” Laura says with a laugh. “I wear a lot of different hats, so life is pretty crazy, but I’m hoping I’m gonna look back in a couple of years and say, ‘how the fuck did I do all of that?’”
CUT WORMS
Max Clarke is the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and musician presently known as Cut Worms. Cut Worm’s new Self Titled album continues Clarke’s exploration of what he calls “pop essentialism”. Mining the golden hits of yesteryear for a timeless sound, he contemplates age-old questions through a modern lens. Here, he leaves behind the legendary studio and sought-after producers for a more homegrown approach, working with a cast of gifted friends and collaborators. The result is a compact collection of daydream anthems that live between the summer’s hopeful beginnings and the season’s fleeting end.
Cut Worm’s Self Titled LP broke out of the gates in 2023, landing Clarke on the Billboard charts for the first time ever. Receiving praise from Paste Magazine as “Clarke’s brightest entry yet, one of the best rock ‘n’ roll records of 2023.”
JEFFREY LEWIS & THE VOLTAGE
Jeffrey Lewis and his various bandmates have perfected a scuzzy, urban style of indie-folk, developing from late-90s New York City bedroom tapes into a mighty 21st Century mash-up of folksy spiel and artsy garage, like Pete Seeger meeting Sonic Youth. UNCUT Magazine said, “Sublime… Lewis [moves] between melodic garage-punk and raw acoustic grooves to great effect. But it’s his terrific wordplay—sharp, funny, poignant and much more—that really dazzles.”
A born and raised denizen of the Lower East Side, Lewis’s home recordings were discovered by Rough Trade Records in 2001 (famed label of The Smiths, The Strokes, Belle & Sebastian and more) while Lewis was briefly living in Austin, Texas. Since the 2001 release of his first official album “The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane and Other Favorites” on Rough Trade Records, Lewis has toured the world and released numerous acclaimed albums on Rough Trade and other labels. He’s built a worldwide fanbase while regularly changing band names, most recently recording as Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage for Don Giovanni Records and Moshi Moshi Records. Of Lewis, David Berman (of Silver Jews) said, “Jeffrey is the best pure songwriter I know of.”
His 2025 album is The Even More Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis.
