Upcoming Concerts

Best known as the frontman for the Walkmen, Hamilton Leithauser embarked on a solo career once that band went on hiatus following its 2011 album Heaven . Leithauser assembled a crack team of supporting musicians to work on his new material, including Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij, Fleet Foxes’ Morgan Henderson, the Shins’ Richard Swift, Dirty Projectors’ Amber Coffman, and his Walkmen bandmate Paul Maroon. Recorded at Los Angeles’ Vox Studios, Leithauser’s debut album Black Hours -- which was inspired by Frank Sinatra’s music and prefaced by the single “Alexandra” -- was released in May 2014.

Leithauser reteamed with Batmanglij for 2016's I Had a Dream That You Were Mine . Recorded at Batmanglij’s home studio in Los Angeles, the pair borrowed the best of their previous bands as well as ’50s and ’60s rock and soul with postmodern abandon. Hamilton’s forthcoming album (released date TBA), was entirely written, recorded, and produced by Hamilton himself. In his own words: “All of the songs on my new record are about people. Individual, real people. Some are strangers I’ve met, but a lot are friends.” The album is due sometime in 2020 through Glassnote Records.

Since his neo-psychedelic Green On Red days, Chuck Prophet has been turning out country, folk, blues, and Brill Building classicism. THE LAND THAT TIME FORGET is something different, a weather vane picking up signals from outer space – or maybe it's the Heartland.

Priced out of his beloved hometown, San Francisco, Prophet found himself re-energized in Upstate NY just a few miles from the Vermont border – and made a record that is much a 21st century exorcism as it is America.

The songs inhabit a world where a Fast Kid might be on the run from the truant officer or a handsy boss...or the Immigration Service. These are love songs that turn political on a dime (Love Doesn't Come from the Barrel of a Gun), and melodic hallucinations about kicking back in the Oval Office after hours "talking to my baby, saying baby, let's not fight."

Where else besides a Chuck Prophet LP are songs going to come at you from both the Tenderloin and an English roundabout, with stopovers in Nixonland and a love-struck mirror on a Saturday night while a workingman tries his Best Shirt On? With special appearances by the ghost of Johnny Thunders and Willie Wonka and John the Baptist and the train that brought Abraham Lincoln home one last time.

In Waving Goodbye, a young girl leaves small town attitudes behind to conquer the world one gig at a time. Then there's a dance Marathon, lost in time and reborn as a reality show. According to Womankind, men had their run, but it's over. (The good news is he can still try to sing his way into her heart.)

And it all leads up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue where a singer has his say, in two and a half loping verses and a middle eight.

Here's Chuck:

"Have any of you been to a 24-hour Walmart on the outskirts of Pittsburgh after midnight lately? It was just me and a couple tweakers roaming the auto parts aisles. We got along just fine. Long story short, I fixed that guitar by my lonesome and am playing it right now. I'm kind of proud of that."

"I will say this, though, about Ohio. Some of my truest hard earned fans are in Ohio. Go on and call it a fly-over-state, but not while Chrissie Hynde is in earshot, unless you want a vegan boot up your ass. All I'm saying is that a state is a lot more than which candidate won by how many votes. I mean you gotta feel sorry for the conservatives. The only songs they can play at their rallies without getting hit with a cease and desist order are by Ted Nugent and Charlie Daniels. And those two sure aren't shy about expressing their opinions."

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT got off the ground in the Money Belt, only to find its legs in the Borscht Belt. Musically it has deep roots, from the Southern Delta to the discos of Munich. There's a kind of folkish inevitability to it, lots of acoustic instruments, on top of each other and side by side. But as much as folk music is the soil all music grows from, it never hurts to have a boiler room. So, there's always a rhythm section shuffling under your feet here.

Written mostly with longtime co-conspirator klipschutz, this LP steps out of Chuck Prophet's comfort zone ("two guitars, bass, and drums"). After nailing three tracks in S.F. with Grammy-winning alchemist Matt Winegar, Prophet confesses, "We hit a wall. Schedules. Money. Towed vehicles: a thousand large to get one van out of lockup."

