The line-up for the 2012 Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, Scotland, was announced today and among the artists on this year's line-up are the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Punch Brothers. The Nonesuch Records label mates are playing a double header show together at O2 ABC 1 Glasgow on January 20. Both bands are playing their own headliner shows in London that week; Punch Brothers also join Amos Lee for several shows in Europe then.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops will bring their unmissable live show back to the UK next year with a date at London’s Cecil Sharp House on January 23. Pre-sales are now open to all who bought tickets for the band’s last UK show and to Nonesuch Journal readers. Tickets go on general sale on October 12. The band is currently working on the follow up to their Grammy-winning Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig. Following its 2010 release, the Chocolate Drops played to sell-out audiences and festival crowds across the UK. As the Times of London remarked in one live review, "In the end, a standing ovation was the only possible response. Anything, you sense, is possible now."

With the Carolina Chocolate Drops taking a couple weeks away from the road, what better time to revisit the group's performance at the Newport Folk Festival this summer? While at Newport's Fort Adams State Park for the festival, proving to be among the "Newport favorites" of NPR's Ann Powers, the band took some time to perform three songs for Paste magazine. All three are now available in the latest issue of Paste's multimedia online mPlayer.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are collaborating on their first theater piece, which will be performed at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music this November. Keep a Song in Your Soul: The Black Roots of Vaudeville was commissioned by Old Town and explores songs written and performed by African Americans between 1830 and 1930. The band is working with jazz composer-pianist Reginald R. Robinson and the Old Town School's Reggio "The Hoofer" Laughlin on the production. Bandmember Dom Flemons tells the Willamette Week, “There’s so much stuff that people just don’t know about in terms of music ... we want to reach back and grab that stuff and make it live again.”

The Carolina Chocolate Drops follow last weekend's performance at the Newport Folk Festival, which NPR's Ann Powers included among her "Newport favorites," with an opening set for Bob Dylan in Ohio tonight. Says Powers: "Bridging the false divides separating blues from folk from country, this North Carolina band also doesn't hesitate to see the folk in the present day." While in Newport, the Chocolate Drops took some time to record a three-song set for Sleepover Shows. "Let’s just put it out there: The Carolina Chocolate Drops are the reason the Newport Folk Festival exists," asserts Sleepover Shows. Watch the set here.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops, who open for Bob Dylan this Friday, return to their home state of North Carolina to perform at the Museum of Art in Raleigh on August 27. In honor of the local show, the Chocolate Drops are hosting a special eBay auction, featuring an autographed banjo from the band, to benefit the Center for the Study of the American South in Chapel Hill and its music programming. The auction is open through August 13.

This past weekend, the Newport Folk Festival offered the sold-out crowd two beautiful summer days of music from performers including the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Emmylou Harris, Wanda Jackson, and Chris Thile & Michael Daves. You can now listen to all of those sets online at NPR Music, from the ever "vital and contemporary" Harris to the "blazingly intense music" of Thile & Daves. The Boston Globe says that all the music proved "compelling and indebted to what preceded it."

The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont, has announced its 2011–12 season, and on the schedule are four Nonesuch artists: k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang open the venue's concert season on September 23, Laurie Anderson follows with her piece Delusion in October, Cheikh Lô joins a multi-artist celebration of James Brown in November, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops play the Flynn in January.

Newport music festival season gets under way this weekend, when the Newport Folk Festival returns, featuring several Nonesuch artists: Carolina Chocolate Drops, Emmylou Harris, Wanda Jackson, and Chris Thile & Michael Daves, plus Sara Watkins with the Decemberists and a special benefit performance by The Low Anthem. James Farm will play the following weekend's Newport Jazz Festival. NPR Music will be broadcasting and webcasting full concerts throughout each event.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops and Punch Brothers will be among the performers at the first of four Dave Matthew Band Caravan festivals this summer, which takes place this weekend at Bader Field in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Caravan pulls up in Chicago July 8–10 for the second three-day festival, with Emmylou Harris and Ben Folds performing. The Chocolate Drops, Punch Brothers, and Harris are all playing the ROMP bluegrass and roots music festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, this weekend.

The 2011 ROMP (River of Music Party) Bluegrass Roots & Branches Festival kicks off today at Yellow Creek Park in Owensboro, Kentucky, and continues through the weekend, with three Nonesuch artists scheduled to perform as festival headliners: Punch Brothers on Friday and Carolina Chocolate Drops and Emmylou Harris on Saturday. Each Punch Brothers band member will also lead a ROMP festival workshop targeted to his instrument.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are today's Daytrotter artist: their session of five songs has now been published. The band's infectious sounds brighten even the deepest doldrums brought on by a relentlessly sodden spring, according to the site. "They bust you out of your stupor and you're immediately more agile, only because you've got to keep up with your heart rate," says Daytrotter. "We feel good again ... We're at a hoedown that was put together just for us, just to build us back up into people who could appreciate a clear blue, bright yellow day."