BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:DPCALENDAR CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Denver X-MICROSOFT-CDO-TZID:12 BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20231105T080000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0600 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:MST END:STANDARD BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20241103T080000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0600 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:MST END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240310T090000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0600 TZNAME:MDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Denver BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240131T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240131T233000 UID:30D18EFF-E1C8-4CC7-9227-395F56C17A34 SUMMARY:Lydia Loveless CREATED:20230920T194134Z DTSTAMP:20230920T194134Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/lydia-loveless DESCRIPTION:Endings are messy. Falling in love is messy. Change is messy. Perhaps, change is the messiest of them all. Especially when eyes are on you; when you blast out of adolescence onto stages across the country, then into your twenties, onto more stages and, finally, into your thirties—all on those same stages. The stages that Lydia Loveless has sung her heart out on, has collapsed on, and laughed on, all mirror the stages of her life thus far for the world to see. When Loveless released her first album over a decade ago, she was still a teenager whose songs of debauchery, guzzling alcohol and doing cocaine were an audio wet dream for a certain type of listener who not only wear their music tastes on their (tattooed) sleeve, but in the lifestyle that they emulate: “outlaw” music with brains – akin to Steve Earle, Drive-By Truckers and Lucinda Williams, vintage country heart with a heartland rock soul.\NIn the end, the music industry is still sadly a man’s world and, as such, Loveless grew up in the spotlight (or perhaps, more accurately, the bar lights) while she was placed on a pedestal. Her voicemail greeting is a tongue-in-cheek ode to this: “Hi, this is Lydia Loveless, savior of cowpunk. Please leave a message and I will get back to you.”\NThe time between their late adolescence to now is defined by a shelf full of records, hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, and a ribbon of heartbreaks pockmarking their trail. Loveless is a fiercely brave writer who bluntly assesses their life in song: their struggles with alcohol and depression, and the uncertainty of not only the future, but what piecing together the past will mean for the present.\NIn 2020, they put out their excellent fourth full-length Daughter on their own label, Honey, You’re Gonna Be Late Records, with encouragement from their friend Jason Isbell, but could not tour behind it; the one consistent throughline in Loveless’ life was impossible due to the pandemic. They were living in North Carolina with their boyfriend at the time, stuck, away from the stages they grew up on, isolated from their family, and going stir-crazy. As the world came undone and then back together again, Loveless returned to Columbus, where their career first began. Starting anew, Loveless found part-time work at a recording studio (Secret Studios) and began processing the last two years of their life. The title of their new album, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again, came easy—like a mantra from the heavens.\NNothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again continues the evolution of Loveless. The artist who once sang that she would rather stay home and drink gallons of wine is now on the other end of the bottle, where a bit of resignation resides. She sings on “Feel”: “I’m getting older and my jets are starting to cool, if I ever get sober it’s really over for you fools.” Though a melancholic weight rests on the record—as it was written after the breakup with her longtime boyfriend and following a period of isolation and depression during the pandemic—it also feels like a triumphant moment from an artist who’s continuing her stride. Loveless has always been a brutally honest songwriter, one whose articulation of love, heartbreak and bad habits is wrapped not only in catchy melodies but also her finesse with words.\NNothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again musically retains the spirit of Loveless’ previous records, but also moves past the chunky drunk and almost out-of-control riffing of their earliest work. Present here is something more akin to Rumors and Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac—and it works incredibly well. Their voice is more controlled and wiser. Although the subject matter that they are mining is, at times, desolate, they mask it with the smoother production. It’s as beautiful and tragic as a woman crying in the rain, with make-up streaming down her cheeks: at once real and mesmerizing.\NGently crushing standout “Runaway” opens with a floating piano chord, slowly building with detailed, multifaceted flourishes to a memorable chorus: “I don’t like to run, I just like to run away.” It’s a stunning showcase of Loveless’ powerhouse vocals and heart-wrenching lyricism. On “Toothache,” she sings about the mundanity of daily life feeling catastrophic enough to precipitate a breakdown, as kinetic, dynamic arrangements add to the track’s intense and claustrophobic mood. Album highlight “Sex and Money” was made for driving with the windows down on a sunny summer day, and Loveless’ wry and self-deprecating sense of humor sparkles: “I know I’m not saving the world / But I gotta live in it so I might as well splurge / On 200 cotton t-shirts with my face on the front.” “Poor Boy” recalls the excitement, energy and rebellion of bands like The Replacements, but Loveless makes the mood her own with a subtle twang and a lot of vulnerability: “I need to clean up my mess and leave the poor boy alone.”\NNothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again is not only a break-up record drifting back to some of the best of its kind, like Richard & Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, Superchunk’s Foolish and of course, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, it’s also a reminder to keep improving oneself, taking ownership and moving forward—alone, if needed. Complex and captivating, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again is a brave declaration from a person who has survived a lot. Here they lays bare not only their raw pain, but also the strength and resiliency they’ve earned along the way, that only Loveless could hold. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:
Endings are messy. Falling in love is messy. Change is messy. Perhaps, change is the messiest of them all. Especially when eyes are on you; when you blast out of adolescence onto stages across the country, then into your twenties, onto more stages and, finally, into your thirties—all on those same stages. The stages that Lydia Loveless has sung her heart out on, has collapsed on, and laughed on, all mirror the stages of her life thus far for the world to see. When Loveless released her first album over a decade ago, she was still a teenager whose songs of debauchery, guzzling alcohol and doing cocaine were an audio wet dream for a certain type of listener who not only wear their music tastes on their (tattooed) sleeve, but in the lifestyle that they emulate: “outlaw” music with brains – akin to Steve Earle, Drive-By Truckers and Lucinda Williams, vintage country heart with a heartland rock soul.
In the end, the music industry is still sadly a man’s world and, as such, Loveless grew up in the spotlight (or perhaps, more accurately, the bar lights) while she was placed on a pedestal. Her voicemail greeting is a tongue-in-cheek ode to this: “Hi, this is Lydia Loveless, savior of cowpunk. Please leave a message and I will get back to you.”
The time between their late adolescence to now is defined by a shelf full of records, hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, and a ribbon of heartbreaks pockmarking their trail. Loveless is a fiercely brave writer who bluntly assesses their life in song: their struggles with alcohol and depression, and the uncertainty of not only the future, but what piecing together the past will mean for the present.
In 2020, they put out their excellent fourth full-length Daughter on their own label, Honey, You’re Gonna Be Late Records, with encouragement from their friend Jason Isbell, but could not tour behind it; the one consistent throughline in Loveless’ life was impossible due to the pandemic. They were living in North Carolina with their boyfriend at the time, stuck, away from the stages they grew up on, isolated from their family, and going stir-crazy. As the world came undone and then back together again, Loveless returned to Columbus, where their career first began. Starting anew, Loveless found part-time work at a recording studio (Secret Studios) and began processing the last two years of their life. The title of their new album, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again, came easy—like a mantra from the heavens.
Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again continues the evolution of Loveless. The artist who once sang that she would rather stay home and drink gallons of wine is now on the other end of the bottle, where a bit of resignation resides. She sings on “Feel”: “I’m getting older and my jets are starting to cool, if I ever get sober it’s really over for you fools.” Though a melancholic weight rests on the record—as it was written after the breakup with her longtime boyfriend and following a period of isolation and depression during the pandemic—it also feels like a triumphant moment from an artist who’s continuing her stride. Loveless has always been a brutally honest songwriter, one whose articulation of love, heartbreak and bad habits is wrapped not only in catchy melodies but also her finesse with words.
Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again musically retains the spirit of Loveless’ previous records, but also moves past the chunky drunk and almost out-of-control riffing of their earliest work. Present here is something more akin to Rumors and Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac—and it works incredibly well. Their voice is more controlled and wiser. Although the subject matter that they are mining is, at times, desolate, they mask it with the smoother production. It’s as beautiful and tragic as a woman crying in the rain, with make-up streaming down her cheeks: at once real and mesmerizing.
Gently crushing standout “Runaway” opens with a floating piano chord, slowly building with detailed, multifaceted flourishes to a memorable chorus: “I don’t like to run, I just like to run away.” It’s a stunning showcase of Loveless’ powerhouse vocals and heart-wrenching lyricism. On “Toothache,” she sings about the mundanity of daily life feeling catastrophic enough to precipitate a breakdown, as kinetic, dynamic arrangements add to the track’s intense and claustrophobic mood. Album highlight “Sex and Money” was made for driving with the windows down on a sunny summer day, and Loveless’ wry and self-deprecating sense of humor sparkles: “I know I’m not saving the world / But I gotta live in it so I might as well splurge / On 200 cotton t-shirts with my face on the front.” “Poor Boy” recalls the excitement, energy and rebellion of bands like The Replacements, but Loveless makes the mood her own with a subtle twang and a lot of vulnerability: “I need to clean up my mess and leave the poor boy alone.”
Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again is not only a break-up record drifting back to some of the best of its kind, like Richard & Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, Superchunk’s Foolish and of course, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, it’s also a reminder to keep improving oneself, taking ownership and moving forward—alone, if needed. Complex and captivating, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again is a brave declaration from a person who has survived a lot. Here they lays bare not only their raw pain, but also the strength and resiliency they’ve earned along the way, that only Loveless could hold.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240130T193530Z SEQUENCE:11404436 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1261 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240202T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240202T210000 UID:D65A79F6-8FC4-45AD-80DA-7ED34133E746 SUMMARY:Steve Poltz CREATED:20231113T175926Z DTSTAMP:20231113T175926Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/steve-poltz-2 DESCRIPTION:This is the story of Steve Poltz. \NSome people start life with a plan. Not Steve. He opens himself up to the universe in a way most of us will never be loose enough to achieve, and the universe responds with a wink, a seemingly bottomless well of inspiration, and the talent to truly connect with an audience. While 2021 could have found him adrift, faced with a tour moratorium the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in decades, it opened a door — literally, his friend Oliver Wood of The Wood Brother’s door — to creating an exuberant, thoughtful batch of songs that celebrate life in all of its stages. \NThe resulting album is called Stardust & Satellites [Red House / Compass Records]. \N“I just make stuff up,” he exclaims, quipping, “it sounded good to say that.” Steve is the sort of prolific writer and collaborator who downplays what seems like a non-stop geyser of creativity. “I have no rhyme or reason for what I do. It’s all magic. I go by instinct. It just felt right, so I went with it.”\NThe “it” in question is one of those serendipitous situations that were created by the pandemic. Steve, a road dog and performance junkie who regularly spends 300+ days a year on the road, bringing it to the people, should’ve been on tour last year. Esteemed Nashville roots rockers The Wood Brothers (Chris Wood being a former neighbor to Steve), also should’ve been on tour. Stuck in Nashville, Steve often joined the Wood Brothers for outdoor socially distant hangs, and, on a whim, decided to record one song with Oliver Wood and Jano Rix. \NThey cut “Frenemy,” a wistful, “keep your friends close and your enemies even closer” song that made it clear to all involved that they’d stumbled onto something special. With no studio clock ticking, no schedule or deadlines to meet, the companionship and ability to collaborate with like-minded musicians added a joyful diversion to what was a boring-ass year. Musically, the sky was the limit, and the group of musicians and friends embarked on a musical experience that found cast and crew reaching toward the stratosphere with Stardust & Satellites, which Oliver and Jano Rix of The Wood Brothers produced. \NThe album begins with the lithe fingerpicking of “Wrong Town,” an anthem summing up the life of an itinerant songwriter/performer, where he declares, “The truth is I have no plan at all,” going on to cite Emmylou Harris and Don Was as his style icons. It’s a “pleased to meet me” sort of song, and it was written to greet the audience at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2019. “I wanted to write an opening song,” Steve recalls.“I sat down with fellow Nashville songwriter Anthony da Costa, and ‘Wrong Town’ just appeared.” \NBut even gonzo guys have their moments where the cycle of life seems to be almost too much to bear. “Conveyor Belt” is a heartfelt song, a song that could only be written at a certain point in one’s life, and that point is when you’re saying goodbye to your parents and addressing your own mortality. Steve explains, "My mom passed away, and then a few years later my dad crossed over. I started thinking that I was next on the conveyor belt in a factory on the wheel of time. Next thing I know, I grabbed my guitar and this song appeared to me like a gift. It didn’t exist and then voila, there it was. I feel lucky to be a conduit." \NThe song is written over a gentle, repetitive melody that moves along with the inevitability of ye old sands of time. For fans, it’s a different side of Steve, using a voice and a new solemnity for a song that touches a universal nerve.\NOn one of the last nights of the recording sessions, Steve locked himself up in his writing room and within an hour, had conjured the catchy, effervescent “Can O’ Pop,” destined to be the radio single. \N“Jano from The Wood Brothers was leaving the studio, and I asked him to give me a beat, and I told him I’d write a song with the beat he gave me,” recalls Steve. The exuberant, syncopated groove seems to bubble up as Steve admits, in his best mid-period Dylan, “I want to feel the fizzy rhythm with you.” \N“Hey, Everyone loves a can of pop” he cracks.\NAmong other highlights, “It’s Baseball Season” seesaws on a sunny acoustic guitar as he pays homage to America’s favorite pastime. Poltz is a true fan, and the song’s laid-back, relaxed vibe speaks of carefree days at the ballpark. Steve even pays tribute to legendary baseball announcer Ernie Harwell.\NWith a cult following that includes fellow musicians, regular folks and festival goers who stumble onto his performances, there’s no common denominator to Steve’s fans. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and raised in San Diego, CA Steve toured and recorded with San Diego cult favorites The Rugburns (they still play annual sold-out reunion shows). But it was through his creative partnership with Jewel that he vaulted into the national spotlight; co-writing her multiplatinum Billboard Hot 100-busting smash, “You Were Meant For Me,” and continues to work with her to this day.\NOver the years, the Nashville-based troubadour has built a fascinating solo catalog, earmarked by his debut, One Left Shoe, Dreamhouse, Folk Singer, and 2019’s Shine On. No Depression crowned him, "A sardonic provocateur with a lighthearted acoustic-driven wit, suggesting at times a sunnier, less psychedelic Todd Snider, or maybe a less wan, washed Jackson Brown,” while the Associated Press dubbed him "part busker, part Iggy Pop and part Robin Williams, a freewheeling folkie with a quick wit and big heart.”\NAmong other collaborations, GRAMMY-winning bluegrass phenom Billy Strings tapped him to co-write “Leaders” on 2021’s Renewal and he’s co-written with Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, Nicki Bluhm, Oliver Wood and even Mojo Nixon.\NHe’s resumed his tour schedule, and when he comes to your town, he’ll say, as he does every night, “This is the best show I’ve ever played.” And hell, maybe it just is.\NUltimately, Steve never needed a plan. \NHe’s something of a natural, after all. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:This is the story of Steve Poltz.
Some people start life with a plan. Not Steve. He opens himself up to the universe in a way most of us will never be loose enough to achieve, and the universe responds with a wink, a seemingly bottomless well of inspiration, and the talent to truly connect with an audience. While 2021 could have found him adrift, faced with a tour moratorium the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in decades, it opened a door — literally, his friend Oliver Wood of The Wood Brother’s door — to creating an exuberant, thoughtful batch of songs that celebrate life in all of its stages.
The resulting album is called Stardust & Satellites [Red House / Compass Records].
“I just make stuff up,” he exclaims, quipping, “it sounded good to say that.” Steve is the sort of prolific writer and collaborator who downplays what seems like a non-stop geyser of creativity. “I have no rhyme or reason for what I do. It’s all magic. I go by instinct. It just felt right, so I went with it.”
The “it” in question is one of those serendipitous situations that were created by the pandemic. Steve, a road dog and performance junkie who regularly spends 300+ days a year on the road, bringing it to the people, should’ve been on tour last year. Esteemed Nashville roots rockers The Wood Brothers (Chris Wood being a former neighbor to Steve), also should’ve been on tour. Stuck in Nashville, Steve often joined the Wood Brothers for outdoor socially distant hangs, and, on a whim, decided to record one song with Oliver Wood and Jano Rix.
They cut “Frenemy,” a wistful, “keep your friends close and your enemies even closer” song that made it clear to all involved that they’d stumbled onto something special. With no studio clock ticking, no schedule or deadlines to meet, the companionship and ability to collaborate with like-minded musicians added a joyful diversion to what was a boring-ass year. Musically, the sky was the limit, and the group of musicians and friends embarked on a musical experience that found cast and crew reaching toward the stratosphere with Stardust & Satellites, which Oliver and Jano Rix of The Wood Brothers produced.
The album begins with the lithe fingerpicking of “Wrong Town,” an anthem summing up the life of an itinerant songwriter/performer, where he declares, “The truth is I have no plan at all,” going on to cite Emmylou Harris and Don Was as his style icons. It’s a “pleased to meet me” sort of song, and it was written to greet the audience at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2019. “I wanted to write an opening song,” Steve recalls.“I sat down with fellow Nashville songwriter Anthony da Costa, and ‘Wrong Town’ just appeared.”
But even gonzo guys have their moments where the cycle of life seems to be almost too much to bear. “Conveyor Belt” is a heartfelt song, a song that could only be written at a certain point in one’s life, and that point is when you’re saying goodbye to your parents and addressing your own mortality. Steve explains, "My mom passed away, and then a few years later my dad crossed over. I started thinking that I was next on the conveyor belt in a factory on the wheel of time. Next thing I know, I grabbed my guitar and this song appeared to me like a gift. It didn’t exist and then voila, there it was. I feel lucky to be a conduit."
The song is written over a gentle, repetitive melody that moves along with the inevitability of ye old sands of time. For fans, it’s a different side of Steve, using a voice and a new solemnity for a song that touches a universal nerve.
On one of the last nights of the recording sessions, Steve locked himself up in his writing room and within an hour, had conjured the catchy, effervescent “Can O’ Pop,” destined to be the radio single.
“Jano from The Wood Brothers was leaving the studio, and I asked him to give me a beat, and I told him I’d write a song with the beat he gave me,” recalls Steve. The exuberant, syncopated groove seems to bubble up as Steve admits, in his best mid-period Dylan, “I want to feel the fizzy rhythm with you.”
“Hey, Everyone loves a can of pop” he cracks.
Among other highlights, “It’s Baseball Season” seesaws on a sunny acoustic guitar as he pays homage to America’s favorite pastime. Poltz is a true fan, and the song’s laid-back, relaxed vibe speaks of carefree days at the ballpark. Steve even pays tribute to legendary baseball announcer Ernie Harwell.
With a cult following that includes fellow musicians, regular folks and festival goers who stumble onto his performances, there’s no common denominator to Steve’s fans. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and raised in San Diego, CA Steve toured and recorded with San Diego cult favorites The Rugburns (they still play annual sold-out reunion shows). But it was through his creative partnership with Jewel that he vaulted into the national spotlight; co-writing her multiplatinum Billboard Hot 100-busting smash, “You Were Meant For Me,” and continues to work with her to this day.
Over the years, the Nashville-based troubadour has built a fascinating solo catalog, earmarked by his debut, One Left Shoe, Dreamhouse, Folk Singer, and 2019’s Shine On. No Depression crowned him, "A sardonic provocateur with a lighthearted acoustic-driven wit, suggesting at times a sunnier, less psychedelic Todd Snider, or maybe a less wan, washed Jackson Brown,” while the Associated Press dubbed him "part busker, part Iggy Pop and part Robin Williams, a freewheeling folkie with a quick wit and big heart.”
Among other collaborations, GRAMMY-winning bluegrass phenom Billy Strings tapped him to co-write “Leaders” on 2021’s Renewal and he’s co-written with Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, Nicki Bluhm, Oliver Wood and even Mojo Nixon.
He’s resumed his tour schedule, and when he comes to your town, he’ll say, as he does every night, “This is the best show I’ve ever played.” And hell, maybe it just is.
Ultimately, Steve never needed a plan.
He’s something of a natural, after all.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240130T193541Z SEQUENCE:6744975 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:709 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-11-14 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240203T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240203T233000 UID:C429FF21-8714-4E32-94EC-6DA5A95C08DD SUMMARY:Slothrust CREATED:20231017T164218Z DTSTAMP:20231017T164218Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/slothrust DESCRIPTION:There’s cover songs, and then there’s the many ways Leah Wellbaum and Will Gorin have flipped their favorite tracks over the past 15 years. Not just with their longtime band Slothrust either. The Sarah Lawrence grads first bonded over the blues, a way to apply the progressive lesson plans of teachers like Mike Longo — a pianist who played with such jazz pioneers as Dizzy Gillespie and Lee Konitz — to fearless riffs and rhythms that feel like total rewrites. \NGorin is quick to credit Longo’s “Three I’s” lesson — imitation, incubation, and innovation — in particular. The main takeaway? That the best music comes from building upon other people’s ideas, rather than simply replicating or revisiting them. \NThe clearest example of this would be the Slothrust record Show Me How You Want It to Be, a cover song compilation that dropped sand-blasted renditions of The Turtles (“Happy Together”) and Marcy’s Playground (“Sex and Candy”) alongside spare takes on Al Green (“Let’s Stay Together”) and Sam Cooke (“Cupid”). \NHeading even further out into left field is the new EP I Promise, a wild ride that includes a raw performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and not one but four different recordings of the slo-mo smash “Pony.” The latter takes its cues from Ginuwine’s cassingle, which split its sides between a vibrant album version, drawn-out director’s cut, Timbaland’s iconic beat, and Ginuwine’s carnal a cappella. \NSlothrust takes the track down two distinct paths built around the original’s three powerhouse chords and effervescent low end. One swings like a lithe slice of sludgy rock ‘n’ roll, and the other dives straight off the deep end for 10 extra minutes, playing to the pair’s strengths as well-rounded mind readers. \N“It’s always fun to leave space in the music where improvisation is possible,” explains Wellbaum, “and that is part of what is so exciting to us about the extended version of ‘Pony’; it’s entirely improvised, and we only did one performance of it in the studio.” \N“One of my all-time favorite quotes is from composer Claude Debussy,” adds Gorin. “I first discovered it in Miles Davis’ biography, when he said ‘music is the space between the notes.’ I approach my playing with that kind of energy, with an emphasis on filling negative space with symmetrical or asymmetrical patterns.” \NThe same can be said for the two snappy, tightly wound tracks that also landed on I Promise, “Maybe Maybe” and “Magic Glow.” Written by Wellbaum while she was living in Florida last year and ending a “really long and beautifully dramatic relationship,” the songs are both poetic and poppy, working in hummable nods to liminal spaces, ceremonial magic, and eco-sexuality alongside a slick rhythm section (featuring Gorin on drums and bass for the first time) and Welbaum’s manic guitar melodies. \N“The two originals on this EP are good examples of songs that wrote themselves,” says Wellbaum. “I decided that I wanted to do guitar-driven, dynamic rock songs and I wrote these two as a pair, which happens to me a lot.”\NAnother recent example of songs that seemed to finish each other’s sentences — sonically and lyrically — would be “Courtesy” and “Waiting” from Slothrust’s last record, 2021’s Parallel Timeline LP. All of this synchronicity makes perfect sense, of course. After all, Slothrust’s breakthrough album (Of Course You Do) is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and the band’s core duo have connected on a kismet level ever since those early days. \N“Will and I have been playing different genres of music in different configurations together for almost 15 years now and that is a big part of our lock,” says Wellbaum. “We know how to work with each other in a variety of different settings and how to communicate outside of what we do specifically. That offers us tremendous freedom.”\N“I feel like we have developed our own unique sound to the point where we can ask ourselves ‘what would Slothrust do?’” adds` Gorin. “The paradox being that if Slothrust knew what Slothrust would do, Slothrust would do the opposite.” X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:There’s cover songs, and then there’s the many ways Leah Wellbaum and Will Gorin have flipped their favorite tracks over the past 15 years. Not just with their longtime band Slothrust either. The Sarah Lawrence grads first bonded over the blues, a way to apply the progressive lesson plans of teachers like Mike Longo — a pianist who played with such jazz pioneers as Dizzy Gillespie and Lee Konitz — to fearless riffs and rhythms that feel like total rewrites.
Gorin is quick to credit Longo’s “Three I’s” lesson — imitation, incubation, and innovation — in particular. The main takeaway? That the best music comes from building upon other people’s ideas, rather than simply replicating or revisiting them.
The clearest example of this would be the Slothrust record Show Me How You Want It to Be, a cover song compilation that dropped sand-blasted renditions of The Turtles (“Happy Together”) and Marcy’s Playground (“Sex and Candy”) alongside spare takes on Al Green (“Let’s Stay Together”) and Sam Cooke (“Cupid”).
Heading even further out into left field is the new EP I Promise, a wild ride that includes a raw performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and not one but four different recordings of the slo-mo smash “Pony.” The latter takes its cues from Ginuwine’s cassingle, which split its sides between a vibrant album version, drawn-out director’s cut, Timbaland’s iconic beat, and Ginuwine’s carnal a cappella.
Slothrust takes the track down two distinct paths built around the original’s three powerhouse chords and effervescent low end. One swings like a lithe slice of sludgy rock ‘n’ roll, and the other dives straight off the deep end for 10 extra minutes, playing to the pair’s strengths as well-rounded mind readers.
“It’s always fun to leave space in the music where improvisation is possible,” explains Wellbaum, “and that is part of what is so exciting to us about the extended version of ‘Pony’; it’s entirely improvised, and we only did one performance of it in the studio.”
“One of my all-time favorite quotes is from composer Claude Debussy,” adds Gorin. “I first discovered it in Miles Davis’ biography, when he said ‘music is the space between the notes.’ I approach my playing with that kind of energy, with an emphasis on filling negative space with symmetrical or asymmetrical patterns.”
The same can be said for the two snappy, tightly wound tracks that also landed on I Promise, “Maybe Maybe” and “Magic Glow.” Written by Wellbaum while she was living in Florida last year and ending a “really long and beautifully dramatic relationship,” the songs are both poetic and poppy, working in hummable nods to liminal spaces, ceremonial magic, and eco-sexuality alongside a slick rhythm section (featuring Gorin on drums and bass for the first time) and Welbaum’s manic guitar melodies.
“The two originals on this EP are good examples of songs that wrote themselves,” says Wellbaum. “I decided that I wanted to do guitar-driven, dynamic rock songs and I wrote these two as a pair, which happens to me a lot.”
Another recent example of songs that seemed to finish each other’s sentences — sonically and lyrically — would be “Courtesy” and “Waiting” from Slothrust’s last record, 2021’s Parallel Timeline LP. All of this synchronicity makes perfect sense, of course. After all, Slothrust’s breakthrough album (Of Course You Do) is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and the band’s core duo have connected on a kismet level ever since those early days.
“Will and I have been playing different genres of music in different configurations together for almost 15 years now and that is a big part of our lock,” says Wellbaum. “We know how to work with each other in a variety of different settings and how to communicate outside of what we do specifically. That offers us tremendous freedom.”
“I feel like we have developed our own unique sound to the point where we can ask ourselves ‘what would Slothrust do?’” adds` Gorin. “The paradox being that if Slothrust knew what Slothrust would do, Slothrust would do the opposite.”
