… did you say "Mebanesville?" ...

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Introductions

Mebanesville introduces and delights live audiences with the best in trans-Atlantic roots, rhythm, and world-roll music from the Mediterranean Basin to the British and Irish Isles, down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

About the Band

Mebanesville has brought the best in roots, rhythm, and worldwide roll to audiences at some of the most popular clubs, wineries, restaurants, and concert stages, as well as universities and community organizations, in the Triangle and Triad of North Carolina, and beyond. The ensemble was a featured music guest on Frank Stasio’s syndicated radio program, The State of Things, on the PBS affiliate WUNC radio, as well as helping to headline Raleigh’s annual Festa Italiana. 

The ensemble has also collaborated with film makers, cultural foundations, and theatre and dance companies, including PlayMakers Repertory Company at UNC-Chapel Hill, as well as the Paul Green Foundation, the Murphey School Radio Program, Odyssey Stage, The Dance Cure, and the Cane Creek Cloggers, all based in Chapel Hill, NC; the Gallery Players in Burlington, NC; the Durham Savoyards; the Open Road Theatre and The Raleigh Little Theatre in Raleigh, NC; the Playwrights’ Forum in Greensboro, NC; and Artauro Productions in Durham, NC.

In 2025, Mebanesville, with special musical guest artist Connie Marie Badgett Steadman, opened for Rhiannon Giddens & Friends at the inaugural Hook & Line Festival, honoring the legacy of the music of Odell & Joe Thompson. 

Mebanesville’s 2020 CD, “Town & Country,” was described by Times News (Burlington, NC) long-time cultural critic Charity Apple as, “(l)ike a typical Mebanesville performance, the album includes something ancient, something new, something borrowed, something brewed—but all thoroughly Mebanesville In the rendering.” NC Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green, describes Mebanesville’s album as “All praises for Mebanesville, Town & Country … a potent mixed brew of cultural entanglements that remind us over and over again how music tenderly invites us across both geographical and spiritual borders. Drink these songs slowly and fully as they open our hearts and arms wider!”

In 2026 Mebanesville released a groundbreaking digital album, in collaboration with Grammy- nominated songwriter, author, playwright & organizer, Si Kahn, “ICE Fishing in America—Songs in the Moment by L. D. Vellani & Si Kahn, with Mebanesville.” 

Fellow artists and music lovers have chimed in:

- Writer & radio host Art Menius wrote about “ICE Fishing:” “Kahn’s and Vellani’s lyrics provide timeless and not so timeless observations on – and a few not-so-subtle exhortations about – understanding and confronting authoritarian governance, crony capitalism, oligarchic dystopia, and environmental violence.” 

- Elaine Chiosso, co-founder of the Haw River Assembly wrote: “ICE Fishing in America is the best of folk music telling truth to power, in the tradition of Will Rogers, Pete Seeger and Jesse Welles. Clever, biting and funny political lyrics by longtime songsters Larry Vellani and Si Kahn, played by Vellani and the great Mebanesville band. ICE, DOGE, Tesla, Mar-a-Lago, Tariffs, US as Canada’s new 11th Province, pipeline fighters and water protectors - they cover it all!” 

- Crystal Red Bear Cavalier-Keck & Jason Crazy Bear Campos-Keck, Founders of 7 Directions of Service, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation shared: “We are grateful, not only to have the artists continue to carry us on their melodies, but also to know and have stood and have spoken and have advocated with the artists. Grateful for this album, grateful for the creativity, grateful for the spirit of responsibility and respect for life. All around sense of gratitude and readiness for more to come. As they say thank you in the language of the current day, Occaneechi Saponi People's whose ancestors kept balance for generations on these lands and waters, we say Bila:huk and Mani:en:ise Water Lives.”

Mebanesville co-founder, Loreins “Larry” Vellani, is the immediate descendant of Reggio Emilian (Arşân ed Rèz) emigrants. Larry began collecting melodies and lyrics from his family, and later friends and professional musical influences, reflective of the reality of the uprooted and resettled. Growing up in the Hilltop Community of Columbus, Ohio, Larry learned how to sing in Latin and Italian before he could read in English.

Larry has performed in Canada, England, Ireland, Italy, Mexico and across the United States with some of the most respected interpreters of social and narrative song and dance—in English, Italian, Spanish, and Ukrainian--, including Guy and Candy Carawan, Barbara Dane, Chuck Davis, Mimi Fariña, Beppe Gambetta, Ronnie Gilbert, Rhiannon Giddens, Beverly Grant, Si Kahn, Natalia Marrone, Fran McKendree, Michela Musolino, Holly Near, Bruce Phillips, Abby Sale, John Shaw, Fabio Turchetti, Baldemar Velasquez, Salvatore Villani, and Martyn Wyndham Reed. He also has performed with some of the Southeast's most renowned traditional Anglo and Afro-American musicians, including Lonny Austin, Marvin Gaster, Tommy Jarrell, Lauchlin Shaw, Paul Taylor, and Joe Thompson.

Initially formed by musician-friends Jamey Tippens, Larry Vellani, Nettie Lassiter, Peggy Boswell, Sarah Rubin, and Sherry Lea, Mebanesville, the ensemble, began in the summer of 2000 as a group of Larry’s neighbors and friends, playing an informal Friday evening music session at a coffee bar in Mebane, NC. Soon people were inviting the musicians to play for private parties and special events. The players took the name Mebanesville – one of their area’s names from the late 18th into the late 19th century prior to its 2nd incorporation as a town in the early 1880’s - to reflect their love of living locally while exploring music globally.

Whether on stage or tableside, the Mebanaires of Mebanesville creatively embrace the realities of the human condition in story and melody.