Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz, Photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz, the members of I’m With Her Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Orlando folk maestro Aoife O’Donovan is on her way back to the Dr. Phillips Center this week, this time with a roster of stagemates dramatically pared down from last year’s engagement with the Orlando Philharmonic. Make no mistake, though, this is all about quality over quantity, as the show sees O’Donovan playing as part of all-star trio I’m With Her. 

The Grammy-winning I’m With Her — O’Donovan, Sarah Jarosz and Sara Watkins — proffer an ethereal melding of folk and bluegrass with the members’ high lonesome voices taking center stage. 

Despite O’Donovan being a proud local, this will be I’m With Her’s Orlando debut and she tells Orlando Weekly she’s excited to show her hometown these songs.

“Even just this morning, I was at the downtown Y and somebody walked up to me and was like, ‘I’m coming to your show on Friday night,’” says O’Donovan. “I love getting to bring this band that’s been all over the world — and gotten to do so many fun and exciting things in the last year — here to kick off 2026 with the show at Steinmetz.” 

I’m With Her live (or on record) is a dream proposition for serious folk- and Americana-heads — or even those on the more adventurous end of the country music spectrum — as the trio sees O’Donovan, Watkins and Jarosz uniting to get very high and very, very lonesome. For O’Donovan, their musical chemistry was immediate, though it grew out of longtime personal bonds. O’Donovan remembers that first moment of frisson well, backstage at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2014.

“We were sitting backstage, and we were just kind of jamming on our songs from our own solo catalogs,” she recalls. “And we started singing together, and it felt like, ‘Wow, this is different.’ And we got up on stage and we did that song, and then later that night, we worked up a bunch more songs, maybe five more songs and we did a little impromptu set opening for Punch Brothers. Afterwards, we all looked at each other and we’re like, ‘I think this is a band.’”

Each band member brings a formidable musical CV to the table: O’Donovan as a solo artist and part of Crooked Still; Watkins for her violin work in Nickel Creek, solo output and sessions with everyone from The Killers to Phoebe Bridgers; and Jarosz for over 15 years’ worth of solo music that includes multiple Grammy-nominated albums. The bonds of friendship and admiration run deep for O’Donovan.

“I met Sara Watkins in 2001 at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. She was in Nickel Creek,” she says. “I was 18, and I remember meeting Sara and thinking she was the coolest person in the world, and jamming with her backstage.” 

Of Jarosz, she says, “I didn’t meet her until around 2006 and she was only, gosh, like 15 years old. I was like 23 and we became friends. I ended up singing on her first solo album, and she ended up singing on a bunch of Crooked Still albums.” 

Though the band have been a going concern for over a decade, making music together still feels new and exciting for the trio. Rather than just punching it in towards the last shows of their 2025 touring cycle, they found themselves excitedly workshopping new music during soundchecks.

“To be at your last soundcheck for your last show of a year of touring, and to be like, ‘OK, how do we make this better? How do we work on the dynamics for this part? How do we stay more locked-in on this section?’” marvels O’Donovan. “Because a lot of times you get to the end of a tour and you’re just like, ‘I’m done. I don’t care how it sounds.’”

The new year sees I’m With Her drastically stripping down their stage setup to keep it fresh for both themselves and the audience. These shows feature the trio huddled around one vocal microphone, like in the glory days of the Grand Ole Opry and Greenwich Village’s Bitter End.

“We’re going to be around one mic with a much more casual atmosphere, without a lighting design, without a big backdrop,” she says. “It’s a very different show. We’re excited to start the year with a show that is almost coming full circle back to how the band started.” 

Collectively sharing a vocal microphone is a good metaphor for the creative dynamic of I’m With Her. For O’Donovan, newest album Wild and Clear and Blue was the “most collaborative” suite of songs that she’s been a part of. The songwriting sessions were more “a writers retreat” than studio drudgery.

“We got together in three different locations, in residential houses where we would be living together and sharing meals together and waking up and having breakfast and starting the day working together. We’d start with an idea and we would work through it. You’d sit there and you’d have your instruments out, your laptop out, you have lyric ideas,” she remembers. “There’s a lot of a lot going on in the album about nostalgia and finding your own way and coming to terms with your life as it is, and asking yourself these hard questions, like, ‘When do you leave? When do you stay?’ How do you make these big, heavy decisions?”

Despite, or perhaps because of, this heaviness, Wild and Clear and Blue is a record that has particularly resonated with fans, critics and now even awards committees. The LP is up for both International Folk Awards and Grammys. 

“It’s just another excuse to hang out with my friends for the weekend and wear a cool outfit,” says O’Donovan of Grammy attendance.

As conversation winds down, talk inevitably turns to the role music and performing play in our dystopian times. 

“Music really has the ability to bring people together and to heal in a way that I think very few art forms do. When you’re going to see a concert, you’re in the same space, you’re breathing the same air, you’re being affected by what’s coming at you in real time, the performers and the audience are coexisting,” says O’Donovan. “My goal with playing concerts is that people can come to this space and be moved but then really think about what they can take away from this by engaging with their community on a broader level.”

7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16, Steinmetz Hall, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 445 S. Magnolia Ave., drphillipscenter.org, $54.28-$178.18.

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This article appears in Jan. 14-20, 2026.