LAST-MODIFIED:20240130T193814Z SEQUENCE:9082556 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:939 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240209T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240209T210000 UID:2FECAEC5-6DBC-48D3-A66C-8286C09B84D4 SUMMARY:Wildflowers CREATED:20231218T232155Z DTSTAMP:20231218T232155Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/wildflowers DESCRIPTION:On Feb. 9, 2024, an all-star group of musicians will celebrate one of the greatest American songwriters (and bands) of the past century: Tom Petty. In honor of the 30th anniversary of Petty's iconic Wildflowers album, the band and a ridiculously great roster of guest singers will perform Wildflowers in its entirety plus more hits from the legendary albums of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. From the same people who brought you 2023's tribute to Neil Young's Harvest, this show features singers and musicians from The National Parks, Neon Trees, Fictionist, Goldmyth, Seaslak, The Lower Lights, Book On Tapeworm, The Hollering Pines, Cardinal Bloom, Mideau, Pinguin Mofex, Lantern By Sea, and many more. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:On Feb. 9, 2024, an all-star group of musicians will celebrate one of the greatest American songwriters (and bands) of the past century: Tom Petty. In honor of the 30th anniversary of Petty's iconic Wildflowers album, the band and a ridiculously great roster of guest singers will perform Wildflowers in its entirety plus more hits from the legendary albums of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. From the same people who brought you 2023's tribute to Neil Young's Harvest, this show features singers and musicians from The National Parks, Neon Trees, Fictionist, Goldmyth, Seaslak, The Lower Lights, Book On Tapeworm, The Hollering Pines, Cardinal Bloom, Mideau, Pinguin Mofex, Lantern By Sea, and many more.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240130T193906Z SEQUENCE:3701831 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:2660 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-19 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240216T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240216T210000 UID:BE991A14-5D43-4B1C-A0C4-B214FA1D43A9 SUMMARY:John Craigie (Night 1) CREATED:20231009T180012Z DTSTAMP:20231009T180012Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/john-craigie-night-1 DESCRIPTION:Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies. Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower. \NAfter selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.\NThe album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things. So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.\NRather than steal away to a cabin or hole up in a house with friends, Craigie opted to set up shop at the OK Theater in Enterprise, OR with longtime collaborator Bart Budwig behind the board as engineer. A rotating cast of musicians shuffled in and out safely, distinguishing the process from the communal recording of previous releases. The core players included Justin Landis, Cooper Trail, and Nevada Sowle. Meanwhile, Shook Twins lent their signature vocal harmonies, Bevin Foley arranged, composed, and performed strings, and Ben Walden dropped in for guitar and violin plucking parts.\N“Instruments were scattered around the theater and microphones placed in various spots,” he recalls. “It’s hard to say who all played what exactly.”\NAs such, the spirit in the room guided everyone. On “Distance,” warm piano glows alongside a glitchy beat as he softly laments, “I could lose you to the loneliness, vast and infinite.” Then, there’s “Helena.” A jazz-y bass line snakes through head-nodding percussion as he relays an incendiary parable of a mother and son in exile. He croons, “She said fire was how we’d make ‘em pay. As I ran across the fields, she would scream, ‘Light it up son’,” uplifted in a conflagration of Shook Twins’ harmonies. Strings echo in the background as his vocals quake front-and-center on “Street Mermaid.” \NElsewhere, the guitar-laden “Microdose” beguiles and bewitches with an intoxicating refrain dedicated to a time where he “Microdosed for months and months, dissolve my ego in the acid.” Everything culminates on the glassy beat-craft and glistening guitars of “Perseids” where he sings, “There’s always a new heart after the old heart. Maybe a new heart is enough.”\NDuring this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco.\N“I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.\NCraigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause. Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.” Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact.\NIn the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies. Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower.
After selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.
The album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things. So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.
Rather than steal away to a cabin or hole up in a house with friends, Craigie opted to set up shop at the OK Theater in Enterprise, OR with longtime collaborator Bart Budwig behind the board as engineer. A rotating cast of musicians shuffled in and out safely, distinguishing the process from the communal recording of previous releases. The core players included Justin Landis, Cooper Trail, and Nevada Sowle. Meanwhile, Shook Twins lent their signature vocal harmonies, Bevin Foley arranged, composed, and performed strings, and Ben Walden dropped in for guitar and violin plucking parts.
“Instruments were scattered around the theater and microphones placed in various spots,” he recalls. “It’s hard to say who all played what exactly.”
As such, the spirit in the room guided everyone. On “Distance,” warm piano glows alongside a glitchy beat as he softly laments, “I could lose you to the loneliness, vast and infinite.” Then, there’s “Helena.” A jazz-y bass line snakes through head-nodding percussion as he relays an incendiary parable of a mother and son in exile. He croons, “She said fire was how we’d make ‘em pay. As I ran across the fields, she would scream, ‘Light it up son’,” uplifted in a conflagration of Shook Twins’ harmonies. Strings echo in the background as his vocals quake front-and-center on “Street Mermaid.”
Elsewhere, the guitar-laden “Microdose” beguiles and bewitches with an intoxicating refrain dedicated to a time where he “Microdosed for months and months, dissolve my ego in the acid.” Everything culminates on the glassy beat-craft and glistening guitars of “Perseids” where he sings, “There’s always a new heart after the old heart. Maybe a new heart is enough.”
During this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco.
“I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.
Craigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause. Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.” Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact.
In the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240213T214706Z SEQUENCE:10986414 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1037 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-10-10 16:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240217T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240217T233000 UID:4ADC060F-725A-426D-88EA-DEDD2E1ABE82 SUMMARY:John Craigie (Night 2) CREATED:20231010T000016Z DTSTAMP:20231010T000016Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/john-craigie-night-2 DESCRIPTION:Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies. Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower. \NAfter selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.\NThe album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things. So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.\NRather than steal away to a cabin or hole up in a house with friends, Craigie opted to set up shop at the OK Theater in Enterprise, OR with longtime collaborator Bart Budwig behind the board as engineer. A rotating cast of musicians shuffled in and out safely, distinguishing the process from the communal recording of previous releases. The core players included Justin Landis, Cooper Trail, and Nevada Sowle. Meanwhile, Shook Twins lent their signature vocal harmonies, Bevin Foley arranged, composed, and performed strings, and Ben Walden dropped in for guitar and violin plucking parts.\N“Instruments were scattered around the theater and microphones placed in various spots,” he recalls. “It’s hard to say who all played what exactly.”\NAs such, the spirit in the room guided everyone. On “Distance,” warm piano glows alongside a glitchy beat as he softly laments, “I could lose you to the loneliness, vast and infinite.” Then, there’s “Helena.” A jazz-y bass line snakes through head-nodding percussion as he relays an incendiary parable of a mother and son in exile. He croons, “She said fire was how we’d make ‘em pay. As I ran across the fields, she would scream, ‘Light it up son’,” uplifted in a conflagration of Shook Twins’ harmonies. Strings echo in the background as his vocals quake front-and-center on “Street Mermaid.” \NElsewhere, the guitar-laden “Microdose” beguiles and bewitches with an intoxicating refrain dedicated to a time where he “Microdosed for months and months, dissolve my ego in the acid.” Everything culminates on the glassy beat-craft and glistening guitars of “Perseids” where he sings, “There’s always a new heart after the old heart. Maybe a new heart is enough.”\NDuring this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco.\N“I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.\NCraigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause. Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.” Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact.\NIn the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies. Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower.
After selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.
The album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things. So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.
Rather than steal away to a cabin or hole up in a house with friends, Craigie opted to set up shop at the OK Theater in Enterprise, OR with longtime collaborator Bart Budwig behind the board as engineer. A rotating cast of musicians shuffled in and out safely, distinguishing the process from the communal recording of previous releases. The core players included Justin Landis, Cooper Trail, and Nevada Sowle. Meanwhile, Shook Twins lent their signature vocal harmonies, Bevin Foley arranged, composed, and performed strings, and Ben Walden dropped in for guitar and violin plucking parts.
“Instruments were scattered around the theater and microphones placed in various spots,” he recalls. “It’s hard to say who all played what exactly.”
As such, the spirit in the room guided everyone. On “Distance,” warm piano glows alongside a glitchy beat as he softly laments, “I could lose you to the loneliness, vast and infinite.” Then, there’s “Helena.” A jazz-y bass line snakes through head-nodding percussion as he relays an incendiary parable of a mother and son in exile. He croons, “She said fire was how we’d make ‘em pay. As I ran across the fields, she would scream, ‘Light it up son’,” uplifted in a conflagration of Shook Twins’ harmonies. Strings echo in the background as his vocals quake front-and-center on “Street Mermaid.”
Elsewhere, the guitar-laden “Microdose” beguiles and bewitches with an intoxicating refrain dedicated to a time where he “Microdosed for months and months, dissolve my ego in the acid.” Everything culminates on the glassy beat-craft and glistening guitars of “Perseids” where he sings, “There’s always a new heart after the old heart. Maybe a new heart is enough.”
During this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco.
“I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.
Craigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause. Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.” Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact.
In the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240213T212909Z SEQUENCE:10963733 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:575 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-10-10 16:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240218T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240218T233000 UID:D6A16642-7D01-4106-A423-013A1F50469A SUMMARY:John Craigie (Night 3) CREATED:20231010T000002Z DTSTAMP:20231010T000002Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/john-craigie-night-3 DESCRIPTION:Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies. Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower. \NAfter selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.\NThe album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things. So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.\NRather than steal away to a cabin or hole up in a house with friends, Craigie opted to set up shop at the OK Theater in Enterprise, OR with longtime collaborator Bart Budwig behind the board as engineer. A rotating cast of musicians shuffled in and out safely, distinguishing the process from the communal recording of previous releases. The core players included Justin Landis, Cooper Trail, and Nevada Sowle. Meanwhile, Shook Twins lent their signature vocal harmonies, Bevin Foley arranged, composed, and performed strings, and Ben Walden dropped in for guitar and violin plucking parts.\N“Instruments were scattered around the theater and microphones placed in various spots,” he recalls. “It’s hard to say who all played what exactly.”\NAs such, the spirit in the room guided everyone. On “Distance,” warm piano glows alongside a glitchy beat as he softly laments, “I could lose you to the loneliness, vast and infinite.” Then, there’s “Helena.” A jazz-y bass line snakes through head-nodding percussion as he relays an incendiary parable of a mother and son in exile. He croons, “She said fire was how we’d make ‘em pay. As I ran across the fields, she would scream, ‘Light it up son’,” uplifted in a conflagration of Shook Twins’ harmonies. Strings echo in the background as his vocals quake front-and-center on “Street Mermaid.” \NElsewhere, the guitar-laden “Microdose” beguiles and bewitches with an intoxicating refrain dedicated to a time where he “Microdosed for months and months, dissolve my ego in the acid.” Everything culminates on the glassy beat-craft and glistening guitars of “Perseids” where he sings, “There’s always a new heart after the old heart. Maybe a new heart is enough.”\NDuring this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco.\N“I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.\NCraigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause. Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.” Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact.\NIn the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies. Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower.
After selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.
The album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things. So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.
Rather than steal away to a cabin or hole up in a house with friends, Craigie opted to set up shop at the OK Theater in Enterprise, OR with longtime collaborator Bart Budwig behind the board as engineer. A rotating cast of musicians shuffled in and out safely, distinguishing the process from the communal recording of previous releases. The core players included Justin Landis, Cooper Trail, and Nevada Sowle. Meanwhile, Shook Twins lent their signature vocal harmonies, Bevin Foley arranged, composed, and performed strings, and Ben Walden dropped in for guitar and violin plucking parts.
“Instruments were scattered around the theater and microphones placed in various spots,” he recalls. “It’s hard to say who all played what exactly.”
As such, the spirit in the room guided everyone. On “Distance,” warm piano glows alongside a glitchy beat as he softly laments, “I could lose you to the loneliness, vast and infinite.” Then, there’s “Helena.” A jazz-y bass line snakes through head-nodding percussion as he relays an incendiary parable of a mother and son in exile. He croons, “She said fire was how we’d make ‘em pay. As I ran across the fields, she would scream, ‘Light it up son’,” uplifted in a conflagration of Shook Twins’ harmonies. Strings echo in the background as his vocals quake front-and-center on “Street Mermaid.”
Elsewhere, the guitar-laden “Microdose” beguiles and bewitches with an intoxicating refrain dedicated to a time where he “Microdosed for months and months, dissolve my ego in the acid.” Everything culminates on the glassy beat-craft and glistening guitars of “Perseids” where he sings, “There’s always a new heart after the old heart. Maybe a new heart is enough.”
During this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco.
“I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.
Craigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause. Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.” Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact.
In the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240213T213228Z SEQUENCE:10963946 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:921 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-10-10 16:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240223T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240223T233000 UID:4EE24D53-6023-4FA5-96B2-ACE9AE674F67 SUMMARY:Michael Nau CREATED:20231023T212948Z DTSTAMP:20231023T212948Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/michael-nau DESCRIPTION:Michael Nau is your favorite band’s favorite songwriter. Since the mid 2000’s, he’s crafted a catalog of thoughtful, reflective songs as the frontman of indie-rock mainstays Cotton Jones, Page France, and Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread. Now, he’s set to release the fifth full-length record under his own name. Accompany is due out 12/08/2023 on Karma Chief Records.\NAll 11 tracks come together to paint a beautiful picture. The lyrics invoke the listener’s imagination throughout. They’re introspective, but vague and open-ended. The indie rock backdrop shows signs of psych-soul influence with dry and punchy drums, lush synth lines, and tastefully verb-soaked vocal production. Sweeping string arrangements and French horn runs add cinematic motion to the waltz-y “Shiftshaping” (track 4). Slide guitar and a shuffling snare drum add some get-up-and-go to “Painting a Wall” (track 2). Nau’s vocal delivery falls somewhere between crooning to a crowd, telling stories to a loved one, and musing to himself.\NThe singer-songwriter’s relaxed attitude toward making records is discernible in the sound. A while back, veteran producer and engineer Adrien Olsen (The Killers, Lucy Dacus, Fruit Bats), approached him about recording in his Richmond, Virginia-based studio. For the first time in a while, Michael had some sessions on the calendar. He called a few old friends and put together a band. “I didn’t have much of a plan before Adrien reached out, so I wrote some songs specifically for the session,” Michael explained. “I was thinking about what would be fun to play with this specific group of guys."\NThe band consisted of several long-time collaborators and musicians who had participated in Nau’s various recording and touring efforts over the years. “It had been a while since I’d made music in a room with other people,” Michael shared. “We just sort of started playing and didn’t really talk about what was happening.” The combo’s newfound chemistry was a primary source of inspiration and, with the help of Olsen, ultimately led to an album’s-worth of music.\NNau and the band spent five days at Montrose Recording and left with a plan to return and finish up a few months later. “After the first session, I took a copy of the recordings with me to overdub a few things at my spot,” Michael shared. While he was working through it, he found a bunch of beautiful moments of jamming in between the takes. “I grabbed a bunch of the pieces and tried to work them in. Then, I dumped the whole thing onto a cassette as one long stream of songs.” With the record mostly complete, the final session at Montrose would consist of some simple overdubs and finishing touches.\NBut somehow, in the months between, he lost the overdubs. “Going into the second session, all I had was the cassette,” Michael explained. The band got back together and performed another batch of songs. At the end of their second session, they had enough music to pick and choose from for the new full-length. “The songs, as they appear on the album, are basically how they were recorded as a live band.” Grab a copy of Accompany on 12/08/2023 and keep an eye out for tour dates in the coming months. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Michael Nau is your favorite band’s favorite songwriter. Since the mid 2000’s, he’s crafted a catalog of thoughtful, reflective songs as the frontman of indie-rock mainstays Cotton Jones, Page France, and Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread. Now, he’s set to release the fifth full-length record under his own name. Accompany is due out 12/08/2023 on Karma Chief Records.
All 11 tracks come together to paint a beautiful picture. The lyrics invoke the listener’s imagination throughout. They’re introspective, but vague and open-ended. The indie rock backdrop shows signs of psych-soul influence with dry and punchy drums, lush synth lines, and tastefully verb-soaked vocal production. Sweeping string arrangements and French horn runs add cinematic motion to the waltz-y “Shiftshaping” (track 4). Slide guitar and a shuffling snare drum add some get-up-and-go to “Painting a Wall” (track 2). Nau’s vocal delivery falls somewhere between crooning to a crowd, telling stories to a loved one, and musing to himself.
The singer-songwriter’s relaxed attitude toward making records is discernible in the sound. A while back, veteran producer and engineer Adrien Olsen (The Killers, Lucy Dacus, Fruit Bats), approached him about recording in his Richmond, Virginia-based studio. For the first time in a while, Michael had some sessions on the calendar. He called a few old friends and put together a band. “I didn’t have much of a plan before Adrien reached out, so I wrote some songs specifically for the session,” Michael explained. “I was thinking about what would be fun to play with this specific group of guys."
The band consisted of several long-time collaborators and musicians who had participated in Nau’s various recording and touring efforts over the years. “It had been a while since I’d made music in a room with other people,” Michael shared. “We just sort of started playing and didn’t really talk about what was happening.” The combo’s newfound chemistry was a primary source of inspiration and, with the help of Olsen, ultimately led to an album’s-worth of music.
Nau and the band spent five days at Montrose Recording and left with a plan to return and finish up a few months later. “After the first session, I took a copy of the recordings with me to overdub a few things at my spot,” Michael shared. While he was working through it, he found a bunch of beautiful moments of jamming in between the takes. “I grabbed a bunch of the pieces and tried to work them in. Then, I dumped the whole thing onto a cassette as one long stream of songs.” With the record mostly complete, the final session at Montrose would consist of some simple overdubs and finishing touches.
But somehow, in the months between, he lost the overdubs. “Going into the second session, all I had was the cassette,” Michael explained. The band got back together and performed another batch of songs. At the end of their second session, they had enough music to pick and choose from for the new full-length. “The songs, as they appear on the album, are basically how they were recorded as a live band.” Grab a copy of Accompany on 12/08/2023 and keep an eye out for tour dates in the coming months.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240215T175237Z SEQUENCE:9922969 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1097 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-10-24 16:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240301T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240301T210000 UID:9C33AA4D-FB8E-4C19-9433-734DDFEA613E SUMMARY:The Discographers: Dark Side of Oz CREATED:20231213T220637Z DTSTAMP:20231213T220637Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/the-discographers-dark-side-of-oz-2 DESCRIPTION:TAKE A TRIP down the psychedelic, rainbow-colored brick road to the Dark Side of Oz. You’ve probably heard that you can loop Pink Floyd’s classic album The Dark Side of the Moon along with the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and come across a number of striking synchronicities. We now present a 2-hour show of Pink Floyd’s music, including the full Dark Side, in sync with video celebrating the history of Pink Floyd and all things Wizard of Oz. Be a part of this new live multimedia concert experience! X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:TAKE A TRIP down the psychedelic, rainbow-colored brick road to the Dark Side of Oz. You’ve probably heard that you can loop Pink Floyd’s classic album The Dark Side of the Moon along with the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and come across a number of striking synchronicities. We now present a 2-hour show of Pink Floyd’s music, including the full Dark Side, in sync with video celebrating the history of Pink Floyd and all things Wizard of Oz. Be a part of this new live multimedia concert experience!
LAST-MODIFIED:20240301T220434Z SEQUENCE:6825477 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1619 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240305T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240305T210000 UID:8C830214-761A-461C-B44A-0A107EAA9B02 SUMMARY:Briscoe CREATED:20231208T230140Z DTSTAMP:20231208T230140Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/briscoe DESCRIPTION:West of It All, the debut album from Americana folk-rock band Briscoe, is a coming-of-agesoundtrack set against the backdrop of the Texas Hill Country. Written in the Lone Star State andrecorded in North Carolina, it's an album that charts its own musical geography, with productionfrom Grammy nominee Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, Nathaniel Rateliff & The NightSweats) and adventurous songwriting that bridges the gap between classic American roots musicand its modern-day incarnation.\NFrom free backyard performances on the outskirts of UT Austin's campus to sold-out gigs at Antone's Nightclub and The Continental Club Gallery, Briscoe's growth — like the group's music itself — has been organic. Bandmates Truett Heintzelman and Philip Lupton met as teenagers, reunited as students at UT Austin, and built their grassroots following the old-school way: by carving out a sound that nodded to the golden era of folk, rock, and pop music, then getting onstage and building a genuine relationship with their audience. Signed by ATO Records while still pursuing undergraduate degrees, the Texas natives wrote West of It All as graduation loomed in the distance, funneling the stories of their college experience — from heartbreak to hard-won lessons to weekend trips into the rural countryside — into a raw, rugged blend of classic and contemporary influences.\NWith contributions from drummer Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver) and multi-instrumentalist Phil Cook (Megafaun, Hiss Golden Messenger), West of It All offers a singular version of genre-fluid folk music, from rootsy rave-ups like "The Well" to brainy, literary songs like "Sparrows." It's a self-assured album that follows no directions but its very own, stacked organic performance and sharp songwriting that negotiates the transition from adolescence to adulthood. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:West of It All, the debut album from Americana folk-rock band Briscoe, is a coming-of-agesoundtrack set against the backdrop of the Texas Hill Country. Written in the Lone Star State andrecorded in North Carolina, it's an album that charts its own musical geography, with productionfrom Grammy nominee Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, Nathaniel Rateliff & The NightSweats) and adventurous songwriting that bridges the gap between classic American roots musicand its modern-day incarnation.
From free backyard performances on the outskirts of UT Austin's campus to sold-out gigs at Antone's Nightclub and The Continental Club Gallery, Briscoe's growth — like the group's music itself — has been organic. Bandmates Truett Heintzelman and Philip Lupton met as teenagers, reunited as students at UT Austin, and built their grassroots following the old-school way: by carving out a sound that nodded to the golden era of folk, rock, and pop music, then getting onstage and building a genuine relationship with their audience. Signed by ATO Records while still pursuing undergraduate degrees, the Texas natives wrote West of It All as graduation loomed in the distance, funneling the stories of their college experience — from heartbreak to hard-won lessons to weekend trips into the rural countryside — into a raw, rugged blend of classic and contemporary influences.
With contributions from drummer Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver) and multi-instrumentalist Phil Cook (Megafaun, Hiss Golden Messenger), West of It All offers a singular version of genre-fluid folk music, from rootsy rave-ups like "The Well" to brainy, literary songs like "Sparrows." It's a self-assured album that follows no directions but its very own, stacked organic performance and sharp songwriting that negotiates the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240215T180104Z SEQUENCE:5943564 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:980 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-13 18:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240306T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240306T210000 UID:7C73FC05-8840-42E9-ABED-6C217991F8BC SUMMARY:Boogarins x Levitation Room CREATED:20231211T220209Z DTSTAMP:20231211T220209Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/boogarins-x-levitation-room DESCRIPTION:Boogarins’ Fernando “Dino” Almeida and Benke Ferraz began playing music together as teenagers in the central Brazilian city of Goiânia — creating psychedelic pop in their parents’ gardens, filtering their country’s rich musical history through a very modern lens. By the time the group’s home-recorded debut LP, ‘As Plantas Que Curam’ (2013), was released worldwide, the band had recruited a proper rhythm section and were developing a name around Goiânia. Soon after, the group was booking regular gigs in Sao Paulo and across the country. \NSombrero Dúvida, the band’s fourth full-length release, is a question. A play on words in Boogarins’ native Brazilian Portuguese. It’s a contraction of “Sombra ou Dúvida”, the title track of the album, which translates as ‘Shadow or Doubt’. There might seem to be a darkness to the question, given that both choices aren’t exactly cheery. Yet, Dino, the smiling, Afro-donned singer of the group tells us that “shadow” refers to a feeling related to your comfort zone, whereas doubt is the uncertainty that hits people and leads them to follow their instincts.”\N“We didn’t want to write songs telling people what to do, but instead help them find their own thing. So, there are more questions in the album than answers” Dino adds. In these days of uncertainty, perhaps there’s some comfort to be found by remaining in the shadows. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Boogarins’ Fernando “Dino” Almeida and Benke Ferraz began playing music together as teenagers in the central Brazilian city of Goiânia — creating psychedelic pop in their parents’ gardens, filtering their country’s rich musical history through a very modern lens. By the time the group’s home-recorded debut LP, ‘As Plantas Que Curam’ (2013), was released worldwide, the band had recruited a proper rhythm section and were developing a name around Goiânia. Soon after, the group was booking regular gigs in Sao Paulo and across the country.
Sombrero Dúvida, the band’s fourth full-length release, is a question. A play on words in Boogarins’ native Brazilian Portuguese. It’s a contraction of “Sombra ou Dúvida”, the title track of the album, which translates as ‘Shadow or Doubt’. There might seem to be a darkness to the question, given that both choices aren’t exactly cheery. Yet, Dino, the smiling, Afro-donned singer of the group tells us that “shadow” refers to a feeling related to your comfort zone, whereas doubt is the uncertainty that hits people and leads them to follow their instincts.”
“We didn’t want to write songs telling people what to do, but instead help them find their own thing. So, there are more questions in the album than answers” Dino adds. In these days of uncertainty, perhaps there’s some comfort to be found by remaining in the shadows.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240228T202603Z SEQUENCE:6819834 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1793 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-12 18:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240308T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240308T210000 UID:755AA81A-2089-4F41-88B7-45A27F3B7813 SUMMARY:Margo Cilker CREATED:20231208T173638Z DTSTAMP:20231208T173638Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/margo-cilker DESCRIPTION:Margo Cilker’s sophomore album, Valley of Heart’s Delight, refers to a place she can't return: California’s Santa Clara Valley, as it was known before the orchards were paved over and became more famous for Silicon than apricots. Margo is the fifth generation of Cilker’s born there, and in this 11-song collection, family and nature intertwine as guiding motifs, at once precious and endangered, beautiful and exhausting. The trees here are family trees, or they’re apricot trees, but suburban sprawl isn’t looking good for either. Cilker moved from California to the Pacific Northwest in her mid-twenties and wrote much of Valley of Heart's Delight while living in Enterprise, Oregon, a small town near the Snake River and powered by the river’s massive, publicly-funded hydroelectric dams. The dams (part of the same system Woody Guthrie was hired to write about) provide clean electricity to much of the western US but make it extraordinarily difficult for anadromous fish (such as Steelhead Trout) to return from the ocean and spawn in their native streams. Valley Of Heart’s Delight feeds off of this tension - how we live in and off of nature, how we live within and without family, and why we return to the places we were born.\NCilker and producer Sera Cahoone’s work on her critically acclaimed Pohorylle debut earned its accolades for lyric-focused production and understated musicianship. The pair maintain this approach on Valley of Heart’s Delight, bringing back the same crew to the same studio in Vancouver, Washington: Cahoone (Sub Pop, Carissa’s Weird, Band Of Horses) drums and produces, John Morgan Askew (Neko Case, Laura Gibson) engineers, Jenny Conlee-Drizos (The Decemberists) provides piano, organ, and accordion, Rebecca Young (Lindsey Fuller) plays bass, Kelly Pratt (Beirut) on horns, and of course, sister Sarah Cilker contributes harmonies. Those in need of more twang will appreciate the addition of Paul Brainard’s (M. Ward, Richmond Fontaine) pedal steel and telecaster work, Annie Staninec's (Mary Gauthier) fiddle, and the mandolin and high lonesome harmony of Portland country standard-bearer Caleb Klauder. Cilker also branched out in her song-collecting, reeling in a cover (“Steelhead Trout”) by Idaho native Ben Walden, ostensibly because of artistic and thematic reasons, but also because, in Cilker’s words, “it’s a damn good song and I wanted to record it.” Walden also sings and plays harmonica on the track.\NCilker's debut record was released in late 2021, a year swinging wildly between cloistered days of lockdown, social engagement roaring back to life like the former ‘20s, and the Greek alphabet entering the vernacular to turn us inwards again. This tumult was echoed in the artistic life of Margo Cilker, trying in vain to predict what kind of a world her first record would be released into while writing what would become her second. As it turned out, the world was welcoming of Pohorylle. The unpronouncably-titled, darkly-jacketed, quietly-released record ended up a darling of critics and fellow songwriters and notably ended up on albums-of-the-year lists in two different years (strange times indeed). The debut was also nominated for UK Americana Album of The Year alongside Brandi Carlile and Robert Plant, and earned Cilker a slew of festival performances and tours supporting American Aquarium, Hayes Carll, and Drive-By Truckers. Between tours, Cilker made time to record Valley Of Heart’s Delight, and its release on Fluff & Gravy Records (Loose Music in the UK/EU) will be followed by a US headline tour with her longtime road band. \NMargo Cilker currently lives near the Columbia River in Goldendale, Washington with her husband, songwriter and working cowboy Forrest VanTuyl, as well their dog and some horses. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Margo Cilker’s sophomore album, Valley of Heart’s Delight, refers to a place she can't return: California’s Santa Clara Valley, as it was known before the orchards were paved over and became more famous for Silicon than apricots. Margo is the fifth generation of Cilker’s born there, and in this 11-song collection, family and nature intertwine as guiding motifs, at once precious and endangered, beautiful and exhausting. The trees here are family trees, or they’re apricot trees, but suburban sprawl isn’t looking good for either. Cilker moved from California to the Pacific Northwest in her mid-twenties and wrote much of Valley of Heart's Delight while living in Enterprise, Oregon, a small town near the Snake River and powered by the river’s massive, publicly-funded hydroelectric dams. The dams (part of the same system Woody Guthrie was hired to write about) provide clean electricity to much of the western US but make it extraordinarily difficult for anadromous fish (such as Steelhead Trout) to return from the ocean and spawn in their native streams. Valley Of Heart’s Delight feeds off of this tension - how we live in and off of nature, how we live within and without family, and why we return to the places we were born.
Cilker and producer Sera Cahoone’s work on her critically acclaimed Pohorylle debut earned its accolades for lyric-focused production and understated musicianship. The pair maintain this approach on Valley of Heart’s Delight, bringing back the same crew to the same studio in Vancouver, Washington: Cahoone (Sub Pop, Carissa’s Weird, Band Of Horses) drums and produces, John Morgan Askew (Neko Case, Laura Gibson) engineers, Jenny Conlee-Drizos (The Decemberists) provides piano, organ, and accordion, Rebecca Young (Lindsey Fuller) plays bass, Kelly Pratt (Beirut) on horns, and of course, sister Sarah Cilker contributes harmonies. Those in need of more twang will appreciate the addition of Paul Brainard’s (M. Ward, Richmond Fontaine) pedal steel and telecaster work, Annie Staninec's (Mary Gauthier) fiddle, and the mandolin and high lonesome harmony of Portland country standard-bearer Caleb Klauder. Cilker also branched out in her song-collecting, reeling in a cover (“Steelhead Trout”) by Idaho native Ben Walden, ostensibly because of artistic and thematic reasons, but also because, in Cilker’s words, “it’s a damn good song and I wanted to record it.” Walden also sings and plays harmonica on the track.
