MUSIC
Bluegrass legend
Mandolinist Sam Bush, a member of the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and three-time Grammy Award winner, performs with his band as headliners of a 7 p.m. concert Saturday in the Ozark Highlands Theater, the indoor music venue at Ozark Folk Center State Park, 1302 Park Ave., Mountain View.
Doors open at 6 p.m. The Music Roots Ensemble, young Mountain View area fiddlers, banjo players and musicians, will open the show.
Sponsor is the Committee of One Hundred for the Ozark Folk Center. Tickets are $40-60 in advance, available online — $5 more day of show; $150 for VIP passes that include a premium, front-and-center seat, limited-edition concert poster and post-show meet-and-greet. Proceeds benefit the Music Roots Program, which offers classes and instruments free of cost to Stone County children in grade four and above.
WAC concert series
Chicago-based, four-piece bluegrass-Americana-folk band Henhouse Prowlers kicks off the West Street Live series, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 11 in the Starr Theater at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center, 495 W Dickson St.
The rest of the five-concert lineup (all shows, 7:30 p.m. in the Starr Theater):
◼️ Oct. 1: Carlene Carter
◼️ Nov. 19: Victor Wooten and the Wooten Brothers
◼️ April 3: Davina & the Vagabonds
◼️ April 24: Nashville Songwriters (Keesy Timmer, Adam Craig and Adam James)
Series subscribers can renew for the 2026-27 season via the website; new subscriptions are available July 22 and single tickets go on sale later this summer. Call (479) 443-5600.
ART & EXHIBITS
Helm oral history
Walton Arts Center’s Alexander Gallery, in collaboration with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History, has created “This Wheel’s Still On Fire: The Levon Helm Oral History Project,” highlights from the Pryor Center’s extensive collection of interviews with Arkansans who knew, worked with and admired Helm.
It’s in conjunction with the “This Wheel’s Still On Fire: The Legacy of Levon Helm” exhibit, curated by the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in Boston, on display through Sept. 6 at the gallery at the Porter Art Warehouse, 212 N. West Ave., Fayetteville.
Filmed by Pryor Center associate director Scott Lunsford alongside Trey Marley and Will Gisler, the recordings include concert footage as well as interviews with members of the Levon Helm Band and several of Helm’s close family and friends, including Arkansas musicians Ronnie Hawkins, Earl and Ernie Cate, Terry Cagle, John Ware and Ron Eoff.
There are also interviews with people who knew Helm from his earliest days in Phillips County, including A.B. Thompson of Helm’s hometown of Turkey Scratch; Anna Lee Amsden, immortalized as “Miss Anna Lee” from “The Weight”; Bubba Sullivan, the longtime organizer of the King Biscuit Blues Festival; and Morse U. Gist, owner of the music store in Helena that Helm frequented as a young man.
Also part of the project: videos from a 2005 concert of the Levon Helm Band at the then-Peabody Hotel Little Rock.
Links to the new oral history project have been incorporated into the exhibition and are available at the exhibition homepage.
Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 5-8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday.
ETC.
Preservation webinar
Melissa Dysart, marketing manager and project coordinator for Mansfield, Texas-based Level 5 Architecture, will “headline” a webinar under the aegis of Preserve Arkansas’ “Women in Preservation” virtual speaker series, 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. “Admission” is free; register online.
Dysart, who according to a news release has “an Arkansas agrarian upbringing,” also serves on the board of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History and is the Arkansas Quilt Trails Coordinator for Madison County.
The series features women from a variety of backgrounds who are working to save historic places in Arkansas and across the country.
Preservation awards
Aug. 31 at 5 p.m. is the deadline to submit nominations for Preserve Arkansas’ 2026 Arkansas Preservation Awards, recognizing “outstanding preservation achievements, people who make a difference in their communities, and projects that inspire others to protect Arkansas’ special historic places,” according to a news release.
Members of the public can submit nominations for eligible projects in 13 categories:
◼️ Outstanding Service in Neighborhood Preservation
◼️ Outstanding Work by a Craftsperson
◼️ Excellence in Preservation through Rehabilitation
◼️ Excellence in Preservation through Restoration
◼️ Outstanding Achievement in Adaptive Reuse
◼️ Excellence in Personal Preservation Projects
◼️ Outstanding Achievement in Preservation Advocacy
◼️ Outstanding New Construction in a Historic Setting
◼️ Outstanding Preservation Reporting in the Media
◼️ Ned Shank Award for Outstanding Preservation Publication
◼️ Outstanding Achievement in Preservation Education
◼️ W.L. Cook Award for Excellence in Heritage Preservation
◼️ Parker Westbrook Award for Lifetime Achievement
Winners will be named in January.
Complete details and nomination instructions are available on the website. Call (501) 372-4757 or email [email protected].
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.arkansasonline.com ’
