The Bacon Brothers, Shawn Camp, and more on Mountain Stage

Join us in celebrating 42 years of Mountain Stage!

Produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting and distributed by NPR Music, each two-hour episode of Mountain Stage is recorded in front of a live audience and can be heard every week on nearly 300 stations across America, and around the world via NPR Music and mountainstage.org

Guest Artists: The Bacon Brothers, Shawn Camp, and more TBA

TICKETS

All tickets to this show are e-tickets and will be emailed to you upon purchase. Open up the pdf and the QR code on your ticket will be scanned at the door. This event will also be offered as a livestream.

$30 - $35

Member ticket sales: Friday, Sept. 26 at 10 am ET
Public ticket sales: Sunday, Sept. 28 at 9:50pm ET

LIVESTREAM

Mountain Stage livestreams are free, however, there are some incredible folks out there who’d like to show their support through a donation-based, pay-what-you-want “ticket” for the livestream. This is a donation-based “ticket” to show some love for the program and is not a ticket to the live event.

You’ll be able to catch the show from the comfort of your home (or wherever you wish) Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025 – at 7 PM ET at mountainstage.org.

For The Bacon Brothers, music is all about exploration.

The siblings have spent the better part of three decades creating their own mix of folk, rock, soul, and country music. They call that diverse sound “forosoco,” and it’s taken them around the world, from headlining gigs in Japan to American performances at iconic venues like Carnegie Hall, the Grand Ole Opry and Gruene Hall.

The exploration continues with the band’s twelfth release, Ballad Of The Brothers. It’s a record that highlights not only the similarities between Kevin Bacon (known worldwide as an A-list Hollywood actor) and Michael Bacon (celebrated as an Emmy-winning composer), but the differences, too. The two siblings may be bound together by blood and a mutual love of American roots music, but they’ve grown into sharp songwriters and storytellers with their own distinct approaches. Ballad Of The Brothers makes room for both of those approaches, offering a mix of edgy alt-rock (“Take Off This Tattoo”), Motown-inspired soul (“Put Your Hand Up”), fingerpicked folk (“Let That Be Enough”), and everything in between.

“We’re two musicians who write songs very differently, and we’ve grown to really appreciate those differences,” says Michael. “Whenever I go see a band play live, I’d much rather see them do a thousand things than just one thing. We take a similar approach to our albums.”

While writing new material for Ballad Of The Brothers, the Bacons made several trips to Tennessee, where they teamed up with Nashville-area songwriters like Casey Beathard, Brett Tyler, and Kimberly Kelly. They continued to travel once it came time to record the album, too. “Live With The Lie” was tracked in New Jersey, where the band abandoned the use of a click track in favor of capturing a raw, real performance with their touring band. “Put Your Hand Up,” a brassy soul song that splits the difference between Memphis grit and Motown groove, was recorded in Philadelphia. “Take Off This Tattoo” was produced in Los Angeles by Kevin’s son, Travis Bacon. “It sounded like a country song when we wrote it,” Michael remembers, “but once we decided to give it to Trav, who has more of a rock and electronic sensibility, it became something new.” The band even added a fiddle solo to “Take Off This Tattoo” — an unexpected choice for a rock song, perhaps, but one that emphasizes the Bacon Brothers’ willingness to break new ground. “We worked with fiddle player Brian Fitzgerald on that song,” explains Kevin, “and the direction we gave him was: ‘Imagine that you’re playing an electric guitar, but it just looks like a fiddle.’ He absolutely crushed it.”

Like much of the Bacon Brothers’ work, Ballad Of The Brothers offers a mix of autobiography and richly-detailed fiction. The tongue-in-cheek “Old Bronco” finds Kevin turning a song about his 1969 Bronco truck into a metaphor for aging. “Airport Bar,” one of the most gorgeous tracks in the Bacons’ catalog, compares a doomed relationship to a sports bar in an airport terminal. On the album’s title track (inspired by Gruene Hall, the historic dancehall where Willie Nelson played some of his most memorable shows), the brothers deliver a Wild West narrative about two East Coast city slickers who take a road trip to Texas. Whether by fate or by Faust, they find themselves onstage at a Texas honky-tonk, blessed with musical talent they didn’t know they had. “I wanted to write a Faustian story set in one of my favorite states ever,” says Michael. “It’s sort of like Texas’ own version of Charlie Daniels’ ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia.'”

