Fireside Collective started the way a lot of Asheville bands start: Jesse Iaquinto gathered some bluegrass-minded musicians in 2014 with an armload of original songs and a shared instinct for what the music could become. The band that assembled around his mandolin is not the one that plays Middle Ages Beer Hall on December 9, and that gap between where they started and where they have arrived is exactly the thing worth showing up to hear.
About the Show
Fireside Collective arrives in Syracuse on the Phoenix Rising Tour, behind The Seven, their studio album released October 31, 2025. The record leans toward roots-rock while keeping acoustic Americana as its structural foundation, a balance that mirrors how the band has moved over the years, beginning as a newgrass outfit and evolving, particularly after the pandemic prompted a creative reckoning, into something closer to a jam band with deep bluegrass roots. The Grateful Dead is their stated artistic north star: changing setlists, extended improvisation, music the band describes as designed so audiences “escape the confines of time and pressures of modern life.” Live, that translates to nights that don’t follow a predictable arc, with a five-piece of mandolin, guitar, resonator guitar, bass, and drums capable of going in any direction and finding their way back.
The lineup is Iaquinto on mandolin, Joe Cicero on guitar, Tommy Maher on resonator guitar, Carson White on bass, and Michael Tillis on drums. Tillis joined in late 2023, bringing funk and rock into the ensemble’s architecture in ways that changed what the band could reach for. The band won the MerleFest band contest in 2016, earning an IBMA nomination for Momentum Band of the Year, and received a New Artist of the Year nomination in 2022. Their 2020 album Elements reached number three on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts. Smoky Mountain News described them as “one of the rising stars in the jam grass and greater psychedelic music scene in Southern Appalachia,” and press coverage has placed them in conversation with Billy Strings and Greensky Bluegrass as part of the broader jam-grass wave coming out of the South.
Opening the night is The Rollin’ Rust, a folk rock group from Central New York led by James VanDeuson, working in blues, bluegrass, roots, and country — a region-grown act that fits the evening’s acoustic DNA without duplicating what the headliner does.
Venue & Logistics
Middle Ages Beer Hall is at 120 Wilkinson Street in Syracuse in the Central New York region. At 400 capacity, it is the kind of room where festival-circuit acts play closer to their audience than a festival ever allows, and for a band that has built its following on improvisation and shared musical experience, that kind of scale serves the music well. Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; the show begins at 8:00 p.m. All ages; anyone under 18 requires a guardian.
Tickets
Tickets are $20 base ($25.46 with fees). The show is presented by Visions FCU. Buy tickets