Sawyer Fredericks started playing music at 13—farmers markets, open mics, the kinds of stages where upstate New York kids figure out what kind of songwriters they might become. He won Season 8 of NBC’s The Voice at 16, signed with Republic Records, and then, a few years later, chose a different direction. What he has been building since reads as a deliberate return to something older and less produced: Americana rooted in the rural traditions of central New York, with arrangements stripped down to where the words have room to breathe. Americana Highways called his most recent record a work of “literal folk rock, closer to rural folk,” and described his voice as one that “sounds like it started singing during the Civil War era.” That is not a knock. It is a compass heading.
About the Show
That record, No Need To Wonder, is what Fredericks brings to Asbury Hall at Babeville on Thursday, January 21. Released on Earth Day 2025 via Windrake Records and recorded at Dreamland Studios in Woodstock, it is his third independent full-length, following Hide Your Ghost (2018) and Flowers for You (2020). The album divides into two deliberate halves: the first grounded in acoustic folk, with songs about family and the farm where he grew up near Fultonville; the second turning harder and blues-driven, with arrangements that open up. The thematic range moves from family memory to environmental policy to the housing crisis, and it stays grounded throughout, rooted in the upstate New York landscape Fredericks has been writing about since he was a teenager. He wrote all 11 tracks and produced them himself. Of the title song, he has said it was written “with the idea that people could sing it together,” then added: “as it goes on, the lyrics get heavier—it sets the tone for everything that follows.” Two tracks from Flowers for You, “Born” and “Amen,” won top honors at the Independent Music Awards, with “Born” earning national airplay on SiriusXM. This show comes more than a decade after his Voice win, a milestone that, given where his music has gone since, feels less like a defining credential and more like a starting point. TRIPI opens.
Venue & Logistics
Asbury Hall at Babeville is a historic music hall at 341 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. for the 8:00 p.m. show.
Tickets
General admission standing tickets are $21. VIP Meet & Greet tickets are $51. Tickets are available through the Babeville box office (Monday–Friday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.). Buy tickets