Winter Concerts

White Gull Inn folk concerts feature contemporary and traditional folk artists from all over the country, who perform in an intimate and acoustic setting in the White Gull dining room. The concerts are held approximately once a month in winter, usually on Wednesday nights. Each 8 PM concert is preceded by an optional 6 PM dinner, featuring a special selection by the chef, which varies each month.

The DonJuans
Wednesday, December 18, 2024, 8 PM
Tickets: $35

By their name you might assume that the DonJuans rely merely on their good looks. However, you will be impressed to know that the group includes two GRAMMY® Award-winning songwriters, Don Henry and Jon Vezner. Their song, “Where’ve You Been” (recorded by Kathy Mattea) was the first song in country music history to sweep all major song of the year honors including the GRAMMY®, ACM®, CMA, and the Nashville Songwriter’s Association International (NSAI) awards.

   In the nearly 25 years since “Where’ve You Been,” Don and Jon have performed in venues from the Bottom Line in New York City to the Bluebird Café in Nashville, sharing stages with artists as diverse as Joey Ramone, John Hartford, Michael Johnson, and David Crosby. Their songs have been recorded by a multitude of artists including Janis Ian, Ray Charles, John Mellencamp, and Miranda Lambert to name a few. Working as a duo, the DonJuans bring an impressive array of songs, experience, and gifted musicianship.

Optional pre-concert fixed price dinner served at 6 PM:  Beef Bourguignon over Yukon gold mashed potatoes, French bread, Salad with spinach, pear and toasted walnut salad in a sherry vinaigrette, Cranberry Pie for dessert.

Third Coast Bluegrass
Wednesday, January 22, 2025, 8 PM
Tickets: $35

Any bluegrass fan even remotely aware of the Wisconsin bluegrass scene will be thrilled to hear Third Coast Bluegrass (TCB), a new band of longtime friends and musical cohorts with deep roots in the Great Lakes bluegrass scene going back to the 70's. The band includes:  Marc Edelstein, bass & vocals; Ken Finkel, banjo & vocals; Peter Knupfer, fiddle; Don Stiernberg, mandolin & vocals; Jerry Wicentowski, lead vocals and guitar.  TCB’s repertoire spans bluegrass classics, hidden gems, originals, and adaptations from amazing songwriters. The band highlights Jerry’s “true to the tradition” vocals, seamless trios and masterful instrumentals.    With world class soloists Don and Peter stepping out front on the instrumentals with rock solid banjo from Ken, it’s as powerful as it is tasteful. Marc’s bass and Jerry’s rhythm guitar lay down the essential rhythmic foundation. As Don says, “Back to the roots of the hard grass with admired colleagues who are also great friends. What could be better?”

Optional pre-concert fixed price dinner served at 6 PM: Santa Fe Stew (Pork, black bean and sweet potato), corrnbread. Southwestern Salad with romaine lettuce, sweet corn and roasted buttemut squash in cilantro avocado dressing, Key Lime Pie for dessert.

Nick Dumas & Branchline
Wednesday, February 12, 2025, 8 PM
Tickets: $35

One of the top emerging artists in bluegrass, Nick Dumas & his band Branchline bring a hard driving bluegrass performance back to the White Gull.  Nick Dumas made his most ambitious album to date with his latest release on Skyline Records titled “Details” and demonstrates why he is one of the most diverse singular talents in the bluegrass industry today. 

   Nick, born and raised in Washington State, was raised in a musical family and constantly surrounded by music. Nick first cut his bluegrass chops with his family band Three Generations. Nick later stepped out with other musicians and founded the high energy group Northern Departure, and subsequently co-founded the band North Country. In 2014, Special Consensus, one of the most prominent bands in bluegrass, hired Nick as one of their lead singers and mandolin player. Nick toured the globe with Special Consensus and recorded two albums, including one album that was nominated for a Grammy and also won three IBMA Awards, including the “Album of the Year” award in 2018. 

    In 2019, Nick put out his first album independently which received rave reviews and spent a significant amount of time on the bluegrass radio charts. In Spring 2022, Nick signed with Skyline Records out of Nashville, TN, releasing his second album titled “Details,” demonstrates Nick’s musical diversity, maturity, and composing ability. Further, “Details” contains a roster of heavy hitting musicians and song writers and also did very well on the airplay charts. In 2023, Nick was nominated for IBMA Momentum Vocalist of the Year, as well as a song of the year nomination with SPBGMA in Nashville. Now a Door County resident, Nick continues to tour with his band, Branchline, consisting of 2018 IBMA Momentum Vocalist of the Year award winning Daniel Thrailkill on guitar and vocals, two-time Wisconsin State fiddle champion Hana Dumas on fiddle and vocals, Will McSeveney on banjo, and Andrew Knapp on bass.

