The Western Troubadours are coming to Vermillion for a concert of contemporary folk and western music at the Edith B. Siegrist Vermillion Public Library on Thursday, Oct. 9. Award-winning songwriters Kerry Grombacher and Aspen Black will perform their “Songs & Stories of the American West” concert at 6 p.m. Grombacher and Black are both multi-instrumentalists, and their songs draw vivid portraits and tell fascinating stories that they accompany with guitars, bass, and mandolin.
“This will be our duo’s first concert for the Edith B. Siegrist Vermillion Public Library, and we’re honored to be invited to perform,” Kerry Grombacher said recently. “We gave a concert at the National Music Museum, on the University of South Dakota campus, last year, and we both expressed a desire to return to Vermillion. We love the opportunity to see so much of the state, courtesy of the South Dakota Touring Artist Grant, which helps libraries fund programs such as ours.”
“I’m really looking forward to performing in Vermillion again,” added Aspen Black. “For me, as a southwest Virginia cowgirl, the South Dakota landscape, from the prairie and farmland to the Badlands and the Black Hills, is so inspiring. The farm and ranch heritage is strong, and our songs really resonate.”
Kerry Grombacher and Aspen Black are The Western Troubadours. They are both successful solo artists, and they’ve worked together as a duo since 2014, performing nationwide for arts councils, house concerts, festivals, museums, and libraries. Their songs are influenced by the English ballad tradition, the string-band music of Aspen’s Appalachian home, and the corridos of the desert Southwest, where Kerry has lived and worked.
Kerry Grombacher plays guitar and mandolin. The title track of his CD, “Range of the Buffalo,” was named 2021 Song of the Year by the International Western Music Association. His songs have been featured on the ABC-TV adventure travel show, “Born to Explore,” and on the Putumayo World Records CD “Cowboy Playground,” which was released in over 60 countries. He has released five albums of original songs, and his songs have been recorded by a list of artists that includes Jim Jones, Belinda Gail, Aspen Black, The Texas Trailhands, Gary Prescott, and Trails & Rails. He notes, proudly, that there is a room named for him at the Sands Motel in Grants, New Mexico, on Historic Route 66.
Nalini Jones, of the Newport Folk Festival, says “Kerry Grombacher is the best kind of songwriter, with lyrics that take us on journeys to places we’ve never visited before, and melodies so pure and true that they seem to rise up from the plains.”
Aspen Black plays guitar and bass. Her 2025 single recording, “As Cowboy as They Come,” is climbing the Western Music and Indie Country Radio Charts. She received a 2019 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Cowboy Poetry for her CD of Cowboy Poetry, “Tales from the Road.” Aspen’s “Lovin’ the West” won the Rural Roots Music Commission’s 2017 Classic Western CD of the Year award, and her “Eastern-Western Cowgirl” was the 2015 Female Country-Western CD of the Year. She was a Top Five finalist for the International Western Music Association’s Female Poet of the Year in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and her poetry CD, “Invisibility,” was a Top Five finalist for Cowboy Poetry CD of the Year in both 2015 and 2016.
Dick Shoemaker, of YNN-TV, in Franklin County, Virginia, says “Aspen Black has the voice of an angel. I could listen to her sing all day and just sit back and smile.”
The Edith B. Siegrist Vermilion Public Library is located at 18 Church Street in Vermillion, South Dakota. The concert on Thursday, Oct. 9 will begin at 6 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, please visit vermillionpubliclibrary.org/, or phone 605-677-7060.
This concert is partially supported by a grant from the South Dakota Arts Council. South Dakota Arts Council support is provided with funds from the State of South Dakota through the Department of Tourism and the National Endowment for the Arts.
