ESSEX — Vermont musician Troy Millette has postponed plenty of concerts because of illness, family obligations or bad weather.

Rain, sure. But ravens? Never, at least not until this week.

Millette’s May 30 show, which was set to open the outdoor season on The Old Stage at the Essex Experience, has been pushed back because ravens are nesting in the rafters. State and federal rules restrict what people can do to disturb the nests of birds. Instead of beginning the season at the outdoor stage, Millette will now close it Sept. 25.

“Ironically, my mother is afraid of birds,” Millette told the Burlington Free Press on May 20, the day he learned his concert would be postponed.

He said he’s not scared of birds but is wary. Especially now.

Differences between ravens and crows

Ravens have a brooding reputation, due in part to Edgar Allan Poe and his macabre “nevermore” musings.

“A hummingbird would have never canceled the show,” Millette said.

Like crows, ravens are deep black in color and caw or croak. But there are, literally, big differences.

“You probably know that ravens are larger, the size of a red-tailed hawk,” reads an Audubon magazine article. “Ravens often travel in pairs, while crows are seen in larger groups.”

Millette and his band, the Fire Below, were to perform a night of ’90s country covers. Last year, he had sprinkled a few “ironically amazing” covers of “country gold” from the likes of Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney in sets of his original music. Venue runners liked what they heard and asked for more.

Ryan Clausen, the first drummer for the Fire Below, is music and events director of the Double E venue at the Essex Experience, a restaurant, shopping and entertainment complex owned by Peter Edelmann. Clausen sent a text last week asking Millette if he was afraid of birds.

Millette didn’t think a whole lot about it, but when Clausen reported that one young raven had still not left the nest, prospects for the show grew dimmer.

Country cover songs lose out to birds

Regulations restrict what can be done to remove bird nests.

“A person shall not take or willfully destroy the nests or eggs of wild birds, other than rock pigeons, house sparrows or European starlings, except when necessary to protect buildings and the nests to be removed contain no eggs or chicks and are no longer being used by birds for feeding,” one Vermont statute reads.

Ravens in particular are shielded by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, said Joshua Morse, a spokesperson for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.

“Under this law, it is illegal to kill or move protected species without a permit from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,” Morse told the Free Press by email.

Clausen noticed the nest well after last year’s summer concerts concluded at The Old Stage. “Once I saw that there were eggs in it,” he said, “there wasn’t much I could do.”

Clausen said state wildlife representatives told him the Essex Experience could either let the birds stay until they flew off — then wait a week to make sure they were gone — or pursue euthanizing the entire nest because of its impact on business.

“That made it a pretty easy call for us. We’re not going to do that,” Clausen said. “It would be so anti-everything that we stand for and what Peter stands for and Vermont stands for. If we can save the ravens, we’re going to do that.”

No one wanted to kill birds, Millette said, just so he and his band could cover “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.”

Critters chewed through wiring

A May 21 visit to The Old Stage turned up a couple of ravens monitoring the action as well as twigs and several square feet of bird droppings atop the stage. Wires were dangling from the rafters of the barn-like structure.

“The ravens have chewed through a bunch of wiring,” Millette said. “There’s excrement everywhere.”

Ravens are territorial, he noted, so getting near the nest is risky.

He wonders if the big birds have it in for him, maybe because of his familial fear of feathered fauna.

“I feel like it’s a personal attack,” Millette said. “They wouldn’t have built a nest for a Ryan Sweezey show.”

If you go

Upcoming concerts on The Old Stage at the Essex Experience (at 7 p.m. unless noted otherwise) include:

• Friday, June 12, StevieMac: A Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks Experience. $30.
• Saturday, June 20, an evening with Quadra. $20.
• 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 1, the Lara Cwass Band. Free.
• 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 8, The Grift. Free.
• Friday, July 10, Spafford. $25.
• 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 15, the All Night Boogie Band. Free.
• Friday, July 17, the Grippo Funk Band featuring Jennifer Hartswick. $20.
• 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 22, Soul Porpoise featuring Dave Grippo and Geoff Kim with The Project. Free.
• Saturday, July 25, The Samples with Arty LaVigne & Friends. $25.
• 6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 2, Keller Williams’ Grateful Grass with Pappy Biondo of Cabinet. $35.
• Friday, Aug. 14, G. Love & Special Sauce with Dizzyisdead. $35-$135.
• Friday, Sept. 25, Troy Millette & the Fire Below play ‘90s country. $20.
• doubleevt.com

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@burlingtonfreepress.com.

A second Vermont man this year has died in a Mississippi prison. 

Shawn Sears, 56, of Whiting, was found unresponsive in his cell Wednesday morning before medical staff attempted to give him emergency treatment, according to a press release from the Vermont Department of Corrections. 

“Mr. Sears was subsequently pronounced deceased,” the release said. 

Sears’ death comes as he was in the process of suing the Corrections Department for allegedly denying him access to prison programs. Those programs include taking high school classes and participating in restorative justice processes, which are often focused on rehabilitating both victims and offenders. 

Sears had been in prison since 2019 for crimes he committed in Vermont, the release said. He was one of 147 men that Vermont pays a private contractor to imprison at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi. 

The Missisppi prison is run by one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the country, CoreCivic, which Vermont contracts with to help mitigate overcrowding in Vermont’s in-state prisons. The facility holds more than 2,500 inmates — which is about six times the size of Vermont’s largest prison — and is more than a 1,300-mile drive from Burlington. 

Sears filed a civil lawsuit against the Corrections Department in September 2025, alleging that he had improperly been denied programming while in prison, according to court records. Court records show that Sears disputed being subject to an internal department policy that allows the department to hold incarcerated people past their minimum sentences if the department deems them to be a danger to themselves or others. 

In Sears’ initial court filing, which he wrote himself, Sears alleged the department violated state law and its own directives by determining he was subject to their risk containment policy. Sears wrote in the filing that his status as “risk contained” denied him access to programming in prison that could have lowered his chance of recidivism. 

Haley Sommer, a spokesperson for the department, declined to comment on the legal case. 

According to a Department of Corrections’ database, Sears had a minimum release date of April 27, 2021, and a maximum release date of Feb. 21, 2055. A minimum release date is the earliest a person is eligible for parole, and their maximum release date is the end of their sentence, according to the Vermont Parole Board. 

Since Sears filed the lawsuit in court, the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office had represented his case. Court calendars show he was scheduled to appear in Orleans County Superior civil court in June. His court case appears to have been dismissed Thursday. 

Sears is at least the fifth person to die in the custody of the Vermont Department of Corrections this year, according to the department’s press statements. 

Nine people died in the custody of the department in 2025, Sommer previously told VTDigger. The department’s investigative unit will review Sears’ death, per department protocol, according to the release.

This week includes what for many is a long Memorial Day weekend, which means you might have even more time than usual to go out and enjoy Vermont’s arts and entertainment scene.

The next week offers up a multitude of options, including a big band at Higher Ground, a wunderkind Burlington guitarist at Foam Brewers, an opera in an opera house (makes sense) and a Texas musical legend finding himself on stage in central Vermont.

Toss in an art exhibit from a Burlington architect and the sounds of France in a cocktail lounge and you’ve got a recipe for a full weekend, and then some.

Bread and Butter and Heather Maloney

7 p.m. Thursday, May 21, Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Heather Maloney takes part in the Silo Sessions series in the barn at Bread and Butter Farm, Shelburne. $17-$20 in advance, $19-$22 day of show. breadandbutterfarm.com