“Rising Appalachia”

Thursday night (4/23) I attend a Rising Appalachia concert at Radford University. I had seen them before at a couple of music festivals, which were all outside and very different environments. Doing the sonic footprint activity before this concert made a huge difference because it made me pick up on this I never had before.

The auditorium was fairly normal but once the band came out on stage the venue became anything but that. An upright base player/guitarist and drummer joined the two sisters, Leah and Chloe. The four of them made a very unique sound that was extremely dynamic. They could go from a very slow and quiet melody to an energizing song that had the entire room dancing. In fact, most of the audience was dancing right down in front of the stage and in the aisles. This is something that I had never seen in a venue as traditional and closed off as this one.

Between each song, the duo would share stories and laughs from their tour (which they had plenty of because this was one of the last shows on the tour). We were very lucky because Rising Appalachia had just released their new album “Wider Circles” a few days prior to the concert. They played a great mix of music that included songs from their new album, some of them were they first time they had performed them live which was really special.

I was very pleasantly surprised with the show as a whole, Rising Appalachia did a fantastic job of engaging the audience and make sure everyone had a great time while enjoying their amazing music. My only criticism is that they didn’t play enough; I could have stayed for twice as long and still been having a great time. I look forward to seeing them again at music festivals in the future!