The Wildwoods at the Cedar Cultural Center (October 23, 2025)
- Oct. 24, 2025 Mineral Point, WI The Mineral Point Opera House
- Oct. 25, 2025 Eau Claire, WI SHIFT Cyclery & Coffee Bar
- Nov. 29, 2025Lincoln, NE The Wildwoods Homecoming Show
- Dec. 3, 2025 Franklin, TN Mockingbird Theater
- Dec. 4, 2025 Brevard, NC Brevard Music Center
- Dec. 5, 2025 Decatur, GA
- Jan. 17, 2026 Glasgow, United Kingdom Celtic Connections 2026
One of my favorite shows last year was at the 318 Cafe, a tiny coffee shop in downtown Excelsior that served dinner at night with bands playing on a tiny stage. On July 26th, the band was The Wildwoods, a trio with husband and wife, Noah and Chloe Gose, on guitar and violin, and Andrew Vaggalis on the upright bass. I doubt the cafe could hold more than fifty people. So I stood by the tiny bar and listened to sweet, original music in the vein of Americana, writing:
Noah started off the evening with a story about accepting an invitation to a bluegrass competition even though they were not a bluegrass band. But no matter, they traveled through the night from Wisconsin to Massachusetts and played the only song they knew that they thought could be a bluegrass song: Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” (They didn’t win.)
Luckily, the Nebraska band did not stop from entering into competitions and touring. They even released their fourth album earlier this year and found a bigger venue to play at the Cedar Cultural Center.
Emmy Woods opened the evening with a solo, acoustic set. She is from North Dakota and currently living in St. Paul. Even though she has been writing songs since age thirteen, she didn’t release any content until 2021, when she issued two albums, The Manifold and delirium. Since then, she formed a band, The Red Pine Ramblers, and holds down a monthly residency at the 331 Club. And speaking of competitions, she is the Blue Ox Music Festival’s Band Contest Winner, 2024.
Most of Emmy’s music is reflective of growing up in North Dakota like “Interstate Town” and “Million Miles Per Hour.” And since it is the season she sang a song about old souls that haunt her apartment building in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood. She added that she recorded the video “bar stool” at W.A. Frost just down the street from the haunting. She then played a new song “Little Moon” from her upcoming album, saying that her release party will be at The Cedar in January.
The Wildwoods then took the stage with a plus one, inviting India to play cello with them. India was a college friend now living in Minneapolis and she added another level of texture to the mostly acoustic music.
The Wildwoods are supporting their new album Dear Meadowlark and they played quite a bit from it with songs like “Hideaway” and “Rabbit Hill” which offered Noah the opportunity to play an extended solo on electric guitar that reminded me of Mark Knopfler’s later recordings. What I like about The Wildwoods is they are funny and they tell funny and possibly true stories between songs. Some highlights:
Chloe riffing about the new (vintage) dress that she was wearing for the first time and finding out that the sleeves constrained her ability to play the violin. So she uncuffed them, which led to another story about her mother’s ability to take off her bra in less than a second without removing her top. (Her mom happened to be in the audience.)
Noah, telling a hilarious story about spending an evening at a Motel 6 in Reno, Nevada, and how the room only had a “vintage” TV/VCR with only three selections: Rush Hour, Rush Hour II and Disney’s Robinhood, which led to the next song.
Besides singing “Oo-De-Lally” by Roger Miller, The Wildwoods played other covers like “Our House” by Crosby, Stills and Nash, and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” by Bob Dylan, a song that didn’t win them any competitions, but fit so nicely into the trio’s harmonies.
A song that did win them recognition is the wonderful “Sweet Niobrara,” a song about their home state of Nebraska, a song that won 2nd place in the 2024 Rocky Mountain Songwriting Contest, a song that was a fan favorite in an evening filled with many great songs.