For Michael and Kevin Bacon, Ballad Of The Brothers marks the continuation of a musical partnership that began long ago in Philadelphia, where the two siblings were raised on a soundtrack of 1970s singer/songwriters, Philly soul bands, and classic rock acts. They’re creating their own soundtrack now, and like many artistic endeavors, the work is never truly done.

“We’re still exploring the sound we began making all those years ago; we’ve just gotten a lot better at it,” Michael says. “Music is a life’s work. It’s a universe of things yet to know. We’re still making new discoveries.”

“This is as much Guy Clark’s album as it is mine. That’s part of my passion for putting it out: to try and keep him alive!”

Shawn Camp was seven years old when an Arkansas fiddle player named Sis Draper finally arrived at a pickin’ party in the hills of Perry County. “I remember her walking in the house, the first time I saw her, with a big beehive hairdo and a fiddle in a coffin case,” Camp says. “She was a legend before I’d ever laid eyes on her, my grandpa and Uncle Cleve had talked her up so much.”

Camp remembers another time, picking in a jam session outside under a neighbor’s carport. Sis was there, playing along with everybody. Camp had his guitar. He was ready. “Sis asked me for my autograph. I’d never really considered having an autograph––I didn’t know what one was,” he says, laughing. “She had me write my name on a scrap of paper. Boy, it sure made me feel good. She respected me as a little kid, as a musician. She inspired me by doing that, to follow my dream.”

Twenty-five years later, a grown Camp sat with Guy Clark in Clark’s Nashville basement workshop, trying to figure out what to write. Camp told his friend about Sis. “Guy said, ‘Well, there’s your song,’” Camp remembers. “We wrote ‘Sis Draper’ that day. ‘Magnolia Wind’ came next. For years, we would work on other songs, then fall into ‘Sis.’ If we got stuck on something, we’d end up going to the Sis Draper project.” The Sis Draper project: the creative refuge of Camp and Clark that grew into a bottomless pool with countless errant tributaries that blur the lines between personal history and wild new folklore. The songs and people are real. The stories could be.

Now, the Sis Draper project is finally a cohesive, recorded masterpiece. Captured in one day at the studio formerly known as The Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa, now simply called Clement House, The Ghost of Sis Draper immerses listeners in a sharply drawn world: The devil’s box is temptation and salvation; life is beautiful, but death lurks nearby; and the hero is a wayfaring, fiddle-wielding woman called Sis. Camp and Clark co-wrote every song on the album, save one, which Clark wrote alone. Clark released six of the songs on his own albums over the years, but the seven other tunes on The Ghost of Sis Draper are being released for the first time. “It’s partially fairytale and partially truth,” Camp says with a grin. “We intentionally wrote songs that fit together.”

Camp began playing guitar as a small child, growing up outside Perryville, Arkansas. Mandolin and fiddle followed, all before he could drive. He remembers dreaming of melodies, waking up, and being able to play them. “I just always loved music. It’s been my everything, really,” Camp says. “My dad worked out of state, so we moved around a lot. Whenever we’d go somewhere, I’d carry a stack of records and a little record player with my guitar. Music was my only constant––that, and my mom and dad.”

A prodigy who never knew how to be anything but, Camp moved to Nashville at 20, and found early gigs playing with the Osborne Brothers, Jerry Reed, Alan Jackson, Shelby Lynne, and Trisha Yearwood. Then, he really started writing––and singing with sly grace, smooth but earthy. Camp released his first solo album, Shawn Camp, on the Reprise (Warner Bros.) label, but found his biggest success as a songwriter, penning hits for Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, Josh Turner, Blake Shelton, George Strait, and many others. He became a trusted collaborator of John Prine, Loretta Lynn, and of course, Clark, with whom he wrote constantly, and toured occasionally. When Clark won a Grammy in 2014 for his final album, My Favorite Picture of You, Camp took home a statue as one of the record’s producers. In 2015, Camp took home another Grammy, this time, as lead vocalist for bluegrass supergroup the Earls of Leicester.

Clark died in 2016, but saw his work revered while he lived. He is included in conversations ranking the greatest songwriters of all time, and his approach to songwriting is as respected as the songs themselves. He wrote with a poet’s empathy but revised with an editor’s ruthless precision. Critics love Clark, but the first to lionize his songs were his peers. Clark became not just an idol, but a collaborator and friend to younger writers––writers like Camp. “He would hit you with a powerful line when you least expected it,” Camp says. “That would cut you to the bone with the truth.”

