As tempting as it is to spend the next four years pretending that everyone and everything outside of America’s cities don't exist, there’s a giant problem with that coping strategy: We’d lose a lot of great music. Great music like the old-school honky-tonk bluegrass of the Caleb Klauder Country Band, which—though fronted by Portland's own Klauder, a member of the Foghorn Stringband and a regular fixture at Pickathon—has deep-down roots in the reddest of American traditions. American music belongs to all of us, though, and tonight Klauder’s masterful guitar, mandolin, and vocals—sometimes plaintive, other times uplifting—should provide plenty of excuses to both dance and drink. Almost as importantly, though, this countrified night out should also remind us of a couple of things we’d do well to remember: that America’s musical roots are one of the things that’ll tie us all together in the coming year, and also? Not everything about America is terrible! ERIK HENRIKSEN