The Sweetwater Music Hall – Mill Valley’s venerable live music institution and one of the most exciting live music venues in Bay Area history – continues to curate and spotlight incredible bands.

The Sweetwater team is rolling into the 2024 with Margaret Belton, that rare artist who fuses her exceptional talent with a genuine warmth that makes audiences feel they’re part of the family.

Belton founded her Patsy Cline Tribute band – ‘The Patsychords’ – in 2010 and most recently created a variety cabaret show called ‘Lady Margaret & The Countrypolitans,’ showcasing a variety of her favorite rare and classic crooner torch style jazz, country and blues songs, comedic sketches and storytelling.

Belton has accomplished five rounds of her critically acclaimed portrayal of Patsy Cline in ‘Always… Patsy Cline’ twice at the Altarena Playhouse in Alameda, twice in New Orleans LA at the Stage Door Canteen, and once at The Woodminster Amphitheater in Oakland CA.

Belton received a Theater Bay Area Award for being an outstanding performer in a musical for her portrayal of Patsy Cline and then in November of 2018 she took home another Theater Bay Area Award for her outstanding performance as a principal actor in ’Honky Tonk Angels’.

A true renaissance woman, Margaret is a visual artist as well as a voice-over, on-camera and film actress. Her lead role in the film ‘Hiding in Freedom’ received an award from the World Music & Independent Film Festival for ‘Best Lead Actress in a Short Film’ as well as the film being accepted into the Cannes Film Festival. The authenticity and fearlessness with which Margaret approaches all of her creative endeavors make her a versatile and vivacious performer.

Her band features Maurice Tani on guitar, David Phillips on pedal steel, Mike Anderson on bass, Henry Salvia on piano, Ken Owen on drums, Jeanine Richardson on tambourine and Kathleen Salvia on harmonies. 
 

Catch this tribute to one of the greatest country singers of all time, performed by a group of terrific musicians imbued with the spirit of Patsy Cline!

 
Five weeks later, on Feb. 28, ‘Mississippi Masala Blues’ with Aki Kumar and Alabama Mike serves up the rare pairing of two Bay Area-based, world-class blues artists – Aki Kumar and Alabama Mike – pioneers who are constantly pushing the genre in new and unique directions.
 
Aki Kumar has made big waves worldwide with his “Bollywood Blues” sound – a genre-bending experiment that blends retro Indian music with the blues. Alabama Mike, “the future of the blues,” is a hard-driving Chicago-style blues singer who upsets the status quo of the genre with his vibrant new approach to the music, making it refreshingly relevant to life in the 21st century.
 
This not-to-be missed event also features Kumar’s stellar Bollywood Blues band, composed of the SF Bay Area’s finest blues musicians.

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