Cilker's debut record was released in late 2021, a year swinging wildly between cloistered days of lockdown, social engagement roaring back to life like the former ‘20s, and the Greek alphabet entering the vernacular to turn us inwards again. This tumult was echoed in the artistic life of Margo Cilker, trying in vain to predict what kind of a world her first record would be released into while writing what would become her second. As it turned out, the world was welcoming of Pohorylle. The unpronouncably-titled, darkly-jacketed, quietly-released record ended up a darling of critics and fellow songwriters and notably ended up on albums-of-the-year lists in two different years (strange times indeed). The debut was also nominated for UK Americana Album of The Year alongside Brandi Carlile and Robert Plant, and earned Cilker a slew of festival performances and tours supporting American Aquarium, Hayes Carll, and Drive-By Truckers. Between tours, Cilker made time to record Valley Of Heart’s Delight, and its release on Fluff & Gravy Records (Loose Music in the UK/EU) will be followed by a US headline tour with her longtime road band.
Margo Cilker currently lives near the Columbia River in Goldendale, Washington with her husband, songwriter and working cowboy Forrest VanTuyl, as well their dog and some horses.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240221T230214Z SEQUENCE:6499536 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1264 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-12 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240309T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240309T220000 UID:F2C8F28C-487F-46E9-A01D-518145BBF3DA SUMMARY:Albert Cummings CREATED:20240129T222259Z DTSTAMP:20240129T222259Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/albert-cummings DESCRIPTION:Ever since the release of his first album in 2003, the blues world has opened its doors for Albert Cummings. A singer and guitarist who has played with many of the greatest players of the modern era, Cummings has received the kind of recognition that few others do. With its 2022 release on Cummings’ own indie label, Ivy Music Company, TEN is a full realization of the wider possibilities of where his music can go. The 13 songs on TEN are a compelling and emotional summation of what the artist has seen and done. The single “Need Somebody” begins the album with a sonic slugfest of back-alley power, the sound that Cummings has spent his life perfecting. Vince Gill lends background vocals to the standout track “Last Call”. Upon hearing that Gill was interested in collaborating, Cummings recalled “I figured then it was a sign that anything can happen.” He was certainly right. Blues is not a style of music that easily progresses, but this is exactly what Albert Cummings is able to do on TEN. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Ever since the release of his first album in 2003, the blues world has opened its doors for Albert Cummings. A singer and guitarist who has played with many of the greatest players of the modern era, Cummings has received the kind of recognition that few others do. With its 2022 release on Cummings’ own indie label, Ivy Music Company, TEN is a full realization of the wider possibilities of where his music can go. The 13 songs on TEN are a compelling and emotional summation of what the artist has seen and done. The single “Need Somebody” begins the album with a sonic slugfest of back-alley power, the sound that Cummings has spent his life perfecting. Vince Gill lends background vocals to the standout track “Last Call”. Upon hearing that Gill was interested in collaborating, Cummings recalled “I figured then it was a sign that anything can happen.” He was certainly right. Blues is not a style of music that easily progresses, but this is exactly what Albert Cummings is able to do on TEN.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240222T223734Z SEQUENCE:2074475 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:915 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240311T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240311T170000 UID:F4E20AB8-B63A-4188-B41F-0CDF44F25198 SUMMARY:Mia x Ally CREATED:20240104T231315Z DTSTAMP:20240104T231315Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/mia-x-ally DESCRIPTION: ‘Mia x Ally’ is the electrifying duo project of electric violinist Mia Asano and bagpiper/multi-instrumentalist Ally the Piper. With a combined following of over 6 million people, both musicians officially joined forces in April 2022. Playing original songs and covers of pop rock and metal music with a Celtic twist, Mia x Ally made their debut in Boston in August of 2022 and have since toured the States, embarking on their debut West Coast and Mid-West run in early 2024. Their debut album, released October 2023, ‘Mia x Ally: The Viral Hits.’ charted the billboards and received massive acclaim across the industry and their avid fanbase. Both from classically trained backgrounds, they share a dream of showcasing the vast range of their instruments, bringing them to the forefront of metal, rock, and pop music. With combined recognition from Metallica, Dragonforce, The Charlie Daniels Band, and Dropkick Murphy’s for covering their music, this duo is turning heads and shaking up the industry with a live show you won’t want to miss. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:‘Mia x Ally’ is the electrifying duo project of electric violinist Mia Asano and bagpiper/multi-instrumentalist Ally the Piper. With a combined following of over 6 million people, both musicians officially joined forces in April 2022. Playing original songs and covers of pop rock and metal music with a Celtic twist, Mia x Ally made their debut in Boston in August of 2022 and have since toured the States, embarking on their debut West Coast and Mid-West run in early 2024. Their debut album, released October 2023, ‘Mia x Ally: The Viral Hits.’ charted the billboards and received massive acclaim across the industry and their avid fanbase. Both from classically trained backgrounds, they share a dream of showcasing the vast range of their instruments, bringing them to the forefront of metal, rock, and pop music. With combined recognition from Metallica, Dragonforce, The Charlie Daniels Band, and Dropkick Murphy’s for covering their music, this duo is turning heads and shaking up the industry with a live show you won’t want to miss.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240222T002921Z SEQUENCE:4151766 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1174 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-01-05 18:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240312T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240312T233000 UID:10FC5B5D-3D80-4145-AE0F-D0F75E19DCBB SUMMARY:G. Love & Special Sauce CREATED:20231017T170950Z DTSTAMP:20231017T170950Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/g-love-special-sauce DESCRIPTION:"I've been in the game a long time, but I've always considered myself a student," says G. Love. "Finishing this album with Keb Mo' felt like graduation."\NRecorded in Nashville with a slew of special guests including Robert Randolph, Marcus King, and Roosevelt Collier, 'The Juice' is indeed diploma-worthy. Co-produced and co-written with GRAMMY-winning icon Keb Mo,' it's an electrifying collection, one that tips its cap to more than a century of blues greats even as it offers its own distinctly modern pop spin on the genre, mixing programmed beats and hip-hop grooves with blistering guitar and sacred steel. G. Love's lyrics are both personal and political here, artfully balancing his appreciation for the simple joys in life with his obligation to speak out for justice and equality, and his performances are suitably riotous and rousing to match, with infectious call-and-response hooks and funky sing-along choruses at every turn. Easy as it is to succumb to cynicism these days, the songs on 'The Juice' refuse, insisting instead on hope and determination in the face of doubt and despair.\N"I've always tried to make music that's a force for positivity," G. Love explains. "It was important to me that this album be something that could empower the folks who are out there fighting the good fight every day. I wanted to make a rallying cry for empathy and unity."\NBorn Garrett Dutton in Philadelphia, PA, G. Love grew up equally enthralled with folk, blues, and rap, devouring everything from Lead Belly and Run D.M.C. to John Hammond and the Beastie Boys. After migrating to Boston, he and his band, Special Sauce, broke out in 1994 with their Gold-selling self-titled debut, which earned widespread critical acclaim for its bold vision and adventurous production. Over the next twenty-five years, G. Love would go on to release seven more similarly lauded studio studios albums with Special Sauce (plus four solo albums on his own), solidifying his place in music history as a genre-bending pioneer with a sound The New York Times described as "a new and urgent hybrid" and NPR called a "musical melting pot." G. Love's magnetic stage presence, meanwhile, made him a fixture on festival lineups from Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza, and his relentless appetite for tour and collaboration landed him on the road and in the studio with artists as diverse as Lucinda Williams, Dave Matthews, The Avett Brothers, Jack Johnson, and DJ Logic.\NWhile G. Love has covered considerable sonic ground during his prolific career, he's always found himself drawn back to the blues, and to one bluesman in particular.\N"Keb Mo' and I got signed to the same label at the same time back when I first started out, and we toured together early on in my career," G. Love remembers. "He used to introduce me onstage as 'a true American original,' and I could tell that he got a kick out of what I did. We didn't see each other for a while after that, but a few years ago we reconnected and did a co-headline tour, which was really special for me."\NTwo decades after they'd first hit the road together, the unlikely duo picked up right where they left off, and after a couple late-night jam sessions, G. Love pitched Keb Mo' on producing his next album. The pair decided to test the waters with a writing session first, teaming up with GRAMMY-winner Gary Nicholson (famed for his work with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Willie Nelson, and Ringo Starr among others) for a week in Nashville, where they penned a handful of tunes based on phrases G. Love had saved in his phone or rough demos he'd recorded at home on Cape Cod. Those tracks quickly became fan favorites on the road, and G. Love knew he was on to something special.\N"I got wrapped up in touring and in my Jamtown project with Donovan Frankenreiter and Cicso Adler after that first session, and even though I really enjoyed working with Keb Mo' and Gary, it was a year-and-a-half before I was able to get back down to Nashville to finish writing the album with them."\NWhen it came time to record, Keb Mo' was meticulous, working closely with G. Love in the studio on nearly every aspect of his performances. While G. Love was used to creating raw, loose albums by the seat of his pants, Keb Mo' worked in a much more deliberate, methodical fashion, building songs up like a hip-hop producer. He'd create a beat on his keyboard, lay down a bass line, and then coach G. Love through the tracks sometimes line-by-line.\N"He was always impressing on me where to place the emphasis and how to phrase my lyrics and guitar playing in relation to the beat," G. Love explains. "He'd tell me to sing like I had a shovel in my hands and I was digging on the one."\NThe resulting mix of G. Love's idiosyncratic style and Keb Mo's old-school influence proves intoxicating on 'The Juice,' which opens with the shuffling, anthemic title track. "We got the juice / We got the love / We got the dreams / We had enough," G. Love sings, setting the stage for an album all about recognizing your power to impact the world around you in ways both big and small. The infectious "Birmingham," for instance, is an ode to perseverance when , while the funky "Go Crazy" cuts loose in the face of our maddening 24-hour news cycle, and the relentless "Shake Your Hair" rattles off a head-spinning list of modern ills before declaring "donate, don't wait, spread love don't hate."\N"I've never been the kind of guy who thinks he's going to change the world with his guitar," reflects G. Love. "But maybe I can write the kind of songs that give strength and encouragement to the people who are out there doing the work to make this planet a better place. Those are the people I want to lift up with my music."\NWhen G. Love sings about making the world a better place, he's not just singing about politics, though, and 'The Juice' serves as a beautiful exploration of the ways we can brighten our own little worlds and the worlds of those we care about on a daily basis. The gritty "SoulBQue" is a celebration of community and friendship, while the rootsy "She's The Rock" pays tribute to all the little ways lovers can lift each other up, and the breezy "Diggin' Roots" spins cultivating a garden into a metaphor for the importance of tending to your home and family and neighbors.\N"I was going through a tough time in my life when I met my fiancé, but my whole world seemed to turn around after that," says G. Love. "I started meditating, we had a son, and we moved out to the Cape. That's when I stopped writing breakup songs and started writing love songs and family songs and friendship songs."\NLife is good for G. Love these days, and he's not taking a moment of it for granted. In fact, in just the past few years alone he's launched his own beer collaboration with Oregon's Good Life Brewery (The Juice IPA), started his own festival in Massachusetts (The Cape Cod Roots & Blues Festival), and founded his own record label, Philadelphonic, which he aims to use as an outlet for curating both music and visual art (the cover of 'The Juice' features a brand new work G. Love commissioned from renowned painter Greg Haberny).\N"I'm more inspired right now than I've ever been before," G. Love reflects. "I feel more thoughtful, seasoned, marinated, confident. I'm making the records I've always wanted to make."\NCue "Pomp and Circumstance." X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:"I've been in the game a long time, but I've always considered myself a student," says G. Love. "Finishing this album with Keb Mo' felt like graduation."
Recorded in Nashville with a slew of special guests including Robert Randolph, Marcus King, and Roosevelt Collier, 'The Juice' is indeed diploma-worthy. Co-produced and co-written with GRAMMY-winning icon Keb Mo,' it's an electrifying collection, one that tips its cap to more than a century of blues greats even as it offers its own distinctly modern pop spin on the genre, mixing programmed beats and hip-hop grooves with blistering guitar and sacred steel. G. Love's lyrics are both personal and political here, artfully balancing his appreciation for the simple joys in life with his obligation to speak out for justice and equality, and his performances are suitably riotous and rousing to match, with infectious call-and-response hooks and funky sing-along choruses at every turn. Easy as it is to succumb to cynicism these days, the songs on 'The Juice' refuse, insisting instead on hope and determination in the face of doubt and despair.
"I've always tried to make music that's a force for positivity," G. Love explains. "It was important to me that this album be something that could empower the folks who are out there fighting the good fight every day. I wanted to make a rallying cry for empathy and unity."
Born Garrett Dutton in Philadelphia, PA, G. Love grew up equally enthralled with folk, blues, and rap, devouring everything from Lead Belly and Run D.M.C. to John Hammond and the Beastie Boys. After migrating to Boston, he and his band, Special Sauce, broke out in 1994 with their Gold-selling self-titled debut, which earned widespread critical acclaim for its bold vision and adventurous production. Over the next twenty-five years, G. Love would go on to release seven more similarly lauded studio studios albums with Special Sauce (plus four solo albums on his own), solidifying his place in music history as a genre-bending pioneer with a sound The New York Times described as "a new and urgent hybrid" and NPR called a "musical melting pot." G. Love's magnetic stage presence, meanwhile, made him a fixture on festival lineups from Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza, and his relentless appetite for tour and collaboration landed him on the road and in the studio with artists as diverse as Lucinda Williams, Dave Matthews, The Avett Brothers, Jack Johnson, and DJ Logic.
While G. Love has covered considerable sonic ground during his prolific career, he's always found himself drawn back to the blues, and to one bluesman in particular.
"Keb Mo' and I got signed to the same label at the same time back when I first started out, and we toured together early on in my career," G. Love remembers. "He used to introduce me onstage as 'a true American original,' and I could tell that he got a kick out of what I did. We didn't see each other for a while after that, but a few years ago we reconnected and did a co-headline tour, which was really special for me."
Two decades after they'd first hit the road together, the unlikely duo picked up right where they left off, and after a couple late-night jam sessions, G. Love pitched Keb Mo' on producing his next album. The pair decided to test the waters with a writing session first, teaming up with GRAMMY-winner Gary Nicholson (famed for his work with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Willie Nelson, and Ringo Starr among others) for a week in Nashville, where they penned a handful of tunes based on phrases G. Love had saved in his phone or rough demos he'd recorded at home on Cape Cod. Those tracks quickly became fan favorites on the road, and G. Love knew he was on to something special.
"I got wrapped up in touring and in my Jamtown project with Donovan Frankenreiter and Cicso Adler after that first session, and even though I really enjoyed working with Keb Mo' and Gary, it was a year-and-a-half before I was able to get back down to Nashville to finish writing the album with them."
When it came time to record, Keb Mo' was meticulous, working closely with G. Love in the studio on nearly every aspect of his performances. While G. Love was used to creating raw, loose albums by the seat of his pants, Keb Mo' worked in a much more deliberate, methodical fashion, building songs up like a hip-hop producer. He'd create a beat on his keyboard, lay down a bass line, and then coach G. Love through the tracks sometimes line-by-line.
"He was always impressing on me where to place the emphasis and how to phrase my lyrics and guitar playing in relation to the beat," G. Love explains. "He'd tell me to sing like I had a shovel in my hands and I was digging on the one."
The resulting mix of G. Love's idiosyncratic style and Keb Mo's old-school influence proves intoxicating on 'The Juice,' which opens with the shuffling, anthemic title track. "We got the juice / We got the love / We got the dreams / We had enough," G. Love sings, setting the stage for an album all about recognizing your power to impact the world around you in ways both big and small. The infectious "Birmingham," for instance, is an ode to perseverance when , while the funky "Go Crazy" cuts loose in the face of our maddening 24-hour news cycle, and the relentless "Shake Your Hair" rattles off a head-spinning list of modern ills before declaring "donate, don't wait, spread love don't hate."
"I've never been the kind of guy who thinks he's going to change the world with his guitar," reflects G. Love. "But maybe I can write the kind of songs that give strength and encouragement to the people who are out there doing the work to make this planet a better place. Those are the people I want to lift up with my music."
When G. Love sings about making the world a better place, he's not just singing about politics, though, and 'The Juice' serves as a beautiful exploration of the ways we can brighten our own little worlds and the worlds of those we care about on a daily basis. The gritty "SoulBQue" is a celebration of community and friendship, while the rootsy "She's The Rock" pays tribute to all the little ways lovers can lift each other up, and the breezy "Diggin' Roots" spins cultivating a garden into a metaphor for the importance of tending to your home and family and neighbors.
"I was going through a tough time in my life when I met my fiancé, but my whole world seemed to turn around after that," says G. Love. "I started meditating, we had a son, and we moved out to the Cape. That's when I stopped writing breakup songs and started writing love songs and family songs and friendship songs."
Life is good for G. Love these days, and he's not taking a moment of it for granted. In fact, in just the past few years alone he's launched his own beer collaboration with Oregon's Good Life Brewery (The Juice IPA), started his own festival in Massachusetts (The Cape Cod Roots & Blues Festival), and founded his own record label, Philadelphonic, which he aims to use as an outlet for curating both music and visual art (the cover of 'The Juice' features a brand new work G. Love commissioned from renowned painter Greg Haberny).
"I'm more inspired right now than I've ever been before," G. Love reflects. "I feel more thoughtful, seasoned, marinated, confident. I'm making the records I've always wanted to make."
Cue "Pomp and Circumstance."
LAST-MODIFIED:20240221T235642Z SEQUENCE:10997212 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1529 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240314T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240314T210000 UID:4FFD3C78-AF73-4954-851F-E6AF81674DCB SUMMARY:WIA Pechakucha Night CREATED:20240213T235756Z DTSTAMP:20240213T235756Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/wia-pechakucha-night DESCRIPTION:Women in Architecture, a local non-profit focused on gender equity in the profession of architecture, hosts a Powered by PK Night. PechaKucha is a presentation format that uses 20 slides that advance automatically every 20 seconds. 20x20. The event will highlight and celebrate local women from a variety of professions and walks of life. Audience participation is encouraged. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Women in Architecture, a local non-profit focused on gender equity in the profession of architecture, hosts a Powered by PK Night. PechaKucha is a presentation format that uses 20 slides that advance automatically every 20 seconds. 20x20. The event will highlight and celebrate local women from a variety of professions and walks of life. Audience participation is encouraged.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240214T181410Z SEQUENCE:65774 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1080 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240315T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240315T210000 UID:8817F47C-0DFB-4232-95A2-40D17C4424C5 SUMMARY:The Lil Smokies CREATED:20240214T183704Z DTSTAMP:20240214T183704Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/the-lil-smokies-2 DESCRIPTION:Blending virtuosic instrumental acrobatics with riveting lyrical craftsmanship, The Lil Smokies have earned a reputation as one of the most electrifying acts in modern American roots music thanks to their exhilarating live show and critically acclaimed studio output. Since forming on the streets of Missoula, Montana, where the group got its start busking back in 2009, the band has performed everywhere from Red Rocks to The Rialto and captivated festival audiences at Telluride, High Sierra, LOCKN’, Freshgrass, FloydFest, and countless more. Their latest album, 2020’s Tornillo, showcases the hard touring four-piece at its most adventurous, teaming up with producer Bill Reynolds (The Avett Brothers, Band Of Horses) for a genre-bending joyride from the hills of Laurel Canyon to the wide-open deserts of West Texas.\NThe Lil Smokies are:\NAndy Dunnigan – Dobro, Vocals\NMatthew Rieger – Guitar, Vocals\NJake Simpson – Fiddle, Vocals\NJean-Luc Davis – Upright Bass X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Blending virtuosic instrumental acrobatics with riveting lyrical craftsmanship, The Lil Smokies have earned a reputation as one of the most electrifying acts in modern American roots music thanks to their exhilarating live show and critically acclaimed studio output. Since forming on the streets of Missoula, Montana, where the group got its start busking back in 2009, the band has performed everywhere from Red Rocks to The Rialto and captivated festival audiences at Telluride, High Sierra, LOCKN’, Freshgrass, FloydFest, and countless more. Their latest album, 2020’s Tornillo, showcases the hard touring four-piece at its most adventurous, teaming up with producer Bill Reynolds (The Avett Brothers, Band Of Horses) for a genre-bending joyride from the hills of Laurel Canyon to the wide-open deserts of West Texas.
The Lil Smokies are:
Andy Dunnigan – Dobro, Vocals
Matthew Rieger – Guitar, Vocals
Jake Simpson – Fiddle, Vocals
Jean-Luc Davis – Upright Bass
LAST-MODIFIED:20240222T000540Z SEQUENCE:624516 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1248 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240316T210000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240316T213000 UID:AF4E5A92-1237-4D5C-B825-A5FD38C9BAE1 SUMMARY:The Pour CREATED:20240130T194841Z DTSTAMP:20240130T194841Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/the-pour-6 DESCRIPTION:Salt Lake City based band The Pour offers up their unique recipe of Funk, Soul, and Psychedelic Rock n’ Roll with influences ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Pink Floyd and Miles Davis to Radiohead. With over 15 years of songwriting under their belts, lead guitarist Jeremy Whitesides and vocalist/bassist Matt Calder lead the creative charge. Colorfully accompanied on keys is Jesse Howerton and driven by Nate Barkdull on the drums. Carefully crafted, tightly executed original songs provide the foundation for an energy rich live music experience full of deep grooves, tasteful solos, and open-ended improvisation. \NMembers of The Pour have had the privilege of sharing the stage with artists such as John Popper and Blues Traveler, Robby Krieger of The Doors, Karl Denson, Matisyahu, JJ Grey, John Medeski, Eric Krasno, Steve Miller, Eric McFadden, Orgone, Big Head Todd, The Mother Hips, MonoNeon, Allen Aucoin, Steve Molitz, DJ Logic and others. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Salt Lake City based band The Pour offers up their unique recipe of Funk, Soul, and Psychedelic Rock n’ Roll with influences ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Pink Floyd and Miles Davis to Radiohead. With over 15 years of songwriting under their belts, lead guitarist Jeremy Whitesides and vocalist/bassist Matt Calder lead the creative charge. Colorfully accompanied on keys is Jesse Howerton and driven by Nate Barkdull on the drums. Carefully crafted, tightly executed original songs provide the foundation for an energy rich live music experience full of deep grooves, tasteful solos, and open-ended improvisation.
Members of The Pour have had the privilege of sharing the stage with artists such as John Popper and Blues Traveler, Robby Krieger of The Doors, Karl Denson, Matisyahu, JJ Grey, John Medeski, Eric Krasno, Steve Miller, Eric McFadden, Orgone, Big Head Todd, The Mother Hips, MonoNeon, Allen Aucoin, Steve Molitz, DJ Logic and others.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240315T185041Z SEQUENCE:3884520 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:800 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240320T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240320T210000 UID:BA9CF9A3-1B15-4138-B2BB-B9B38D906137 SUMMARY:Steve 'n' Seagulls CREATED:20240104T212158Z DTSTAMP:20240104T212158Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/steve-n-seagulls DESCRIPTION:They ride again! Progressive bluegrass, or one might say new grass, ambassadors of the north. Combine musical adventures, energetic and lightning like like shows with odd Nordic sense of humor, and you'll end up with something mankind has never witnessed before. Meet the band from the land of eternal darkness: Steve 'n' Seagulls! X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:They ride again! Progressive bluegrass, or one might say new grass, ambassadors of the north. Combine musical adventures, energetic and lightning like like shows with odd Nordic sense of humor, and you'll end up with something mankind has never witnessed before. Meet the band from the land of eternal darkness: Steve 'n' Seagulls!
LAST-MODIFIED:20240130T195015Z SEQUENCE:2240897 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1544 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-01-05 18:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240321T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240321T210000 UID:8B07DD97-16AF-44D0-AF19-340C67ED5D7C SUMMARY:Diggin Dirt (CANCELED) CREATED:20231205T220705Z DTSTAMP:20231205T220705Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/diggin-dirt DESCRIPTION:This seven-piece band emerging from behind the redwood curtain in Humboldt County, California, is skyrocketing through the west coast music scene. Shoveling out their own path, and consistently wowing audiences and filling concert venues, Diggin Dirt is no ordinary funk and soul band. Their sounds explode off the stage with a pure authentic energy, and once they have you in their clutches, the relentless dance party does not let up. Their intoxicating and infectious sound is fueled by a blazing horn section, pulsating rhythms, and searing guitars, that when combined into one, have been known to entice even the shyest of wallflowers to start movin and groovin. Tying it all together, is the band’s frontman, who is in possession of the pipes, charisma, moves, and natural-born-soul, and launches this ensemble into rarefied air. Behold, as they layer humble influences of psychedelic rock, Motown soul, Afrobeat, and even reggae, atop a sturdy foundation of late 60’s inspired funk music. You might have flashes of James Brown or Sly and the Family Stone, Otis Redding or Tower of Power, but make no mistake that you are in the presence of spine-tingling originality. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:This seven-piece band emerging from behind the redwood curtain in Humboldt County, California, is skyrocketing through the west coast music scene. Shoveling out their own path, and consistently wowing audiences and filling concert venues, Diggin Dirt is no ordinary funk and soul band. Their sounds explode off the stage with a pure authentic energy, and once they have you in their clutches, the relentless dance party does not let up. Their intoxicating and infectious sound is fueled by a blazing horn section, pulsating rhythms, and searing guitars, that when combined into one, have been known to entice even the shyest of wallflowers to start movin and groovin. Tying it all together, is the band’s frontman, who is in possession of the pipes, charisma, moves, and natural-born-soul, and launches this ensemble into rarefied air. Behold, as they layer humble influences of psychedelic rock, Motown soul, Afrobeat, and even reggae, atop a sturdy foundation of late 60’s inspired funk music. You might have flashes of James Brown or Sly and the Family Stone, Otis Redding or Tower of Power, but make no mistake that you are in the presence of spine-tingling originality.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240321T210655Z SEQUENCE:9241190 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1056 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-08 18:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240322T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240322T210000 UID:C88709B3-E839-4D79-BB2D-D84EF42AC291 SUMMARY:Madi Diaz CREATED:20231113T181500Z DTSTAMP:20231113T181500Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/madi-diaz DESCRIPTION:Madi Diaz has been making records and writing songs professionally since the late 2000s, but it wasn’t until she released 2021’s History Of A Feelingthat she felt the glare of wider notoriety. It wasn’t her debut album, but it certainly felt like it. She made her daytime and nighttimetelevision debuts, embarked on her first solo tour since 2014, supported Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen on tour, andcollaborated with them on record. Harry Styles handpicked Diaz to open for him in arenas and stadiums in NorthAmerica, and was so taken by her captivating live show, he asked her to be a member of his touring band, to sing alongside him all over Europe and the UK, as well as continuing to open the show in various cities.After three months on the road touring internationally, Diaz is back in Nashville and gearing up to release her new album, Weird Faith, perched on the precipice of her moment.\NOn her last album, History of a Feeling, Diaz confronted the dissolution of a long relationship and a nuanced breakup. “Writing that record was like throwing a dart at an emotional dart board,” she says. “I was trying to get closer to the bullseye of the core of what I was feeling with no goal other than processing my own grief.” Though it was scary to put those feelings out there for mass consumption, Diaz found the process of bringing the record on tour strangely healing. Fans screamed along to her set, and the power of hearing her words echoed back to her at a place like Wembley Stadium was affirming. “It's so empowering to stand in a room hearing girls yelling as loud as they can possibly yell,” she says. While she penned songs for artists like Kesha, Little Big Town, and more, time on the road renewed Diaz’s excitement about her own project, her own story. \NOn Weird Faith, Diaz once again examines a romantic partnership, but this time, her songs are about falling for someone and the endless self-questioning a new relationship inspires. “After being really burned by love –maybe relentlessly burned by it –the album is about being brave and trying again. Doing it differently,” she says. “It’s in our nature to try to be brave like that. You see the car crash coming. Maybe it won’t happen, but you're bracing for it anyway.” In the throes of new love, she repeatedly encountered the same questions: “Am I ready for this? Can I do this? Can I trust myself to know the good from the bad?”\NThe album’s stirring closer “Obsessive Thoughts” is about exactly that. It opens with quivering strings, as if in mimicry of a nervous heartbeat, before the chorus crashes in like a gale force, toppling any sense of unease. “It’s a lot, it’s a lot/ Obsessive thoughts,” she howls. The song will vindicate anyone who’s ever struggled with the same and while Diaz might consider those obsessive thoughts an impediment, they’re also what makes her a bold, singular songwriter. The poetry in her lyrics don’t obfuscate the reality of what she’s singing about: trusting another person with your heart is hard.\NWhile writing Weird Faith, Diaz came up against a problem that has dogged songwriters since time immemorial. How do you write about romance, or love, without making it sentimental, schlocky, or fake? For Diaz, the answer was to explore how anxiety-inducing, if not downright humiliating falling in love can be. Weird Faithanswers these questions bluntly, and Diaz says the record “chronicles a new relationship, but also a new relationship to myself.” This record exists between the time you say “I Love You” and the moment they say it back (or don’t). Album opener “Same Risk” acknowledges that feeling from the outset. “Do you think this could ruin your life? Cause I can see it ruining mine,” Diaz asks plainly. It’s a disarmingly honest moment, her barefaced and fearless lyrics becoming all the more impactful as the rhythm section briefly drops out of the mix. It’s but one of the breathtaking production choices Diaz made on the album with help from friends Sam Cohen and Konrad Syder. “Sam makes raw, grungy, rambunctious records, and I needed him to help me crack open the door and start sonically exploring what the record would be,” Diaz says about her time spent recording in Woodstock. “Later in Nashville, Konrad and I were able to push what we did even further, until it was beyond the sonic landscape of what I had set out to make.”\NDiaz’s collaborative spirit is the result of living in Nashville, where she moves in a tight-knit group of songwriters. “It’s the type of place where you get into deep conversations with people at 2AM then go to the gas station for a six pack because you’re not done talking yet,” she says. Kacey Musgraves is one of those friends and she accompanies Diaz on the devastating ballad “Don’t Do Me Good,” a song that mourns the end of a relationship before the inevitable end. It’s desperately lonely, a woman’s admission that peace eludes her, but Diaz is bolstered by Musgraves, as if to indicate that she’s never truly alone, that there is always a friend on the other end of the line waiting on your call.\NThat difficulty of trusting someone with your heart comes to a head on “For Months Now,” which sounds like the hard-fought revelation at the end of a therapy session. “It’s about knowing a relationship is over, you just haven’t acknowledged it yet,” Diaz says. On “Hurting You,” she acknowledges it. “Hurting you is hurting me,” she fervently sings on the chorus, her stark words bolstered by the sparest production heard on the album. It’s a crushing song, but it’s also an auspicious one. When Diaz started writing Weird Faith, she knew it would be bigger than a love story. She didn’t yet know that she was rendering a self-portrait, one that captures the Madi Diaz of a fleeting moment in time, hungrily alive and forever searching. A search that has led to a record highlighting the human experience of spinning out on the fall into love, bold in itshonesty, and matching the momentum of Madi Diaz. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Madi Diaz has been making records and writing songs professionally since the late 2000s, but it wasn’t until she released 2021’s History Of A Feelingthat she felt the glare of wider notoriety. It wasn’t her debut album, but it certainly felt like it. She made her daytime and nighttimetelevision debuts, embarked on her first solo tour since 2014, supported Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen on tour, andcollaborated with them on record. Harry Styles handpicked Diaz to open for him in arenas and stadiums in NorthAmerica, and was so taken by her captivating live show, he asked her to be a member of his touring band, to sing alongside him all over Europe and the UK, as well as continuing to open the show in various cities.After three months on the road touring internationally, Diaz is back in Nashville and gearing up to release her new album, Weird Faith, perched on the precipice of her moment.
