The Mighty Pines NYE 2026

They are the band that puts the wildcat guitar in the jazzgrass, the electric mandolin in the country-reggae, the three-part harmony in the zydeco-folk, and the contrapuntal bass in the jump-blues jamboree. It’s the Mighty Pines, the butt-kickingest band in Americana that has made national splashes by way of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, NBC’s The Voice, collaborations with the legendary Michael McDonald and Yonder Mountain String Band’s Allie Kral, and their own booming roots-music festival, Pines Fest. 

The St. Louis-based Mighty Pines have barnstormed the country with their almighty musicality, gorgeous ambrosial melodies, pass-the-chillum string shredding, consciousness-expanding grassedelica, and electric roots-rock fire. Nobody brings it live like the Pines, as the quartet continues to wow audiences by bringing their superb original material to life with daredevil picking, sophisticated arrangements, and aorta-exploding melodic charge. 

The Pines’ singer/guitarist Neil Salsich went nationwide during the 2023 season of The Voice, setting the stage ablaze with a four-chair judges turnaround during his blind audition and going on to the show’s playoff rounds. Salsich has since continued to be one of roots music’s most highly coveted collaborators, lauded for his silvery tenor, boundless stylistic range, magnetic stage personality, and sizzling acoustic guitar runs. 

Multi-instrumentalist Gerard Erker brings fireside vocals, kaleidoscopic mandolin, breakneck banjo, and mountain-soul fiddle to the Pines’ genre-fluid tapestry. Extraordinary bassist John Hussung is a master of melodicism, a virtuoso of technique and feel, and a smooth shapeshifter of rock, jazz, country, reggae, and funk styles. Highly decorated drummer Mike Murano is a much sought-after studio ace and a creator of dynamic rhythmic approaches and in-the-pocket propulsion, playing with incredible power and dexterity. 

Together, the Mighty Pines are deft instrumentalists and genre archivists who use their encyclopedic repertoire of rock and roots music to create an eclectic sound all their own as heard on their dazzling studio albums, including 2017’s Lonesome Blues and 2020’s Late Last Night. Last year’s single “Thank You” demonstrates the Pines’ trademark blend of tender soul, bucolic stomp, soothing melodies, and Salsich’s twilight vocals, creating literary, mandolin-abetted testaments to romantic yearning and shared experiences. 

In 2022, the band started Pines Fest, a multi-stage music festival in St. Louis that brings together an exquisite mix of Americana, rock, blues, jazz, and bluegrass artists from across the region. In its third year, Pines Fest has become the annual flagship event within St. Louis’s rich musical milieu, headlined by that group that St. Louis magazine calls “the city’s most popular and talented band.”

The Pines are currently headed back to the studio to record their new album and will hit the road in 2026, bringing their jambidextrous picking prowess, rousing anthems, and warm audience rapport to stages everywhere. Come get high and Mighty.