Ian Munsick at Blue Gate Performing Arts Center in Shipshewana, IN
Shipshewana, IN (Nov 1, 2024) – Ian Munsick brings his cowboy tunes of the western way to a SOLD-OUT show at the Blue Gate Performing Arts Center, while including Ashland Craft as support.
On Friday night, Munsick kicks off the weekend with his own headlining show in Shipshewana, before rejoining the Lainey Wilson tour on Saturday where he has been support to her on her 2024 tour. Craft is added to the show here as support to Ian as she has done so in the past.
Standing at a microphone center stage with an acoustic guitar, 28-year-old Ashland Craft starts the night off with a short 30-minute set to get the crowd fired up. Opening with “Your Mother Still Does,” she adds a bit of raspy to her voice showing her wide range of singing styles.
Hailing from Piedmont, South Carolina, Craft has been singing all her life, although performing professionally since she was 13 years old. While spending two years singing at a local dive bar, Wendell’s Dipping Bar, she became a fan of the honky-tonk country sound. As a fan of live music and making people feel happy, she performs her next single release, “Right Damn Now.” This song is guaranteed to be a popular hit for her as it is sure to be a beer drinking anthem for the working class.
To once again showcase her raspy voice, Ashland adds the Tyler Childers’ cover “Whitehouse Road,” before closing her set with the title track to her debut album, “Travelin’ Kind.”
Being added as support to Munsick and performing at the Blue Gate PAC almost a year to the day for a radio songwriters round, Craft is quickly gaining fans in the area and proven why she was labeled as a CMT’s Next Women of Country in 2021 along with Pandora’s Country Artist To Watch.
Ashland Craft setlist:
1. Your Mother Still Does 2. Does It Have To Be That Way 3. Right Damn Now 4. Make It Past Georgia 5. Lie A Little 6. Whitehouse Road (Tyler Childers cover) 7. Travelin’ Kind
After a short stage changeover, it is time for the headliner Ian Munsick to take the stage. When the lights go down and the music begins, the sold out crowd jumps to their feet to welcome Munsick and his band as they open the show with the highly impactful “Mountain Time.” The band welcomes the crowd with a strong presents of fiddle and guitar.
Dropping the lead guitar for a banjo, the band continues to excite the crowd with more western mountain music including a fiddle and banjo in “I See The Country” and “River Run.”
Munsick welcomes the crowd and thanks them all for coming. Upon calling out all the cowgirls and cowboys, he states “cowboys…if you go home alone tonight, it’s your own damn fault. You must be pretty ugly if you can’t make it happen here tonight.” That leads right into “Cowboy Killer.”
Ian Munsick has been making his own kind of country music for the past 12 years. “I promised myself that I would write about horses, cattle, cowboys and cowgirls, sagebrush and canyons. In my opinion, country music needs more western in it. Although we are in the middle of the mid-west here in Shipshewana, we are going a little further west tonight” as he and the band head into “Long Haul.” The crowd reacts by shining their cellphone lights into the sky to resemble what Ian calls a “Wyoming night light.”
Raising the energy in the Blue Gate, the band gets into a “Barn Burner” before they are introduced individually. “The Rocky Mountain Fever band is the hottest boys from the Rocky Mountains since Chris LeDoux and the Western Underground,” Ian claims. The band includes: Tristen Smith (lead guitar, banjo), Peter Wilson (drums) and Jonathon Warren (Fiddle).
Next, Ian admits that growing up on a ranch in Wyoming, there was a certain smell that lingered in the air 24/7. It was the sweetest smell in the world…called cow shit. That smell also inspired Munsick to write the song “Cowshit In The Morning.”
Recently, Munsick has been able to release quite a bit of music. He states that he wouldn’t be where he is in life or even standing on the stage at the Blue Gate now, if it wasn’t for his manager/wife Caroline. He has written a song and released it to dedicate to her and show his appreciation. It’s called “Caroline.”
The crowd shows their excitement, by singing along and dancing to the Ian’s first number one single and the 2022 duet with Cody Johnson tune, “Long Live Cowgirls.”
Having some fun with the crowd, Ian takes a survey to see who and how many in the crowd are 80’s babies, 90’s babies and 2000 babies. Ian starts off a medley with 80’s babies and “No Scrubs” by TLC, then 2000 babies and “Toxic” by Britney Spears, and wrapping up with the 90’s babies and “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child. At the conclusion, Ian says “it is possible to like Hank Williams and Britney Spears at the same time. In fact, if you don’t like them together, I question your like of country music. Never take yourself so seriously that you can’t sing a Britney Spears song every now and then. Life is too short to not enjoy it and have fun”.
Munsick released his sophomore album, White Buffalo a year and half ago. Native American culture sees the animal as a spiritual omen of good things to come in the future, and a return of the good things in life. To me, I see it as a return to people respecting other people and the land more than what they have in their own pockets. My country music fans respect others more than what they have in their own pockets”. As the crowd roars in approval and appreciation, Ian and band perform “White Buffalo” before exiting off the dark stage to end the set.
After a quick break backstage, Munsick and the band returns for an encore that includes “Fixin’ Me,” a song that was released just last week. Showing dedication to the band and their music, in only a week many in the crowd have already learned all the words to the song and sang it back to them on stage. The show ends with Ian welcoming a former member of the Rocky Mountain Fever band that now resides in Indiana to join them all on stage for the final number “Horses Are Faster.”
The evening’s show is testament that there is still a want and desire for country songs to sound country with fiddles and banjos with music made on stage, not in a studio on a computer. The songs are still about the western culture and way of life. Ian Munsick is a modern day, singing cowboy that exemplifies the lifestyle he writes and sings about. In return, he draws crowds like the one here at Shipshewana’s Blue Gate Performing Arts Center that sells out the venue, night in and night out. This crowd at the Blue Gate PAC was full of fans of all ages from small children to elderly seniors. Each one of them at one time throughout the evening sang along to the song being played. And from the moment the band took the stage at the beginning of their show, the crowd stood the entire show.
For more information about Ian Munsick and his travels, Ashland Craft or shows at the Blue Gate Performing Arts Center, click on and follow the links below to stay up to date.
Ian Munsick setlist:
1. Mountain Time 2. I See Country 3. River Run 4. Cowboy Killer 5. Good Dogs And Sad Songs 6. Long Haul 7. Barn Burner 8. Band Introductions: Country Boy (Ricky Skaggs cover) / Beat It (Michael Jackson cover) / If Your Gonna Play In Indy (You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band) (Alabama cover) 9. Cowshit In The Morning 10. Caroline 11. Me Against The Mountain 12. Heartbreak King 13. Long Live Cowgirls (Cody Johnson cover) 14. More Than Me 15. No Scrubs (TLC cover) / Toxic (Britney Spears cover) / Say My Name (Destiny’s Child cover) 16. White Buffalo Encore: 17. Fixin’ Me 18. Horses Are Faster
Ian Munsick
Ashland Craft
Blue Gate Performing Arts Center