So he went out on tour, a solo tour. Driving through the Catskills he dropped into Kenny Siegal's Old Soul Studios, in a "5-bedroom Greek Revival listed on the National Registry," Chuck and Kenny immediately began to argue. Over anything. Whether it was too hot or too cold (according to WHOM?). At the end of the day – "a very long day, three weeks of them – let's just say Kenny's the man. At Old Soul, musicians drop in, sometimes complete blind dates. We did everything live. The drummer gigs with Kevin Morby. The bass player, out of some jazz scene. Piano player, an honorary Bad Seed. A mish mash of personalities and styles. Turns out you can make a lot of noise with acoustic instruments, if there are enough of them."

When asked about his life, Prophet is candid and evasive all at once: "What do you want to know. Death, health issues, financial hijinks, I've had them all the past few years. We lost my dad and we lost Stephie's dad too. The basement flooded. My shoulder went out. I got hives over 80% of my body; was quarantined. The only break I caught was when the ear, eye, nose, and throat doctors were all in the same building. Oh, and I almost got killed about seven times in rented cars in snowstorms, lost on the way to gigs. Hey, maybe we should talk about songs instead."

This show has been postponed to May 25, 2021 - all tickets honored.

“This band is therapy for me to bring myself back to being a better person, and I hope people come along with me,” says powerhouse singer Clinton Clegg of The Commonheart. The testimonial begins on August 16th when the 9-piece band issues its most potent and purposeful dose of grittily redemptive rock n’ soul, its sophomore album, Pressure (Jullian Records).

Clinton didn’t grow up in a Baptist church, and his soul machine of a band isn’t pushing religion. Live and in the studio, the Pittsburgh-based collective is offering feel-good positivity, Golden Rule messaging, and sweat-soaked performances that nimbly ease through blues, vintage soul, and rock.

The nonet is bonded by familial-like ties and a desire to foster spiritual uplift. Among its ranks are female backup singers, drums, bass, guitar, a horn section, and keyboards. Out front is Clinton, a lightning bolt charismatic front man with dynamically expressive pipes that effortlessly traverse bluesy pleading, and honeyed balladeering.

The Commonheart’s latest album, Pressure, is both rugged and refined. The 10-song album showcases raw-nerve soul musicianship pristinely recorded. It's an album by a band on a mission. “We are willing to take risks and to go at any lengths for this band,” Clinton says affirmatively. “We are ready to spread positivity and make a stretch of this thing.”

Started by boyhood friends Taylor Meier and Evan Westfall, Caamp came to life in the college town of Athens, Ohio. Together in a hazy attic, enjoying light beers, they would find the heartfelt, folk-driven sound that became Caamp. A self-titled 2016 album quickly gained traction, with “Vagabond” racking up an astounding 25 million plays alone. A series of tours with Rainbow Kitten Surprise gave them the opportunity to expand their sound, finding audiences enjoying rock moments alongside quiet folk ballads. Indeed, Caamp’s latest album, “By and By” broadens their repertoire without sacrificing the intimate feel of their early work. The album is bookended by two of the earliest songs Meier and Westfall have written. Caamp conjures an undeniably inviting sound throughout “By and By” that forces even the newest listener into a wide smile. Since their beginnings in Athens, Caamp has grown to include friend and collaborator Matt Vinson on bass and most recently Joe Kavalec on keys. With the summer release of “By and By” and a busy slate of sold out shows underway this fall, Caamp continues to have high hopes and no reservations as they march into 2020.

This show has been cancelled - refunds avail at point of purchase. All tickets purchased through Ticketweb will be automatically refunded.

This show has been rescheduled from April 18 - all tickets honored

Kim Richey
A Long Way Back: The Songs of Glimmer

"I started off that record scared to death," Kim Richey recalls of making Glimmer with producer Hugh Padgham back in 1999 in New York and London. A disastrous haircut, unfamiliar musicians, and oversized budgets didn't help matters. “It wasn’t the way I was used to making records.”

The way Richey was used to making records was with friends in a vibed-out, low-key setting. That's how she made her debut album with Richard Bennett, and it's how she made her new album, A Long Way Back... The Songs of Glimmer, with Doug Lancio. So Glimmer was different, and not just on the production side.

Then, as now, the compositions that comprise Glimmer, which was named one of the best records of the year by TIME magazine, were the Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter's first collection of true confessionals. Prior to that she'd been a staff writer at Blue Water Music writing from a more arm's-length vantage point for her first two releases, 1995's Kim Richey and 1997's Bitter Sweet. But Glimmer was all her.

