Good news: The Sam Ragan Writers Series will present The Red Clay Ramblers "unplugged" Friday, March 2, and Saturday, March 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Tickets are available by calling the Weymouth Center at (910) 692-6261. Tickets for both shows are $30. Seating is limited.

Now in their 40th year, the Tony Award-winning Red Clay Ramblers are a North Carolina string band whose repertoire reflects their roots in old-time mountain music, as well as bluegrass, country, rock, New Orleans jazz, gospel and the American musical.

In 1993, the Irwin-Shiner-Ramblers hit "Fool Moon" on Broadway earned the Ramblers their second Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music in a Play, and "Fool Moon" in Los Angeles set box-office records. "Fool Moon" went on to run abroad in Vienna and Munich, returned to Broadway for a second success in late 1995, and had a third Broadway run in 1998-99.

"Fool Moon" enjoyed a five-week run at the Kennedy Center, D.C., February and March 1999, and received a Special Tony Award, Gershwin Theater, in New York, on June 6, 1999.

The Ramblers' long association with music and theater also includes the original New York productions of "Diamond Studs" (1975) and Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind" (1985).

In 1988, the Red Clay Ramblers scored Shepard's film "Far North," and they perform and appear in his second feature, "Silent Tongue" (Tri-Mark, 1994).

The Ramblers also scored Nick Searcy's "Paradise Falls."

The Ramblers have been guests numerous times on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" and have appeared nationally with Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show," Harry Smith on "CBS This Morning" and Candice Bergen on "A.M. America."

They have toured extensively in North America and in Europe, and have made four USIA concert tours, to eastern Europe, sub-Sahara Africa, North Africa and the Middle East.

The Ramblers developed "Kudzu: A Southern Musical," in collaboration with Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette, and staged the show at Duke in Durham and Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., in 1998.

Over the years, the Ramblers have performed with such figures as '98 Grammy-winner Shawn Colvin (a Red Clay Rambler for most of '87), Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Eugene Chadbourn, Ireland's Boys of the Lough, Randy Newman and Michele Shocked.

All along, members of the Ramblers have been involved separately in diverse creative projects, including children's works for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and the celebratory Carolina musicals "King Mackerel," "Cool Spring" and "Tar Heel Voices."

In 2001, the Ramblers' show "Fool Moon" ran at the Geary Theater in San Francisco, and their musical "Lone Star Love: or, the Merry Wives of Windsor Texas" ran at the Ohio Theater in Cleveland.

Their album "Yonder" was released in August 2001, and the Ramblers made a national radio appearance on "Mountain Stage" (NPR) in 2002. They premiered "Ramblin' Suite" with the Atlanta Ballet in 2002; toured "Rambleshoe" nationally with Dayton's "Rhythm in Shoes" in 2003 and 2004; and released on CD the scores to both "Rambleshoe" and "Kudzu."

The Ramblers' '04-'05 off-Broadway run of "Lone Star Love" earned Outstanding Musical nominations from both the Lucille Lortel Awards and the N.Y. Outer Critics' Circle, and the original cast recording of the show was released January 2006 by PS Classics of New York.

Their recording "Fool Moon: the Music" was released in September 2007. The Red Clay Ramblers appeared with the North Carolina Symphony New Year's Eve 2007, and "Carolina Jamboree," their second ballet, launched by the Carolina Ballet in 2005, was reprised June 2008, and has been broadcast statewide numerous times over UNC Public Television.

The Daily Advance calls the Ramblers' latest CD, "Old North State" (released October 2009), "North Carolina culture at its best." Premier acoustic music station WNCW salutes The Red Clay Ramblers as "the house band of North Carolina."

All over North Carolina during 2010 and 2011, as well as from New York City to St. Louis to Vancouver Island, The Ramblers continue to carry the banner of string-band music far and wide, and with great joy and zest!

Contact Stephen Smith at travisses@ hotmail.com.