The Wild Shoats took the stage at Jerry Run Summer Theater as dusk began to settle on a late June evening in 2025. The crickets and whippoorwills could be heard through the walls, and there was something about the sound of the large wooden theater that brought out a richness in the band’s music they hoped to capture. They had spent an entire week in the theater, cut off from cell reception and the rest of the world recording their next album, and this was the pinnacle of their week. The set list for the night included songs off The Wild Shoats’ debut album, Yell In The Shoats (2025), new material from their upcoming record, and tried-and-true mainstays from shows played over recent years. As the audience filed in, the atmosphere of the theater thickened and the energy swelled.
Live at Jerry Run Summer Theater was recorded live in a single evening by Hunter Davidsohn, a wizard of vintage recording methods, capturing The Wild Shoats’ unique branch of old-time that harkens back through decades of traditional Appalachian mountain music while keeping its roots planted firmly in the present. Rich with fresh clear vocals and fiddle melodies that lilt and flicker from mournful to buoyant, the collection of songs recorded at Jerry Run Summer Theater are at once out of time and a bright-line microcosm of the current moment in mountain music.
“We knew our week at Jerry Run should culminate in a concert, and it only made sense to capture that as well. It felt special to open the doors at the end of the week and let people in on a little bit of what we’d been working on. The live recording feels like that too. I like to imagine it feels like letting you in on something.” — Gus Tritsch, The Wild Shoats
With the live record, The Wild Shoats wanted the spirit of the space and the richness of the music to translate not only through the recordings themselves, but also in the medium through which it is sent out into the world. Their hope is that setting the needle down onto a limited-edition vinyl LP will make listeners feel like they were right there with them at Jerry’s Run Summer Theater on that warm June evening.
Visit Nudie Records or our Bandcamp to purchase the vinyl, or stream it wherever you get your music.
