Shakey Graves Made a Vermont Summer Night Feel Like the Only Place That Mattered

Shakey Graves | Shelburne Museum | Shelburne, VT | July 26, 2026

By Riot + Reverie

An outdoor concert on the green of one of Vermont’s most beautiful landmarks. Eighty degrees. Not a cloud in the sky. The kind of summer evening that makes you wonder why anyone willingly lives somewhere with winter.

You could put any number of horrible bands in the middle of this and still have a pretty great night.

Did I mention there were food trucks?

Yeah. Pizza on wheels and live music. It’s the literal dream.

Be jealous.

Thankfully, nobody had to rely on the scenery.

Texino opened the night with just his voice and an acoustic guitar before groovy electronic drums joined the equation and gave the rest of his short set a little more muscle. A handful of songs later, he was gone, but not before leaving plenty of people wondering when they could hear more.

His debut album can’t come soon enough.

Myself included.

Then things got weird.

In the best possible way.

The tail end of a tour can go one of two ways. Does a band keep emptying the tank night after night, or are they burned out from everything that came before and already mentally packing their bags for home?

Dope Lemon still had a few dates left on the calendar.

And they sure as hell weren’t playing like a band counting down the days.

I was only briefly familiar with the band going into the night. Yeah, my fault, my dudes. I’ll rectify that ASAP. I was, however, familiar with Angus Stone and his work outside Dope Lemon.

Watching fans steadily abandon their seats and pack the space between the designated seating and barricade should have been my first clue.

One song in, I got it.

Dope Lemon emerged through a wall of fog, entirely man-made because, remember, it was still absurdly beautiful outside. Then Stone appeared in a striped suit, grabbed a guitar and the whole thing took off.

The band tore through fan favorites and newer material, including “John Belushi,” which was an absolute banger. Everyone got a chance to shine.

There were multiple harmonica solos, by the way. Multiple. And somehow, that wasn’t the weird part. Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get any stranger, out came the dancers. A lemon-headed dancer. A cat. Various other animals. Because apparently that’s what this evening needed.

They threw themselves around the stage while Dope Lemon ripped away behind them, and the crowd responded exactly as you’d expect a Dope Lemon crowd to respond: dancing, singing and completely buying into the beautiful absurdity of it all.

Then it was time for Shakey Graves.

Last year, I had the privilege of seeing him on the first night of a three-night run at our “big” local music venue.

That night, it was just a man and his guitar.

Usually, that sentence should scare you.

A guy with an acoustic guitar can get boring pretty damn quickly. At least 99 percent of the time, I’d say.

But give that guy an amp. Throw a few pedals at his feet. Add a kick drum and tambourine that he’s somehow playing while also attacking said guitar. Then have him belt out something as bulletproof as “Roll the Bones.”

Now, my friends, that can be life-changing.

Shelburne was different.

Shakey Graves wasn’t doing this alone. He had a backing band with him, and playing alongside someone who seems perfectly willing to let the music grab hold and drag him wherever the hell it wants to go is no small assignment.

Before bringing them out, though, he gave us two songs alone.

Feedback. Guitar. Kick drum.

And an entire field singing back at him.

That will never get old. Then the band arrived. They didn’t miss a beat.

The set moved between old songs and new, including material from Fondness, Etc., released in May. But standing on that lawn, surrounded by what felt like the entire state of Vermont dancing, swaying and singing along, you’d have been hard-pressed to tell which songs had been played millions of times and which had only been living in the world for a couple of months.

Nobody seemed to care about the distinction anyway.

They knew the words. They knew the guitar licks. They knew the turns. They were completely in it. And that’s when a great concert stops being about whether somebody played the songs well.

Sometimes an artist manages to reach beyond the stage and turn thousands of individual experiences into one shared thing.

Everyone on that lawn had their own reason for being there.

Maybe Shakey Graves got you with the lyrics. Maybe it was the wonderfully strange idea of a guy with a suitcase drum setup. Maybe it was the beautifully chaotic way he plays guitar, like the instrument might get away from him if he loosens his grip for even a second.

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter anymore.

For an hour, thousands of people stood together on the grass at Shelburne Museum and disappeared into the same thing.

No bullshit. No distractions. No reason to be anywhere else.

Just us and the music.

If only for an hour.