The North Dakota Museum of Art 

Welcome Back Festival

August 26 & 27, 2022

This weekend festival is underwritten by UND Student Involvement & Parent Programs,
with food vouchers for UND students compliments of UND Student Events.

Each evening will feature two opening bands with one nationally touring headliner. Food provided by the North Dakota Museum of Art Cafe, with Ely’s running a cash bar. Bring a lawn chair or a blanket and take a place in the Museum’s sculpture garden.

The festival will take place west of the Museum in the sculpture garden. Parking available in all lots surrounding the Museum. Parking is free after 4:30 pm, and weekends.

Gates open at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 for single day, or $35 for a two-day pass. UND students (with I.D) and children 12 years and younger are admitted free of charge.

Food vouchers for UND students available August 22-26 from the Student Government/Student Involvement Office on the main floor of the Memorial Union (Suite 144) between the hours of 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Tickets available at NDMOA.com or at the gate.

To purchase tickets call 701.777.4195 or purchase online

NEED TO KNOW

No outside food or drinks allowed
Smoking is not permitted on campus
Tickets are non-refundable
No coolers allowed
All concerts are rain or shine, but will be canceled if conditions do not allow for an outdoor performance
Concerts will not be moved indoors
Free parking after 4:30 p.m.

Pieta Brown with special guest Bo Ramsey

The daughter of two preacher’s kids, Pieta Brown’s early upbringing in Iowa was in a rural outpost with no furnace, running water, or TV. There, she was exposed to traditional and rural folk music through her father, Greg Brown, the now beloved Midwestern folk singer. Later, while living with her mother in Birmingham, Alabama during her formative years, Pieta drew on and expanded these influences and began writing poems and composing instrumental songs on piano. By the time she left home at 18 she had lived in at least 19 different houses and apartments between Iowa and Alabama. Emerging from a disjointed and distinctly ‘bohemian’ upbringing, Pieta began performing live and making independent recordings soon after teaching herself how to play guitar. “I grew up around a lot of musicians and artists living on the fringe, and have always felt most at home among them,” Pieta says.

Perhaps even more importantly for an artist as fiercely independent as Brown, her work continues to garner praise and support from a wide array of peers and mentors, including legendary producer Don Was, filmmaker Wim Wenders, and Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon, who called Brown’s 2014 album Paradise Outlaw his “favorite recording made at our studio.” In addition to the mountain of acclaim, Brown’s music has also earned her co-writes with the likes of Iris Dement, Amos Lee, and Calexico; tour dates with an astonishing array of artists, including John Prine, Brandi Carlile, Emmylou Harris, JJ Cale, Neko Case, Richard Thompson, Ani DiFranco, and Mavis Staples; and festival slots everywhere from Bonnaroo to Mountain Jam. And in the last few years Pieta’s songs and music have been heard in various TV Shows and indie films including Everything Will Be Fine (Wim Wenders).

Parker Millsap

The fifth album from Oklahoma-bred singer/songwriter Parker Millsap, Be Here Instead emerged from a wild alchemy of instinct, ingenuity, and joyfully determined rule-breaking. In a departure from the guitar-and-notebook-based approach to songwriting that shaped his earlier work, the Nashville-based artist followed his curiosity to countless other modes of expression, experimenting with everything from piano to effects pedals to old-school drum machines (a fascination partly inspired by the early-’70s innovations of Sly Stone and J.J. Cale). As those explorations deepened and broadened his musical vision, Millsap soon arrived at a body of work touched with both unbridled imagination and lucid insight into the search for presence in a chaotic world.

Although Be Here Instead often finds Millsap wandering into new terrain, the album remains firmly grounded in the sophisticated musicianship he began honing as a kid growing up in the small town of Purcell. Raised on Texas singer/songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, he started writing songs on acoustic guitar in his early teens, then made his debut at the age of 19 with the 2012 album Palisade. With his self-titled sophomore effort arriving in 2014, Millsap released both The Very Last Day and Other Arrangements to widespread praise, with famed rock critic Ann Powers dubbing him a “star in the making” and Rolling Stone stating that the latter album “mingle[s] the sacred and profane to rollicking effect.” Through the years, he’s also made his name as a captivating live act, opening for the likes of Jason Isbell, Patty Griffin, and Lucinda Williams and taking the stage at major festivals like Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, and Newport Folk Fest. And in a particularly memorable turn of events, Millsap joined singer/songwriter Sarah Jarosz for a 2016 show in Atlanta and drew raves from none other than Sir Elton John, who hailed the performance as “one of the best concerts I have ever seen” and noted that the night “restored my faith in music.”