Revisiting that history for A Long Way Back was both emotional and edifying for her. “I was pretty broken-hearted when I wrote and recorded most of those songs and I remembered feeling that way,” she says. “At the time, I needed to really get out of my head and out of Nashville. I think that was what appealed to me so much about making a record somewhere that wasn’t home and with new people. Recording these songs again was a good way to look back and remember I made it through those times.”

The 20 years of distance between then and now provided another benefit, as well: Richey is more comfortable with her voice, both literally and metaphorically. As a result, A Long Way Back sounds like it has nothing to prove and nothing to hide. It's more spacious, but not less spirited, with Richey's voice, in particular, feeling more relaxed and rounded than on the original. Starting with “Come Around,” the 14 new renderings take their time to make their points, meandering casually around, much like their maker.

An Ohio native, Richey's passion for music was sparked early on in her great aunt's record shop where she’d scour the bins and soak it all in. She took up the guitar in high school and, while studying environmental education and sociology at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, she played in a band with Bill Lloyd. But it didn't stick... not right away.

After Kentucky, Richey worked in nature centers in Colorado and Ohio and traveled to Sweden and South America. She eventually landed in Bellingham, Washington, where she worked as a cook while her boyfriend went to grad school. Their deal was, she got to decide where they went after he graduated. One night in 1988, some old friends — Bill Lloyd and Radney Foster — rolled through town. She sold T-shirts at their gig, and they talked up Nashville. To drive the point home, Lloyd sent her a tape with Steve Earle and others on it. So taken by the songwriting, Richey and her partner loaded up their Ford F150 and headed to Music City.

In Nashville, Richey cooked at the famed Bluebird Café and gigged around town at writers’ nights. At a show one night at 12th & Porter, Mercury Records' Luke Lewis approached her. In classic Richey fashion, she didn't know who he was. Still, she went to a meeting with him and Keith Stegall, played one song, talked a lot, and got a record deal at the musical home of Billy Ray Cyrus and Shania Twain. Remembering the glory days of major labels in the '90s, Richey says, “They gave me way more than enough rope to hang myself with. I could do whatever I wanted.”

What she wanted was to work with her friend, producer Richard Bennett. So she did. For Bitter Sweet, she put Angelo Petraglia at the helm, before turning to Padgham for Glimmer. “Bitter Sweet was recorded in Nashville with my road band and friends,” Richey says. “That record was as if the kids had taken over the recording studio while the adults were away. Glimmer was more pro and less messing around having fun. The musicians were all super-talented and gave the songs a voice I never would have thought to give them. Hugh was up for trying anything and really encouraged me to add all those vocal arrangements that ended up on the record”.

For 2002's Rise, Richey took another left turn, signed to Lost Highway Records, and hired Bill Bottrell as producer. Though it was her first time writing in a studio with a band, the players' talent and Bottrell's whimsy proved to be great complements to Richey's own rule-breaking style. The resulting record was quirky, confessional, mesmerizing, and masterful. And it officially set her outside contemporary country's bounds, which was fine by Richey, whose music had always broken barriers.

A greatest hits collection dropped in 2004, buying her some time to tour, write, and make 2007's Chinese Boxes with Giles Martin in the UK, followed by 2010's Wreck Your Wheels and 2013's Thorn in My Heart, both produced by Neilson Hubbard in Nashville. The latter landed her at Yep Roc Records, where she also released 2018's Edgeland, made with producer Brad Jones in what she has described as the easiest recording process she's ever had, despite working with three different tracking bands in the studio.

Through it all, Richey has worn her heart on her lyrical sleeve, revealing herself time and again. “I started writing songs because of Joni Mitchell, probably like most women songwriters of a certain age,” Richey confesses. “I loved being able to write songs because I was really super-shy. I couldn't say things to people that I wanted to say. If I put it in a song, there was the deniability. If I ever got called on it, I could say, 'Oh, heavens no, that's just a song! I made that up.'”

Though she could fall back on plausible deniability, with Richey, what you hear is actually what you get. “I don't have a lot of character songs because I'm not that good at making things up out of thin air.” Even when it comes to the main narrator of a song like Edgeland's “Your Dear John,” Richey demurs with a laugh, “I do think that song is probably just another song about me and I'm pretending to be a barge worker.”

