Sicard Hollow + Tray Wellington Band

Sicard Hollow + Tray Wellington

Saturday, October 11th 2025

Charleston Pour House

Main Stage

8pm doors/ 9pm show

$17 advance / $20 day of show

Sicard Hollow

Nashville’s psychedelic punk-grass rockers, Sicard Hollow, grew up sick of any existing

institution telling them who and what to be. Now, as they navigate adulthood, they’re

equally tired of the music institutions telling them what their music should sound like—

so they dunked it in patchouli and a skate-and-destroy ethos that brings an enduring

sound into the modern age.

Before the band met in 2018, none of the members ever considered playing bluegrass. Matt

Rennick (violin) was working on electronic music, Will Herrin (mandolin/vocals) was

playing guitar in rock bands, and Alex King (guitar/vocals) was barely playing music at

all. After a few jam sessions, the bluegrass just kind of happened. Since adding Parrish

Gabriel (bass) in the Fall of 2019, the band has been on a journey of self discovery within

the genre while challenging themselves to make it their own.

Whether it was skateboarding or chasing jam bands, singer/guitar-player Alex King

always had a fierce desire to succeed on his own terms. He spent years as an artist

without an art-form, searching for a home by pouring every bit of his sweat and heart into

anything he was doing. “It took years for me to land on music,” King says, referencing

“This I Know” from the album, “but when I found that fire inside my heart, I found my

home.”

It just so happened that finding that home coincided with the shutdown of live music due

to the pandemic that canceled the entire release tour supporting their debut studio record,

‘Secret of the Breeze.’ During that time, the band turned inward to reflect on their identity

and how they could add their generation’s voice to a timeless genre of music.

The result, with the help of producer John Mailander (Billy Strings, Bruce Hornsby) and

Recording/mixing engineer Dan Davis (Billy Strings, Zac Brown Band, Dierks Bentley),

was a combination of pop-punk melodies, psychedelic instrumental breaks, and

existential song-writing all packaged as a bluegrass quartet dressed in tattoos and

tie-dyes.

After six years of tearing up festival stages around the country like Peach Festival,

Summer Camp, CaveFest at the Caverns, WinterWonderGrass, Blue Ox, and Hillberry, as

well as gassing up sold-out crowds supporting artists like the Infamous Stringdusters,

Leftover Salmon, Eggy, Sam Bush, Kitchen Dwellers, Dogs in a Pile, Dopapod, Pigeons

Playing Ping Pong, and Yonder Mountain String Band, Sicard Hollow has a full tank and a

whole lot guts as they hit the road in 2025.

Tray Wellington Band

Banjo player Tray Wellington’s approach to the quintessential American instrument is all about looking forward. An International Bluegrass Music Association Award winner, Wellington is critically acclaimed not only for his technical prowess, but also for leveraging his unique point of view to craft a one-of-a-kind voice on the instrument. It’s a feat that’s all too rare in these roots genres that seem to value emulation and regurgitation over all else. Instead, Wellington has time and time again reasserted that his playing style, and all of the many varied and disparate parts that combine within it, is wholly his own – and it’s unconcerned with tradition.

Whether seen on CNN, discovered in reviews and features by The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, or heard on the main stage of roots music festivals across the country, Wellington combines forward-looking musical textures and influences with an athletic and trad right hand. There are numerous qualities here evoking so many five-string banjo legends, but there are just as many that are brand new – referencing or conjuring jazz, swing, bebop, hip-hop, rock and roll, and beyond. Wellington is carving a truly idiosyncratic pathway for himself in music and on the banjo. The stereotypical, often revisionist and white-washed cultural touchpoints of the instrument are decidedly in his rearview mirror.

With roots in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee, Wellington subverts those expectations and presuppositions of five-string banjo players artfully; his playing is constantly informed by a striking self awareness. Do not be confused, his bluegrass, old-time, and traditional expertise is well-honed, since he was a teenager, but at this stage in his solo career, they are merely a small handful of influences in the rich, diverse soil his music is rooted in. On top of this well of knowledge, Wellington knows how he is perceived in these roots music spaces, and he uses that awareness to his advantage.

Tray Wellington Band sets include broad, through-composed new acoustic instrumentals that are cerebral and intentional, but accessible, too. Their concerts never stray into “show off” territory. They’ll often include entrancing covers – like a show-stopping rendition of Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” – and plenty of bluegrass, Americana, and country, but the bulk of material here is original with a focus on composition and improvisation.

While Wellington and his band are a common sight at bluegrass festivals, this is a bluegrass ensemble in structure only. Yet another banjo expectation that he slyly reconfigures. It’s clear Wellington never feels hemmed in by his instrument, his background, or the vocabularies available to him from each. That freedom is more than attractive to audiences and listeners, it’s electric. When the band steps on stage, the audience sees a “bluegrass band,” but by the time they leave the stage, those audiences are shown a group and a sound that is anything but.

At the end of the day, at the end of the concert, at the end of the tour, Tray Wellington synthesizes countless styles and inputs to craft an approach to the banjo where reinvention and innovation aren’t abstract concepts, but active, real time processes. Banjo players like Wellington are adept at sitting on fences, living in multiple, dissonant worlds simultaneously.

Tray Wellington accomplishes this type of duality with ease, even for his youth, demonstrating that if you treat the banjo as an instrument that transcends styles, techniques, and genres it will rise to that occasion and then some. And, he shows us all that there’s an entire undiscovered world of banjo out there waiting for us. With a guide like Wellington, that world is no longer hard to find.

* Show is 21+. Attendees under 21 must be accompanied by a parent & will be subject to a $5 surcharge. The surcharge must be paid in cash at the door on the day of the event.