Thursday 5/12: The Waybacks & Friends – Halfway to Heaven: Hillside Album Hour 2021

For 13 years now, The Waybacks have hosted arguably the most exciting tradition at MerleFest: they play a classic album in its entirety with a variety of guests, with assorted snippets of tributes to other singers and songs woven in. Most exciting (and impressive) of all: no one but them knows what it’s going to be until they launch in to Track 1! They’ve released most of their previous Hillside Album Hours on CD, including this latest one just in time for last month’s festival. This one includes Sam Bush, Jim Lauderdale, Kevin Russell, and others, and starts with an illegal smile for the beloved singer/songwriter who died in April of 2020; he’d been scheduled to play MerleFest that year.