On her last album, History of a Feeling, Diaz confronted the dissolution of a long relationship and a nuanced breakup. “Writing that record was like throwing a dart at an emotional dart board,” she says. “I was trying to get closer to the bullseye of the core of what I was feeling with no goal other than processing my own grief.” Though it was scary to put those feelings out there for mass consumption, Diaz found the process of bringing the record on tour strangely healing. Fans screamed along to her set, and the power of hearing her words echoed back to her at a place like Wembley Stadium was affirming. “It's so empowering to stand in a room hearing girls yelling as loud as they can possibly yell,” she says. While she penned songs for artists like Kesha, Little Big Town, and more, time on the road renewed Diaz’s excitement about her own project, her own story.
On Weird Faith, Diaz once again examines a romantic partnership, but this time, her songs are about falling for someone and the endless self-questioning a new relationship inspires. “After being really burned by love –maybe relentlessly burned by it –the album is about being brave and trying again. Doing it differently,” she says. “It’s in our nature to try to be brave like that. You see the car crash coming. Maybe it won’t happen, but you're bracing for it anyway.” In the throes of new love, she repeatedly encountered the same questions: “Am I ready for this? Can I do this? Can I trust myself to know the good from the bad?”
The album’s stirring closer “Obsessive Thoughts” is about exactly that. It opens with quivering strings, as if in mimicry of a nervous heartbeat, before the chorus crashes in like a gale force, toppling any sense of unease. “It’s a lot, it’s a lot/ Obsessive thoughts,” she howls. The song will vindicate anyone who’s ever struggled with the same and while Diaz might consider those obsessive thoughts an impediment, they’re also what makes her a bold, singular songwriter. The poetry in her lyrics don’t obfuscate the reality of what she’s singing about: trusting another person with your heart is hard.
While writing Weird Faith, Diaz came up against a problem that has dogged songwriters since time immemorial. How do you write about romance, or love, without making it sentimental, schlocky, or fake? For Diaz, the answer was to explore how anxiety-inducing, if not downright humiliating falling in love can be. Weird Faithanswers these questions bluntly, and Diaz says the record “chronicles a new relationship, but also a new relationship to myself.” This record exists between the time you say “I Love You” and the moment they say it back (or don’t). Album opener “Same Risk” acknowledges that feeling from the outset. “Do you think this could ruin your life? Cause I can see it ruining mine,” Diaz asks plainly. It’s a disarmingly honest moment, her barefaced and fearless lyrics becoming all the more impactful as the rhythm section briefly drops out of the mix. It’s but one of the breathtaking production choices Diaz made on the album with help from friends Sam Cohen and Konrad Syder. “Sam makes raw, grungy, rambunctious records, and I needed him to help me crack open the door and start sonically exploring what the record would be,” Diaz says about her time spent recording in Woodstock. “Later in Nashville, Konrad and I were able to push what we did even further, until it was beyond the sonic landscape of what I had set out to make.”
Diaz’s collaborative spirit is the result of living in Nashville, where she moves in a tight-knit group of songwriters. “It’s the type of place where you get into deep conversations with people at 2AM then go to the gas station for a six pack because you’re not done talking yet,” she says. Kacey Musgraves is one of those friends and she accompanies Diaz on the devastating ballad “Don’t Do Me Good,” a song that mourns the end of a relationship before the inevitable end. It’s desperately lonely, a woman’s admission that peace eludes her, but Diaz is bolstered by Musgraves, as if to indicate that she’s never truly alone, that there is always a friend on the other end of the line waiting on your call.
That difficulty of trusting someone with your heart comes to a head on “For Months Now,” which sounds like the hard-fought revelation at the end of a therapy session. “It’s about knowing a relationship is over, you just haven’t acknowledged it yet,” Diaz says. On “Hurting You,” she acknowledges it. “Hurting you is hurting me,” she fervently sings on the chorus, her stark words bolstered by the sparest production heard on the album. It’s a crushing song, but it’s also an auspicious one. When Diaz started writing Weird Faith, she knew it would be bigger than a love story. She didn’t yet know that she was rendering a self-portrait, one that captures the Madi Diaz of a fleeting moment in time, hungrily alive and forever searching. A search that has led to a record highlighting the human experience of spinning out on the fall into love, bold in itshonesty, and matching the momentum of Madi Diaz.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240301T182415Z SEQUENCE:9418155 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1172 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-11-14 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240323T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240323T233000 UID:8652B4B4-E6EE-455E-AB2D-B6E420DF0670 SUMMARY:San Fermin CREATED:20231023T195417Z DTSTAMP:20231023T195417Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/san-fermin DESCRIPTION:San Fermin songwriter Ellis Ludwig-Leone writes songs that shift seamlessly between joy and dread, panic and euphoria. Since the band’s beginnings in 2013, San Fermin’s ambitious scope has taken them across a variety of genres, attracting an eclectic group of collaborators that reflect Ludwig- Leone’s own wide-ranging musical background. San Fermin rose to early acclaim on the strength of their self-titled debut, which bandleader Ellis Ludwig-Leone had initially envisioned as a one-off featuring more than 20 collaborators. NPR hailed the album as “one of the year's most surprising, ambitious, evocative and moving records,” while Pitchfork called breakout single “Sonsick” “deliriously infectious.” Buoyed by the record’s success, Ludwig-Leone put together a full-time band and hit the road, performing everywhere from the Tiny Desk to Lollapalooza and sharing bills with the likes of alt-J, Courtney Barnett, the National, and St. Vincent. In the years to come, the group would go on to release three similarly lauded albums, prompting The New Yorker to celebrate their “knack for simultaneously expressing beauty and crisis,” and Rolling Stone to declare them “masters of highbrow chamber pop.\NWritten in the topsy-turvy days following two different breakups, San Fermin’s poignant new album, Arms, is a testament to the band’s ability to transform pain and isolation into catharsis and healing. The songs are more minimalist than ever before, stripping away much of the sonic ornamentation the Brooklyn eight-piece has come to be known for in favor of a more raw, direct sound reflective of the album’s candid, plainspoken lyrics. The result is a deeply moving, compassionate collection, one that moves from anger and disappointment to clarity and acceptance as it balances devastation and hope in equal measure. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:San Fermin songwriter Ellis Ludwig-Leone writes songs that shift seamlessly between joy and dread, panic and euphoria. Since the band’s beginnings in 2013, San Fermin’s ambitious scope has taken them across a variety of genres, attracting an eclectic group of collaborators that reflect Ludwig- Leone’s own wide-ranging musical background. San Fermin rose to early acclaim on the strength of their self-titled debut, which bandleader Ellis Ludwig-Leone had initially envisioned as a one-off featuring more than 20 collaborators. NPR hailed the album as “one of the year's most surprising, ambitious, evocative and moving records,” while Pitchfork called breakout single “Sonsick” “deliriously infectious.” Buoyed by the record’s success, Ludwig-Leone put together a full-time band and hit the road, performing everywhere from the Tiny Desk to Lollapalooza and sharing bills with the likes of alt-J, Courtney Barnett, the National, and St. Vincent. In the years to come, the group would go on to release three similarly lauded albums, prompting The New Yorker to celebrate their “knack for simultaneously expressing beauty and crisis,” and Rolling Stone to declare them “masters of highbrow chamber pop.
Written in the topsy-turvy days following two different breakups, San Fermin’s poignant new album, Arms, is a testament to the band’s ability to transform pain and isolation into catharsis and healing. The songs are more minimalist than ever before, stripping away much of the sonic ornamentation the Brooklyn eight-piece has come to be known for in favor of a more raw, direct sound reflective of the album’s candid, plainspoken lyrics. The result is a deeply moving, compassionate collection, one that moves from anger and disappointment to clarity and acceptance as it balances devastation and hope in equal measure.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240213T224400Z SEQUENCE:9773383 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1306 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-10-24 16:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240327T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240327T210000 UID:87D18FAC-5D20-48C3-B1B6-CC0D64C79A7A SUMMARY:Birdtalker CREATED:20231204T191333Z DTSTAMP:20231204T191333Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/birdtalker DESCRIPTION:Birdtalker released their debut album One in 2018 which met critical acclaim, featuring their breakout single “Heavy,” which has now amassed over 90 million streams on Spotify alone. With their self-titled sophomore album in 2021 and subsequent releases, they have come into their own with their most confident and unrestrained songs to date. Fronted by Zack and Dani Green along with Brian Seligman (guitar) and Chris Wilson (drums/percussion), Birdtalker explore how to navigate the unknown, embrace uncertainty, and learn to let go X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Birdtalker released their debut album One in 2018 which met critical acclaim, featuring their breakout single “Heavy,” which has now amassed over 90 million streams on Spotify alone. With their self-titled sophomore album in 2021 and subsequent releases, they have come into their own with their most confident and unrestrained songs to date. Fronted by Zack and Dani Green along with Brian Seligman (guitar) and Chris Wilson (drums/percussion), Birdtalker explore how to navigate the unknown, embrace uncertainty, and learn to let go
LAST-MODIFIED:20240327T224903Z SEQUENCE:9862530 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1225 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-05 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240329T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240329T210000 UID:A16C36B0-2816-4B63-A19F-B80BFE8423F9 SUMMARY:The Garcia Project CREATED:20240213T235540Z DTSTAMP:20240213T235540Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/the-garcia-project-2 DESCRIPTION:“The Garcia Project is a must-see for anyone who had the good fortune of seeing Jerry’s band live. I was lucky enough to share the JGB experience with Jerry, John Kahn, Maria Muldaur, Keith and Donna. Being on stage with Mik, Kat, Dan and the crew is the closest thing to the original. They are Jerry’s kindred spirits when it comes to making music. Even if you never saw JGB live, you can see and hear their spirit at a Garcia Project performance.” – Buzz Buchanan, Drummer for The Jerry Garcia Band 1977-1978 X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:“The Garcia Project is a must-see for anyone who had the good fortune of seeing Jerry’s band live. I was lucky enough to share the JGB experience with Jerry, John Kahn, Maria Muldaur, Keith and Donna. Being on stage with Mik, Kat, Dan and the crew is the closest thing to the original. They are Jerry’s kindred spirits when it comes to making music. Even if you never saw JGB live, you can see and hear their spirit at a Garcia Project performance.” – Buzz Buchanan, Drummer for The Jerry Garcia Band 1977-1978
LAST-MODIFIED:20240326T170616Z SEQUENCE:3604236 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1237 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240330T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240330T230000 UID:803DAEB4-9A5F-44B6-BAC6-153A27FD3B58 SUMMARY:Cory Mon CREATED:20240130T195804Z DTSTAMP:20240130T195804Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/cory-mon DESCRIPTION:..music, my blessing, my curse, it's in me and it must come out. I can't help it, I must play, write, compose and perform. Without I am incomplete, while with, call me misfit in this world of the incorporated. I am a man confused and divided thus in recourse I am often brightened and enlightened. I emphatically give way to both light and dark, I live in pleasure and pain. My name: cory.\NCory Mon has a distinctly unique, albeit pleasant voice in the world of music. “Happy (sometimes sad), gritty, funky, folksy, bluesy, rocky music… I guess”… he says when asked the dreaded, “So what type of music do you play?” Assuming the life of a musician, Cory has thrived as well as endured through the many ups and downs that have come throughout his well tenured 20+ year music career. Cory has released 60+ original songs and toured with and/or supported a handful of his favorite artists: JJ Grey & Mofro, Sean Hayes, The Avett Brothers, Patterson Hood etc. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:..music, my blessing, my curse, it's in me and it must come out. I can't help it, I must play, write, compose and perform. Without I am incomplete, while with, call me misfit in this world of the incorporated. I am a man confused and divided thus in recourse I am often brightened and enlightened. I emphatically give way to both light and dark, I live in pleasure and pain. My name: cory.
Cory Mon has a distinctly unique, albeit pleasant voice in the world of music. “Happy (sometimes sad), gritty, funky, folksy, bluesy, rocky music… I guess”… he says when asked the dreaded, “So what type of music do you play?” Assuming the life of a musician, Cory has thrived as well as endured through the many ups and downs that have come throughout his well tenured 20+ year music career. Cory has released 60+ original songs and toured with and/or supported a handful of his favorite artists: JJ Grey & Mofro, Sean Hayes, The Avett Brothers, Patterson Hood etc.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240215T181459Z SEQUENCE:1376215 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:600 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240401T210000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240401T220000 UID:185406C1-25A2-42D2-A799-B7CD9EEEE29C SUMMARY:Low Cut Connie CREATED:20240221T164912Z DTSTAMP:20240221T164912Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/low-cut-connie-2 DESCRIPTION:“This record is all kink and no shame,” says Adam Weiner of ART DEALERS, the tough, sexy and tender new album coming from Low Cut Connie. “With Low Cut Connie, I try to create a safe space for you to just absolutely get your freak on.”\NFor years now, Low Cut Connie has built its grassroots coalition of oddballs, underdogs, and fun-loving weirdos with songs that celebrate life on the fringes of polite society. The band’s infamously wild, passionate live shows provide a total release - of stress, of inhibition, of shame - working up a primordial rock n roll sweat for fans to get blissfully soaked in. The new album, and its full-length companion film, sizzle with that same cathartic sweat, reminding us that it's time to get dirty again, and to feel alive. ART DEALERS sits at the intersection of sleazy and soulful - a collection of risky, romantic, life-affirming anthems, all dedicated to you.\N“I think rock n roll exists to be a red-blooded, countercultural medium,” says Weiner, who has performed under the Low Cut Connie moniker for over a decade, "You're supposed to get your hair messed-up." That imperative comes through in the adults-only tone of songs like the opening “Tell Me Something I Don’t\NKnow,” a sinuous, lurid rocker that sounds like walking through depraved Times Square in 1978 - neon-lit and nasty with a snapping beat. The speedy, fuzzed-up garage-rocker “Whips and Chains" calls out Trump and the current wave of neo-fascism, without ever losing its boogie rhythm section.\NBut there’s also tenderness behind the curtain here, as on the yearning first single "Are You Gonna Run?" and "Call Out My Name", which evoke the sweet sad love that punky boys like the New York Dolls and the Ramones used to have for tough girls like the Ronettes and the Shangri-La's.\NThe sounds throughout the record comprise a grimy modern urban landscape, a soulful but broken place that Weiner and his band (including rock n roll guitar hero, Will Donnelly, in his 9th year in Low Cut Connie) have been gravitating towards throughout the band's history. Weiner grew up amid the lawns and strip malls of suburban New Jersey, and his own teen dreams were lit up by the beacon of the big city, where he could shed his skin like so many artists before. “If you think about it, so many great artists who we associate with the city were actually bridge and tunnel people,” Adam said. “Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Springsteen. Debbie Harry, Robert Mapplethorpe. People who came from the burbs had this vision of what they could achieve in the city, what attracted them to this art life, who they could turn into and what impressions they could make - if they could just get there.” ART DEALERS is in many ways a tribute to that feeling at the pumping heart of the city - that enlightened buzz that can come in a packed hothouse of creativity and free expression. Songs like the Grace Jones styled "Take Me to the Place" and the penetrating title song point to all the people who cross those bridges, who choose the art life, who find their liberation on the edges of propriety.\NART DEALERS isn’t constrained by a gender binary, either. “When I’m onstage, I am the freest, most uninhibited version of myself,” Weiner explains. “It's total freedom of spirit and body. Over the years, that freedom has given me more confidence to write songs from a perspective that isn't necessarily male. I’ve slowly been walking toward a more gender-fluid voice with Low Cut Connie." Weiner's first steady gig at age 21 was as a piano-player in a drag karaoke bar in Manhattan called Pegasus, a seedy place where trans people, gay, straight and otherwise would gather around Weiner's piano in a benevolent yet fully debauched\Narray. "There are so many songs that came out of that bar for me. Things like 'Shake It Little Tina [the single\Noff of Low Cut Connie's Hi Honey album]" But it wasn't until ART DEALERS that he fully allowed himself to let the gender binary go so completely on songs like the upcoming single "Don't Get Fresh With Me," "Wonderful Boy," and "Sleaze Me On" (with its sweet refrain "Treat me like a modern girl!"). Says Weiner, "I have no idea the gender identity of those songs. And that feels real comfy for me, the 'not knowing'."\NART DEALERS goes out to all the outsiders. On the no-fucks-to-give anthem "King of the Jews," Weiner gets deep in the weeds of his personal and ethnic outsider identity. “There are just so many entry points these days to antisemitism, so my absolute unapologetic full-frontal Jewiness feels more needed now, I guess,” he says. “My Jewiness gives me an outsider perspective and humor that I wouldn't trade for any goddamn thing,\Nand the minute I start hiding that, I'm dishonoring myself. Shedding shame is a key element of Low Cut Connie.”\NWeiner feels like a certain dark prince of rock n roll was a companion to him on this whole album and film project. “I felt like Lou Reed was riding with me the whole time I was making Art Dealers,” he said. “Lou was the toughest motherfucker out there, a subversive Jew like me - but he had a real rock n’roll heart underneath it all."\NART DEALERS comes on the heels of a few very busy years for Low Cut Connie. During the height of COVID lockdowns, Adam and Low Cut Connie guitarist Will Donnelly did the near-impossible with their “Tough Cookies” live-streaming rock and soul variety shows. Even in a bathrobe, from his South Philly guest bedroom, Adam managed to generate the electricity of a live show - twice a week, no less - earning him the New Yorker’s newly-minted laurel of “Pandemic Person of the Year” in 2020. The broadcasts drew hundreds of thousands of viewers from more than forty countries, who joined previous appreciators like Bruce\NSpringsteen (who invited Weiner backstage on Broadway in 2018) Barack Obama (an early adopter, who included the band on his official Spotify favorites playlist in 2015) and Elton John (who both praised the band from his own concert stage and featured Weiner as a guest, twice, on his satellite radio show) in Low Cut Connie’s de facto fan club.\NIn the midst of all this, Low Cut Connie also released 2020's acclaimed PRIVATE LIVES album. The album's title track finished the year in the top 20 nationally for non-commercial radio and was praised by NPR as "the freak anthem we need right now." PRIVATE LIVES was praised for the vivid interiority and intimate detail of its songwriting and was included on many best-of-the-year lists that year (Rolling Stone, NPR/Fresh Air, PopMatters, Glide, AllMusic, etc). For that album and ART DEALERS, Weiner sat solo in the producer's chair.\NFurther exploring new media, Weiner co-directed (with filmmaker Roy Power) an 80 minute feature film that will premiere late this year as a companion piece to ART DEALERS. The film is a hybrid-genre documentary that combines a stellar run of NYC concerts from 2022 shot at Sony Hall and the Blue Note, as well as 15 years of performance footage and musical and personal misadventures that led up to ART DEALERS. There will be limited festival screenings of the ART DEALERS film late in 2023, in tandem with this Fall's US tour, and the film will see wider release in 2024.\NAhead of the release of this new album and film, Adam Weiner aka Low Cut Connie explains what motivates him to keep pushing deeper into art life.\N“I'm always trying to get back to the heart and soul of things with the intention of my music and my performances,” says Adam. “I don't know what's hip. I don't know what's in fashion. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing to be accepted by whatever's popular or trending. I have no idea - I don't care anymore. I just want to turn people on with what I do. The world is a dirty and broken place... we might as well live it the fuck up while we’re here. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:“This record is all kink and no shame,” says Adam Weiner of ART DEALERS, the tough, sexy and tender new album coming from Low Cut Connie. “With Low Cut Connie, I try to create a safe space for you to just absolutely get your freak on.”
For years now, Low Cut Connie has built its grassroots coalition of oddballs, underdogs, and fun-loving weirdos with songs that celebrate life on the fringes of polite society. The band’s infamously wild, passionate live shows provide a total release - of stress, of inhibition, of shame - working up a primordial rock n roll sweat for fans to get blissfully soaked in. The new album, and its full-length companion film, sizzle with that same cathartic sweat, reminding us that it's time to get dirty again, and to feel alive. ART DEALERS sits at the intersection of sleazy and soulful - a collection of risky, romantic, life-affirming anthems, all dedicated to you.
“I think rock n roll exists to be a red-blooded, countercultural medium,” says Weiner, who has performed under the Low Cut Connie moniker for over a decade, "You're supposed to get your hair messed-up." That imperative comes through in the adults-only tone of songs like the opening “Tell Me Something I Don’t
Know,” a sinuous, lurid rocker that sounds like walking through depraved Times Square in 1978 - neon-lit and nasty with a snapping beat. The speedy, fuzzed-up garage-rocker “Whips and Chains" calls out Trump and the current wave of neo-fascism, without ever losing its boogie rhythm section.
But there’s also tenderness behind the curtain here, as on the yearning first single "Are You Gonna Run?" and "Call Out My Name", which evoke the sweet sad love that punky boys like the New York Dolls and the Ramones used to have for tough girls like the Ronettes and the Shangri-La's.
The sounds throughout the record comprise a grimy modern urban landscape, a soulful but broken place that Weiner and his band (including rock n roll guitar hero, Will Donnelly, in his 9th year in Low Cut Connie) have been gravitating towards throughout the band's history. Weiner grew up amid the lawns and strip malls of suburban New Jersey, and his own teen dreams were lit up by the beacon of the big city, where he could shed his skin like so many artists before. “If you think about it, so many great artists who we associate with the city were actually bridge and tunnel people,” Adam said. “Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Springsteen. Debbie Harry, Robert Mapplethorpe. People who came from the burbs had this vision of what they could achieve in the city, what attracted them to this art life, who they could turn into and what impressions they could make - if they could just get there.” ART DEALERS is in many ways a tribute to that feeling at the pumping heart of the city - that enlightened buzz that can come in a packed hothouse of creativity and free expression. Songs like the Grace Jones styled "Take Me to the Place" and the penetrating title song point to all the people who cross those bridges, who choose the art life, who find their liberation on the edges of propriety.
ART DEALERS isn’t constrained by a gender binary, either. “When I’m onstage, I am the freest, most uninhibited version of myself,” Weiner explains. “It's total freedom of spirit and body. Over the years, that freedom has given me more confidence to write songs from a perspective that isn't necessarily male. I’ve slowly been walking toward a more gender-fluid voice with Low Cut Connie." Weiner's first steady gig at age 21 was as a piano-player in a drag karaoke bar in Manhattan called Pegasus, a seedy place where trans people, gay, straight and otherwise would gather around Weiner's piano in a benevolent yet fully debauched
array. "There are so many songs that came out of that bar for me. Things like 'Shake It Little Tina [the single
off of Low Cut Connie's Hi Honey album]" But it wasn't until ART DEALERS that he fully allowed himself to let the gender binary go so completely on songs like the upcoming single "Don't Get Fresh With Me," "Wonderful Boy," and "Sleaze Me On" (with its sweet refrain "Treat me like a modern girl!"). Says Weiner, "I have no idea the gender identity of those songs. And that feels real comfy for me, the 'not knowing'."
ART DEALERS goes out to all the outsiders. On the no-fucks-to-give anthem "King of the Jews," Weiner gets deep in the weeds of his personal and ethnic outsider identity. “There are just so many entry points these days to antisemitism, so my absolute unapologetic full-frontal Jewiness feels more needed now, I guess,” he says. “My Jewiness gives me an outsider perspective and humor that I wouldn't trade for any goddamn thing,
and the minute I start hiding that, I'm dishonoring myself. Shedding shame is a key element of Low Cut Connie.”
Weiner feels like a certain dark prince of rock n roll was a companion to him on this whole album and film project. “I felt like Lou Reed was riding with me the whole time I was making Art Dealers,” he said. “Lou was the toughest motherfucker out there, a subversive Jew like me - but he had a real rock n’roll heart underneath it all."
ART DEALERS comes on the heels of a few very busy years for Low Cut Connie. During the height of COVID lockdowns, Adam and Low Cut Connie guitarist Will Donnelly did the near-impossible with their “Tough Cookies” live-streaming rock and soul variety shows. Even in a bathrobe, from his South Philly guest bedroom, Adam managed to generate the electricity of a live show - twice a week, no less - earning him the New Yorker’s newly-minted laurel of “Pandemic Person of the Year” in 2020. The broadcasts drew hundreds of thousands of viewers from more than forty countries, who joined previous appreciators like Bruce
Springsteen (who invited Weiner backstage on Broadway in 2018) Barack Obama (an early adopter, who included the band on his official Spotify favorites playlist in 2015) and Elton John (who both praised the band from his own concert stage and featured Weiner as a guest, twice, on his satellite radio show) in Low Cut Connie’s de facto fan club.
In the midst of all this, Low Cut Connie also released 2020's acclaimed PRIVATE LIVES album. The album's title track finished the year in the top 20 nationally for non-commercial radio and was praised by NPR as "the freak anthem we need right now." PRIVATE LIVES was praised for the vivid interiority and intimate detail of its songwriting and was included on many best-of-the-year lists that year (Rolling Stone, NPR/Fresh Air, PopMatters, Glide, AllMusic, etc). For that album and ART DEALERS, Weiner sat solo in the producer's chair.
Further exploring new media, Weiner co-directed (with filmmaker Roy Power) an 80 minute feature film that will premiere late this year as a companion piece to ART DEALERS. The film is a hybrid-genre documentary that combines a stellar run of NYC concerts from 2022 shot at Sony Hall and the Blue Note, as well as 15 years of performance footage and musical and personal misadventures that led up to ART DEALERS. There will be limited festival screenings of the ART DEALERS film late in 2023, in tandem with this Fall's US tour, and the film will see wider release in 2024.
