Pat MacDonald and The Carpenter Ants Featuring John Ellison

Since his techno-folk pioneering Timbuk3 days, Pat MacDonald has been tinkering in relative obscurity. His one-man electro-blues experiments of the late 1990s and early 2000s led to the the forming of the alternative band Purgatory Hill. Life-threatening illness in 2016 brought a long pause.

Now, five years cancer-free, he’s writing, rediscovering the six-string, and reanimating his pre-T3 acoustic roots with finger-style remakes from his back catalog. The new songs flirt with a twisted spirituality, hints of hope, and optimism embraced and defaced by his trademark darkish humor.

The Carpenter Ants, a quartet steeped in Appalachian gospel, soul and country, open the show with John Ellison was born in Montgomery, WV on the banks of the Kanawha River and grew up in the mining town of Landgraff in McDowell County. In 1959, he quit his job at the Carter Hotel in Welch, put his belongings in a grocery bag and bought a one-way ticket to Rochester, NY. Eight years later, he formed The Soul.

Tickets are $20 to $25 depending on seating, and are available at readertix.com. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.