On A Long Way Back... The Songs of Glimmer, though, she's not pretending to be anything or anyone she's not, and neither are the songs. Richey and Lancio set out to make a guitar/vocal record, but the songs had something else in mind, and that something included drums by Lancio's legendary neighbor, Aaron “the A-Train” Smith, among other things. “Once we stopped making rules about what could and could not be on the record, the songs spoke for themselves,” Richey says. “I knew all along I wanted Dan Mitchell to play flugelhorn, and the two tracks he played on are two of my favorites. In the end, the songs decided.”

From her move to Nashville to her making this record, for Kim Richey, the songs have always decided.

"Signs & Signifiers is 10 years old this year, and we thought it would be a blast to head out on a short tour, and perform all the songs from the album, including some covers from that period, which is something we’ve rarely done... I thought it could be a nice way to celebrate this little record that changed my life." - JD McPherson

A new date for 2021 will be announced asap

For 10 years there had been rumors of BRAND X reuniting, then in late 2016 it happened. Founding members Percy Jones (Bass), John Goodsall (Guitar) and former-Drummer Kenwood Dennard pulled it off – and there was much rejoicing. Completing the band were Keyboard Whiz Chris Clark and Percussionist Scott Weinberger. Fast Forward to end of 2019: With jaw-dropping festival performances at Ros-Fest, ProgtoberFest, ProgStock and three amazing Cruise To The Edge shows, coupled with bubbling accolades from The Huffington Post, Progression Mag, New York Times, Innerviews, have led many to claim this: “Best live Brand X of all time.”

That’s high praise for a band that once sported a young Phil Collins as their original Drummer. Nowadays a Who’s-Who of Rock have come out to catch BRAND X live, including members of KING CRIMSON, YES, DREAM THEATER, STEVE HACKETT, ADRIAN BELEW, METALLICA, FOCUS, DIXIE DREGS, ROBIN TROWER, CRIMSON PROJECT, LIFESIGNS, RENASISANCE, and others.
The Live Show: Includes a wide variety of iconic pieces from some of the best known BRAND X albums, including: Unorthodox Behaviour, Moroccan Roll, Livestock, Masques, Product, Do They Hurt?, Is There Anything About?, and even a bit from Percy Jones’ solo career.

Frontman John Goodsall frequently hurls twisted English humor from the stage. Fans have learned to expect the unexpected. Sometimes influenced by our pals of Monty Python, and sometimes off the top of his head. Python’s Michael Palin wrote sleeve notes for “Do They Hurt?”. He charged us 25 pence -- about 32 Cents -- He’s still trying to collect it…

This show has been postponed to March 31, 2021 - all tickets honored.

Without desire, most of the world’s problems would be solved and it would be a miserable place to live. For the last 30 years, Greg Dulli has been the poet laureate of the bizarre whims and cruel tangents of desire. A foremost authority on the sell-your-soul rewards of carnal lust, the high voltage epiphanies of chemical enhancement, and the serotonin lows left in their wake. The front man of the Afghan Whigs has long been on a first-name basis with his demons, most of whom eventually relented and let him pour them a shot. But then there are the known unknowns at the heart of our nature, the intractable difficulties of love and death, and the recurring human desire for survival and rebirth.

Therein lies Random Desire, the first solo album under Dulli’s own name, following canonized stints at the helm of The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers. The title is a play on “random selection,” which refers to a process that researchers use to pick participants for a study. When using this method, every single member of a population has an “equal chance of being chosen as a subject.” Recontextualized, it allows us to realize the randomness of existence, the odd alchemy of emotions, chemistry, and circumstance that baffle us to no end. The reasons why artists write songs and why listeners need them. And even if the answers are evasive, that’s no excuse to quit searching.

Random Desire started in the aftermath of the last Whigs record, 2017’s In Spades, which Pitchfork named one of the best rock records of the year, hailing it as a “heavy, menacing work of indie rock majesty…thrilling and unsettling.” Drummer Patrick Keeler was about to take a short sabbatical to record and tour with his other band, The Raconteurs. Dulli’s longtime collaborator, bassist John Curley went back to school, and there was the tragic death of the band’s guitarist, Dave Rosser.