Ahead of the release of this new album and film, Adam Weiner aka Low Cut Connie explains what motivates him to keep pushing deeper into art life.
“I'm always trying to get back to the heart and soul of things with the intention of my music and my performances,” says Adam. “I don't know what's hip. I don't know what's in fashion. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing to be accepted by whatever's popular or trending. I have no idea - I don't care anymore. I just want to turn people on with what I do. The world is a dirty and broken place... we might as well live it the fuck up while we’re here.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240306T185249Z SEQUENCE:1217017 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:692 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240402T110000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240402T120000 UID:69C79A85-0B94-4034-B750-98829436B433 SUMMARY:Jimmie Vaughan & The Tilt-A-Whirl Band (POSTPONED) CREATED:20231204T182505Z DTSTAMP:20231204T182505Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/jimmie-vaughan DESCRIPTION:UPDATE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Jimmie Vaughan is postponing the show at the State Room on April 2nd. Please keep your tickets for a new show to be announced. Jimmie apologizes for any inconvenience and looks forward to performing again for you soon.\NIn true Texas fashion, four-time Grammy-winner Jimmie Vaughan has helped breathe new life into the music that has been his lifeline all these decades, becoming a hero to those who cherish America's real gift to musical history. \N"When I talk about country and blues, they're the same thing," Jimmie Vaughan says. "Muddy Waters and Hank Williams, Webb Pierce and Jimmy Reed. When I was a kid, I didn't understand the difference. Everybody was always asking me, 'Why do you want to play blues? Why don't you play country?' But I would listen to the country guys and they would be doing a Jimmy Reed song. They're playing the same lick. And Ray Charles, Little Milton, Guitar Junior, Lonnie Brooks, B.B. King--they all did country songs. Is Bob Wills country blues or jazz? And the answer is, it's American music. I'm tired of trying to pigeonhole everything. I want to bring it together; it comes from the same place." \NAs a young teenager in Oak Cliff, Texas, his father told him to take guitar lessons if he wanted to really learn the instrument. But when Vaughan's teacher told the guitar student it wasn't going to work because the student "was too far gone" to learn from the lesson books, Jimmie Vaughan knew he was on his own. Which was perfect for him, because the blues would be his teacher for life. For those who find themselves living inside this true American music, it becomes a way of life, and a musical force to follow forever. \NJimmie Vaughan became possessed by his instrument while listening to the blues on the Black radio station in Dallas, and it has been that way ever since. When something this strong takes over, there is no way out—the pursuit just keeps going deeper. \NJimmie Vaughan has been playing the blues he hears in his head and feels in his heart for over a half-century. \NWhen he first heard songs like Phil Upchurch's "You Can't Sit Down," The Nightcaps' "Wine, Wine, Wine" and B.B. King's many hit songs in the early 1960s, he knew he had found his music. And ever since then, it's been a constant quest to play the blues, whether it was in early 1970s Austin bands like Storm and then the Fabulous Thunderbirds, or later with brother Stevie Ray Vaughan on their FAMILY STYLE album, and on his own releases throughout the 1990s and in 2001. \NThen the solo albums stopped, until in 2010, Vaughan had an idea to start recording The Great American Blues Songbook. He assembled the kind of band most musicians can only dream about, and began recording his dream set list at Top Hat and Wire Studios in Austin. Never one to back down from a great idea, in 2011 Vaughan and band went back into the same studio and recorded a second collection of some of his favorite songs, zeroing in on that music's ability to light a fuse wherever it was heard. \NLast fall, to help celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the first of the BLUES, BALLADS AND FAVOURITES albums, THE PLEASURE’S ALL MINE compiled both albums as a collection, and was released alongside a Vinyl reissue of 2016's JIMMIE VAUGHAN TRIO featuring Mike Flanigin LIVE AT C-BOY'S release, which featured songs recorded at the venerable Austin nightspot that Vaughan and crew call home when they are in town. \NIn 2019, his newest release, BABY, PLEASE COME HOME brought him back into the spotlight with yet another Grammy nomination, and a Blues Foundation Award for Best Male Artist. \NThis year, he celebrates his life in the blues and on the road with THE JIMMIE VAUGHAN STORY, a special limited-edition box set and book including over 200 photos covering his life and the breadth of his remarkable career. And yet, Vaughan still feels like he is just getting started, devoted to making sure he is able to give back to the music that has given him so much. The blues is in Jimmie Vaughan's blood, has been there since the start, and will stay there forever. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:UPDATE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Jimmie Vaughan is postponing the show at the State Room on April 2nd. Please keep your tickets for a new show to be announced. Jimmie apologizes for any inconvenience and looks forward to performing again for you soon.
In true Texas fashion, four-time Grammy-winner Jimmie Vaughan has helped breathe new life into the music that has been his lifeline all these decades, becoming a hero to those who cherish America's real gift to musical history.
"When I talk about country and blues, they're the same thing," Jimmie Vaughan says. "Muddy Waters and Hank Williams, Webb Pierce and Jimmy Reed. When I was a kid, I didn't understand the difference. Everybody was always asking me, 'Why do you want to play blues? Why don't you play country?' But I would listen to the country guys and they would be doing a Jimmy Reed song. They're playing the same lick. And Ray Charles, Little Milton, Guitar Junior, Lonnie Brooks, B.B. King--they all did country songs. Is Bob Wills country blues or jazz? And the answer is, it's American music. I'm tired of trying to pigeonhole everything. I want to bring it together; it comes from the same place."
As a young teenager in Oak Cliff, Texas, his father told him to take guitar lessons if he wanted to really learn the instrument. But when Vaughan's teacher told the guitar student it wasn't going to work because the student "was too far gone" to learn from the lesson books, Jimmie Vaughan knew he was on his own. Which was perfect for him, because the blues would be his teacher for life. For those who find themselves living inside this true American music, it becomes a way of life, and a musical force to follow forever.
Jimmie Vaughan became possessed by his instrument while listening to the blues on the Black radio station in Dallas, and it has been that way ever since. When something this strong takes over, there is no way out—the pursuit just keeps going deeper.
Jimmie Vaughan has been playing the blues he hears in his head and feels in his heart for over a half-century.
When he first heard songs like Phil Upchurch's "You Can't Sit Down," The Nightcaps' "Wine, Wine, Wine" and B.B. King's many hit songs in the early 1960s, he knew he had found his music. And ever since then, it's been a constant quest to play the blues, whether it was in early 1970s Austin bands like Storm and then the Fabulous Thunderbirds, or later with brother Stevie Ray Vaughan on their FAMILY STYLE album, and on his own releases throughout the 1990s and in 2001.
Then the solo albums stopped, until in 2010, Vaughan had an idea to start recording The Great American Blues Songbook. He assembled the kind of band most musicians can only dream about, and began recording his dream set list at Top Hat and Wire Studios in Austin. Never one to back down from a great idea, in 2011 Vaughan and band went back into the same studio and recorded a second collection of some of his favorite songs, zeroing in on that music's ability to light a fuse wherever it was heard.
Last fall, to help celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the first of the BLUES, BALLADS AND FAVOURITES albums, THE PLEASURE’S ALL MINE compiled both albums as a collection, and was released alongside a Vinyl reissue of 2016's JIMMIE VAUGHAN TRIO featuring Mike Flanigin LIVE AT C-BOY'S release, which featured songs recorded at the venerable Austin nightspot that Vaughan and crew call home when they are in town.
In 2019, his newest release, BABY, PLEASE COME HOME brought him back into the spotlight with yet another Grammy nomination, and a Blues Foundation Award for Best Male Artist.
This year, he celebrates his life in the blues and on the road with THE JIMMIE VAUGHAN STORY, a special limited-edition box set and book including over 200 photos covering his life and the breadth of his remarkable career. And yet, Vaughan still feels like he is just getting started, devoted to making sure he is able to give back to the music that has given him so much. The blues is in Jimmie Vaughan's blood, has been there since the start, and will stay there forever.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240326T211448Z SEQUENCE:9773383 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:2637 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-05 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240403T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240403T210000 UID:CC344465-9F8B-4F2B-9855-263C9DD28FB6 SUMMARY:David Wilcox CREATED:20240214T001907Z DTSTAMP:20240214T001907Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/david-wilcox-2 DESCRIPTION:David Wilcox is a penetrating storyteller. The revered folk musician has an effortless talent for spinning lyrics that quietly cut deep, and crafting melodies that seamlessly ride the plot twists and turns. Wilcox handily exemplifies the power of lyrical and musical catharsis\NPick any song from Wilcox’s new acoustic album, My Good Friends, and you will find yourself instantly immersed. Sometimes you’ll see yourself in the lyrics, other times you’ll marvel at the four-minute mini-movie. My Good Friends is a stripped-down, acoustic collection of ten songs, a fan-requested creative respite for Wilcox as he also continues to work on a full band album coming in 2024.\NOf special note on the new recording is “Jolt,” with its jittery rhythm playing perfect backdrop to lyrics about today’s obsession with online fear mongering and internet disinformation. The title track is a folk-blues number about living a life filled with close calls and surviving them all. Then there’s a trio of story songs – “Dead Man’s Phone,” “This Is How It Ends,” and “Lost Man” – that are as cinematic as they are charismatic. Wilcox says those last three songs “create a whole movie in my imagination.”\NIn fact, the way Wilcox feels about every tune on My Good Friends proves this is indeed a fan-requested labor of love. “I am grateful for the community that sustains me – my good friends,” he says. “These are the kind of friends that get you through difficult times. The kind of friends that you go to for a fresh perspective when the future looks grim. These songs grew out of conversations with friends, and they hold ideas that I like to have around.”\NSuch dedication to honoring personal and heartfelt music has been the backbone of David Wilcox’s entire career. The Ohio native with the warm baritone found his artistic muse in North Carolina during the mid-1980s. In 1987, he released his debut album, The Nightshift Watchman, which led to winning the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival in 1988. That translated to a four-album stint with A&M Records starting with 1989’s How Did You Find Me Here, which sold 100,000 copies by word of mouth. Thirty-plus years and twenty-plus albums later, Wilcox won top honors in the 23rd annual USA Songwriting Competition in 2018 for his effervescent “We Make the Way by Walking” from his last album release, The View From the Edge. Wilcox has deservedly earned praise over the years in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and Rolling Stone, to name a few. He also has a dedicated and vocal core of fans who regularly write to thank him for his work and the impact his songs have had on their lives.\NToday, Wilcox is still earning his admirers with storytelling that cuts deep into the soul and observes the human condition from both the nerve center and the outside looking in. That kind of storytelling is certain to become a good friend. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:David Wilcox is a penetrating storyteller. The revered folk musician has an effortless talent for spinning lyrics that quietly cut deep, and crafting melodies that seamlessly ride the plot twists and turns. Wilcox handily exemplifies the power of lyrical and musical catharsis
Pick any song from Wilcox’s new acoustic album, My Good Friends, and you will find yourself instantly immersed. Sometimes you’ll see yourself in the lyrics, other times you’ll marvel at the four-minute mini-movie. My Good Friends is a stripped-down, acoustic collection of ten songs, a fan-requested creative respite for Wilcox as he also continues to work on a full band album coming in 2024.
Of special note on the new recording is “Jolt,” with its jittery rhythm playing perfect backdrop to lyrics about today’s obsession with online fear mongering and internet disinformation. The title track is a folk-blues number about living a life filled with close calls and surviving them all. Then there’s a trio of story songs – “Dead Man’s Phone,” “This Is How It Ends,” and “Lost Man” – that are as cinematic as they are charismatic. Wilcox says those last three songs “create a whole movie in my imagination.”
In fact, the way Wilcox feels about every tune on My Good Friends proves this is indeed a fan-requested labor of love. “I am grateful for the community that sustains me – my good friends,” he says. “These are the kind of friends that get you through difficult times. The kind of friends that you go to for a fresh perspective when the future looks grim. These songs grew out of conversations with friends, and they hold ideas that I like to have around.”
Such dedication to honoring personal and heartfelt music has been the backbone of David Wilcox’s entire career. The Ohio native with the warm baritone found his artistic muse in North Carolina during the mid-1980s. In 1987, he released his debut album, The Nightshift Watchman, which led to winning the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival in 1988. That translated to a four-album stint with A&M Records starting with 1989’s How Did You Find Me Here, which sold 100,000 copies by word of mouth. Thirty-plus years and twenty-plus albums later, Wilcox won top honors in the 23rd annual USA Songwriting Competition in 2018 for his effervescent “We Make the Way by Walking” from his last album release, The View From the Edge. Wilcox has deservedly earned praise over the years in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and Rolling Stone, to name a few. He also has a dedicated and vocal core of fans who regularly write to thank him for his work and the impact his songs have had on their lives.
Today, Wilcox is still earning his admirers with storytelling that cuts deep into the soul and observes the human condition from both the nerve center and the outside looking in. That kind of storytelling is certain to become a good friend.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240304T222832Z SEQUENCE:1721365 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:408 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240404T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240404T210000 UID:06B831C8-416A-4A77-B560-3460DFD368B0 SUMMARY:High Fade CREATED:20240108T192234Z DTSTAMP:20240108T192234Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/high-fade DESCRIPTION:On a three-man crusade to set dance floors alight with their inimitable brand of razor-sharp funk and disco, Edinburgh’s High Fade captured the attention of a global audience with their music amassing over 30 million views and streams within six months of their first release and, in the process, gaining recognition from music heavyweights including Jack Black, Cypress Hill, Deep Purple’s Glenn Hughes, and Brad Wilk from Rage Against The Machine\NFor a band that only started mid-2018, to already have the support of artists including Emeli Sandé, David Paitch and even Peter Andre is a testament to not only their raw musical talent but also the relentless drive and ambition that has seen the band play over 1000 gigs in the last four years. With a forward-thinking approach to grassroots promotion, High Fade have been able to capture the magic of their live performances with a proactive presence on social media and create multiple viral moments for their tracks “Sharpen Up”, “Burnin”, and “Burnt Toast and Coffee” that feed the appetite of new fans across the world. \NWith a more traditional offline approach towards learning their craft and perfecting the High Fade sound, Harry Valentino (guitar/vocals), Oliver Sentance (bass) and Calvin Davidson (drums/vocals) developed their infectious style whilst feeding off the unpredictable crowd interactions that come with street shows and busking. It’s this unmatched live energy that sets their performances apart and results in the impressive musical display that comes from just three musicians working together. Indeed, with other acts in the same genre often having upwards of six members, being a three-piece could be a limiting factor for many, but for High Fade it has become an integral part of the band’s DNA, allowing them to put on a show that supersedes anything their fans have experienced before.\NFrom the old-school soul and Motown of John Legend and Barry White to the classic rock of bands like Kiss and Motley Crue, High Fade’s sound draws on the musical tastes and experiences of all three members, extracting the best bits of each and serving the funky, disco-inspired results up live on stage. Launching their own label, RPN Records, has allowed the band to take control of their output with monthly singles planned for the foreseeable and a forthcoming official remix package for “Sharpen Up”. Featuring club-ready interpretations from Opolopo and Oden & Fatzo that highlight the group’s passion for electronic music, this tangible connection to the dance music scene provides the perfect opportunity for the High Fade sound to make the transition into the setlists of house and disco DJs.\NBy their own admission, “High Fade doesn’t work unless there’s a crowd, a dance floor and people that want to get down” - it’s reassuring then that their gig diary is stacked, with dates across the UK and Scotland confirmed throughout summer, and a big US tour in place for later this year following their signing with leading US booking agency, Wasserman. Throw in partnerships with brands including Ernie Ball, Blackstar Amps and Suhr Guitars and it’s clear that the whole industry is backing the meteoric rise of High Fade, and so should you. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:On a three-man crusade to set dance floors alight with their inimitable brand of razor-sharp funk and disco, Edinburgh’s High Fade captured the attention of a global audience with their music amassing over 30 million views and streams within six months of their first release and, in the process, gaining recognition from music heavyweights including Jack Black, Cypress Hill, Deep Purple’s Glenn Hughes, and Brad Wilk from Rage Against The Machine
For a band that only started mid-2018, to already have the support of artists including Emeli Sandé, David Paitch and even Peter Andre is a testament to not only their raw musical talent but also the relentless drive and ambition that has seen the band play over 1000 gigs in the last four years. With a forward-thinking approach to grassroots promotion, High Fade have been able to capture the magic of their live performances with a proactive presence on social media and create multiple viral moments for their tracks “Sharpen Up”, “Burnin”, and “Burnt Toast and Coffee” that feed the appetite of new fans across the world.
With a more traditional offline approach towards learning their craft and perfecting the High Fade sound, Harry Valentino (guitar/vocals), Oliver Sentance (bass) and Calvin Davidson (drums/vocals) developed their infectious style whilst feeding off the unpredictable crowd interactions that come with street shows and busking. It’s this unmatched live energy that sets their performances apart and results in the impressive musical display that comes from just three musicians working together. Indeed, with other acts in the same genre often having upwards of six members, being a three-piece could be a limiting factor for many, but for High Fade it has become an integral part of the band’s DNA, allowing them to put on a show that supersedes anything their fans have experienced before.
From the old-school soul and Motown of John Legend and Barry White to the classic rock of bands like Kiss and Motley Crue, High Fade’s sound draws on the musical tastes and experiences of all three members, extracting the best bits of each and serving the funky, disco-inspired results up live on stage. Launching their own label, RPN Records, has allowed the band to take control of their output with monthly singles planned for the foreseeable and a forthcoming official remix package for “Sharpen Up”. Featuring club-ready interpretations from Opolopo and Oden & Fatzo that highlight the group’s passion for electronic music, this tangible connection to the dance music scene provides the perfect opportunity for the High Fade sound to make the transition into the setlists of house and disco DJs.
By their own admission, “High Fade doesn’t work unless there’s a crowd, a dance floor and people that want to get down” - it’s reassuring then that their gig diary is stacked, with dates across the UK and Scotland confirmed throughout summer, and a big US tour in place for later this year following their signing with leading US booking agency, Wasserman. Throw in partnerships with brands including Ernie Ball, Blackstar Amps and Suhr Guitars and it’s clear that the whole industry is backing the meteoric rise of High Fade, and so should you.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240327T175641Z SEQUENCE:6820447 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:533 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240405T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240405T210000 UID:328A03FB-A92C-427F-AB77-F0A06A14DAD7 SUMMARY:Mike Doughty and Ghost of Vroom CREATED:20231113T183152Z DTSTAMP:20231113T183152Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/mike-doughty DESCRIPTION:Mike Doughty, is taking his new band Ghost of Vroom on the road for the first time this fall. The group, consisting of Doughty, Andrew “Scrap” Livingston and drummer Madden Klass are releasing their latest album “Ghost of Vroom 3” September 2023. The aptly titled full length is their third release from acclaimed producer Mario Caldato Jr (Beastie Boys, Beck) and showcases hard hitting drums, hooks, flows and Doughty's signature brand of art pop. \NThese special shows will feature songs from Mike Doughty’s entire catalog, spanning Soul Coughing, his solo work, and selections from all three Ghost of Vroom albums. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Mike Doughty, is taking his new band Ghost of Vroom on the road for the first time this fall. The group, consisting of Doughty, Andrew “Scrap” Livingston and drummer Madden Klass are releasing their latest album “Ghost of Vroom 3” September 2023. The aptly titled full length is their third release from acclaimed producer Mario Caldato Jr (Beastie Boys, Beck) and showcases hard hitting drums, hooks, flows and Doughty's signature brand of art pop.
These special shows will feature songs from Mike Doughty’s entire catalog, spanning Soul Coughing, his solo work, and selections from all three Ghost of Vroom albums.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240222T000724Z SEQUENCE:8660132 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1199 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-11-14 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240410T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240410T210000 UID:89F293E9-BEA5-494D-8D8D-34FF3240BFF1 SUMMARY:Jon McLaughlin CREATED:20240129T225259Z DTSTAMP:20240129T225259Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/jon-mclaughlin DESCRIPTION:Everything in Jon McLaughlin’s life makes its way into his music, whether he’s conscious of it or not. The artist, raised in Indiana and based in Nashville, brings all of his experiences and beliefs into each song he creates, something that is especially true now that he’s the father of two young girls. \NJon released his debut album, Indiana, in 2007 on Island Def Jam, attracting fans with his heartfelt, hook-laden songwriting and impassioned delivery. He’s released six full-lengths in the years since and revealed a true evolution in both his piano playing and singing. He’s played shows with Billy Joel, Kelly Clarkson and Adele, collaborated with longtime friend Sara Bareilles, co-written with Demi Lovato and even performed at the Academy Awards in 2008. \NJon’s album, Like Us, dropped in October of 2015 via Razor & Tie, and he spent the past few years touring extensively before heading back into his Nashville studio to work on new music. Jon released a Christmas EP in 2017 titled Red & Green with two originals and his take on a few holiday classics. In November of 2018 Jon released his album Angst & Grace which features “Still My Girl” written for his youngest daughter. \NAnother project started in 2018 is his Dueling Pianos video series. Every episode features a new guest artist and they perform mashups of never-before-heard arrangements. \NIn Fall of 2019 Jon released an instrumental piano album titled MOOD. This record demonstrates Jon's artistry and captivates his talent as a pianist. In May 2020 the second edition of the project was released entitled MOOD II.\NJon wrapped up 2020 with the release of his Christmas EP Christmas Time before putting out his most recent full length album All The Things I Say To Myself with immediate fan favorites “A Breakup Song” & “Outta My Head”. \NIn the fall of 2022 Jon hit the road with his band in celebration of the 15 year anniversary of his Indiana album which will be remastered and re released on vinyl spotlighting a new a capella version of the title track “Indiana” featuring Straight No Chaser as well as never-before-released b-sides.\NTowards the end of 2023, Jon released the third installment in his instrumental piano series: MOOD III.\NAs with everything he does, Jon’s goal is to create connections. He wants to translate his experiences and ideas into music that reaches fans everywhere. His passion for music and playing is evident in each note he plays. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Everything in Jon McLaughlin’s life makes its way into his music, whether he’s conscious of it or not. The artist, raised in Indiana and based in Nashville, brings all of his experiences and beliefs into each song he creates, something that is especially true now that he’s the father of two young girls.
Jon released his debut album, Indiana, in 2007 on Island Def Jam, attracting fans with his heartfelt, hook-laden songwriting and impassioned delivery. He’s released six full-lengths in the years since and revealed a true evolution in both his piano playing and singing. He’s played shows with Billy Joel, Kelly Clarkson and Adele, collaborated with longtime friend Sara Bareilles, co-written with Demi Lovato and even performed at the Academy Awards in 2008.
Jon’s album, Like Us, dropped in October of 2015 via Razor & Tie, and he spent the past few years touring extensively before heading back into his Nashville studio to work on new music. Jon released a Christmas EP in 2017 titled Red & Green with two originals and his take on a few holiday classics. In November of 2018 Jon released his album Angst & Grace which features “Still My Girl” written for his youngest daughter.
Another project started in 2018 is his Dueling Pianos video series. Every episode features a new guest artist and they perform mashups of never-before-heard arrangements.
In Fall of 2019 Jon released an instrumental piano album titled MOOD. This record demonstrates Jon's artistry and captivates his talent as a pianist. In May 2020 the second edition of the project was released entitled MOOD II.
Jon wrapped up 2020 with the release of his Christmas EP Christmas Time before putting out his most recent full length album All The Things I Say To Myself with immediate fan favorites “A Breakup Song” & “Outta My Head”.
In the fall of 2022 Jon hit the road with his band in celebration of the 15 year anniversary of his Indiana album which will be remastered and re released on vinyl spotlighting a new a capella version of the title track “Indiana” featuring Straight No Chaser as well as never-before-released b-sides.
Towards the end of 2023, Jon released the third installment in his instrumental piano series: MOOD III.
As with everything he does, Jon’s goal is to create connections. He wants to translate his experiences and ideas into music that reaches fans everywhere. His passion for music and playing is evident in each note he plays.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240215T182722Z SEQUENCE:1452863 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:492 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240412T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240412T210000 UID:C64303DF-C15F-401F-AD4A-001F66571DAC SUMMARY:Knox CREATED:20240221T165611Z DTSTAMP:20240221T165611Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/knox DESCRIPTION:Growing up, Knox knew he had an interest in music more than the average kid. His teenage years were sound tracked by artists such as Fall Out Boy & Ed Sheeran, and the summer before he started college, Knox taught himself guitar. He began playing open mic nights and by his sophomore year, his musical ambitions were so all-consuming that he dropped out of school, moved in with his grandma and saved up money to move to Nashville. He made the leap in January 2019.\NKnox used Covid isolation to work on his craft. The focus paid off: Knox signed a publishing deal in 2022 but was struck with the urge to record songs he had been working on. The result was How to Lose a Girl in 7 Songs, Knox’s debut EP, released February 2023. Knox filmed TikToks featuring his song “Sneakers”, and 1 amassed nearly 2M views overnight. “Sneakers” now has over 28M streams. Another fan favorite track, “Not The 1975," can be seen on the Top 40 and Hot AC radio charts, and is featured on Knox’s latest EP, “I’m So Good At Being Alone?” released October 2023. \NKnox has since been touring, opening for the Band Camino, Nightly, and Boys Like Girls and most recently performing on his own sold out headline tour. “I'm 6 states away from home and there’s a thousand people in the audience that are singing the song that I wrote with my friends in my bedroom. That's when it gets you, when you see people connecting to something that I made with my best friends. It’s the most unreal feeling in the world.” X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Growing up, Knox knew he had an interest in music more than the average kid. His teenage years were sound tracked by artists such as Fall Out Boy & Ed Sheeran, and the summer before he started college, Knox taught himself guitar. He began playing open mic nights and by his sophomore year, his musical ambitions were so all-consuming that he dropped out of school, moved in with his grandma and saved up money to move to Nashville. He made the leap in January 2019.
Knox used Covid isolation to work on his craft. The focus paid off: Knox signed a publishing deal in 2022 but was struck with the urge to record songs he had been working on. The result was How to Lose a Girl in 7 Songs, Knox’s debut EP, released February 2023. Knox filmed TikToks featuring his song “Sneakers”, and 1 amassed nearly 2M views overnight. “Sneakers” now has over 28M streams. Another fan favorite track, “Not The 1975," can be seen on the Top 40 and Hot AC radio charts, and is featured on Knox’s latest EP, “I’m So Good At Being Alone?” released October 2023.
Knox has since been touring, opening for the Band Camino, Nightly, and Boys Like Girls and most recently performing on his own sold out headline tour. “I'm 6 states away from home and there’s a thousand people in the audience that are singing the song that I wrote with my friends in my bedroom. That's when it gets you, when you see people connecting to something that I made with my best friends. It’s the most unreal feeling in the world.”
LAST-MODIFIED:20240305T211309Z SEQUENCE:1138618 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:533 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240413T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240413T210000 UID:B05EEC41-2020-4BB3-93CA-4FBEA12D3122 SUMMARY:Hectic Hobo CREATED:20240222T165145Z DTSTAMP:20240222T165145Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/hectic-hobo DESCRIPTION:Since the dawn of the roots music revival of the 2000s, Hectic Hobo have summoned frenzied crowds on national and international tours with their eclectic blend of riotous Eastern European infused American folk-rock, dubbed “Wild West Gypsy Rock” in their earlier days. Wickedly funny, irreverent tunes like “There’s a Hole in My Coffin” (“Our Medicine Will Do You In,” 2014) about rain drops disturbing the corpses because there’s “no rest of the weary, no sleep for the dead,” or the murder ballad “In the Pines” (“Died on the Fourth of July,” 2017) took you on a time-trip to the days of minstrel style shows toting fiddle and horns.\NWhile they’re still playing some of the gypsy party stuff, the band, whose current members along with Cone are Todd Johnson (drums), Eric Peatross (keys, vocals), Nicholas Newberry (accordion, guitar, harmonica), and Christian Mills (bass, vocals) have evolved more towards Americana over time. “But it has always been rock n roll,” Cone says. And at its root, is good old-fashioned folksy storytelling. “Our songs have always carried a hint of protest music, albeit oftentimes hidden in the story, which is how I write: stories,” he says. \NCone started singing and playing music at Mojos in Ogden, the long-shuttered all ages venue. He had always been drawn to storytellers that paint vivid pictures, like Woody Guthrie, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Isaac Brock and Ian Felice—artists who, like himself, are storytellers first and singers second, he says.“Ever since I was young, even in elementary school, I’ve come up with tales about strange people, often on some sort of journey or stuck in some really tough predicament. They play out in my mind almost like a vivid movie with lots of imagery, and I just try to capture that in my writing, making it at least somewhat rhyme along the way,” Cone says.\NLong before Hectic Hobo, Cone played in a scat-jazz-stream of consciousness funk band called Hasenpfeffer & the Bombdiggitty, based in Logan, rapping instead of singing. He didn’t know how to sing or play guitar back then, but with access to instruments from his bandmates he picked up some chords and “twenty years later here I am, a mediocre rhythm guitar player and sore-throated singer that sometimes hits the right notes.” \NHectic Hobo’s videos are, like their live shows, thoroughly original and wildly entertaining. “We come up with the concepts, they bring their artistic eye, and we are always pleased with the final product,” Cone says. “I like doing music videos because it lets people get to know a bit of our personalities as they're listening to the songs. Plus it's an additional artistic outlet for us on top of writing, recording, and performing.” X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Since the dawn of the roots music revival of the 2000s, Hectic Hobo have summoned frenzied crowds on national and international tours with their eclectic blend of riotous Eastern European infused American folk-rock, dubbed “Wild West Gypsy Rock” in their earlier days. Wickedly funny, irreverent tunes like “There’s a Hole in My Coffin” (“Our Medicine Will Do You In,” 2014) about rain drops disturbing the corpses because there’s “no rest of the weary, no sleep for the dead,” or the murder ballad “In the Pines” (“Died on the Fourth of July,” 2017) took you on a time-trip to the days of minstrel style shows toting fiddle and horns.