The Ghost of Sis Draper is a concept album that plays by its own rules, loosely calibrated by Camp and Clark. The songs are tied to one another by characters, narratives, and kernels of old-time fiddle tunes. Camp’s love of concept records can be traced back to his childhood. “Red Headed Stranger is my favorite record of all time,” Camp says. “I wanted this record to feel like it all happened right then––like Red Headed Stranger. They cut that record, and they could reach out and touch each other. I think that comes through in a recording.”

For The Ghost of Sis Draper, Camp assembled a cast of players capable of delivering immediacy and skill. Arkansas fiddle great Tim Crouch breathes life into the legend of Sis Draper’s fiddlin’, supported by Mike Bub on bass, Chris Henry on mandolin, Jimmy Stewart on dobro, Cory Walker on banjo, and of course, Camp on guitar and vocals. “It’s a jug band thing––all for one, one for all,” says Camp. “Everybody plays the melody together. I like that in this type of music.”

The album kicks off with Camp’s distinct flatpicking, playing the song that launched them all, “Sis Draper.” As Camp sings, “Sis Draper is the devil’s daughter, plays the fiddle Daddy bought her,” the rest of us are swept up in the rousing pickin’ party and fable that’s taking shape.

The exquisite “Magnolia Wind” follows, with its tender portrayal of love and longing. Then “Soldier’s Joy 1864” veers into moribund territory, recounting a post-battle amputation through the eyes of the wounded man. The melody is rooted in an old-time fiddle tune called “Soldier’s Joy,” with a noteworthy change. “We flattened the third and morphed it into a minor that brought a darkness to it,” says Camp. “The tune has been around since before the Civil War, but I don’t believe it’s ever been played this way.”

Many of the songs’ melodies were inspired by traditional tunes: “Big Foot Stomp” is anchored in “Lost Indian,” while “Sis Draper” pulls from “Arkansas Traveler.” “There are patterns to those melodies, and we altered some of them so it’s not laid out exactly like the original fiddle tune––it’s a portion of the pattern,” Camp explains. “I’d play an old tune, and we’d just start making stuff up around it.”

Sweet songbirds chatter amongst themselves before the band fires up “The Fiddlin’ Preacher,” which races through a former soldier’s new battles. Like bluesmen at the crossroads, fiddlers whisper old tales of making deals with dark forces to master the devil’s favorite instrument. A man of God wouldn’t––couldn’t––play the devil’s box. But this one does.

Featuring Verlon Thompson on harmony vocals, “Old Hillbilly Hand-Me-Down” celebrates riches found in shared, humble treasures. Thompson––Clark’s dear friend and longtime sideman––also co-wrote the song. Heard together, Camp’s and Thompson’s voices can’t help but conjure up Clark’s spirit. Then, a M**der of crows arrives. Nestled between songs five and six, they caw to one another. “They’re hinting at the fact that Sis is going to be murdered,” Camp says. “And Guy is a crow now, you know?” Camp is referring to Terry Allen’s Caw Caw Blues, the latter’s sculpture of a crow that contains Clark’s ashes.

After the crows impart a sense of foreboding, “Checkered Shirt Band,” “Big Foot Stomp,” and “Grandpa’s Rovin’ Ear” swerve decidedly into joy, vivid characters, and winking humor. “Those three songs in a row: It’s like a house party,” Camp says. “I think it’ll be fun for kids to listen to that section.” Leaning into nostalgia, “Corn Meal Waltz” gives us front row seats at a community dance.

Written solely by Clark about 50 years ago, “New Cut Road” is an outlier––but it’s also a bridge. “When I was about 15, I had just started playing the fiddle. My dad and I were working on this house we were going to move into,” Camp says. “I remember standing on the ladder, holding up sheet rock in the ceiling. We had a little radio, and Bobby Bare comes on with Ricky Skaggs playing fiddle on his new record, ‘New Cut Road.’ The song was such an inspiration to me.”

The last track is a self-contained tour de force. Natural, honest, and rooted to the earth, the songbirds return to introduce a medley of three separate songs recounting the M**der of Sis Draper. Surrounded by adroit pickers and mournful fiddle, Camp’s sublime vocals take charge like an otherworldly master of ceremonies, lamenting, warning, and ultimately, cementing Sis’s legacy. It is a spellbinding feat of musicianship and storytelling.

Reflecting on a recording more than 20 years in the making, Camp is sure of its purpose: “I want people to feel like they’ve been spoken to by Guy from the other side.”

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