Rock Hearts have been in a Nashville studio this spring, cutting a gospel album with engineer Scott Vestal. August 29 at Caffè Lena is where that project is expected to surface publicly — and it arrives at a moment when the band, a 2026 IBMA Official Showcase Artist from Charlestown, Rhode Island, has as much serious critical attention behind them as at any point in their 13-year run.
About the Show
The quintet (Joe Deetz on banjo, frontman Alex MacLeod on guitar and vocals, Billy Thibodeau on mandolin, Rick Brodsky on bass, and Austin Scelzo on fiddle) has been working together since 2013, when five veteran musicians from Southern New England put the band together. Thibodeau was inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame in 2024; MacLeod appeared at the 2024 IBMA World of Bluegrass Songwriter Showcase; Scelzo was a 2024 IBMA Momentum Awards nominee. Their third album, Unfinished Bridges (615 Hideaway Records, October 2024), charted at No. 2 on AirPlay Direct’s Top 50 Bluegrass Albums and drew the kind of press attention this corner of the genre rarely generates: Bluegrass Today called it “Rock Hearts’ best work to date,” IndieShark declared it “easily one of the best bluegrass releases recently heard,” and the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association said the record positions them “for national recognition for their songwriting, picking and especially their vocal blend.” Their approach is to take songs that don’t naturally suggest bluegrass treatment and reinterpret them through the idiom without surrendering what made the originals work — it’s what the press material describes, and what the records bear out. The gospel turn, then, isn’t much of a pivot: the band appeared on DayStar Television’s Gospel Music Showcase from April through July 2026, and earlier this summer MacLeod co-wrote “This Is Why” with Mark Brinkman, recording it with Rhonda Vincent for a July 3 release.
Venue & Logistics
Caffè Lena at 47 Phila St in Saratoga Springs is a Capital Region folk club and listening room that holds 110 people. For a band that has shared bills with Del McCoury, Michael Cleveland, and The Gibson Brothers, that number says something about how seriously they work the small-room circuit. It is precisely the kind of room where the nuance in a vocal blend, which critics have consistently singled out as this band’s calling card, actually carries. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; the show begins at 8:00 p.m.
Tickets
Tickets are $30.37 general admission, $27.11 for members, and $15.18 for children and students; all prices include fees. A livestream via Caffè Lena TV is available for $5, with 100% of proceeds going to the artists. Buy tickets