A Night of Finger Pickin That’ll Leave You Awe-stricken!
@ 707 Sports Bar & Nightlife • Rapid City / Friday, May 8 / 7 p.m. / 21+
For decades Cary Morin has played stages like the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Paris Jazz Festival, and the Vancouver Olympics. His music can be heard in Dark Winds and Resident Alien. NPR named his live performance of “Jug In The Water” one of the best live sessions of 2020, and he’s shared stages with Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos, Jackson Browne, and Arlo Guthrie, just to name a few.
Friday night at 707, he shares the bill with one of the region’s own heavy hitters. Jalan Crossland has spent years building a loyal following across Wyoming and the Dakotas with a style that earned him National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship runner-up honors, the Wyoming State Flatpick Championship, and national touring slots with Robert Earl Keen.
Put both of them in the same room, inside a venue that only holds a few hundred people, and suddenly this starts looking less like a normal Friday night show and more like one of those nights people talk about afterward because they still can’t believe it happened here.
Up First, Jalan Crossland
Photo Credit: Tess Anderson
The Ten Sleep, Wyoming native has been a fixture in the Black Hills for years, building the kind of following where people make plans the second his name shows up on a poster. His mix of guitar work, banjo playing, sharp writing, and dry Wyoming humor has carried him from tiny bars to major festival stages, but rooms like 707 still fit him best. Up close, every little thing he does lands harder.
There is also something fitting about Jalan opening this night in Rapid City. Around here, people know what he can do. They know the speed, the precision, the weird little left turns, and the way he can turn a room from laughing to dead silent in the middle of a song. He is the rare kind of regional musician whose reputation was built the hard way, one live show at a time.
Followed by Cary Morin and Ghost Dog
Cary Morin is not new to Rapid City. Long before Ghost Dog, he was coming through town with The Atoll, the reggae-rock band that packed rooms here through the late 1990s and early 2000s, including nights at the Alex Johnson ballroom.
“Cary’s music comes from a place deep inside. I would describe his style as artful, soulful, and authentic. His fingerpicking style will warm even the coldest heart. If you get a chance to hear him, whether with a band or on his own, take the opportunity and enjoy the ride!”
~Anni Harjes
He returned over the years for Guitar Masters, performances tied to Crazy Horse, and other stops that kept his connection to this region alive even as his career kept growing far beyond it.
Morin has spent decades playing major festivals, national broadcasts, film and television placements, and stages shared with some of the most respected names in American music. What makes Ghost Dog interesting is that none of it feels like a legacy act settling into nostalgia. The band pushes forward instead, taking the guitar work and songwriting Morin built his reputation on and driving it through a full rhythm section. Their newest album, Pocket of Time, released in February and draws from stories rooted in everyday Indigenous life, including the Crow Reservation.
Ghost Dog is the five-piece band Morin leads with Celeste Di Iorio on harmony vocals and rhythm guitar, and the lineup around them is stacked with serious players. Bassist Ean Smith has worked with groups like Galactic, Robert Randolph, and Dumpstaphunk, while drummer Adam Loudermilk and percussionist Koda Gray lock into a groove that feels just as rooted in blues and Americana as it does funk, reggae, and the wider rhythm traditions Morin has been pulling from since The Atoll days.
These two acts on the same stage Friday night are worth getting off the couch for. World-class musicians do not usually land together on the same bill. This feels like one of those shows people will still be talking about months from now, either because they were there and caught something really incredible or because they are still kicking themselves for missing it.
