On Friday, March 13, we will host Northern Lights with Raina Rose opening the show. Northern Lights, a string band quintet, performs an eclectic blend of traditional bluegrass and “newgrass,” with touches of jazz, blues, rock, gospel, classical, and western swing. Indie folksinger Raina Rose who has just released a new album, End of Endless False Starts, opens.

Northern Lights, the Northeast’s superlative veteran string band, doesn’t qualify as typical traditionalist. But over a three-decade career, the band has created its own tradition — a constant exploration of new musical territory without ever losing its acoustic and vocal bearings. From 1990’s Take You to the Sky, to 2005’s New Moon, the band has fused an eclectic mix of traditional roots music, rock, country, soul and gospel with the high, lonesome vocal sound and instruments of bluegrass. The band has performed at festivals and concert halls from coast to coast and abroad, including the Newport Folk Festival, Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, American Folklife Center, Barns at Wolf Trap, Strawberry Music Festival, Walnut Valley Festival, Smithsonian Institute, Festival Sur la Route de Tullins (France), Bumbershoot Festival and the Winnipeg Folk Festival. They have recorded 10 albums, including Three August Nights, a live CD with the late legendary Nashville fiddler Vassar Clements, who often performed with them, and three of their CDs reached the top ten of Bluegrass Unlimited’s National Bluegrass Survey.

Throughout the years, Northern Lights has undergone some personnel changes and at present is a quintet. Bill Henry (guitar and lead/harmony vocals), John Daniel (bass, lead/harmony vocals) and Alex MacLeod (guitar, lead/harmony vocals) have been a part of the group for years. Two exciting new additions, Mike Barnett (fiddle, lead/harmony vocals) a 17-year-old native of Nashville, Tennessee and Eric Robertson (mandolin, lead/harmony vocals) from Greensboro, North Carolina have joined the group. Both are currently enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

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Raina Rose was born on the day the music died. She sings Americana-folk songs of love, long travels, fictional characters, time that plays tricks and tricks that governments play. Starting her life in Los Angeles during the Reagan era, her family soon emigrated to Portland, OR where Raina cut her teeth on the notable music scene. One foot firmly planted in the northwest city and the other ankle-deep in the Pacific Coast, Raina took off on tour in late 2005 and has been at it ever since. Thanks to the campfires of the Kerrville Folk Festival, Raina found the draw of the Austin music community too strong and now calls the Live Music Capital of the World her homebase. She let that southern flavor sink in and now serves a brave and heartbreaking brew of fingerpicking, flatpicking, and feather voiced stories. She was a 2007 Kerrville New Folk Finalist, received honorable mention in the 2006 Telluride Troubadour Competition, and played at High Sierra Music Festival in ’06 and ’07.

This is bluegrass at its very best with strong lead vocals, beautiful harmonies and virtuoso musicians. COUNTRY MUSIC ROUND-UP (England)

Smooth, likeable bluegrass in a New Grass style, with some terrific gospel touches . . . these Northern Lights don’t shine, they glow. NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

. . . hot enough to peel the paint off your walls . . . NASHUA TELEGRAPH

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If a bottle of champagne could sing, it would sound a lot like Raina Rose: positively effervescent, sparkling with youthful enthusiasm — she’s a joy! Tracy Grammer

Her voice is clear and sweet, recalling at times Suzanne Vega or Dirty Martini’s McKinley, and even — when she opts for a slip-and-slide sort of phrasing popular with young female folkies these days — Ani DiFranco. She is most compelling when she gets serious, as in the ruminative See You Singing, on which her multitracked vocals create a haunting effect, or the dark literary vignette Back Alley Butcher. . . . Suffice to say, this moth has taken wing. Marty Hughley, The Oregonian