AUBURN, Maine — Actually, Bald Hill will not be doing any such thing. That was a just a cynical bit of click-bait. The person responsible for that headline has been sacked. 

While you’re here: Be advised that Bald Hill, those surprisingly hip purveyors of blues-inflected newgrass, folk rock and Americana, will play a live show on Nov. 18 — a triumphant return to Gritty McDuff’s Brewing Co., home to the Twin Cities’ finest pub fare and craft beers. Doors are open all day long; the band goes on at 8 p.m.

Saturday night’s engagement kicks off a busy holiday season for the New Gloucester-based Bald Hill [none of whom, so far as we know, have anything against Samuel Barber or the music he so deftly wrought from romantic structures and post-Straussian chromaticism]. Several band members will participate in the second annual holiday extravaganza, A New Gloucester Christmas, on Dec. 2 in the stunning-but-serene sanctuary of the NG First Congregational Church. A potluck dinner is planned for 5:30 p.m.; the concert begins at 7 p.m.

What’s more:

  • Bald Hill will return to She Doesn’t Like Guthries Restaurant & Café on Friday night, Dec. 15, in Lewiston.
  • The band plays another date back across the mighty Androscoggin River, at Gritty’s, on Friday night, Dec. 29.
  • [To be clear: Not a single  Samuel Barber opus will be undertaken during any of these shows.]

That said, in preparation for the long winter to come, Bald Hill has restocked its set list with new material from the likes of The Devil Makes Three, Billy Bragg & Wilco, The Jayhawks, Steely Dan, John Lincoln Wright, Robert Earl Keen and none other than BH mandolin/fiddle artist Ben DeTroy, known in Maine bluegrass circles as “The Samuel Barber of South/Central Maine”.