While they’re still playing some of the gypsy party stuff, the band, whose current members along with Cone are Todd Johnson (drums), Eric Peatross (keys, vocals), Nicholas Newberry (accordion, guitar, harmonica), and Christian Mills (bass, vocals) have evolved more towards Americana over time. “But it has always been rock n roll,” Cone says. And at its root, is good old-fashioned folksy storytelling. “Our songs have always carried a hint of protest music, albeit oftentimes hidden in the story, which is how I write: stories,” he says.
Cone started singing and playing music at Mojos in Ogden, the long-shuttered all ages venue. He had always been drawn to storytellers that paint vivid pictures, like Woody Guthrie, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Isaac Brock and Ian Felice—artists who, like himself, are storytellers first and singers second, he says.“Ever since I was young, even in elementary school, I’ve come up with tales about strange people, often on some sort of journey or stuck in some really tough predicament. They play out in my mind almost like a vivid movie with lots of imagery, and I just try to capture that in my writing, making it at least somewhat rhyme along the way,” Cone says.
Long before Hectic Hobo, Cone played in a scat-jazz-stream of consciousness funk band called Hasenpfeffer & the Bombdiggitty, based in Logan, rapping instead of singing. He didn’t know how to sing or play guitar back then, but with access to instruments from his bandmates he picked up some chords and “twenty years later here I am, a mediocre rhythm guitar player and sore-throated singer that sometimes hits the right notes.”
Hectic Hobo’s videos are, like their live shows, thoroughly original and wildly entertaining. “We come up with the concepts, they bring their artistic eye, and we are always pleased with the final product,” Cone says. “I like doing music videos because it lets people get to know a bit of our personalities as they're listening to the songs. Plus it's an additional artistic outlet for us on top of writing, recording, and performing.”
LAST-MODIFIED:20240313T230410Z SEQUENCE:1750345 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:483 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-02-22 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240416T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240416T210000 UID:A75FEE35-CB9E-493B-9927-142095937168 SUMMARY:An Evening of Eight Guitars CREATED:20240315T193945Z DTSTAMP:20240315T193945Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/an-evening-of-eight-guitars DESCRIPTION:Utah Symphony’s Guitar Celebrations Festival Presents: AN EVENING OF 8 GUITARS WITH ANOTHER NIGHT ON EARTH\NClassical music and guitars of all kinds combine to kick off the Utah Symphony’s Guitar Celebrations festival! Another Night On Earth is an ensemble like no other—made up of eight electric and acoustic guitarists based all over the world, coming together to perform music both classical and current. From melodies of the Middle Ages to present-day art music, Another Night On Earth will highlight the guitar's sonic diversity! (Please note, the Utah Symphony does not perform on this concert.)\NThis performance is part of Utah Symphony’s Guitar Celebrations festival, bringing the eight extraordinary acoustic and electric guitarists of the collective Another Night on Earth to our community. The ensemble members—including conductor and Utah Symphony | Utah Opera Creative Partner David Robertson—will engage with audiences and students across Salt Lake City in a week of genre-bending performances and education programs. (Don't miss the festival's finale weekend, April 19 & 20 as Another Night on Earth takes the stage with the Utah Symphony at Maurice Abravanel Hall!) X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Utah Symphony’s Guitar Celebrations Festival Presents: AN EVENING OF 8 GUITARS WITH ANOTHER NIGHT ON EARTH
Classical music and guitars of all kinds combine to kick off the Utah Symphony’s Guitar Celebrations festival! Another Night On Earth is an ensemble like no other—made up of eight electric and acoustic guitarists based all over the world, coming together to perform music both classical and current. From melodies of the Middle Ages to present-day art music, Another Night On Earth will highlight the guitar's sonic diversity! (Please note, the Utah Symphony does not perform on this concert.)
This performance is part of Utah Symphony’s Guitar Celebrations festival, bringing the eight extraordinary acoustic and electric guitarists of the collective Another Night on Earth to our community. The ensemble members—including conductor and Utah Symphony | Utah Opera Creative Partner David Robertson—will engage with audiences and students across Salt Lake City in a week of genre-bending performances and education programs. (Don't miss the festival's finale weekend, April 19 & 20 as Another Night on Earth takes the stage with the Utah Symphony at Maurice Abravanel Hall!)
X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:544 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240419T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240419T210000 UID:F8BF3216-23B7-4914-967A-7C839AA6D4FA SUMMARY:Ezra Bell CREATED:20240213T235121Z DTSTAMP:20240213T235121Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/ezra-bell-2 DESCRIPTION:Ezra Bell was founded late in the summer of 2013. It was warm enough to sit on the porch into the evening and learn a couple of songs. A lap drum a banjo and an out-of-tune guitar. Years on, it’s surprising Ezra Bell is still at it. Streaming services have surprisingly worked in Ezra Bell’s favor and listeners resonate with the tales spinning out of order around disconcerting musical interludes. Somehow, a licensing company commissioned Ezra Bell to play and record Sam Cooke’s worst song for an insurance commercial. The commercial aired on Superbowl Sunday. Ezra Bell espouses neither football nor insurance but sold out accordingly for the pittance that was paid and the exposure. Such is the music industry. Many heartfelt messages from unknown listeners have kept Ezra Bell busy writing and recording. Eventually, a booking agency caught on to the growing cult following and propped Ezra Bell up in front of audiences outside of Portland, forcing the band to drive thousands of miles, sometimes in single day, to play for crowds. Then there was COVID. Now the touring has (mostly) ceased and the band focuses on recording and self-releasing independent music. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Ezra Bell was founded late in the summer of 2013. It was warm enough to sit on the porch into the evening and learn a couple of songs. A lap drum a banjo and an out-of-tune guitar. Years on, it’s surprising Ezra Bell is still at it. Streaming services have surprisingly worked in Ezra Bell’s favor and listeners resonate with the tales spinning out of order around disconcerting musical interludes. Somehow, a licensing company commissioned Ezra Bell to play and record Sam Cooke’s worst song for an insurance commercial. The commercial aired on Superbowl Sunday. Ezra Bell espouses neither football nor insurance but sold out accordingly for the pittance that was paid and the exposure. Such is the music industry. Many heartfelt messages from unknown listeners have kept Ezra Bell busy writing and recording. Eventually, a booking agency caught on to the growing cult following and propped Ezra Bell up in front of audiences outside of Portland, forcing the band to drive thousands of miles, sometimes in single day, to play for crowds. Then there was COVID. Now the touring has (mostly) ceased and the band focuses on recording and self-releasing independent music.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240222T192111Z SEQUENCE:761390 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:221 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240420T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240420T210000 UID:159B1CD0-4316-49C1-BBC4-067A8A5CAF50 SUMMARY:Jesse Daniel CREATED:20240108T191400Z DTSTAMP:20240108T191400Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/jesse-daniel-2 DESCRIPTION:It is no secret that Jesse Daniel puts on one hell of a live show. With his top notch band, he’s been touring the country for years and earning fans the old fashioned way; with honest songs played well. The California native is blazing the trail for a new wave of traditional artists, bringing his hard core country music to stages all over the US. There are many making traditional country music in modern times, but there is no one making it like Daniel. His sound is uniquely his own, while rooted in the tradition of his Bakersfield heroes like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. This one-of-a-kind sound has earned Jesse a place at the table among the best of the country music world and has garnered the support of his contemporaries and fans alike. Over the past few years, he and his band have toured and shared stages with artists like Colter Wall, Tyler Childers, Sierra Ferrell, Charley Crockett, American Aquarium, Turnpike Troubadours, Shane Smith, Mike and the Moonpies, Raul Malo and many others. Jesse’s touring schedule has taken him and his band over 50,000 miles in 2022 alone and this year they aim to surpass that by a longshot. Touring this extensively can be tough on a band, but it has proven to be what truly makes a band great. There is nothing that will make a group tighter than grinding it out on the road, night after night, club after club. That is why Jesse and his songwriting partner, fellow band member, manager and fiance Jodi Lyford decided it was time to make a live album.\N“My Kind Of Country Live at The Catalyst '' was recorded in front of a sold out crowd at Santa Cruz, CA’s biggest live music venue. It’s the only album made at The Catalyst since Neil Young & Crazy Horse recorded “Touch The Night - Santa Cruz 1984” on the same stage. This was a monumental achievement for Daniel, considering he used to work as a stage hand and security at the venue years ago. He played his first ever show at the tiny upstairs bar and spent years battling addiction on the very street that The Catalyst resides. “The Catalyst was kind of as big as it gets in my world. I grew up there, going to shows, playing shows on their smaller stages. To headline the main stage, let alone sell it out and make a record there, is a huge accomplishment for me and I’m forever grateful to my Santa Cruz County friends, fans and family for supporting what we do.” said Daniel. What better way to thank the community that raised and supported you than to make a live album with them.\NThis recording includes songs from all three of Daniel’s studio albums - Jesse Daniel (2018), Rollin’ On (2020) and Beyond These Walls (2021), as well as his own hometown rendition of Homer Joy’s country classic “Streets Of Bakersfield”, made famous by Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens. When the band breaks down you can hear every soul in the room shouting, singing along and celebrating the phrase that they themselves coined - “My Kind Of Country”. This captured live performance showcases Daniel and his band’s live energy and transports you directly to that place in time, as if you were there for it all. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:It is no secret that Jesse Daniel puts on one hell of a live show. With his top notch band, he’s been touring the country for years and earning fans the old fashioned way; with honest songs played well. The California native is blazing the trail for a new wave of traditional artists, bringing his hard core country music to stages all over the US. There are many making traditional country music in modern times, but there is no one making it like Daniel. His sound is uniquely his own, while rooted in the tradition of his Bakersfield heroes like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. This one-of-a-kind sound has earned Jesse a place at the table among the best of the country music world and has garnered the support of his contemporaries and fans alike. Over the past few years, he and his band have toured and shared stages with artists like Colter Wall, Tyler Childers, Sierra Ferrell, Charley Crockett, American Aquarium, Turnpike Troubadours, Shane Smith, Mike and the Moonpies, Raul Malo and many others. Jesse’s touring schedule has taken him and his band over 50,000 miles in 2022 alone and this year they aim to surpass that by a longshot. Touring this extensively can be tough on a band, but it has proven to be what truly makes a band great. There is nothing that will make a group tighter than grinding it out on the road, night after night, club after club. That is why Jesse and his songwriting partner, fellow band member, manager and fiance Jodi Lyford decided it was time to make a live album.
“My Kind Of Country Live at The Catalyst '' was recorded in front of a sold out crowd at Santa Cruz, CA’s biggest live music venue. It’s the only album made at The Catalyst since Neil Young & Crazy Horse recorded “Touch The Night - Santa Cruz 1984” on the same stage. This was a monumental achievement for Daniel, considering he used to work as a stage hand and security at the venue years ago. He played his first ever show at the tiny upstairs bar and spent years battling addiction on the very street that The Catalyst resides. “The Catalyst was kind of as big as it gets in my world. I grew up there, going to shows, playing shows on their smaller stages. To headline the main stage, let alone sell it out and make a record there, is a huge accomplishment for me and I’m forever grateful to my Santa Cruz County friends, fans and family for supporting what we do.” said Daniel. What better way to thank the community that raised and supported you than to make a live album with them.
This recording includes songs from all three of Daniel’s studio albums - Jesse Daniel (2018), Rollin’ On (2020) and Beyond These Walls (2021), as well as his own hometown rendition of Homer Joy’s country classic “Streets Of Bakersfield”, made famous by Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens. When the band breaks down you can hear every soul in the room shouting, singing along and celebrating the phrase that they themselves coined - “My Kind Of Country”. This captured live performance showcases Daniel and his band’s live energy and transports you directly to that place in time, as if you were there for it all.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240130T201229Z SEQUENCE:1904309 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:328 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-01-10 16:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240422T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240422T230000 UID:ED82B9EC-3D42-489B-941E-B4BD0B3A6976 SUMMARY:Tinsley Ellis CREATED:20240130T201618Z DTSTAMP:20240130T201618Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/tinsley-ellis DESCRIPTION:According to Atlanta-based blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Tinsley Ellis, his new, first-ever solo acoustic album, Naked Truth, is both “a departure and an arrival.” Ellis has been recording and travelling the world for over four decades, delivering his feral, guitar-fueled, original electric blues-rock to ever-growing audiences at concert halls, festivals, and clubs. Naked Truth is steeped in the folk blues traditions of Muddy Waters, Skip James, Son House, Robert Johnson and even Leo Kottke. To the casual fan, this might seem to be a new direction, but for Ellis, it’s an extension of his music, as he taps into the raw essence of the blues. “This is a record I’ve always wanted to make, and one that my longtime fans have been asking for,” he says, noting he’s included an acoustic mini-set in his concert performances for years. In the last 12 months, Ellis has already performed over 100 solo shows, many as co-bills with his Alligator label-mate Marcia Ball. “I’m having so much fun playing these shows,” he says.\NOn Naked Truth (his 21stalbum), Ellis swaps his blistering, guitar-fueled full band workouts for equally passionate, soul-searching acoustic folk blues. His famed guitar chops and musical creativity are on full display throughout the album’s 12 songs, including nine newly written originals. Naked Truth was produced by Ellis, with the foot-stomping cover of Son House’s Death Letter Bluesproduced by Atlanta roots musician Eddie 9V. The album was recorded live in the studio using Ellis’ beloved 1969 Martin D-35 (a gift from his father) and his 1937 National Steel O Series guitars. Whether intricately fingerpicking the Martin or playing hair-raising slide on the National Steel, Ellis delivers each song with unvarnished intimacy.\NThe opener, Ellis’ original Devil In The Room, comes from an expression Ellis’ close friend, the late Col. Bruce Hampton, would tell his musicians just before a show was about to begin (“We’re here to put the devil in the room,” he’d say). From the original, Skip James-inspired Windowpane to the Delta-styled Tallahassee Blues, to the humorous Grown Ass Man, Ellis goes deep, singing and playing the blues’ honest truths. The inclusion of four introspective instrumentals (including a transcendent cover of Leo Kottke’s A Soldier’s Grave On The Prairie, a song he’s been playing live for almost 50 years) adds even more depth and substance to an album overflowing with riches. Each song carries the weight, experience and hard-earned wisdom Ellis learned over four decades on the road, infusing Naked Truth with an emotional authenticity that is palpable from start to finish.\NTinsley Ellis has been immersed in music his whole life. Born in Atlanta 1957 and raised in southern Florida, he acquired his first guitar at age seven, inspired by seeing The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. He took to guitar instantly, developing and sharpening his skills as he grew up. Like many kids his age, Ellis discovered the blues through the back door of British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Cream and The Rolling Stones as well as Southern rockers like The Allman Brothers. One afternoon after high school in 1972, he and a friend were listening to Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield’s Super Session record when his friend’s older brother told them that, if they liked Super Session, they should go see B.B. King, who was in town that week. Tinsley saw that show from the very front row. As fate would have it, King broke a guitar string while playing, and after changing it without missing a beat, he handed the broken string to young Tinsley. And yes, Tinsley still has that string.\NLess than three years later, Ellis, already an accomplished teenaged musician, left Florida and moved to Atlanta. He soon joined a hard-driving local blues band, the Alley Cats. In 1981, along with veteran blues singer and harpist Chicago Bob Nelson, Tinsley formed The Heartfixers, a group that would become Atlanta’s top-drawing blues band. After cutting four Heartfixers albums (three for the Landslide label), Ellis was ready to step out on his own.\NGeorgia Blue, Tinsley’s first Alligator release, hit the unprepared public by surprise in 1988, as press and radio brought his music to more people than ever before. His next four releases—1989’s Fanning The Flames, 1992’s Trouble Time, 1994’s Storm Warning, and 1997’s Fire It Up—further grew his reputation as well as his audience. (His song A Quitter Never Wins, a highlight of Storm Warning, was recorded by Jonny Lang, selling almost two million copies.) Features and reviews ran in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and in many other national and regional publications. And he backed it all up performing hundreds of nights per year. Rolling Stonedeclared, “Feral blues guitar…non-stop gigging has sharpened his six-string to a razor’s edge…his eloquence dazzles…he achieves pyrotechnics that rival Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.”\NIn the early 2000s, Ellis released albums on Capricorn Records and on Telarc, returning to Alligator in 2005 with Live–Highwayman, which captured the fifth-gear energy of his roof-raising live show. He followed it with two more incendiary studio albums, 2007’s Moment Of Truth and 2009’s Speak No Evil. He self-released four successful albums on his own Heartfixer label before coming back home to Alligator in 2018. That year, he released the fan favorite Winning Hand, followed by 2020’s Ice Cream In Hell just before the pandemic sidelined all touring. With 2022’s Devil May Care, Ellis embarked on another relentless, coast-to-coast tour, further cementing his reputation as one of the most prolific and exciting blues rockers on the scene.\NTinsley Ellis has brought his music to fans live in person to all 50 United States, as well as in Canada, across Europe, Australia and South America. He’s earned the love and respect of many of his fellow musicians, having shared stages with Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, The Allman Brothers, Warren Haynes, Oliver Wood, Buddy Guy, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gov’t Mule, Widespread Panic, and more. Over the years, legends including Otis Rush, James Cotton, Gregg Allman, Jimmy Buffett, Son Seals, Koko Taylor and Albert Collins invited Ellis to join them on stage. Mega-star guitarist Joe Bonamassa calls Ellis “a national treasure.” \NNow, with Naked Truth, Ellis will bring his music directly to his fans. “Two guitars and a car,” he says of the simplicity of his North American touring situation. “When folks come to see me, I’ll have the guitars I used on the record with me, so what fans hear on the album is what they’ll get live. It’s not easy. Now I’m the whole band and there’s nowhere to hide. It’s scary every single time I go up on stage alone. But nothing could be more honest.”\NNaked Truth is a revelation. Stripped of the electric fervor that defined his previous works, Ellis’ acoustic music carries a rawness that speaks directly from his soul. The songs unveil another side of Tinsley Ellis, but one that is totally recognizable to his fans. His gruff, full-throated vocals intertwine seamlessly with the bare, acoustic arrangements, creating an album that is both timeless and immediate. No Depression says, “Ellis shines. When the tempo slows, the intensity doesn’t waver.” Blues Music Magazine states, “Tinsley Ellis is a powerful and commanding presence. His music is impossible not to enjoy.” X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:According to Atlanta-based blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Tinsley Ellis, his new, first-ever solo acoustic album, Naked Truth, is both “a departure and an arrival.” Ellis has been recording and travelling the world for over four decades, delivering his feral, guitar-fueled, original electric blues-rock to ever-growing audiences at concert halls, festivals, and clubs. Naked Truth is steeped in the folk blues traditions of Muddy Waters, Skip James, Son House, Robert Johnson and even Leo Kottke. To the casual fan, this might seem to be a new direction, but for Ellis, it’s an extension of his music, as he taps into the raw essence of the blues. “This is a record I’ve always wanted to make, and one that my longtime fans have been asking for,” he says, noting he’s included an acoustic mini-set in his concert performances for years. In the last 12 months, Ellis has already performed over 100 solo shows, many as co-bills with his Alligator label-mate Marcia Ball. “I’m having so much fun playing these shows,” he says.
On Naked Truth (his 21stalbum), Ellis swaps his blistering, guitar-fueled full band workouts for equally passionate, soul-searching acoustic folk blues. His famed guitar chops and musical creativity are on full display throughout the album’s 12 songs, including nine newly written originals. Naked Truth was produced by Ellis, with the foot-stomping cover of Son House’s Death Letter Bluesproduced by Atlanta roots musician Eddie 9V. The album was recorded live in the studio using Ellis’ beloved 1969 Martin D-35 (a gift from his father) and his 1937 National Steel O Series guitars. Whether intricately fingerpicking the Martin or playing hair-raising slide on the National Steel, Ellis delivers each song with unvarnished intimacy.
The opener, Ellis’ original Devil In The Room, comes from an expression Ellis’ close friend, the late Col. Bruce Hampton, would tell his musicians just before a show was about to begin (“We’re here to put the devil in the room,” he’d say). From the original, Skip James-inspired Windowpane to the Delta-styled Tallahassee Blues, to the humorous Grown Ass Man, Ellis goes deep, singing and playing the blues’ honest truths. The inclusion of four introspective instrumentals (including a transcendent cover of Leo Kottke’s A Soldier’s Grave On The Prairie, a song he’s been playing live for almost 50 years) adds even more depth and substance to an album overflowing with riches. Each song carries the weight, experience and hard-earned wisdom Ellis learned over four decades on the road, infusing Naked Truth with an emotional authenticity that is palpable from start to finish.
Tinsley Ellis has been immersed in music his whole life. Born in Atlanta 1957 and raised in southern Florida, he acquired his first guitar at age seven, inspired by seeing The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. He took to guitar instantly, developing and sharpening his skills as he grew up. Like many kids his age, Ellis discovered the blues through the back door of British Invasion bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Cream and The Rolling Stones as well as Southern rockers like The Allman Brothers. One afternoon after high school in 1972, he and a friend were listening to Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield’s Super Session record when his friend’s older brother told them that, if they liked Super Session, they should go see B.B. King, who was in town that week. Tinsley saw that show from the very front row. As fate would have it, King broke a guitar string while playing, and after changing it without missing a beat, he handed the broken string to young Tinsley. And yes, Tinsley still has that string.
Less than three years later, Ellis, already an accomplished teenaged musician, left Florida and moved to Atlanta. He soon joined a hard-driving local blues band, the Alley Cats. In 1981, along with veteran blues singer and harpist Chicago Bob Nelson, Tinsley formed The Heartfixers, a group that would become Atlanta’s top-drawing blues band. After cutting four Heartfixers albums (three for the Landslide label), Ellis was ready to step out on his own.
Georgia Blue, Tinsley’s first Alligator release, hit the unprepared public by surprise in 1988, as press and radio brought his music to more people than ever before. His next four releases—1989’s Fanning The Flames, 1992’s Trouble Time, 1994’s Storm Warning, and 1997’s Fire It Up—further grew his reputation as well as his audience. (His song A Quitter Never Wins, a highlight of Storm Warning, was recorded by Jonny Lang, selling almost two million copies.) Features and reviews ran in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and in many other national and regional publications. And he backed it all up performing hundreds of nights per year. Rolling Stonedeclared, “Feral blues guitar…non-stop gigging has sharpened his six-string to a razor’s edge…his eloquence dazzles…he achieves pyrotechnics that rival Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.”
In the early 2000s, Ellis released albums on Capricorn Records and on Telarc, returning to Alligator in 2005 with Live–Highwayman, which captured the fifth-gear energy of his roof-raising live show. He followed it with two more incendiary studio albums, 2007’s Moment Of Truth and 2009’s Speak No Evil. He self-released four successful albums on his own Heartfixer label before coming back home to Alligator in 2018. That year, he released the fan favorite Winning Hand, followed by 2020’s Ice Cream In Hell just before the pandemic sidelined all touring. With 2022’s Devil May Care, Ellis embarked on another relentless, coast-to-coast tour, further cementing his reputation as one of the most prolific and exciting blues rockers on the scene.
Tinsley Ellis has brought his music to fans live in person to all 50 United States, as well as in Canada, across Europe, Australia and South America. He’s earned the love and respect of many of his fellow musicians, having shared stages with Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, The Allman Brothers, Warren Haynes, Oliver Wood, Buddy Guy, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gov’t Mule, Widespread Panic, and more. Over the years, legends including Otis Rush, James Cotton, Gregg Allman, Jimmy Buffett, Son Seals, Koko Taylor and Albert Collins invited Ellis to join them on stage. Mega-star guitarist Joe Bonamassa calls Ellis “a national treasure.”
Now, with Naked Truth, Ellis will bring his music directly to his fans. “Two guitars and a car,” he says of the simplicity of his North American touring situation. “When folks come to see me, I’ll have the guitars I used on the record with me, so what fans hear on the album is what they’ll get live. It’s not easy. Now I’m the whole band and there’s nowhere to hide. It’s scary every single time I go up on stage alone. But nothing could be more honest.”
Naked Truth is a revelation. Stripped of the electric fervor that defined his previous works, Ellis’ acoustic music carries a rawness that speaks directly from his soul. The songs unveil another side of Tinsley Ellis, but one that is totally recognizable to his fans. His gruff, full-throated vocals intertwine seamlessly with the bare, acoustic arrangements, creating an album that is both timeless and immediate. No Depression says, “Ellis shines. When the tempo slows, the intensity doesn’t waver.” Blues Music Magazine states, “Tinsley Ellis is a powerful and commanding presence. His music is impossible not to enjoy.”
LAST-MODIFIED:20240213T215315Z SEQUENCE:1215417 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:308 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240427T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240427T210000 UID:5AD6D743-94B4-4670-ABA4-4DFE57DAFC65 SUMMARY:Thunderstorm Artis CREATED:20240213T223051Z DTSTAMP:20240213T223051Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/thunderstorm-artis DESCRIPTION:Thunderstorm Artis is a singer/songwriter born and raised on the North Shore of Oahu. He learned at a very young age to play piano, guitar, harmonica and drums, from his father, Ron and mother, Victoria. He has shared stages with Train, John Legend, Zac Brown and Jack Johnson. However, he is most known for being a finalist on the NBC show “The Voice” Season 18. His music crosses many genres including Folk, Rock, Soul and Country. At his concerts he has been known to jump into Bowie, Beatles, Elton John and Leonard Cohen, as well as mixing in his own heartfelt originals. No matter what Thunderstorm performs, he does it from his heart. He does not consider his music as notes on a page but rather a window into his soul. His strong belief is that through music he can make the world a better place and lift the hearts of others. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Thunderstorm Artis is a singer/songwriter born and raised on the North Shore of Oahu. He learned at a very young age to play piano, guitar, harmonica and drums, from his father, Ron and mother, Victoria. He has shared stages with Train, John Legend, Zac Brown and Jack Johnson. However, he is most known for being a finalist on the NBC show “The Voice” Season 18. His music crosses many genres including Folk, Rock, Soul and Country. At his concerts he has been known to jump into Bowie, Beatles, Elton John and Leonard Cohen, as well as mixing in his own heartfelt originals. No matter what Thunderstorm performs, he does it from his heart. He does not consider his music as notes on a page but rather a window into his soul. His strong belief is that through music he can make the world a better place and lift the hearts of others.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240221T235808Z SEQUENCE:696437 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:173 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240501T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240501T210000 UID:F93F4FB8-4910-4BF6-BD42-98A995AF733E SUMMARY:Tenille Townes CREATED:20240213T233611Z DTSTAMP:20240213T233611Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/tenille-townes DESCRIPTION:An astute observer of the human condition, Tenille Townes’ discography is rife with stories that reverberate with heavy truths. Following the release of a duet with world-superstar Bryan Adams, the revered songwriter, and CCMA Entertainer of the Year, released a five-song project called the Train Track Worktapes in 2023. Townes conceptualized, wrote, and recorded the EP on a 15-day, 3,000-mile, train trip where she played 65 shows at stops in communities across Canada. \NTownes is a 15-time Canadian Country Music Association Award winner (CCMA), a two-time JUNO Awards Country Album of the Year Winner, and a two-time ACM Award-winner. She is also the first female artist in Mediabase Canada history to achieve two No. 1 singles (Music Canada Gold-certified “Jersey on The Wall (I’m Just Asking),” Music Canada Platinum-certified and RIAA Gold-certified “Somebody’s Daughter”). \NTownes has opened for legendary artists such as Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert, Shania Twain and George Strait. Townes has also toured extensively outside of the US – last year she performed for fans in Australia, Ireland, Germany, and had a sold-out run of headlining shows in the UK. Her international touring efforts earned her a nomination for the CMA International Artist Achievement Award. \NA Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Townes has been featured by NPR, Variety, Refinery29, Billboard, Rolling Stone, NBC’s “TODAY,” BBC and more. Additionally, she has raised over $2.5 million for Big Hearts For Big Kids, a non-profit she started when she was 15 years old to benefit a youth shelter in her hometown, which has grown to support US-based organizations including the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee, S.A.F.E. Animal Haven, and the Manna House. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:An astute observer of the human condition, Tenille Townes’ discography is rife with stories that reverberate with heavy truths. Following the release of a duet with world-superstar Bryan Adams, the revered songwriter, and CCMA Entertainer of the Year, released a five-song project called the Train Track Worktapes in 2023. Townes conceptualized, wrote, and recorded the EP on a 15-day, 3,000-mile, train trip where she played 65 shows at stops in communities across Canada.
