01 Jun Telluride Bluegrass 2026: Fresh, Fiery Dallahan Debuts 6/18!
The Telluride Bluegrass Festival announces 2026 lineup with top-to-bottom emphasis on world-class pickers.
Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gregory Alan Isakov, Larkin Poe, Shakey Graves, Flatland Cavalry, and more join a stellar string band lineup for this year’s festival, June 18-21, 2026, in Telluride, Colorado. And to open the weekend with a free concert, FirstGrass, in Mountain Village on June 17, is East Nash Grass, an up-and-coming musical sensation.
A select few tickets and camping pass options are still available at shop.bluegrass.com. For those making their first trek to Telluride—or if it’s been a while—the Planet Bluegrass team has laid out a helpful guide for first-timers right here.
Have kids and don’t know where to start in bringing them to their first (and favorite) music festival? This handy Telluride Bluegrass with Kids guide is here to make it fun for the whole family.
For everything else, please visit bluegrass.com.
Go here for more about the history of Telluride Bluegrass. (Back to 2009.)
And please scroll down to learn more about Dallahan, including an email interview with co-founder Jack Badcock.
Credit, courtesy Jack Badcock, Dallahan.
Their diverse repertoire ranges from rousing jigs and reels to evocative, story-driven ballads, all subtly intertwined with myriad “world folk” influences including: gypsy melodies, bluegrass, Balkan and North American folk. A rich stew spiced with stunning virtuosity as a group and bravura individual performances.
And humor: Dallahan is.also known for their playful, cheeky, and laugh-out-loud stage presence.
Dallhan is guitarist/singer Jack Badcock; banjo player Ciaran Ryan; accordionist Andrew Waite; and fiddler Benedict Morris.
From the moment their debut album, When The Day Is On The Turn, arrived in 2014 — hailed by fRoots as “the most exciting Irish music I’ve heard in a long time… Lunasa for the new generation” — Dallahan found themselves launched headfirst onto the international stage.
Dallhan’s 2016 album, Matter of Time, had the outfit on the road for 103 international performances including a trip to Kathmandu, Nepal for the British/Nepalese bicentenary celebrations on behalf of the British Council.
They were also shortlisted again for Album of the Year and earned Instrumental Cut of the Year at the Live Ireland Awards (USA).
In 2019 tDallahan released Smallworld on European label Westpark Records, shortlisted in the German Music Critics Choice Awards in the Folk category.
The quartet’s fourth album, Speak of the Devil (2023), added fuel to Dallahan’s growing fire.
To date, Dallahan has brought their live show to 25 countries and earned four nominations for Folk Band of the Year.
And now the quartet has voyaged across the pond to bring the heat to Telluride.
Be there is you want to find out what being “Dallahanified” is all about.
And to learn more, check out Telluride Inside..and Out’s email interview with Jack Badcock, a hugely experienced performer, having toured throughout Europe, North America, Asia and Australia as frontman and founding member of Dallahan.
Jack Badcock by Elly Lucas.
Dallahan by Elly Lucas
TIO: How and when did Dallahan come together as a band.?
Jack: We started out in 2013 in Edinburgh. Myself and our banjo player Ciaran Ryan both moved to the city as teengers in 2011 and started playing together in pubs. We soon started performing as a duo on stages in the UK and in Europe. Another musician on Edinburgh’s Irish scene called Jani Lang – a Hungarian fiddler and violinist who is a brilliant player of both Balkan and Irish music – asked us if he could record an EP of our duo as part of his sound production course. As we were recording the tracks, he added some fiddle to them and this snowballed into us adding an accordion and some double bass too! The process of putting that EP together accidentally led us to form what became the first lineup of Dallahan! That duo EP became Dallahan’s EP which we launched along with the band itself in December 2013 at The Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh.
TIO: How does Dallahan blend Balkan, North American, Irish, and Scottish folk without it feeling disjointed. Is that a conscious process or does it all come together organically?
Jack: Really we just play original music. So with the odd exception, it’s not that we’re ever really playing music from these places, but rather that our music is clearly influenced by them. We deliberately do not want to be thought of as fusion music. We’re not authentic players of bluegrass or Balkan music at all so we don’t have the right to say we’re really blending in these styles. We very much do come from the Irish and Scottish traditional music world. But it just so happens we are more often listening to music from elsewhere. So these other styles of folk music from around the world are hugely responsible for our sound, but it comes about by osmosis rather than deliberately mushing them together if that makes sense! The Balkan inflections are definitely as a result of Jani’s presence in the band. Though he has not been with the band for a good few years now, he left his mark and it’s become part of the band’s identity.
