Friday, October 16, 2026
6:30 pm Doors // 7:30 pm Music
All Ages
$35 ($43.85 w. taxes/fees) VIP Seating (includes premium seats, pre-show meet & greet at 6 pm, and a complimentary glass of bubbly!)
$30 ($38.07 w. taxes/fees) Preferred Reserved Seating
$25 ($32.30 w. taxes/fees) Advance General Admission
$30 ($35 w. taxes/fees) At The Door General Admission
Ticket purchases are final and non-refundable
To usher in his 18th studio album (between solo work and his band Rogue Valley) singer-songwriter Chris Koza is gathering together friends and fellow string-dusters for an evening of country-tinged Americana music. A longtime Minnesotan, Chris has since ventured west under the sanctuary-like shadows of the Rocky Mountains, giving this collection of songs a newfound outsider perspective of the rich life and so many golden fleeting days throughout the rural Midwest. Millsmoke On The Skyline weaves melody and lyrics into vignettes and narratives set in these vital places where love is powerful, dreams are vast, and life is beautiful.
This special night of music begins with sets by local favorites Dylan Hicks and Clover and The Bee.
Chris Koza is an internationally recognized Americana artist. Since 2005, Chris has supported legendary songwriters such as Gordon Lightfoot, Patty Griffin, Brandi Carlile, Ingrid Michaelson, Lucinda Williams, Andrew Bird, Dan Wilson, and many others. His music appears regularly on ABC’s General Hospital, 60 Minutes, and Good Morning America. His song, “The Wolves and the Ravens,” was featured in Ben Stiller’s film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Chris’s take on the Americana genre comes across in his thoughtful, illuminating lyrics and clear, melodic delivery. His songwriting is inspired by the places, relationships and experiences from years of writing, performing, and traveling. His forthcoming album, Millsmoke On The Skyline, recognizes some of the great wordsmiths of the 20th century, such as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Joni Mitchell, and poignantly references many of the rural farming and industrial communities throughout Minnesota. The album will be Chris’s 18th across his solo work and his band Rogue Valley.
While the new music is steeped in Midwest lore, the coming-together of the album has leaned heavily on collaborators in Colorado and beyond. Having fully committed to the Rocky Mountain State in 2022, coinciding with the birth of his son, Chris has been assimilating as a Coloradian as much as his schedule between gigging and parenting will allow. Mixed by John McVey at Cindersound Studio in Longmont and Mastered by David Glasser in Boulder, the album includes key vocal contributions from renowned Colorado songwriters Megan Burtt and Monica LaBonte. Chris will perform as a band, flanked by his longtime bandmates Peter Sieve on guitar / vocals, Richard Medek on drums and Cody McKinney on bass. Other guests and surprises to follow!
Acclaimed Minnesota songwriters Becky Schlegel, Anthony Ihrig, Eric Christopher, and Kevin Rowe blend bluegrass pedigree with indie-folk sensibilities to craft American roots music as free and expansive as the Upper Midwest.
Clover and The Bee began as a semi-regular song swap among three friends, songwriters and musical co-conspirators (Becky, Anthony and Eric) at Christopher’s house in the West 7th neighborhood of Saint Paul. The three dug into their songwriting back catalogs to show off songs that were either not bluegrass enough (in the case of Ihrig and Christopher’s band The High 48s), not country enough (in the case of Becky Schlegel’s solo project) or just too weird or idiosyncratic for any other project.
It was at this open house for misfit songs that the three got the idea to start a new band, one whose sound showed Christopher, Ihrig, and Schlegel’s country and bluegrass roots but wasn’t bound by tradition. With the addition of bassist and songwriter Kevin Rowe (Buffalo Gospel, Space Burritos), who had recently moved to the Twin Cities from Madison, WI, Clover the Bee was born.
Musician and writer Dylan Hicks was born in Austin, Texas, in 1970, and has lived since 1983 in Minneapolis. With his six-piece group Dylan Hicks & Small Screens, he plays exploratory pop with literary ambitions and far-flung musical influences including jazz, R&B, freely improvised music, and various song traditions. The group’s latest album, Modern Flora, centers on inviting multi-part songs arranged for nonet. Other recent recordings include Accidental Birds, a largely electronic album recorded during the height of the pandemic, and Munson-Hicks Party Supplies, a collection of Hicks’s songs mostly sung by John Munson. Hicks is also the author of two novels, Amateurs and Boarded Windows, and has written journalism, criticism, essays, and word puzzles for the New York Times, the Village Voice, Slate, the New England Review, the Paris Review Daily, and many other publications.He has also published two novels with Coffee House Press and written journalism, essays, word puzzles, and fiction for the Village Voice, the New York Times, the New England Review, Slate, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Paris Review Daily, MPLS-St. Paul, and other publications, many of them now defunct.
Hicks’s wife, Nina Hale, is an entrepreneur, photographer, and birder whose creative projects often combine craft, conceptual art, and advocacy for the natural world. Their son, Jackson, is a stand-up comedian.