Optional pre-concert fixed price dinner served at 6 PM: Shepherd's Pie, Wedge Salad with shaved carrot and radish topped with buttermilk blue dressing, Carrot Cake for dessert.

Christine Lavin
Wednesday, February 26, 2025, 8 PM
Tickets: $35

Christine Lavin started her professional life as a waitress/bread baker at the Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1975 where she met Dave Van Ronk who encouraged her to study guitar with him in NYC. She took his advice and is now a singer/songwriter/guitarist/recording artist/author/videographer based in New York City. Her latest solo album, her 25th, ON MY WAY TO HOOTERVILLE, includes 10 new songs and one re-worked song, "Ramblin' Waltz," a re-telling of her time in 1975 when she was an entourage driver for the first week of Bob Dylan's iconic "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour. 

   In 2023 Christine released "The Seasons Project," an 80-song seasonal compilation that features the work of 63 American, Canadian, British and Irish singer/songwriters. Christine assembled this compilation to help guide future historians and folklorists to authentic music being written in the last two decades of the 20th Century and the first two of the 21st Century.

   In 2024 she is completing her 26th solo album, DRUM SCHOOL DROPOUT, hoping to have it done by the end of 2024.  Christine has also won five ASCAP Composer Awards, The Kate Wolf Memorial Award, and her album Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind won Album Of The Year from the National Association Of Independent Record Distributors.

     Christine performs concerts all over the US, Canada, and points beyond (Australia, Germany, Israel), often hosting knitting circles and Downton Abbey-style napkin folding backstage at each show. Songs of hers have been performed by artists as diverse as Broadway stars Betty Buckley, Sutton Foster, Karen Ziemba, and Klea Blackhurst, cabaret divas Andrea Marcovicci. Barbara Brussell, and Colleen McHugh, the a cappella Dartmouth Decibelles, and The Accidentals, winners of the National Harmony Sweepstakes Championship.

   Christine Lavin has been called "A fearless folkZinger!" by the Orlando Sentinel, "Wildly entertaining," by The New Yorker, and "A fresh kick in the pants!" by the late Paul Newman. She is currently also working on her 26th solo album.

Optional pre-concert fixed price dinner served at 6 PM:  Italian Sausage Lasagna served with garlic herbed focaccia, tossed salad with grape tomatoes, cucumber, Kalamata olives and Italian vinaigrette.  Tiramisu for dessert.

Peter Mulvey
Wednesday, March 5, 2025, 8 PM
Tickets: $35

We are delighted to welcome back Peter Mulvey, who has been a songwriter, road-dog, raconteur and almost-poet since before he can remember. Raised working-class Catholic on the Northwest side of Milwaukee, he took a semester in Ireland, and immediately began cutting classes to busk on Grafton Street in Dublin and hitchhike through the country, finding whatever gigs he could. Back stateside, he spent a couple years gigging in the Midwest before lighting out for Boston, where he returned to busking (this time in the subway) and coffeehouses. Small shows led to larger shows, which eventually led to regional and then national and international touring.

   The wheels have not stopped since.  Nineteen records, an illustrated book, thousands of live performances (including two at the White Gull), a TEDx talk, a decades-long association with the National Youth Science Camp, opening for luminaries such as Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, and Chuck Prophet, appearances on NPR, an annual autumn tour by bicycle, emceeing festivals, hosting his own boutique festival (the Lamplighter Sessions, in Boston and Wisconsin)… Mulvey never stops. He has built his life’s work on collaboration and an instinct for the eclectic and the vital. He folds everything he encounters into his work: poetry, social justice, scientific literacy, & a deeply abiding humanism are all on plain display in his art.

   In late January 2019, Mulvey and his band, SistaStrings (Chauntee & Monique Ross) with Nathan Kilen on drums, decamped to their home turf, the Cafe Carpe, in Fort Atkinson, WI where they spent just five days making two records in the tiny back room. The live record, “Peter Mulvey with SistaStrings Live at the Cafe Carpe” is out now on Righteous Babe Records. It’s a celebration of a world that is temporarily on hold: a small folk club, packed with listeners, and a band shoulder-to-shoulder, playing and singing with intimacy and abandon.

Optional pre-concert fixed price dinner served at 6 PM: Guinness braised short ribs served over mashed potatoes, White Gull salad with pecans, dried cherries and Parmesan in balsamic vinaigrette.  French Silk Pie for dessert.