In response, Dulli returned to his teenage bedroom roots, finding musical inspiration via the model of one-man-band visionaries Prince and Todd Rundgren. The Los Angeles-by-way-of-Hamilton Ohio native wrote nearly every part of the record from piano lines to drums to bass riffs. As always, the music came first and the lyrics were completed later. Recording and writing way stations included his home in Silver Lake, the village of Crestline high up in mountains above San Bernardino, and New Orleans. But the bulk was finished amidst the arid beauty and stark isolation of Joshua Tree (at the studio of engineer Christopher Thorne. Dulli handled most instrumentation, but an all-star cast of characters appear across the track-listing including The Whigs’ guitarist Jon Skibic and multi-instrumentalist Rick G. Nelson, Mathias Schneeberger (Twilight Singers), pedal steel wizard, upright bassist, and physician Dr. Stephen Patt, and drummer Jon Theodore (Queens of the Stone Age, The Mars Volta).

If many of his grunge-era peers are tapped out or resting beneath, Dulli has proven that creativity can be infinite with a voodoo imagination that tilts towards constant revolution. A gris gris man in the vein of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Nick Cave, or the dearly departed Purple One, Dulli’s never made the same album twice, shapeshifting through funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz, and bloody knuckled rock n’ roll without wandering too far from the essence of what defines his sound. But don’t expect your older brother’s Afghan Whigs. There are serrated guitar attacks, sure, but there are also threnodies built atop sepulchral piano lines, plaintive acoustic hymnals, goth-rock benders, Bedouin caravan raggas, and the occasional hip-hop 808s slap.

The bulk of Random Desire cohered in a six-month whirlwind last year. After writing songs for the previous 18 months, Dulli scrapped all but “A Ghost” and “Scorpio.” Into the void came a narcotic lovers lament like “Sempre,” which gathers dark strength from the fatalistic comfort of knowing that things might never get any easier. It’s a bittersweet kiss off to a lover, laughing at their cruelness with a knowing sneer. As a wise man once said, it’s that ether that makes your soul burn slow. There is “Pantomima,” the Spanish and Italian word for “pantomine,” rooted in the everyday deceptions of people who babble with borrowed words. It almost plays out like a Go Team! song, if the squad lost the game and consoled themselves by letting chaos engulf them. The tone is set from the sardonic taunts of the album’s first bars: desolation, come and get it.

“Marry Me” is a midnight of the soul number full of delicate guitar and moonlit ambience, a pedal steel sighing like a woeful regret in the distance -- the words full of ambiguous questions and recollected sin. “It Falls Apart” floats with aquatic translucency, introducing the album’s experimental second half and the gut-punch feeling that whatever romance was sparked will soon be extinguished. “Scorpio” boasts the de facto Prince nod with a middle portion borrowing the symbol’s pitched up Camille falsetto. While “Lockless” pays tribute to the creative benefits of loneliness, the shock that you still possess the ability to be surprised and the numbing revelation that your worst suspicions usually come true. “Slow Pan” is the slinking finale, the end credits with a Last Waltz grace. The screen fades out as a harp angelically hums (as the holy spirit of Dorothy Ashby would’ve intended).

Clocking in at a lean 37 minutes, Random Desire is a clinic put on by a veteran master operating at the height of his powers, offering evidence of the hard-fought and weary wisdom learned from setbacks and victories alike. A lucid, confident and self-assured document of the songs of experience, the perils of existence, and the possibilities that offer themselves anew with each breath. Another death and rebirth from an outlaw who has seen it all and somehow lived to tell.

Rescheduled from March 29 - All tickets honored

James McMurtry has been working with legendary Los Angeles-based producer Ross Hogarth at Santa Monica's GrooveMasters for his forthcoming album. Liner notes enthusiasts know multiple-Grammy-winning producer/engineer/mixer Hogarth from his work with Gov’t Mule, Roger Waters, The Black Crowes, Shawn Colvin, John Mellencamp, R.E.M.and Jewel, among many others. Hogarth’s wide and varied experience and taste opened up all creative doors and usual and unusual possibilities for all their classics. And no need to explain the incredible GrooveMasters Studio.

