Mikaela Davis has described Graceland Way, her fifth studio album, as a state of mind rather than a place — and there is a particular rightness to hearing music like that in a room where the sound has nowhere to hide. She is a conservatory-trained harpist from Rochester whose career has taken her from whimsical folk to jam-band circles to something that now sits somewhere between Laurel Canyon mysticism and neo-western reverie, and on Saturday, September 19, she brings the Graceland Way Fall Tour to its final stop at Lark Hall in Albany — the closing night of a month-long run that opened in Kingston, New York, and has wound through Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Toronto, Montreal, and Burlington before coming back home to New York State.
About Mikaela Davis
Released this past April on Kill Rock Stars, Graceland Way is the record Davis has been building toward. Recorded at UHF Studio in Glendale, California, with producer and bassist Dan Horne and guitarist John Lee Shannon — the first album to emerge from the Davis-Shannon songwriting partnership — the album reaches for something large without ever losing its intimacy. It draws explicitly from the Laurel Canyon lineage Davis has long cited as a touchstone, from the mythology of Elvis’s Graceland as a site of transformation, and from the restless creative reinvention she hears in Paul Simon’s body of work. Harp glissandos move alongside pedal steel guitar played by Kurt G. Johnson. Neal Francis plays organ. The sonics are deliberate and unhurried, built for listeners who sit still.
The guest list extends the reach further: Madison Cunningham, Tim Heidecker, and Karly Hartzman of Wednesday all appear on the record, along with James Felice of the Felice Brothers and Clay Finch and Hannah Read from Mapache. These are artists with their own distinct aesthetic centers of gravity, and their presence on the album isn’t decorative — you can feel the way the collaborations open the songs outward. Davis has said the songs were “written from our personal experience, but together they tell the arc of humanity,” which is the kind of aspiration that either lands or collapses, and on Graceland Way it mostly lands. The reviewers at No Depression noted the album synthesizes Davis’s accumulated sonic sensibilities — the hazy pop, the whimsical folk, the jam-band grooves — into something that feels like a genuine arrival rather than a detour.
Live, Davis has the advantage of her instrument. A harp in a 300-person room is a fundamentally different proposition than a harp on a record, and Davis is skilled enough as a performer to let the audience feel that difference — the way a glissando fills an intimate space rather than dissolving into it. There is also something fitting in the geography of this final date: the Graceland Way Fall Tour opened in Kingston, traveled north and west through the Great Lakes and Canada, and returns to New York State for its last night in Albany. Davis was born in Rochester. This region has a claim on her that the tour recognizes.
Special Guest: Johanna Samuels
Opening the show is Johanna Samuels, who has been with Davis for all the headlining dates on this run. Samuels is an LA-based singer-songwriter who came up in New York, and she carries the influence of The Band, Gene Clark, and Tom Petty the way serious folk writers do — not as pastiche but as a set of values about how a song should feel when it lands. Her production is described as “gently elegant,” her delivery as “easy yet arresting,” and her album Excelsior! — recorded live-to-tape at producer Sam Evian’s upstate New York cabin studio — shows a songwriter who knows what she’s doing with a room. She has her own connection to this part of the country, and it comes through in the work.
By the time she plays Lark Hall, Samuels will have her fourth LP, Sorry, Kid, behind her — the record releases August 14, just over a month before this show. She arrives in Albany with fresh material and the particular energy of a songwriter who has just sent something new into the world. Her touring circle speaks well of her: Madison Cunningham, Anaïs Mitchell, Courtney Marie Andrews, Watchhouse, Cassandra Jenkins, and Fruit Bats are among the artists she has shared stages with. That company is a shorthand for the kind of music that rewards close attention.
About Lark Hall
Lark Hall, at 351 Hudson Avenue in Albany, has been part of this city’s life since 1916. Originally owned by the Daughters of the Eastern Star, the 14,000-square-foot space now operates as a live music venue and event hall with a stated mission of bringing “music and community to the Village in the City of Albany.” It holds 300 standing and has the kind of history a room carries without announcing it. For a harpist-songwriter playing the closing night of a fall tour, it is the right scale — large enough to feel like an occasion, intimate enough that nothing gets lost in the distance between stage and listener. The Capital Region has seen its share of strong listening-room nights, and this one belongs on that list.
Tickets & Show Details
Doors open at 7 PM; show begins at 8. Tickets are $27 to $36 and are available via the link below. The venue admits guests under 21 with a parent or legal guardian.