Pickin on Hate Benefit For Trans Lifeline featuring Town Howlers, Country Business, Evie Ladin Band, and Fog Holler

The 3rd Annual Pickin' on Hate Benefit will be held January 12, 2019 at Ashkenaz In Berkeley, CA. This year's proceeds will be donated to Trans Lifeline. Larger donation are welcome. 

Trans Lifeline is a grassroots hotline and microgrants organization offering direct emotional and financial support to trans people in crisis - for the trans community, by the trans community.

This year's lineup will include:
The Town Howlers
The Country Business
Evie Ladin Band
Fog Holler

Plus speakers from Trans Lifeline

The Town Howlers

Pickin' On Hate is a Bay Area effort created and organized by The Town Howlers to bring together the thriving community of bluegrass musicians and fans to raise funds and awareness in support of tolerance. 

At our 2017 benefit, we raised over $3,000 for The Southern Poverty Law Center.
At our 2018 benefit, we raised $4200 for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC)

The Town Howlers play traditional bluegrass music and are influenced by the great singers and pickers from the golden era of bluegrass, such as Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Vern Williams, and Jimmy Martin. With flashy picking, tight harmony singing, and original as well as traditional songs, the Town Howlers show a deference to traditional bluegrass while also adding their own style and sound.

Evie Ladin Band

The neo-trad kinetic-folk of the Evie Ladin Band is a mingling of the deep Appalachian sound of clawhammer banjo, guitar, bass and percussive dance, with contemporary storytelling and original, conversational interplay among the band members. Some of their adventurousness comes from early hip hop in the high school cafeteria, some from Evie’s early attraction to, and study of, the African roots in Appalachian music and dance. She created an African Studies In Dance major at Brown University, then studied dance in Eastern Nigeria on a Fulbright Fellowship. While myriad world and contemporary music influences permeate the band’s choices, they never reach too far, remaining seamless and true to the stories they tell.

Fog Holler

“The enigmatic Fog Holler first arose in the foothills of Echo Mountain, the product of an intense love of bluegrass and traditional American music shared by banjoist Casey Holmberg, guitarist Tommy Schulz, and bass fiddler Noa Laniakea. After years roaming those southern hills, honing their craft and spreading the high lonesome sound, they vanished. With the belief their music could be pushed further and harder, they retreated to the misty oaken hollows of Northern California. After months of silence, rumors of a spectral band that channel the spirits of bluegrass past and future have begun to spread ‘round all corners of the deep Frisco Bay. The Fog is rolling in...”