Hogarth has never allowed himself to be pigeonholed or trapped in any one musical genre as his studio work runs the gamut from the heavy metal icons Mötley Crüe to the Grammy-winning Americana favorite Keb’ Mo’ to recent releases by Van Halen, Ziggy Marley and the Sick Puppies. Exclusive and particular in its clientele, the semi-private Santa Monica recording studio where McMurtry will be recording has recently opened its doors to Laurel Canyon legends such as David Crosby, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, David Bromberg and more. The spiritual vibe and feel of this studio, along with the cast of characters, will most definitely bring out the best in the upcoming McMurtry record.

Other notable players on the album (in addition to his stellar band) include David Grissom (John Mellencamp) and Harmoni Kelley (Kenny Chesney). McMurtry will unleash this latest collection of poignant and timely songs on New West Records this fall! “I first became aware of James McMurtry’s formidable songwriting prowess while working at Bug Music Publishing in the ’90s,” says New West President John Allen. “He’s a true talent. All of us at New West are excited at the prospect of championing the next phase of James’ already successful and respected career.” McMurtry joins New West's singular roster of top-tier roots music all-stars including Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, John Hiatt, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Buddy Miller, Nikki Lane and dozens more.

Rescheduled from March 29 - All tickets honored

James McMurtry has been working with legendary Los Angeles-based producer Ross Hogarth at Santa Monica's GrooveMasters for his forthcoming album. Liner notes enthusiasts know multiple-Grammy-winning producer/engineer/mixer Hogarth from his work with Gov’t Mule, Roger Waters, The Black Crowes, Shawn Colvin, John Mellencamp, R.E.M.and Jewel, among many others. Hogarth’s wide and varied experience and taste opened up all creative doors and usual and unusual possibilities for all their classics. And no need to explain the incredible GrooveMasters Studio.

Hogarth has never allowed himself to be pigeonholed or trapped in any one musical genre as his studio work runs the gamut from the heavy metal icons Mötley Crüe to the Grammy-winning Americana favorite Keb’ Mo’ to recent releases by Van Halen, Ziggy Marley and the Sick Puppies. Exclusive and particular in its clientele, the semi-private Santa Monica recording studio where McMurtry will be recording has recently opened its doors to Laurel Canyon legends such as David Crosby, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, David Bromberg and more. The spiritual vibe and feel of this studio, along with the cast of characters, will most definitely bring out the best in the upcoming McMurtry record.

Other notable players on the album (in addition to his stellar band) include David Grissom (John Mellencamp) and Harmoni Kelley (Kenny Chesney). McMurtry will unleash this latest collection of poignant and timely songs on New West Records this fall! “I first became aware of James McMurtry’s formidable songwriting prowess while working at Bug Music Publishing in the ’90s,” says New West President John Allen. “He’s a true talent. All of us at New West are excited at the prospect of championing the next phase of James’ already successful and respected career.” McMurtry joins New West's singular roster of top-tier roots music all-stars including Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, John Hiatt, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Buddy Miller, Nikki Lane and dozens more.

Ben Gibbard is a singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is the lead vocalist and guitarist of Death Cab for Cutie, with which he has recorded nine studio albums, and is one half of the electronic duo the Postal Service.

Gibbard released his debut solo album, Former Lives, in 2012, and a collaborative studio album, One Fast Move or I'm Gone (2009), with Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt's Jay Farrar.

Steve Forbert's folk-rock career has spanned four decades and counting. In June 1976, the twenty-one year old boarded a train in Meridian, Mississippi bound for New York City, then the epicenter of folk music. His combination of musicianship and authenticity demanded notice. In less than two years, he went from being a street performer and living at the YMCA to filling historic Greenwich Village clubs and signing a major label record contract with Nemperor Records.

From 1978 to 1982, Forbert released four acclaimed albums. Rolling Stone contributing editor David Wild wrote that "now or then, you would be hard-pressed to find a debut effort that was simultaneously as fresh and accomplished as Alive on Arrival . . . it was like a great first novel by a young author who somehow managed to split the difference between Mark Twain and J.D. Salinger.'