Townes is a 15-time Canadian Country Music Association Award winner (CCMA), a two-time JUNO Awards Country Album of the Year Winner, and a two-time ACM Award-winner. She is also the first female artist in Mediabase Canada history to achieve two No. 1 singles (Music Canada Gold-certified “Jersey on The Wall (I’m Just Asking),” Music Canada Platinum-certified and RIAA Gold-certified “Somebody’s Daughter”).
Townes has opened for legendary artists such as Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert, Shania Twain and George Strait. Townes has also toured extensively outside of the US – last year she performed for fans in Australia, Ireland, Germany, and had a sold-out run of headlining shows in the UK. Her international touring efforts earned her a nomination for the CMA International Artist Achievement Award.
A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Townes has been featured by NPR, Variety, Refinery29, Billboard, Rolling Stone, NBC’s “TODAY,” BBC and more. Additionally, she has raised over $2.5 million for Big Hearts For Big Kids, a non-profit she started when she was 15 years old to benefit a youth shelter in her hometown, which has grown to support US-based organizations including the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee, S.A.F.E. Animal Haven, and the Manna House.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240221T235818Z SEQUENCE:692527 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:278 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240502T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240502T210000 UID:C877FD20-AE25-49BD-887E-C89E6EDDA81B SUMMARY:Jade Bird CREATED:20240301T162826Z DTSTAMP:20240301T162826Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/jade-bird DESCRIPTION:Like falling in love, break-ups start slowly and then happen all at once. For Jade Bird, the end of her relationship gathered pace and crashed into reality in 2022, resulting in the beautifully temperate EP Burn The Hard Drive. It is a short collection of songs that paint the various stages of grief that come with the end of a relationship in devastatingly astute but carefully optimistic strokes. \NBird has always railed against being pigeonholed and wary of collaboration. Having grown up in the UK, she was influenced heavily by Americana and hailed as a powerhouse performer. Even as she was compared to country-folk titans, in those early days she was determined to be fully Jade Bird without any shades of anyone else. Every note had to come from her. But for the Burn The Hard Drive EP, she worked with Alex Crossan, known better as Mura Masa, finding freedom and joy in writing and experimenting with ideas in his modest home studio. Gradually, the songs found form and her emotions tumbled out into notes and melodies, shepherded by Crossan’s unique and encouraging ear. \NShe had met her ex-fiance when she was just 18. He was a musician and she was newly signed. “It was an unsaid thing that it wouldn’t have worked unless he kind of joined my band and we toured together, so things evolved very quickly,” she says. So for the next few years as Bird’s career took off, they did everything together: recording, touring, writing, everything. “Every cool memory I’ve got musically, he’s in that. The second record is about him.” He was enmeshed in her life in a way that few of us experience. “When you’re in a relationship like that, when it’s good it’s so good. You’ve got support at work, you’re on the road together: it’s this romantic ideal. And when it’s not good, it becomes a bit of a living hell.” \NEven as they got engaged and moved together to Austin, Texas, things began to break down. “There’s been so many times I’ve been on stage and I’ve just sort of had a bit of a breakdown, crying or whatever, because the songs are so interwoven into my experience.” Bird began writing the songs that make up the EP just after the hardcore lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic ended. “I think we were all going through something,” she says of those early writing sessions with Cossen. During one of the last writing sessions before the break-up, she wrote the song Burn The Hard Drive, a sultry, sorrowful song. “There’s no good goodbye, no right way to die,” she sings on the chorus before offering a digital Eternal Sunshine solution of destroying all evidence of a relationship. “I listened back to it with Alex and was like, ‘Oh my god this is a premonition of ending my relationship’.” \NWriting has always been a way to talk things through with herself. “I think that was me getting it out on paper, getting it out through music and telling myself the things I couldn’t do in a more matter of fact way.” With Cossen’s help, she interrogated the emotions the song had thrown up, feeling her way through the memories of times when she didn’t have a voice or a safe space to express what she’d been feeling during the dying days of an intense relationship. “Before I knew it, that was the exact concept for the EP, which was honing in on every little piece of the break up.” \NThough a sad, reflective kind of EP, it begins on a hopeful note with Breaking The Grey, the final stage of grief when you realise you’re going to be okay. “It’s about getting out of a bad spot,” Bird explains. “I often find in a room, there is a level of empathy, where I find myself worrying what the room is going through and I think with Breaking The Grey we were all feeling the murkiness of the pandemic, the clouds of that - so the chorus was about finding our way out of that while the verses are more personal.” Over a jaunty piano line, she sketches out tiny scenes of a different kind of grey - “The look on your face as you hold me close, your feelings have changed”. “There was a purity to the process,” she recalls. “I could get super in my head as a writer, zigzagging past my feelings. But with Alex, he was just like ‘It doesn’t matter what this is for, we’re just creating’. So it allowed me to tell stories that are different to my usual kind of ‘rage’ narrative - it’s a lot more vulnerable.” \NIt’s quite a departure for Bird, much gentler than her previous two albums and with more twisting, mesmerising riffs than the hard strums that have become a kind of trademark. “Rage became a huge point of contention for me - I grew up in a high conflict household so I think my albums have been about getting that out - but with Alex, for some reason, that wasn’t what was coming out. It’s a little different. I think it’s exploring the emotions before the rage,” she says, before adding with a grin: “I’m saving the rage for the album.”\NYou can still hear the fire of classic Jade Bird though - C’est La Vie has a huge stadium-worthy chorus that is solely Bird and her guitar. But there is no song more markedly unusual for her than You’ve Fallen In Love Again, twinkling gently across a winding bass line with otherworldly synths popping in and out of focus. “I think we tapped into the dissociative mood I was in - I felt like I was hovering above myself,” she says. The song suggests a fear of finding herself back in an unhealthy relationship, the trap of falling in love. “I think that is probably the most relatable feeling, as opposed to the heartbreak. I needed to be free.” \NIt’s a short, reflective record, one that seems to send Jade Bird off on a new trajectory. Life has taken a turn too. She relocated to LA, started seeing someone new and has been embracing more pastimes outside of her career - at just 26 she’s already been a working musician for almost a decade. Even as her most collaborative work yet, Burn The Hard Drive sees her finally feeling like herself. It’s been a transformative time: and from the darkness, light has come. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Like falling in love, break-ups start slowly and then happen all at once. For Jade Bird, the end of her relationship gathered pace and crashed into reality in 2022, resulting in the beautifully temperate EP Burn The Hard Drive. It is a short collection of songs that paint the various stages of grief that come with the end of a relationship in devastatingly astute but carefully optimistic strokes.
Bird has always railed against being pigeonholed and wary of collaboration. Having grown up in the UK, she was influenced heavily by Americana and hailed as a powerhouse performer. Even as she was compared to country-folk titans, in those early days she was determined to be fully Jade Bird without any shades of anyone else. Every note had to come from her. But for the Burn The Hard Drive EP, she worked with Alex Crossan, known better as Mura Masa, finding freedom and joy in writing and experimenting with ideas in his modest home studio. Gradually, the songs found form and her emotions tumbled out into notes and melodies, shepherded by Crossan’s unique and encouraging ear.
She had met her ex-fiance when she was just 18. He was a musician and she was newly signed. “It was an unsaid thing that it wouldn’t have worked unless he kind of joined my band and we toured together, so things evolved very quickly,” she says. So for the next few years as Bird’s career took off, they did everything together: recording, touring, writing, everything. “Every cool memory I’ve got musically, he’s in that. The second record is about him.” He was enmeshed in her life in a way that few of us experience. “When you’re in a relationship like that, when it’s good it’s so good. You’ve got support at work, you’re on the road together: it’s this romantic ideal. And when it’s not good, it becomes a bit of a living hell.”
Even as they got engaged and moved together to Austin, Texas, things began to break down. “There’s been so many times I’ve been on stage and I’ve just sort of had a bit of a breakdown, crying or whatever, because the songs are so interwoven into my experience.” Bird began writing the songs that make up the EP just after the hardcore lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic ended. “I think we were all going through something,” she says of those early writing sessions with Cossen. During one of the last writing sessions before the break-up, she wrote the song Burn The Hard Drive, a sultry, sorrowful song. “There’s no good goodbye, no right way to die,” she sings on the chorus before offering a digital Eternal Sunshine solution of destroying all evidence of a relationship. “I listened back to it with Alex and was like, ‘Oh my god this is a premonition of ending my relationship’.”
Writing has always been a way to talk things through with herself. “I think that was me getting it out on paper, getting it out through music and telling myself the things I couldn’t do in a more matter of fact way.” With Cossen’s help, she interrogated the emotions the song had thrown up, feeling her way through the memories of times when she didn’t have a voice or a safe space to express what she’d been feeling during the dying days of an intense relationship. “Before I knew it, that was the exact concept for the EP, which was honing in on every little piece of the break up.”
Though a sad, reflective kind of EP, it begins on a hopeful note with Breaking The Grey, the final stage of grief when you realise you’re going to be okay. “It’s about getting out of a bad spot,” Bird explains. “I often find in a room, there is a level of empathy, where I find myself worrying what the room is going through and I think with Breaking The Grey we were all feeling the murkiness of the pandemic, the clouds of that - so the chorus was about finding our way out of that while the verses are more personal.” Over a jaunty piano line, she sketches out tiny scenes of a different kind of grey - “The look on your face as you hold me close, your feelings have changed”. “There was a purity to the process,” she recalls. “I could get super in my head as a writer, zigzagging past my feelings. But with Alex, he was just like ‘It doesn’t matter what this is for, we’re just creating’. So it allowed me to tell stories that are different to my usual kind of ‘rage’ narrative - it’s a lot more vulnerable.”
It’s quite a departure for Bird, much gentler than her previous two albums and with more twisting, mesmerising riffs than the hard strums that have become a kind of trademark. “Rage became a huge point of contention for me - I grew up in a high conflict household so I think my albums have been about getting that out - but with Alex, for some reason, that wasn’t what was coming out. It’s a little different. I think it’s exploring the emotions before the rage,” she says, before adding with a grin: “I’m saving the rage for the album.”
You can still hear the fire of classic Jade Bird though - C’est La Vie has a huge stadium-worthy chorus that is solely Bird and her guitar. But there is no song more markedly unusual for her than You’ve Fallen In Love Again, twinkling gently across a winding bass line with otherworldly synths popping in and out of focus. “I think we tapped into the dissociative mood I was in - I felt like I was hovering above myself,” she says. The song suggests a fear of finding herself back in an unhealthy relationship, the trap of falling in love. “I think that is probably the most relatable feeling, as opposed to the heartbreak. I needed to be free.”
It’s a short, reflective record, one that seems to send Jade Bird off on a new trajectory. Life has taken a turn too. She relocated to LA, started seeing someone new and has been embracing more pastimes outside of her career - at just 26 she’s already been a working musician for almost a decade. Even as her most collaborative work yet, Burn The Hard Drive sees her finally feeling like herself. It’s been a transformative time: and from the darkness, light has come.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240308T170246Z SEQUENCE:606860 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:462 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240503T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240503T210000 UID:8ABA76C8-D404-4119-9462-5617EDCEBC4C SUMMARY:Daniel Young x Hollering Pines CREATED:20240305T165441Z DTSTAMP:20240305T165441Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/daniel-young-x-hollering-pines DESCRIPTION:Daniel Young is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, drummer, sound engineer, and producer from Salt Lake City. He grew up on the side of a tall mountain, and that sense of forceful elevation informs all of his work. Daniel's been recording and performing for over two decades—and he's not that old, which tells you much of what you need to know about his commitment to craft, about how deep this runs with him.\NWho knows? On his soul-stretching, sometimes anguished fourth album, Leave It Out to Dry, Daniel Young finds his way to this question, over and over again. Through a heady stew of psych cowboy laments, Dead-style sideways rambles, and sagebrush pharmaceuticals, Leave It Out to Dry is Young's rawest, most expansive adventure yet. The medium matches the message: Young is looking at the great beyond; Young's music is becoming the great beyond. And, like the man said, sometimes when you stare into the abyss, it returns your gaze. Or sometimes, Young seems to acknowledge, you sing to it and it sounds back.\N The familiar influences are still there—country and western, early-70 r-&-r, observational songwriting á la John Prine—but they are filtered through something gnarlier, more unsettled. In other words, there's an urgency and a ragged edge to many of the cuts here that feels like a breakthrough. "Here Comes the Flood," for instance, finds Young at the edge of a new territory—sonically, spiritually—reaching outward, still reaching. Or the twin-guitar-lead, heavy-mic-bleed of "Help Us Get Along," a horn-driven plea that charges toward solace.\N Tracked mostly live in the basement of Orchard Studio, Leave It Out to Dry adds another length to the winding track of American song and sound that Young has been building for over half his life. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Daniel Young is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, drummer, sound engineer, and producer from Salt Lake City. He grew up on the side of a tall mountain, and that sense of forceful elevation informs all of his work. Daniel's been recording and performing for over two decades—and he's not that old, which tells you much of what you need to know about his commitment to craft, about how deep this runs with him.
Who knows? On his soul-stretching, sometimes anguished fourth album, Leave It Out to Dry, Daniel Young finds his way to this question, over and over again. Through a heady stew of psych cowboy laments, Dead-style sideways rambles, and sagebrush pharmaceuticals, Leave It Out to Dry is Young's rawest, most expansive adventure yet. The medium matches the message: Young is looking at the great beyond; Young's music is becoming the great beyond. And, like the man said, sometimes when you stare into the abyss, it returns your gaze. Or sometimes, Young seems to acknowledge, you sing to it and it sounds back.
The familiar influences are still there—country and western, early-70 r-&-r, observational songwriting á la John Prine—but they are filtered through something gnarlier, more unsettled. In other words, there's an urgency and a ragged edge to many of the cuts here that feels like a breakthrough. "Here Comes the Flood," for instance, finds Young at the edge of a new territory—sonically, spiritually—reaching outward, still reaching. Or the twin-guitar-lead, heavy-mic-bleed of "Help Us Get Along," a horn-driven plea that charges toward solace.
Tracked mostly live in the basement of Orchard Studio, Leave It Out to Dry adds another length to the winding track of American song and sound that Young has been building for over half his life.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240308T170233Z SEQUENCE:259672 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:318 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-03-05 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240508T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240508T210000 UID:570D602A-6210-4530-A0BE-A3AB173729FB SUMMARY:We Three CREATED:20240228T172943Z DTSTAMP:20240228T172943Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/we-three-2 DESCRIPTION:We Three the Oregon alt-pop trio – siblings Manny, Bethany and Joshua Humlie – have already built a passionate global fanbase with their anthemic, emotive and life-affirming songs: they have 1.4 million TikTok followers, an audience they cultivated during the pandemic, and their music has received more than 250 million streams. But "Love Me" is their richest, rawest and hardest-hitting work yet. For frontman and primary songwriter Manny, the album title is a "smallphrase" that gives a "huge insight" into the record's themes. We Three are now a globally popular act selling out shows all over the world, but like so many bands, they started out gigging in and around their hometown – McMinnville, Oregon, a small city 40 miles southwest of Portland. They first came to wider attention in 2018 when they entered 'America's Got Talent' and stormed all the way to the semi-finals. We Three used 'America's Got Talent' as aspringboard and never looked back. They have since released three previous studio albums: 2018's 'We Three,' 2020's 'Dear Paranoia, Sincerely Me' and 2022's 'Happy' – and built a reputation for singing sensitively and insightfully about difficult topics including mental health issues. 'Sara,' their most streamed song to date, is a haunting portrait of a young woman struggling with self-harm, substance abuse and depression. As for the band's collective fantasy: it's simply to continue their forward momentum. "I always want us to move to a bigger level while staying genuine," Manny says. "I want us to grow and I believe this album has the songs that will help us do that. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:We Three the Oregon alt-pop trio – siblings Manny, Bethany and Joshua Humlie – have already built a passionate global fanbase with their anthemic, emotive and life-affirming songs: they have 1.4 million TikTok followers, an audience they cultivated during the pandemic, and their music has received more than 250 million streams. But "Love Me" is their richest, rawest and hardest-hitting work yet. For frontman and primary songwriter Manny, the album title is a "smallphrase" that gives a "huge insight" into the record's themes. We Three are now a globally popular act selling out shows all over the world, but like so many bands, they started out gigging in and around their hometown – McMinnville, Oregon, a small city 40 miles southwest of Portland. They first came to wider attention in 2018 when they entered 'America's Got Talent' and stormed all the way to the semi-finals. We Three used 'America's Got Talent' as aspringboard and never looked back. They have since released three previous studio albums: 2018's 'We Three,' 2020's 'Dear Paranoia, Sincerely Me' and 2022's 'Happy' – and built a reputation for singing sensitively and insightfully about difficult topics including mental health issues. 'Sara,' their most streamed song to date, is a haunting portrait of a young woman struggling with self-harm, substance abuse and depression. As for the band's collective fantasy: it's simply to continue their forward momentum. "I always want us to move to a bigger level while staying genuine," Manny says. "I want us to grow and I believe this album has the songs that will help us do that.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240301T170713Z SEQUENCE:171450 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:332 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-02-28 18:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240509T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240509T210000 UID:A6ADEC6E-6B07-4694-A38C-6F2474A380D7 SUMMARY:LA LOM CREATED:20240226T232846Z DTSTAMP:20240226T232846Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/la-lom DESCRIPTION:The Los Angeles League of Musicians, LA LOM, are an instrumental trio formed in Los Angeles in 2021. They blendthe sounds of Cumbia Sonidera, 60’s soul ballads and classic romantic boleros that emanate from radios, backyardparties and dance clubs of Los Angeles with the twang of Peruvian Chicha and Bakersfield Country. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:The Los Angeles League of Musicians, LA LOM, are an instrumental trio formed in Los Angeles in 2021. They blendthe sounds of Cumbia Sonidera, 60’s soul ballads and classic romantic boleros that emanate from radios, backyardparties and dance clubs of Los Angeles with the twang of Peruvian Chicha and Bakersfield Country.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240301T170657Z SEQUENCE:322691 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:448 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-02-27 16:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240510T213000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240510T223000 UID:39E3A75B-522B-4CC9-9392-61D9FB18A335 SUMMARY:Loom CREATED:20240305T164813Z DTSTAMP:20240305T164813Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/loom DESCRIPTION:Loom is a Salt Lake City, UT based improvisational rock band that weaves together the imagery of cinematic landscapes with the novelty of auditory experimentalism into their live performances. Their music embodies a fusion of funk, jazz, disco, and world influences, captivating audiences and electrifying dance floors. Rooted in the commitment to a vibrant feedback loop with their audience, Loom's shows are never replicated, offering a distinct and communal celebration of the present moment. Loom is Billy Rogan (guitar), Vince DiMichele (bass), Tyler Troy (keyboards) and Carlos Bible (drums). X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Loom is a Salt Lake City, UT based improvisational rock band that weaves together the imagery of cinematic landscapes with the novelty of auditory experimentalism into their live performances. Their music embodies a fusion of funk, jazz, disco, and world influences, captivating audiences and electrifying dance floors. Rooted in the commitment to a vibrant feedback loop with their audience, Loom's shows are never replicated, offering a distinct and communal celebration of the present moment. Loom is Billy Rogan (guitar), Vince DiMichele (bass), Tyler Troy (keyboards) and Carlos Bible (drums).
LAST-MODIFIED:20240308T170219Z SEQUENCE:260046 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:328 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-03-05 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240511T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240511T210000 UID:B99241F2-8F29-46DA-A2A5-CAB407CF2129 SUMMARY:Kaleb Austin CREATED:20240214T182448Z DTSTAMP:20240214T182448Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/kaleb-austin DESCRIPTION:Kaleb Austin grew up in Murray, UT where he cultivated a love for singing and writing country music from a very early age. He began writing his own songs at age 14 and quickly realized he wanted to pursue a career in the music business. In the coming years he would have the chance to share the stage with the likes of JoDee Messina, Billy Currington, Dan+Shay, Brantley Gilbert and Joe Nichols among others. After chasing his dreams for over a decade he finally got his big break through social media. His wife Cheyenne began posting short videos of Kaleb singing to his baby daughter which swiftly gained him a following of almost 2 million people. His following dubbed the “Kampfire” helped him get to Nashville and record his first #1 iTunes single, “Sound of the South” with long time hitmaker Dan Frizsell.\NThis marked a turning point in Kaleb’s life giving his music new wings and earning him the title of “TikTok Country Artist of the Year.” He has since released a full album with several chart topping hits including “Turn the Night On” and “Sun Goes Down.” He currently resides in Salt Lake City where he is preparing for his upcoming tour and is actively writing for his second studio album. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Kaleb Austin grew up in Murray, UT where he cultivated a love for singing and writing country music from a very early age. He began writing his own songs at age 14 and quickly realized he wanted to pursue a career in the music business. In the coming years he would have the chance to share the stage with the likes of JoDee Messina, Billy Currington, Dan+Shay, Brantley Gilbert and Joe Nichols among others. After chasing his dreams for over a decade he finally got his big break through social media. His wife Cheyenne began posting short videos of Kaleb singing to his baby daughter which swiftly gained him a following of almost 2 million people. His following dubbed the “Kampfire” helped him get to Nashville and record his first #1 iTunes single, “Sound of the South” with long time hitmaker Dan Frizsell.
This marked a turning point in Kaleb’s life giving his music new wings and earning him the title of “TikTok Country Artist of the Year.” He has since released a full album with several chart topping hits including “Turn the Night On” and “Sun Goes Down.” He currently resides in Salt Lake City where he is preparing for his upcoming tour and is actively writing for his second studio album.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240221T235834Z SEQUENCE:624826 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:359 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240512T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240512T233000 UID:9C4CFE9B-D39B-4D90-9019-208CCC806662 SUMMARY:Bruce Cockburn CREATED:20230912T210658Z DTSTAMP:20230912T210658Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/bruce-cockburn-2 DESCRIPTION:“My job is to try and trap the spirit of things in the scratches of pen on paper and the pulling of notes out of metal.” – Bruce Cockburn, 2017\NOne of Canada’s finest artists, Bruce Cockburn has enjoyed an illustrious career shaped by politics, spirituality, and musical diversity. The Ottawa-born artist remains deeply respected for his activism on issues from native rights and land mines to the environment and Third World debt, working for organizations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Friends of the Earth. His remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, rock, and worldbeat styles while travelling to such far-flung places as Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique, and Nepal, and writing memorable songs about his ever-expanding world of wonders.\NBruce Cockburn has written more than 400 songs on 35 albums over a career spanning more than 50 years, of which 23 have received gold or platinum certification. His guitar playing, both acoustic and electric, has placed him in the company of the world’s top instrumentalists. He has sold more than nine-million albums worldwide, and has been honoured with 13 JUNO Awards, an induction into both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, as well as the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and he has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada.\NHis commitment to growth has made Bruce Cockburn both an exemplary citizen and a legendary artist whose prized songbook will be celebrated for many years to come. In 2020 Cockburn celebrated his 50-year anniversary as a recording artist. As his producer-friend Colin Linden says: “Like the great blues players he admires, Bruce just gets better with age." X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:“My job is to try and trap the spirit of things in the scratches of pen on paper and the pulling of notes out of metal.” – Bruce Cockburn, 2017
One of Canada’s finest artists, Bruce Cockburn has enjoyed an illustrious career shaped by politics, spirituality, and musical diversity. The Ottawa-born artist remains deeply respected for his activism on issues from native rights and land mines to the environment and Third World debt, working for organizations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Friends of the Earth. His remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, rock, and worldbeat styles while travelling to such far-flung places as Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique, and Nepal, and writing memorable songs about his ever-expanding world of wonders.
Bruce Cockburn has written more than 400 songs on 35 albums over a career spanning more than 50 years, of which 23 have received gold or platinum certification. His guitar playing, both acoustic and electric, has placed him in the company of the world’s top instrumentalists. He has sold more than nine-million albums worldwide, and has been honoured with 13 JUNO Awards, an induction into both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, as well as the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and he has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
His commitment to growth has made Bruce Cockburn both an exemplary citizen and a legendary artist whose prized songbook will be celebrated for many years to come. In 2020 Cockburn celebrated his 50-year anniversary as a recording artist. As his producer-friend Colin Linden says: “Like the great blues players he admires, Bruce just gets better with age."
LAST-MODIFIED:20240130T202149Z SEQUENCE:12093291 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:950 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240517T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240517T210000 UID:30CBF45C-8DE7-4327-A223-C6A7AD0F734A SUMMARY:Zepparella CREATED:20231211T234015Z DTSTAMP:20231211T234015Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/zepparella DESCRIPTION:How to honor the legacy of a band deemed sacred? To tread on holy ground is perilous, and must be done with the intent and spirit of a disciple—Pay attention to the intricacies of the magic, explore the far ends of the innovation, strive for ever-growing ability, and let the purity of the love for the music drive it all.\NDrummer Clementine is the founding member of ZEPPARELLA. From the beginning of her musical career, her goal has been to be onstage every night. The pursuit of that goal has led Clementine to constantly tour the US and Europe in projects as diverse as Bottom, AC/DShe, The House Of More, The Solid, Francis Bakin, Stars Turn Me On and Beaux Cheveux. She tackles the best rock drumming ever written with her own emotionally powerful style, bringing the Motown influence of the Bonham groove to the forefront. The profound musical connection established with Gretchen Menn (guitar), Holly West (bass), and Anna Kristina (vocals) creates the bond required to do this great music justice.\NIt was under the tutelage of classical guitarist Phillip DeFremery, a student of Andrés Segovia, that guitarist Gretchen Menn began her path on the instrument. Playing with tireless passion and constantly seeking out new challenges, her projects are often unconventional, genre-bending expressions combining elements of classical, rock, progressive, jazz, and metal. On influences, Gretchen has never tired of her initial inspirations—Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Frank Zappa, and Jeff Beck. But she has loved Jimmy Page’s guitar playing longer than she has played the guitar. It was through the music of Led Zeppelin that she found a gateway into music that resonated deeply with her, creating a love for guitar-oriented music, and, ultimately, the guitar.\NBassist Holly West began her musical journey full-steam ahead, and more recently than her stellar playing belies. Her unstoppable will and drive have truly propelled her to this moment and her place in the powerhouse Zepparella. A self-taught bass player, she is also a blossoming vocalist with rich rock pipes. Her time on stage has been well spent, developing an impressive attack, impeccable feel, and a technique which seems to have come completely naturally to her, not to mention her dazzling stage presence and joyful performance style. Her influences span the rock gauntlet, from Clutch and the Rival Sons to Slash, ZZ Top, and of course, the mighty Zeppelin.\NSinger Anna Kristina is a soulful, fiery, and rocking vocal powerhouse who has stepped into Zepparella’s Plant spot for a second time. Anna was with the band for 5 years, became known for her performance in the band’s 15 million-view “When The Levee Breaks” video, took a 6-year hiatus, and now returns in 2018 to front the band. Her career has spanned acoustic, jazz, soul, rock, and her charisma and power delivers captivating performances every night. About her brilliant harp playing she says: “getting a chance to blow on the harmonica is an added bonus! Plant isn’t just a singer he’s a musician. He brings his blues background and natural percussive feel to his harmonica playing as well and I love getting lost in that. Playing the harp allows me to express on a whole different level and it’s so freeing.”\NNow more than ever, Zepparella explores their own improvised magic within the framework of Zeppelin’s mighty songs! X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:How to honor the legacy of a band deemed sacred? To tread on holy ground is perilous, and must be done with the intent and spirit of a disciple—Pay attention to the intricacies of the magic, explore the far ends of the innovation, strive for ever-growing ability, and let the purity of the love for the music drive it all.
