A high-contrast, moody photo of three members of Pentagram String Band. In the center, a woman with long hair and dark lipstick looks at the camera with wide eyes. To her left is a man with long dark hair, and to her right is a man with a large, thick beard. They are dressed in black t-shirts featuring white-line illustrations of a goat skull and a woman's profile. The image has a heavy, vintage film grain throughout.
The Pentagram String Band Credit: thepentagramstringband / Bandcamp

Don’t worry, Missouri’s Pentagram String Band is not what happens when Mumford & Sons discovers the Ouija board.

Led by drifter and busker Johnny Lawhorn, the Kansas City outfit plays a murderous, misanthropic strain of bluegrass that feels conspicuously optimistic when it gets blasted out of the speakers. Ragtime-loving Louisiana busker Matthew Bracken Edens brings his Yes Ma’am project to the bill along with Arizona’s Little Foot and Sarasota’s own country-R&B act Mark Wagner & the Bad Habits.

Tickets to see Pentagram String Band play The Nest at St. Pete Brewing Co. in St. Petersburg on Sunday, March 1 are still available for $20–$25.

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This article appears in Feb. 26 – Mar. 04, 2026.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...