The ambient confines of Asbury Hall a/k/a Babeville, was the setting on November 5th for the symbiotic stylings of I’m With Her. The mod-bluegrass-roots folk trio played the rescued church space in support of their 2025 record Wild and Clear and Blue.

The Grammy Award winning triad presented an elegant cross-section of their catalog in a stripped-down synergistic display. Members, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins are established artists, masterful vocalists, and practiced multi-instrumentalists. Throughout the evening the trio swapped instruments and elicited the voices of an angel choir in a set that combined masterful playing, contemporary storytelling, and undistilled acoustic music.

There was absolutely no pretense, no autotune, no light show, just three women and their songs to share.

I’m With Her’s aesthetic, while rooted in the rich and foundational soils of bluegrass, folk, and songwriting tradition … is its own specialized invocation. Their songs are patient meditations full of breath and space.

Over the course of the concert, the songs moved of their own volition, without drums, on the strength of strings, raked, muted, and strummed as the impetus for the music’s organic self-propulsion.

The instrumentation by the threesome was constantly inventive and led by Sarah Jarosz’s guitar, mandolin, and banjo playing which invented a celebratory vernacular for every song.  O’Donovan’s guitar provided the foundational detailing and Sara Watkins fiddling opened the arrangements up through her dynamic phrasings.

The concert demanded focused listening from the audience. The songs were captivating either instrumentally or vocally. The group’s harmonies were so tightly pressed, that the three voices seemed to combine into a harmonically spectral fourth vocal element.

A simplistic and possibly overwrought descriptor, but apt comparison, is with the vocal supergroup Crosby. Stills, and Nash where three disparate talents developed indescribable music through enduring friendships and musical rapport.

The evening opened with the lacy wordless evocation of “Strawberry Moonrise,” setting the stage for an ethereal collection of music and the whole of their new album over the course of the performance.

In the early part of the show “Ancient Light,” and “Standing on the Fault Line,” were sung like secrets, a nuanced blend of dramatic harmonizations that culminated in the beautiful farewell of “See You Around.”

The audience was given a short lyrical schooling to better accompany the sing-along reading of “Overland,” from the group’s debut LP. For the performance of “Only Daughter,” the crowd was brought to such still silence that you could hear the old church settle and sigh.

The Gospel stylings of “Lord, Lead Me On,” was a eye closed and hand waving declaration that shined the light on the threesomes apt ability weave their voices together while playing the hell out of their instruments.

Later, a welcome cover of Paul Simon’s “Obvious Child,” was rolled out with shifty three-part harmonies and a bounding groove that the audience loved.

The evening was concluded when the triumvirate came to the edge of the stage and stood in a semi-circle around a bullet microphone for a meditative reading of “Rhododendron,” the closing track on their new album. This stunning performance was followed with the group’s first single, John Hiatt’s “Crossing Muddy Water.”

I’m With Her’s performance at Buffalo’s Asbury Hall was beautiful proof that you can still see incredible music, by real musicians, in soulful spaces.