TIO: With four albums in, how do you keep the live show feeling fresh — do you still play tracks from your earlier releases?
Jack: We do still play some older stuff and occasionally we’ll swap one or two out. But most of our set these days is from the newest album as it’s just the best material! We’re in the slow process of writing our fifth album now so contrary to how we’ve always done it in the past, we’re going to gradually evolve the setlist over the next year adding in new material as and when it’s written to completion! Our Telluride gigs will feature at least two new tracks that are as yet unreleased!
TIO: Dallahan has now played 25 countries, including playing for the British/Nepalese bicentenary in Kathmandu. Has any particular culture’s music crept into your sound in ways listeners might not expect?
Jack: By the time we land in Telluride we’ll be up to 27 as we toured Sweden for the first time in May and have a gig in Poland, another new country in July! Perhaps one of the musical culture’s that does influence us a bit but doesn’t seem to get mentioned in the press material would be Scandinavian music. We’ve spent a lot of time in those countries and playing with musicians from there. It’s probably a subtler influence that’s harder to distinguish as Scandinavian and Celtic music are very closely related in a lot of ways.
TIO: What does the Dallahan sound look like in another ten years. Do you see it continuing to evolve outward, or is there a pull back toward the traditional roots?
Jack: My hope is that it will absolutely change over time to come. I think an evolving sound says that you’re being inspired and influenced from more and more people and places as you go. If you’re not changing what you do over the years even slightly, you’re probably not taking much in. We’ve got a busy year ahead of us and if all goes to plan, many more to come too, so I think our upcoming adventures will inspire us into some new directions. You can’t not develop your interests and sound if you’re out travelling the world, playing music to different audiences and meeting other musicians along the way.
TIO: Now Let’s get personal Jack; Growing up between Co. Kilkenny, Yorkshire, and Scotland — how do those three identities show up in your songwriting?
Jack: In my younger days of learning lots of traditional songs to add to my repertoire, I tried to kind of own that mixed up identity I have. I felt good about treating English folk songs with the same respect as Irish songs with the same respect as Scottish ones and bringing them all indiscriminately to my voice. My songwriting style has definitely got some idioms that I’ve picked up from being around those traditional songs so my three home countries have definitely ended up in my songwriting in subtle ways. These days though I listen to a lot of American songwriters so they’re as much to blame too!
TIO: Your DADGAD guitar style is really distinctive. What is that stye exactly and how did you develop it. Who were your biggest influences in so doing?
Jack: Though similar in some ways, it’s definitely a very different to style to what a lot of the guitarists at Telluride will be playing! I can tell you for sure, my style is definitely less efficient. It’s obviously another way of playing rhythm guitar not unlike the role of guitarists in bluegrass, but I think so much more motion comes from the elbow as opposed to the wrist. As a traditional accompanist of Irish and Scottish music, my favourite guitarists would probably be John Doyle and Kris Drever, both of whom have enormously different styles and neither of whom play DADGAD!
TIO: You were a BBC Young Traditional Musician finalist. How did that early recognition shape your path?
Jack I was very young when I did that and didn’t have a lot of stage experience so it was an incredibly scary thing to do then. I don’t think the recognition was particularly important apart from it was nice thing to put on my CV! The bigger takeaway from that experience was overcoming the fear of that gig. It was a healthy thing to go through for giving me confidence in my performing.
TIO: If you could collaborate with any living musician outside the folk world, who would it be and why?
Jack: Paul McCartney. I’m a massive Beatles head and have been since I was 15. I don’t think they were geniuses by any stretch, but I think that’s what makes their story so compelling. It was a few friends with some great ideas that through a series of freak events, ended up taking over the world and used their immense power and influence to simply mess about with music. In doing so changing music forever. It’s fair to say no other living person has left a larger mark on music than Paul and I’d just love to write some songs with him!
TIO: What about the Telluride Bluegrass Festival are most looking forward to?
Jack: We have been so aware of this festival for many years because every Telluride festival lineup is a Who’s Who of our musical heroes. We are huge fans of bluegrass, nu-grass, old time and the modern exponents of these styles. We never thought we’d get the chance to play there so it really is a dream gig. We’re looking forward to having a free ticket to some of our dream gigs and maybe even getting a tune with some of the musicians in the hotel lobby!
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