2019 Headliners

We are pleased to announce our headliners and full lineup of musical artists for our 16th Annual Maplewoodstock Music & Arts Festival.

Antibalas will headline Day 1, with Sister Sparrow featured on Day 2, prior to headliners (and closing act) Turkuaz.

Read more below and check out our Day 1 and Day 2 schedules.

Antibalas

https://antibalas.com/

Antibalas is a force of nature celebrated by both music connoisseurs and a wide array of renowned artists alike. Antibalas has served as the backing band for high profile tribute shows at Carnegie Hall, including Music of Paul Simon (2014), Music of David Byrne & Talk Heads (2015), and Music of Aretha Franklin (2017). Antibalas members have also appeared alongside some of today’s biggest stars, such as Beyonce, The Roots, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Angelique Kidjo, Zap Mama, Femi Kuti, Seun Kuti, Tony Allen, Davido, Arcade Fire, Lady Antebellum, and many others. In 2012, Antibalas made their late night television debut on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and have appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Formed in Brooklyn, the musical collective known as Antibalas has a new new studio album, Where The Gods Are In Peace, which is an epic Afro-Western Trilogy searching for solace from American political opportunism, greed and vengeance. Through its battle cry of resistance against exploitation and displacement, Antibalas’ longform compositions investigate oppression in 1800s America that eerily mirror the current state of the country. Three explosive original arrangements cultivate an urgent call to heal a broken system. Ultimately, the sonic excursion lands on an island where love is our first instinct. A new ideology is born opening our hearts to the possibilities of living as one unified people, where all gods are equal and together we prevail.

Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds

https://www.sistersparrow.com/

For nearly a decade , Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds have been hailed for their explosive brand of modern soul, equally celebrated for their three studio albums and electrifying live performances. Kincheloe grew up amongst an intensely musical family in upstate New York’s Catskill Mountains, co-founding Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds with her brother Jackson at just 18. The band based itself in Brooklyn and soon earned a rep as one of the har dest working outfits anywhere in the world, playing upwards of 150 shows each year including headline dates, sold out r esidencies, and top festivals. “Sister Sparrow, Arleigh Kincheloe’s nom de disque , is a soul queen,” raved The Washington Post, while The Baltimore Sun simply noted, “Arleigh Kincheloe has one of the biggest voices in the business. Prepare to be blown away”.

Rich with ingenuity, confidence, and deeply felt emotion, their new album GOLD represents both a career milestone and thrilling new beginning for Sister Sparrow. Though she has been making music for most of her life, Arleigh Kincheloe is well aware that with GOLD she has finally created something unique, universal, and altogether her own.

Turkuaz

http://www.turkuazband.com/

Drip painting entails actively splashing myriad colors on canvas. Popularized by Jackson Pollock, Janet Sobel, Max Ernst, and other 20th century luminaries, the artform itself relies on ac tion and motion. In similar fashion, energetic splashes of funk, alternative, rock, R&B, and psychedelia color the music of Turkuaz. Balancing male-female harmonies, strutting guitars, wild horn arrangements, and interminable grooves, this spirit takes shape in the color donned by each respective member on stage nightly via larger-than-life performances.

The Brooklyn-based nonet–Dave Brandwein [guitar, vocals], Taylor Shell [bass ], Craig Brodhead [guitar, keys], Michelangelo Carubba [drums], Chris Br ouwers [trumpet, keys], Greg Sanderson [tenor sax], Josh Schwartz [baritone sax, vocals], Sammi Garett [vocals], and Shira Elias [vocals]–ignite an explosion of energy punctuated by neon hues, deft musicality, and show-stopping singalongs on their fifth full-length album, Life In The City.

“Turkuaz is made up of individuals, each their own shade of the color spectrum,” explains Dave. “Each person brings a signature style and embodies his or her own color. The respective auras come together to create our sound. The name itself implies that vibrancy, but it’s a different spin on turquoise. In the same way, we put a different spin on groove-oriented music by telling stories that you wouldn’t normally associa te with funk.” Since emerging in 2011 with their self -titled debut, the group have quietly animated a movement.

Touring incessantly in support of four full-length s tudio albums and three official live releases, they’ve lit up stages everywhere from Bonnaroo, Hulaween, Okeechobee, Electric Forest, and Moun tain Jam to Telluride Jazz, High Sierra, and Lock’n, in be tween gracing stages at legendary spots such as Red Rocks, Terminal 5, and The Fillmore, to name a few. Among numer ous critical plaudits, The New Yorker claimed, “ This Brooklyn-based nine-piece delivers horn-filled funk incorporating elements of R&B, psychedelic pop, gospel, Afro-pop, New Wave, classic rock, and just about any genre that gets people dancing.”

2019 Info

Our 16th annual Maplewoodstock Music & Arts Festival will be held Saturday and Sunday, July 13 and 14, 2019. More details on all aspects to be announced through the spring as they are finalized. Stay tuned, and watch this space!

Our 2019 band application process is now CLOSED. It ran from Wed, Jan 30, to Sunday, March 10, at 11:59 PM. We do NOT accept late applications.