CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS
Friday, July 13, 2012, 9pm, at The Handlebar
Critics are rejoicing over Carolina Chocolate Drops’ latest album, Leaving Eden, a Buddy Miller-produced work that’s not only adding to the barn-burning catalog of the adventurous North Carolina band, but is cementing the band’s iconographic role in American music. The LA Times gives Leaving Eden 3 stars out of 4, while American Songwriter and others hail the band’s reinvigorating impact on roots music. Big news: The Drops were invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in a tribute to the Rolling Stones that featured Taj Mahal; Art Garfunkel; Steve Earle, Jackson Browne; and Rickie Lee Jones. So the floor-stompin’, fiddle-‘n’-banjo powerhouse that the Wall Street Journal says has “emerged as an American roots-music phenomenon” returns with new energy and new material. Small wonder their last show here almost sold out.

CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS, Leaving Eden, on CD, available at Horizon Records