Songs about small towns, long drives and the people who stay. Boise, Idaho.
Tamsin Ackerly is a folk singer-songwriter from Boise, Idaho. She writes plainspoken songs about small towns and long drives and performs solo with an acoustic guitar. Her second album, Magpie Season, came out in August 2026. She plays around 80 shows a year: listening rooms, house concerts, breweries and festival side stages across the Mountain West.
Tamsin Ackerly grew up in a town of 900 people in eastern Oregon, learned guitar from a library book, and wrote her first songs on the night shift at a truck stop diner. She moved to Boise in 2019, put out a five-song EP recorded in a friend's garage, and has been on the road more weeks than not since.
Her second album, Magpie Season (August 2026), was recorded in six days in a cabin outside Stanley, Idaho, mostly live, mostly first or second takes. It is ten songs about leaving, staying, and the people who do each.
Tamsin performs solo: one voice, one guitar, a few stories. She is comfortable in a silent listening room and on a loud brewery patio, and she plays a lot of house concerts. She travels with her own small PA for rooms that need it. Everything a host or venue needs to know is in the tech rider in the Downloads section.
Second album. Ten songs recorded in six days in a cabin outside Stanley, Idaho. Produced by Tamsin Ackerly and Jonah Pruitt.
Debut EP. Five songs, one microphone, one garage.
Ackerly writes the way people in small towns actually talk, and then she breaks your heart with it.
Magpie Season is the rare record that sounds exactly like the place it was made.
She silenced a brewery on a Friday night with one guitar. I did not think that was possible.
Magpie Season release show, The Pearl Listening Room, Boise (sold out, August 2026). Sawtooth Valley Gathering side stage (2024, 2025). Around 30 house concerts a year across Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Wyoming. Support dates for touring folk and Americana acts at The Silver Spur and Pine Street Hall.