La magie du folk avec The Dead South au Transbordeur

There is something quite striking when entering the Transbordeur on this Tuesday, March 17: seeing so many people (1,670 to be precise) gathered around bluegrass, folk and americana aesthetics… Genres that usually remain on the margins are tonight filling, without difficulty, the rather rock-oriented venue of Villeurbanne, just as they had filled the Olympia in Paris a few days earlier. The Dead South have therefore succeeded in this challenge thanks to the quality of their music, but also through a strong sense of staging, both on stage and on social media, allowing them to reach a much wider audience than the usual aficionados.

Live report – The Dead South + Benjamin Dakota Rogers
📆 March 17, 2026
📌 Villeurbanne – Le Transbordeur
📸 Charles-François Mingalon @champagne_missia

It is March 17, Saint Patrick’s Day, and the music of The Dead South clearly carries part of that heritage. And as with any Saint Patrick’s celebration, the audience arrives with a clear intention that can be felt from the very first minutes: to celebrate. And let’s say it right away, the evening will be a success without a single false note. Blues Actu was there to tell the story.

Benjamin Dakota Rogers sets the mood

The evening begins with Benjamin Dakota Rogers, alone on stage with his guitar. The opening of his set evokes the spirit of working songs, those hypnotic labor chants that are part of North American musical tradition. Very quickly he warms up the crowd with songs from his latest album, including the excellent Charlie Boy, which he jokingly presents as “a song that brings him luck.” Then comes She’s My Pretty Little Darling, performed with a distinctive diction that sometimes recalls Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash. Or even Dan Tyminski (Union Station), whom I recently mentioned in Ciné Blues dedicated to the film O Brother. It is therefore no surprise that our man recorded his own version of Man of Constant Sorrow, the film’s signature song, in 2023.

The rest of the set continues the exploration of his latest album This Ol’ Way and confirms the atmosphere of his music, somewhere between dark country and narrative folk. Born in Canada and raised on a farm, Benjamin Dakota Rogers clearly belongs to that rural tradition where songs tell stories of lives, roads and sometimes difficult choices. At times we regret not understanding all the richness of his lyrics, full of humor and irony, but we will make up for it by listening more closely to this artist who, for us tonight, is a complete discovery.

In short, a perfect introduction and one entirely consistent with the spirit of the evening.

The Dead South: welcome to the saloon, ol’ boy!

When the lights come back up after the opening act, the stage design reveals its full dimension. The stage at the Transbordeur recreates the image of an old western town, with wooden façades aligned like a dusty street in the American West. This remarkable set directly echoes the artwork of the band’s latest album Chains & Stakes, inspired by those 19th-century frontier towns.

Live performance with four musicians on stage, colorful lights and an old western town set.

At that moment you realize that listening to The Dead South is not enough. You also have to watch them. The four musicians gather around their microphones in their usual formation. White shirts, black suspenders, wide-brimmed hats: an aesthetic that has become inseparable from the band, a dress code even adopted by a few fans in the audience. Banjo, mandolin, guitar and cello gradually settle in. Everyone moves from one microphone to another for the vocals, although many of the lead vocal lines are carried by Nathaniel Hilts, nicknamed “The Good Lord”, one of the central figures of the band.

The group quickly establishes its universe with Snake Man Pt. 1 and Snake Man Pt. 2, a diptych with Irish-tinged accents that immediately plunges the audience into their world: mysterious characters, dark atmospheres and stories told in the purest folk tradition. The cello, sometimes played with a bow, often acts as a rhythmic bass line, another distinctive feature of the band that gives the music a singular depth and allows Danny Kenyon great freedom of movement (which he clearly enjoys).

Two musicians on stage playing mandolin and guitar with a western town set behind them.

The songs alternate between darker stories and lighter moments. Son of Ambrose and That Bastard Son continue this tradition of family tales and colorful figures from rural America. On the other hand, some songs reveal the humor that runs throughout the band’s repertoire. In Time for Crawlin’, a standout track from the album Illusions & Doubt (2016), Scott “The Gentleman” Pringle tells of his misadventures after drinking too much beer and whiskey, finding himself locked out because his wife refuses to let him in: “My best friend’s been a bottle nearly every night / So honey won’t you let me in.”

On this European tour, the banjo is played by Scott “The Disciple” Caelum, replacing Colton Crawford for some dates due to health issues. “If we’re here tonight, it’s because he’s here!” the band jokes. And as it turns out, it is also his birthday. When the band mentions it, the entire crowd spontaneously starts singing Happy Birthday. For a moment, it almost feels like a very large family gathering.

The most anticipated moment of the night obviously comes with In Hell I’ll Be in Good Company. Released on the album Good Company in 2014, the song became a worldwide phenomenon after its video was posted in 2016, now counting hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. At the Transbordeur, the first notes are enough for the entire audience to sing along, whistle the melody and pull their phones out to capture the moment—something we also did, I must admit, in order to share the video below. And honestly, it was worth it.

The encore begins in a more stripped-down configuration, with two musicians returning to the stage first before the full band gathers again for the final songs. The evening closes with Banjo Odyssey, which has become one of the band’s most emblematic live pieces over the years.

For a little over an hour and a half, the Transbordeur turned into an old western town. And seeing the entire crowd singing along with The Dead South, you realize how far this band from the Canadian prairies has come.