Forbert's second studio release, Jackrabbit Slim went RIAA Gold Certified with its Billboard #11 hit "Romeo's Tune". Recording success vaulted Steve onto a broader musical stage, touring the U.S. and Europe many times over. Forbert even appeared opposite Cyndi Lauper in her music video for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.' His early accomplishments would be a career for most artists, but he continues to write, record, and perform to this day. His artistic pursuit has resulted in twenty studio albums and numerous live releases, compilations, and accolades. His songs have been recorded by Keith Urban, Rosanne Cash and Marty Stuart.

Any Old Time, a retrospective of the music of Meridian's Jimmie Rodgers, received a 2003 Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Folk Album. As Rodgers' music has inspired Forbert, so has Forbert's music influenced a new generation of artists.

In 2017, twenty-one artists paid tribute to Steve by recording a compilation titled: An American Troubadour: The Songs of Steve Forbert, further validating his artistic legacy. Forbert's 2018 memoir Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock serves as a primer for young musicians setting out on their own journeys.

...His perspective on what life was like for a 20-something recently arrived in NYC is sharp. Forbert offers a sparkling observation about the pull of music as excellent as any I have seen,' said Entertainment Today.

Forbert's latest studio album release The Magic Tree serves as sound track to his memoir. The album rings with the verve and vitality that Forbert's fans have always come to expect. The Magic Tree underscores what revered critic the late Paul Nelson wrote about Forbert in Rolling Stone almost 40 years ago 'Nothing, nothing in this world, is going to stop Steve Forbert, and on that I'll bet anything you'd care to wager.'

Anyone who reviews Steve's catalogue of music can see the writer in the musician. His songs are as literary as they are musically vibrant. Brutally honest lyrics delivered with sensitivity create an uncommon trust with his listeners. Excelling in every decade of his career, Forbert exemplifies the best of the troubadour tradition.

Rescheduled from March 12 - all tickets honored

Superstar is an underdog story, and one not far off from Caroline Rose’s real life. After a years-long struggle to release what would ultimately become 2018’s LONER, deemed “a singular artistic statement from it’s unforgettable album art all the way down” (Pitchfork), Rose found herself in the midst of a new widespread audience, one both delightfully intrigued and perplexed about how and where to place her. That, combined with a developed set of studio skills and a challenge to “make something from nothing,” marked the beginning of Superstar. Gone are the polished Hollywood hunks and starlets of olde. Here is a shamelessly odd hero, or rather anti-hero, on a quest to become a someone.

Inspired by cult classics such as The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Mulholland Drive and the mockumentary Drop Dead Gorgeous, Superstar plays out like a film with a beginning, middle, and an open ending. In album opener “Nothing’s Impossible,” the protagonist receives a mistaken phone call from the glamorous Chateau Marmont hotel. Taking the call as a sign toward a star-studded future, they (gender neutral pronoun) leave behind everything in pursuit of a newly established destiny.

What ensues is a cinematic paradox that in one moment finds them strutting down a neon strip in full Saturday Night Fever hip-swing donned in their finest threads, and the next sipping a dirty martini at the rundown apartment complex pool, dwelling on life’s unfortunate turns. It’s a narrative Rose pulled directly from the somewhat shameless desires of her own growing ambition, as well as the public breakdowns of several notable celebrities. “To me, the satire is in what we’ll do and put up with in order to be successful. I wanted to make a story out of those parts of myself that are for the most part undesirable, then inject them with steroids.”

Rose worked on the album in order of the story’s timeline, ensuring each track represented a chapter of the narrative in her head. Songs bursting with self-aggrandizement often reveal moments of vulnerability. “Feel The Way I Want” leads us with boisterous confidence through heartache by refusing to let pain get the best of us. Disguised as a Prince-infused bop, “Do You Think We’ll Last Forever?” expresses the uncertainty and anxiety that come with seeing a new partner, ending in a full blown freakout of bottled up nervous energy. The S&M-fueled love song “Freak Like Me” and the darkly comedic “Command Z” ultimately expose a fragile person coming to terms with their own humanity. Rose sings, “I looked around at all the people there / as I thought everyone we know will know will someday be dead / God, I just don’t want it to end / Undo, I’m gonna do it again”.