The White Gull Concert Series Turns 41

In 1983, on a cold November evening, a small group of Door County visitors and residents gathered at a local inn, enjoying the first of what has become a popular tradition: monthly winter folk concerts. During this time, more than 175 talented folk singers and songwriters from all over the country have performed at the White Gull Inn.

The concerts were conceived by the Innkeeper Andy Coulson, a banjo player himself and lover of traditional and contemporary folk music. Coulson was frustrated by the lack of live entertainment during the long quiet Door County winters. The first concerts were loosely based on the "house concert" concept, in which traveling folk musicians, often on tight budgets and in need of work, are invited into the homes of fans along the route of their travels. The fans provide the musician with food and lodging in return for a concert to a small group of friends, often right in their living rooms. A collection at the door goes to the artist to help defray expenses.

The house concert circuit has provided work and travel expenses for generations of singers and brought folk music to many rural areas that are too small to otherwise provide such entertainment. "I wasn't sure who would come to a concert on a weekday in winter in Fish Creek," Coulson recalls thinking in the beginning. "But we had plenty of room and board , and figured that we had nothing to lose. At the very least, we'd have some quality folk music in Fish Creek."

In the beginning, it was not easy finding artists willing to come so far for such a small turnout. However, as word got around, more and more musicians decided that a "working holiday" in the quiet beauty of the Door Peninsula was worth the trek to the north country. The series has gradually been able to attract in more and more well known performers, such as Anne Hills, Chris Smither, Tom Paxton and Cheryl Wheeler, many of whom normally play in much larger halls.

The pre-concert dinners, now almost as popular as the concerts, were added in recent years at the request of local residents. White Gull chefs responded by offering an optional fixed price dinner, served at 6 pm for each concert.

Concert tickets can be purchased at the door, although most concerts are sold out, so advance ticket purchase and reservations for the pre-concert dinners are recommended. You may purchase tickets at the White Gull front desk, or you can do it by phone, using a credit card.

Folk Musicians Previously Featured at the White Gull
Date: 1983-2024

Musicians who have appeared in the White Gull folk concert series in the 35 seasons since its inception in 1983: Tom Paxton, Cheryl Wheeler, John McCuen, Bob Gibson, John McCutcheon, Chris Smither, Michael Smith, Bill Miller, Fred Alley, Vance Gilbert, Neal & Leandra, Lou and Peter Berryman, Michael Johnson, Garnet Rogers, Pat Donohue, Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum, Joel Mabus, David Mallett, Suzzy and Maggie Roche, Cindy Mangsen and Steve Gillette, Bill Staines, Buddy Mondlock, Bryan Bowers, Peter Keane, Mark Dvorak, Anne Hills, Willy Porter, Michael Miles, Bob Bovee and Gail Heil, Jim Hurst and Missy Raines, Dave Moore, Cathie Ryan, Small Potatoes, Matt Watroba, Peter Mayer, Kenny White, Natalia Zukerman, Eric Lewis, Tommy Burroughs, Andy Ratliff, Hans Christian, David Roth, Brooks Williams, Steppin In It with Rachel Davis, James Keelaghan, Chuck Pyle, L. J. Booth, Johnsmith, Dan Sebranek, Clay Riness, Tom Pease, Louise Taylor, Christopher Shaw and Bridget Ball, Mark Dvorak, Priscilla Herdman, Claudia Schmidt, Moe Dixon, Susan Smentek, Heartwood, Cosy Sheridan, Becky Schlegel, Don Stiernberg, Victoria Vox, Wil Maring and Robert Bowlin, Michael Johnathon, May Erlewine and Seth Bernard, Peter Mulvey, Jonathan Byrd, Jerry Rau, The Special Consensus, Phil Passen and Highland Road, Antje Duvekot, the Waymores, the Honey Dewdrops, David Wilcox, The Steel Wheels, Lindsay Lou & the Flatbellys, Paul Cebar, Dayna Kurtz, Kelly Joe Phelps, Count This Penny, Carolyn Martin, the Stray Birds, Molly O'Brien and Rich Moore, Nora Jane Struthers and the Party Line, Rita Hosking, Red Molly, Jake Armerding, Tim Grimm, Mipso, 10 String Symphony, Robbie Fulks, The String Ties, Molly Tuttle Band, Scott Cook, Ruth Moody Band, Robinson & Rohe, Harmonious Wail, Claire Lynch Band, Freddy & Francine, Susan Gibson, Mile Twelve, Joshua Davis, and April Verch Band, Slocan Ramblers, Third Coast Bluegrass, Nick Dumas & Branchline, Western Flyers, Joe Newberry & Kenny White.

The concerts are held approximately once a month, November through April, beginning at 8 pm, after an optional dinner served at 6 pm.