Here's a new take on old-time music! Vandaveer, the core duo of Mark Charles Heidinger and Rose Guerin augmented by other musicians, is currently camped out in Washington, D.C. Vandaveer offers up melodic Americana that is both haunting and easy, forlorn and welcoming, with stories as universal as the songs they inhabit. Death, murder and ghosts have long been underlying threads coursing through Vandaveer's original music, but instead of weaving their own shadowy tales into their latest studio effort, "Oh, Willie, Please...," Vandaveer has tapped into the wellspring of traditional folk's darker side. Inspired by their recent participation in The 78 Project, the group gathered in a majestic old home on a picturesque horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky, in the spring of 2012 and set to work re-imagining a collection of age-old murder ballads and songs of self ruin plucked almost entirely from the public domain. The result is a spacious, honest album that balances reverence and respect for the source material with a healthy coat of contemporary color. Louisville native (and former Student Songwriter Series winner) John Whitaker is that little voice you hear around midnight whispering in your ear. His quirky heartfelt songs are full of the thoughts that keep us awake at night–and he opens tonight's show.