Rose began formulating the songs and ideas for a sequel-esque follow-up to LONER in between the band’s near-incessant touring schedule, from playing sold out headline shows across the country and beyond, to becoming fan favorites at some of the world’s biggest festivals. “Two years ago I started touring with nothing, not knowing if I’d even have a career. Then all of a sudden we were playing to hundreds of people in a town I’d never heard of. The whole thing was fascinating. It got me thinking, just how much can you build from nothing?” As a result, Superstar was written, recorded and produced by Rose in her 10’x12’ home studio, as well as on a portable rig she’d set up in green rooms while on tour.

Superstar is a bigger, badder, glitter-filled cinematic pop record for weirdos. “I realized at some point that I’m not going to fit into any one box, and maybe that’s a good thing. This new record is me embracing feeling like an outsider making my own path,” Rose says. One part satire, one part self-reflection, Rose’s anti-hero personifies much of what we as casual on-lookers are wont to poke fun at, dismiss or denigrate, yet deep down likely aspire to be. Someone who, whether warranted or not, refuses to let anyone dictate their own life’s narrative.

“I wanted to dig under the darkest impulses of humanity for this album, and that is violence, selfishness, and destruction,” says Benjamin Tod, guitarist, vocalist, and primary songwriter of Americana trio Lost Dog Street Band. The Muhlenberg County, Kentucky-based group’s latest album, its fifth overall, Weight Of A Trigger, out March 29th, is a potent distillation of its outlaw heartache soul.

The dark impulses Ben sings about are simply the demons that have driven him since he was a teen. At 16, Ben left home to play music on the streets. Since then, he’s lived under bridges, slept in jail cells, sought freedom hopping freight trains, battled addiction, and watched many good friends die from the same rambling disease. Some states, he remains a wanted man with active warrants. Though Ben has been aimless, and destructive, he’s always been prolific through exorcising his demons in song. Even if that meant writing songs at 7:00 AM in dank and dark basements strung out on drugs and drunk.

His companion in life and music, Ashley Mae, is an accomplished fiddle player and harmony singer. The pair met in the Nashville punk scene when Ben was 15, and Ashley was 17. They share in a tumultuous love affair that’s defied adventures, and misadventures. The couple formed Lost Dog Street Band in the winter of 2010. The duo’s vision was to carry on the tradition of the American troubadour with fine Americana songcraft and starkly real storytelling. Today, Ben and Ashley Mae are joined by bassist Jeff Loops of the beloved roots band, Deep Chatham.

The three-piece group’s latest, Weight Of A Trigger, is a portal into when Americana was peopled by sensitive outlaws who pleaded for salvation in song. The 10-song collection spans old-time music, Appalachian folk, redemptive country blues, and winsome balladry. Each song is elegantly essential, using teardrop pedal steel guitar, delicate fingerpicked passages, emotive harmony vocals, and stately violin touches as delicate dynamic touches. It’s an album of hard truths themed around a three-part narrative of Thomas Clancy Russell, and stories of fated love, addiction, tragic deaths, and rising demons. The poetic former collaborator Nicholas Ridout, a uniquely gifted musician who left before his time is always honored on their albums. His presence is made all the more poignant by Lost Street Dog performing his sweetly high lonesome song “Lazy Moonshiner.”

Rescheduled from April 19 - all tickets honored

After the impressive success of her previous band Houndmouth, Katie Toupin’s career as a solo artist is beaming. Co-writer and key performer on #1 song, “Sedona” with over 100,000,000 streams on Spotify, Katie Toupin is proving she has only just begun. “Freed from the gingham-checked restraints of Houndmouth, Toupin displays more range and greater depth on her solo debut, Magnetic Moves” - Paste Magazine.

Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Katie ventured to Austin, Texas to create an eclectic, yet cohesive record. “Magnetic Moves” (written, arranged, and produced by Katie Toupin) is a mixture of throwback odes and modern sonics brought to life by the thoughtful arrangements of multi-instrumentalist Scott Davis (Hayes Carl, Band of Heathens). George Harrison-esk rifs never feel out of place over the tastefully placed synthesizers on songs like “Real Love” and “Back In Time”. Angela Miller and Lauren Marie (Black Pumas) offer soulful backup parts on album highlight, “Someone To you” as well as “Lost Sometimes” and “In Your Dreams”. The title track, “Magnetic Moves” received extensive radio play across the United States. Katie brings the album to life with vivacious and interactive live performances.

American Songwriter said, “based on this evidence, (Toupin) is clearly ready for her shot in the spotlight.”