Drummer Clementine is the founding member of ZEPPARELLA. From the beginning of her musical career, her goal has been to be onstage every night. The pursuit of that goal has led Clementine to constantly tour the US and Europe in projects as diverse as Bottom, AC/DShe, The House Of More, The Solid, Francis Bakin, Stars Turn Me On and Beaux Cheveux. She tackles the best rock drumming ever written with her own emotionally powerful style, bringing the Motown influence of the Bonham groove to the forefront. The profound musical connection established with Gretchen Menn (guitar), Holly West (bass), and Anna Kristina (vocals) creates the bond required to do this great music justice.
It was under the tutelage of classical guitarist Phillip DeFremery, a student of Andrés Segovia, that guitarist Gretchen Menn began her path on the instrument. Playing with tireless passion and constantly seeking out new challenges, her projects are often unconventional, genre-bending expressions combining elements of classical, rock, progressive, jazz, and metal. On influences, Gretchen has never tired of her initial inspirations—Eric Johnson, Steve Morse, Frank Zappa, and Jeff Beck. But she has loved Jimmy Page’s guitar playing longer than she has played the guitar. It was through the music of Led Zeppelin that she found a gateway into music that resonated deeply with her, creating a love for guitar-oriented music, and, ultimately, the guitar.
Bassist Holly West began her musical journey full-steam ahead, and more recently than her stellar playing belies. Her unstoppable will and drive have truly propelled her to this moment and her place in the powerhouse Zepparella. A self-taught bass player, she is also a blossoming vocalist with rich rock pipes. Her time on stage has been well spent, developing an impressive attack, impeccable feel, and a technique which seems to have come completely naturally to her, not to mention her dazzling stage presence and joyful performance style. Her influences span the rock gauntlet, from Clutch and the Rival Sons to Slash, ZZ Top, and of course, the mighty Zeppelin.
Singer Anna Kristina is a soulful, fiery, and rocking vocal powerhouse who has stepped into Zepparella’s Plant spot for a second time. Anna was with the band for 5 years, became known for her performance in the band’s 15 million-view “When The Levee Breaks” video, took a 6-year hiatus, and now returns in 2018 to front the band. Her career has spanned acoustic, jazz, soul, rock, and her charisma and power delivers captivating performances every night. About her brilliant harp playing she says: “getting a chance to blow on the harmonica is an added bonus! Plant isn’t just a singer he’s a musician. He brings his blues background and natural percussive feel to his harmonica playing as well and I love getting lost in that. Playing the harp allows me to express on a whole different level and it’s so freeing.”
Now more than ever, Zepparella explores their own improvised magic within the framework of Zeppelin’s mighty songs!
LAST-MODIFIED:20240130T202248Z SEQUENCE:4308153 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:729 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-12 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240518T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240518T210000 UID:804F65EF-8F34-4FD4-81F9-0CF54A382F6D SUMMARY:J-Rad Cooley CREATED:20240305T191524Z DTSTAMP:20240305T191524Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/j-rad-cooley-2 DESCRIPTION:Young Salt Lake City-based musician J-Rad Cooley is a singer/songwriter, piano player and harmonica player, a unique storyteller with a distinct sense of blues, melody and groove. His soulful songs show his diverse influences from Lightnin’ Hopkins to Ray Charles to The Band, some with a New Orleans twist or a distinct ragtime flavor.\NFor his impressive debut album, YARD SALE, J-Rad got together with Memphis based musician/producer Tony Holiday in Wild Feather Recordings, the Hendersonville, Tennessee studio of Zach Kasik (bassist for Too Slim & the Taildraggers). YARD SALE comprises all original compositions plus one classic cover, with four tracks featuring Grammy nominated piano player Victor Wainwright. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Young Salt Lake City-based musician J-Rad Cooley is a singer/songwriter, piano player and harmonica player, a unique storyteller with a distinct sense of blues, melody and groove. His soulful songs show his diverse influences from Lightnin’ Hopkins to Ray Charles to The Band, some with a New Orleans twist or a distinct ragtime flavor.
For his impressive debut album, YARD SALE, J-Rad got together with Memphis based musician/producer Tony Holiday in Wild Feather Recordings, the Hendersonville, Tennessee studio of Zach Kasik (bassist for Too Slim & the Taildraggers). YARD SALE comprises all original compositions plus one classic cover, with four tracks featuring Grammy nominated piano player Victor Wainwright.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240312T222411Z SEQUENCE:616127 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:231 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240529T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240529T210000 UID:BE28A549-7C04-447A-815F-6DAC5A0368E1 SUMMARY:Cedric Burnside CREATED:20240111T212524Z DTSTAMP:20240111T212524Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/cedric-burnside DESCRIPTION:The official credit tells it like it is. “Recorded in an old building in Ripley, Mississippi” – that’s all the info we get, and all that we need.\NWhen Cedric Burnside prepared to record Hill Country Love, the follow-up to his 2021 Grammy-winning album I Be Trying, he set up shop in a former legal office located in a row of structures in the seat of Tippah County, a town with 5,000 residents that’s known as the birthplace of the Hill Country Blues style.\N“That building was actually going to be my juke joint. Everything was made out of wood, which made the sound resonate like a big wooden box,” said Burnside. He called up producer Luther Dickinson (co-founder of the acclaimed North Mississippi Allstars and the son of legendary Memphis producer/musician Jim Dickinson), who brought recording equipment into the empty space. “We recorded in the middle of a bunch of rubbish – wood everywhere and garbage cans,” Burnside says. “We just laid everything out the way and recorded the album right there.”\NThe 14 songs on the record were finished in two days, but in addition to being satisfied with the sound, Burnside believes that Hill Country Love represents real creative progress. “Every time I write an album, it's always different,” he says. “I'm always looking to express myself a little bit better than I did on the last one and talk about more things happen in my life. I think that every day that you’re able to open your eyes, life is gonna throw you something to write about and to talk about.\N“So on this album,” he continues, “I'm a little bit more upfront and direct, because I went through some crazy feelings with family and with friends. Winning the Grammy was awesome, but people tend to treat you a little different when things like that happen.”\NCertainly, plenty of things have happened in Cedric Burnside’s life since he went on the road at age 13, drumming for his grandfather, the pioneering bluesman R.L. Burnside. His two albums before I Be Trying – 2015’s Descendants of Hill Country and 2018’s Benton County Relic – were both nominated for Grammys. He has also appeared in several films, including Tempted and Big Bad Love (both released in 2001) and the 2006 hit Black Snake Moan, and he played the title character in 2021’s Texas Red.\NBurnside is a recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship, the country’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts and was recently recognized with the 2024 Mississippi Governor's Art Award for Excellence in Music. He has performed and recorded with such diverse musicians as Jimmy Buffett, Bobby Rush, and Widespread Panic.\NYet as the title of the new album indicates, Burnside has never strayed far from the distinctive blues style introduced to the world by his “Big Daddy” R.L. and such other greats as Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Otha Turner. “I’ve been traveling my whole life, and the song ‘Hill Country Love’ gave me a chance to let people know that I love what I do and give a sense of how we do it in Mississippi – like, the house party is a tradition here, Big Daddy threw a lot of them. So that's what I was thinking about as I was writing that song – where I come from and also where I'm going, and how my journey has been to get to where I'm at now.”\NAnother song, “Juke Joint,” pays tribute to the local nightlife institutions that were central to Burnside’s growth both personally and musically. “The juke joint was a big part of my life,” he says. “I didn't go to church, the juke joint was my church, and the juke joint was my school. I was there all the time, from 10 years old until I was grown.”\NAt the same time, Burnside sees himself as an inheritor, not an imitator, of his native region’s blues style. “Big Daddy’s music, Junior’s music, Mister Otha’s music – my music is similar to theirs, but I'm a younger generation,” he says. “Whether we want to or not, we move on, and so my music will automatically sound a little more modern. But even if I tried to sound really modern, that old feel and old sound is just there. You might hear a song and think. ‘Wow, that sounds like it was recorded in 1959.’ I like that, but it's really just me growing up around it and falling in love with that sound.”\NThe album displays rock, R&B, and hip-hop elements, a range of sounds and emotions, from the self-explanatory instrumental “Get Funky” to the harsh truths of “Toll on your Life” and “Coming Real to You.” The most familiar composition is Burnside’s version of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “You Gotta Move,” popularized by the Rolling Stones but often performed by Burnside’s grandfather at his Holly Springs farm. “He would get off the tractor and go sit on the porch and play for a couple hours, drink a little moonshine, and then go back to the tractor,” says Burnside, “and that's one of the songs that I always loved to hear him play.”\NMany have drawn parallels between the polyrhythmic, droning sound of the Hill Country style, with its unpredictable chord progressions and bar counts, to West African music; that link is most obvious on the extended guitar introduction to “Love You Music.” But Burnside never really heard music from that part of the world until a few years ago, when a friend born in Gambia played him a record by Malian artist Ali Farka Toure. “I thought it was some old, underground Junior Kimbrough,” he says. “I was like, ‘Wow, man, I wonder do the Kimbrough family know about this?’ And then he started singing and my friend just started laughing!”\NWith “Closer,” Burnside strives for spiritual redemption; “I fall short on you, Lord, on some days/Please forgive me Lord, every day I pray,” he sings. “That song really resonates to me,” he says. “When I was writing it, I didn't just think about myself, I thought about everybody in the world, and getting closer to God. Every day you wake up, life is challenging, and it throws you all kinds of curveballs. Your faith is tested every day – that line is actually in the song, and I know people can relate to that as I can.”\NTo Cedric Burnside, Hill Country Love is a culmination of a career that’s already seen astonishing accomplishments and only keeps growing. What he wanted this time out was a real sense of honesty and integrity. “I compromised a little bit with my albums in the past,” he says, “and I didn't really have to compromise with this one, because I did it by myself. I paid for the engineer, paid for the musicians, I didn't have a record company there. We just went to play music, and how it came out was how it came out – and it came out great.\N“I have to be true to where I'm coming from,” he continues. “On this album, the feeling that I had was like, I’m going to write what I feel, I’m going to write what's going on. Life gives you good and life gives you bad and you have to cope with it however you need to cope with it. My way of coping with things is through my music, so I thank the Lord for music. I really do.” X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:The official credit tells it like it is. “Recorded in an old building in Ripley, Mississippi” – that’s all the info we get, and all that we need.
When Cedric Burnside prepared to record Hill Country Love, the follow-up to his 2021 Grammy-winning album I Be Trying, he set up shop in a former legal office located in a row of structures in the seat of Tippah County, a town with 5,000 residents that’s known as the birthplace of the Hill Country Blues style.
“That building was actually going to be my juke joint. Everything was made out of wood, which made the sound resonate like a big wooden box,” said Burnside. He called up producer Luther Dickinson (co-founder of the acclaimed North Mississippi Allstars and the son of legendary Memphis producer/musician Jim Dickinson), who brought recording equipment into the empty space. “We recorded in the middle of a bunch of rubbish – wood everywhere and garbage cans,” Burnside says. “We just laid everything out the way and recorded the album right there.”
The 14 songs on the record were finished in two days, but in addition to being satisfied with the sound, Burnside believes that Hill Country Love represents real creative progress. “Every time I write an album, it's always different,” he says. “I'm always looking to express myself a little bit better than I did on the last one and talk about more things happen in my life. I think that every day that you’re able to open your eyes, life is gonna throw you something to write about and to talk about.
“So on this album,” he continues, “I'm a little bit more upfront and direct, because I went through some crazy feelings with family and with friends. Winning the Grammy was awesome, but people tend to treat you a little different when things like that happen.”
Certainly, plenty of things have happened in Cedric Burnside’s life since he went on the road at age 13, drumming for his grandfather, the pioneering bluesman R.L. Burnside. His two albums before I Be Trying – 2015’s Descendants of Hill Country and 2018’s Benton County Relic – were both nominated for Grammys. He has also appeared in several films, including Tempted and Big Bad Love (both released in 2001) and the 2006 hit Black Snake Moan, and he played the title character in 2021’s Texas Red.
Burnside is a recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship, the country’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts and was recently recognized with the 2024 Mississippi Governor's Art Award for Excellence in Music. He has performed and recorded with such diverse musicians as Jimmy Buffett, Bobby Rush, and Widespread Panic.
Yet as the title of the new album indicates, Burnside has never strayed far from the distinctive blues style introduced to the world by his “Big Daddy” R.L. and such other greats as Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Otha Turner. “I’ve been traveling my whole life, and the song ‘Hill Country Love’ gave me a chance to let people know that I love what I do and give a sense of how we do it in Mississippi – like, the house party is a tradition here, Big Daddy threw a lot of them. So that's what I was thinking about as I was writing that song – where I come from and also where I'm going, and how my journey has been to get to where I'm at now.”
Another song, “Juke Joint,” pays tribute to the local nightlife institutions that were central to Burnside’s growth both personally and musically. “The juke joint was a big part of my life,” he says. “I didn't go to church, the juke joint was my church, and the juke joint was my school. I was there all the time, from 10 years old until I was grown.”
At the same time, Burnside sees himself as an inheritor, not an imitator, of his native region’s blues style. “Big Daddy’s music, Junior’s music, Mister Otha’s music – my music is similar to theirs, but I'm a younger generation,” he says. “Whether we want to or not, we move on, and so my music will automatically sound a little more modern. But even if I tried to sound really modern, that old feel and old sound is just there. You might hear a song and think. ‘Wow, that sounds like it was recorded in 1959.’ I like that, but it's really just me growing up around it and falling in love with that sound.”
The album displays rock, R&B, and hip-hop elements, a range of sounds and emotions, from the self-explanatory instrumental “Get Funky” to the harsh truths of “Toll on your Life” and “Coming Real to You.” The most familiar composition is Burnside’s version of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “You Gotta Move,” popularized by the Rolling Stones but often performed by Burnside’s grandfather at his Holly Springs farm. “He would get off the tractor and go sit on the porch and play for a couple hours, drink a little moonshine, and then go back to the tractor,” says Burnside, “and that's one of the songs that I always loved to hear him play.”
Many have drawn parallels between the polyrhythmic, droning sound of the Hill Country style, with its unpredictable chord progressions and bar counts, to West African music; that link is most obvious on the extended guitar introduction to “Love You Music.” But Burnside never really heard music from that part of the world until a few years ago, when a friend born in Gambia played him a record by Malian artist Ali Farka Toure. “I thought it was some old, underground Junior Kimbrough,” he says. “I was like, ‘Wow, man, I wonder do the Kimbrough family know about this?’ And then he started singing and my friend just started laughing!”
With “Closer,” Burnside strives for spiritual redemption; “I fall short on you, Lord, on some days/Please forgive me Lord, every day I pray,” he sings. “That song really resonates to me,” he says. “When I was writing it, I didn't just think about myself, I thought about everybody in the world, and getting closer to God. Every day you wake up, life is challenging, and it throws you all kinds of curveballs. Your faith is tested every day – that line is actually in the song, and I know people can relate to that as I can.”
To Cedric Burnside, Hill Country Love is a culmination of a career that’s already seen astonishing accomplishments and only keeps growing. What he wanted this time out was a real sense of honesty and integrity. “I compromised a little bit with my albums in the past,” he says, “and I didn't really have to compromise with this one, because I did it by myself. I paid for the engineer, paid for the musicians, I didn't have a record company there. We just went to play music, and how it came out was how it came out – and it came out great.
“I have to be true to where I'm coming from,” he continues. “On this album, the feeling that I had was like, I’m going to write what I feel, I’m going to write what's going on. Life gives you good and life gives you bad and you have to cope with it however you need to cope with it. My way of coping with things is through my music, so I thank the Lord for music. I really do.”
LAST-MODIFIED:20240308T235749Z SEQUENCE:4933945 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:423 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-01-12 18:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240531T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240531T210000 UID:89912E96-B91E-456C-8B52-3B413FC0215C SUMMARY:Sinkane CREATED:20240122T171232Z DTSTAMP:20240122T171232Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/sinkane DESCRIPTION:We Belong, is the eighth studio album from Sinkane, a band led by multi-instrumentalist Ahmed Gallab. And like much of Sinkane’s previous releases, it resists genre. It’s pop. It’s funk. It’s electronic. It blends the gritty punk newness of a 70s and 80s New York with the steady, foundational soul of the rhythms of his native Sudan. Though We Belong comes deep into the catalog of a long career, it also resists stagnation. It moves and travels—through words and eras, through emotion and healing. It is a kind of rebirth for Gallab, who began releasing music under the Sinkane moniker in 2007. \NThough it can be painful, it can be cathartic to revisit the past; this album is both. Because to be Black in America is to know great suffering and great joy. “I made this album as my love letter to Black music,” Gallab says. Each song is addressed to a different era, a different form: the gospel-soaked “Everything Is Everything,” the dreamy, Quiet Storm-influenced Afro-beats of “Rise Above,” the 70s-funk of “We Belong” and its Sly Stone influence, the Stevie Wonder-edged “Another Day”—they tell a story about Black music and Black people.\N“A musical community exists in New York, a specific kind of Black musical community,” Gallab says. We Belong assembles them, makes them visible, not just to each other but to anyone willing to see, to hear, to feel. Gallab and Amanda Khiri, co-lyricist on most of the songs, passed notes across the digital divide. Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Ismael Reed, scraps of poetry. The pair turned these late-night ideas into fully realized compositions. Casey Benjamin, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with jazz pianist Robert Glasper, left his touch on several tracks. Jazz trumpeter Kenyatta Beasley soared across three songs. Soul singer Bilal lent his voice. Rising artists like vocalists Ifedayo Gatling, of the Harlem Gospel Travelers, Tru Osbourne, Hollie Cook and STOUT, joined this community as well.\NAll of this is by design. Gallab wanted to lead and allow himself to be led. “Having all these people at my disposal [meant] I could actually be a producer,” he says. “I could zoom out a little bit and see what serves the song best. How can I make this better? Having a community around me really just allowed this to turn into something bigger than I could have ever imagined.”\NSinkane had long been the solitary vision of its creator, melding the classic American sounds mingling in his head—rock, jazz, soul, pop—with the syncopated rhythms of Africa to create his own Afrofuturistic vision. But for this album, the idea of a single voice no longer felt right. The methods that once felt natural now felt heavy, an old way tethered to old sounds. Gallab’s longing to reshape what a “Sinkane song” could be required rethinking fundamental ideas about music and collaboration. He returned to school, at SUNY Purchase, and earned a masters in composition; on the way, he learned new ways. “We are hardwired for connection, and we want to communicate with each other,” Gallab says. And as much as this is an album displaying his new ways of thinking and creating, it is also about connections. Between musicians. Between cultures. Between sounds. Between histories.\NLetting go of the urge to create alone has led to beautiful things for Gallab in the past, including his stint leading the Atomic Bomb! Band, a tribute band celebrating the work of Nigerian funk musician, William Onyeabor. The project included notables such as Pharoah Sanders, David Byrne, Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz), and Dev Hynes, among many others. He found it essential for We Belong, as well. “Collaborating doesn't mean you're losing a part of you, you're only showcasing more of a very beautiful part of you,” Gallab says. “And once I was able to understand how to move away from that it allowed this process to work a lot easier, and it allowed me to really understand myself.” Gallab reached out to a frequent collaborator, producer Money Mark (who produced for the Beastie Boys and Beck), who helped him understand more about the journey his music was about to take.\NReturning to the classroom not only honed Gallab’s composition skills, but his listening skills too. Each week, he’d bring a new song to his instructor: old favorites from David Bowie, John Coltrane, and Herbie Hancock. They’d listen together and hear the notes anew. It not only deepened his understanding of how music worked, but how he worked. It vastly expanded the definition of what a Sinkane song could be. He started writing new material. “We'd lock in on one song and spend two or three weeks on a song,” Gallab says. “And by the end of the year, I had thirty-plus songs in demo form.”\NWhen the last note fades on this album, there’s hope. The we of the title is all of us. All of us who have lost and found community. All of us who have reached into the past to find our future. But, Gallab says, the “we” is also Black people. It’s his message to a culture, to a history, to a people. “I think We Belong ultimately turned into, ‘This is about us, this is about all of us.’ And we all feel the same thing about how the world responds to us, and how we feel like second class citizens, and how a lot of people try to tell us all of the time that we don't belong, in one way, shape, or form,” he says.\N“In making this album, I realized very quickly that I got a lot of freedom in not making it about myself,” Gallab says. “I realized I'm more than just me, there's all of us, all of us together. It's much more about community and much more about connecting with other people. But maybe, that's how I've kind of come to find myself.”\NShort bio:\NWe Belong, is the eighth studio album from Sinkane, a band led by multi-instrumentalist Ahmed Gallab. And like much of Sinkane’s previous releases, it resists genre. It’s pop. It’s funk. It’s electronic. It blends the gritty punk newness of a 70s and 80s New York with the steady, foundational soul of the rhythms of his native Sudan. Though We Belong comes deep into the catalog of a long career, it also resists stagnation. It moves and travels—through words and eras, through emotion and healing. Gallab calls this album his “love letter to Black music,” and each track pulses with the energy of different eras and forms: the gospel-soaked “Everything Is Everything,” the dreamy, Quiet Storm-influenced Afro-beats of “Rise Above,” the 70s-funk of “We Belong” and its Sly Stone influence, the Stevie Wonder-edged “Another Day”—they tell a story about Black music and Black people.\NThe album itself also reveals Gallab’s desire to create a work that not only reflected a community, but was made by one, too. We Belong assembles this community, makes it visible, to anyone willing to see, to hear, to feel. Gallab and Amanda Khiri, co-lyricist on most of the songs, passed notes across the digital divide. Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Ismael Reed, scraps of poetry. The pair turned these late-night ideas into fully realized compositions. Casey Benjamin, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with jazz pianist Robert Glasper, left his touch on several tracks. Jazz trumpeter Kenyatta Beasley soared across three songs. Soul singer Bilal lent his voice. Rising artists like vocalists Ifedayo Gatling, of the Harlem Gospel Travelers, Tru Osbourne, Hollie Cook, and STOUT, joined this community as well.\NWhat had long been a solo endeavor by Gallab, suddenly became a collaborative experience. “Having all these people at my disposal [meant] I could actually be a producer,” he says. “I could zoom out a little bit and see what serves the song best? How can I make this better? Having a community around me really just allowed this to turn into something bigger than I could have ever imagined.”\NThe result is an album that showcases freedom, in all its forms. Freedom to create, to move, to love, to live. The we of the title is all of us. All of us who have lost and found community. All of us who have reached into the past to find our future. And ultimately, it is the sound of an artist finding his way back to himself by stretching beyond himself. “In making this album, I realized very quickly that I got a lot of freedom in not making it about myself,” Gallab says. “I realized I'm more than just me, there's all of us, all of us together. It's much more about community and much more about connecting with other people. But maybe, that's how I've kind of come to find myself.” X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:We Belong, is the eighth studio album from Sinkane, a band led by multi-instrumentalist Ahmed Gallab. And like much of Sinkane’s previous releases, it resists genre. It’s pop. It’s funk. It’s electronic. It blends the gritty punk newness of a 70s and 80s New York with the steady, foundational soul of the rhythms of his native Sudan. Though We Belong comes deep into the catalog of a long career, it also resists stagnation. It moves and travels—through words and eras, through emotion and healing. It is a kind of rebirth for Gallab, who began releasing music under the Sinkane moniker in 2007.
Though it can be painful, it can be cathartic to revisit the past; this album is both. Because to be Black in America is to know great suffering and great joy. “I made this album as my love letter to Black music,” Gallab says. Each song is addressed to a different era, a different form: the gospel-soaked “Everything Is Everything,” the dreamy, Quiet Storm-influenced Afro-beats of “Rise Above,” the 70s-funk of “We Belong” and its Sly Stone influence, the Stevie Wonder-edged “Another Day”—they tell a story about Black music and Black people.
“A musical community exists in New York, a specific kind of Black musical community,” Gallab says. We Belong assembles them, makes them visible, not just to each other but to anyone willing to see, to hear, to feel. Gallab and Amanda Khiri, co-lyricist on most of the songs, passed notes across the digital divide. Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Ismael Reed, scraps of poetry. The pair turned these late-night ideas into fully realized compositions. Casey Benjamin, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with jazz pianist Robert Glasper, left his touch on several tracks. Jazz trumpeter Kenyatta Beasley soared across three songs. Soul singer Bilal lent his voice. Rising artists like vocalists Ifedayo Gatling, of the Harlem Gospel Travelers, Tru Osbourne, Hollie Cook and STOUT, joined this community as well.
All of this is by design. Gallab wanted to lead and allow himself to be led. “Having all these people at my disposal [meant] I could actually be a producer,” he says. “I could zoom out a little bit and see what serves the song best. How can I make this better? Having a community around me really just allowed this to turn into something bigger than I could have ever imagined.”
Sinkane had long been the solitary vision of its creator, melding the classic American sounds mingling in his head—rock, jazz, soul, pop—with the syncopated rhythms of Africa to create his own Afrofuturistic vision. But for this album, the idea of a single voice no longer felt right. The methods that once felt natural now felt heavy, an old way tethered to old sounds. Gallab’s longing to reshape what a “Sinkane song” could be required rethinking fundamental ideas about music and collaboration. He returned to school, at SUNY Purchase, and earned a masters in composition; on the way, he learned new ways. “We are hardwired for connection, and we want to communicate with each other,” Gallab says. And as much as this is an album displaying his new ways of thinking and creating, it is also about connections. Between musicians. Between cultures. Between sounds. Between histories.
Letting go of the urge to create alone has led to beautiful things for Gallab in the past, including his stint leading the Atomic Bomb! Band, a tribute band celebrating the work of Nigerian funk musician, William Onyeabor. The project included notables such as Pharoah Sanders, David Byrne, Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz), and Dev Hynes, among many others. He found it essential for We Belong, as well. “Collaborating doesn't mean you're losing a part of you, you're only showcasing more of a very beautiful part of you,” Gallab says. “And once I was able to understand how to move away from that it allowed this process to work a lot easier, and it allowed me to really understand myself.” Gallab reached out to a frequent collaborator, producer Money Mark (who produced for the Beastie Boys and Beck), who helped him understand more about the journey his music was about to take.
Returning to the classroom not only honed Gallab’s composition skills, but his listening skills too. Each week, he’d bring a new song to his instructor: old favorites from David Bowie, John Coltrane, and Herbie Hancock. They’d listen together and hear the notes anew. It not only deepened his understanding of how music worked, but how he worked. It vastly expanded the definition of what a Sinkane song could be. He started writing new material. “We'd lock in on one song and spend two or three weeks on a song,” Gallab says. “And by the end of the year, I had thirty-plus songs in demo form.”
When the last note fades on this album, there’s hope. The we of the title is all of us. All of us who have lost and found community. All of us who have reached into the past to find our future. But, Gallab says, the “we” is also Black people. It’s his message to a culture, to a history, to a people. “I think We Belong ultimately turned into, ‘This is about us, this is about all of us.’ And we all feel the same thing about how the world responds to us, and how we feel like second class citizens, and how a lot of people try to tell us all of the time that we don't belong, in one way, shape, or form,” he says.
“In making this album, I realized very quickly that I got a lot of freedom in not making it about myself,” Gallab says. “I realized I'm more than just me, there's all of us, all of us together. It's much more about community and much more about connecting with other people. But maybe, that's how I've kind of come to find myself.”
Short bio:
We Belong, is the eighth studio album from Sinkane, a band led by multi-instrumentalist Ahmed Gallab. And like much of Sinkane’s previous releases, it resists genre. It’s pop. It’s funk. It’s electronic. It blends the gritty punk newness of a 70s and 80s New York with the steady, foundational soul of the rhythms of his native Sudan. Though We Belong comes deep into the catalog of a long career, it also resists stagnation. It moves and travels—through words and eras, through emotion and healing. Gallab calls this album his “love letter to Black music,” and each track pulses with the energy of different eras and forms: the gospel-soaked “Everything Is Everything,” the dreamy, Quiet Storm-influenced Afro-beats of “Rise Above,” the 70s-funk of “We Belong” and its Sly Stone influence, the Stevie Wonder-edged “Another Day”—they tell a story about Black music and Black people.
The album itself also reveals Gallab’s desire to create a work that not only reflected a community, but was made by one, too. We Belong assembles this community, makes it visible, to anyone willing to see, to hear, to feel. Gallab and Amanda Khiri, co-lyricist on most of the songs, passed notes across the digital divide. Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Ismael Reed, scraps of poetry. The pair turned these late-night ideas into fully realized compositions. Casey Benjamin, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with jazz pianist Robert Glasper, left his touch on several tracks. Jazz trumpeter Kenyatta Beasley soared across three songs. Soul singer Bilal lent his voice. Rising artists like vocalists Ifedayo Gatling, of the Harlem Gospel Travelers, Tru Osbourne, Hollie Cook, and STOUT, joined this community as well.
What had long been a solo endeavor by Gallab, suddenly became a collaborative experience. “Having all these people at my disposal [meant] I could actually be a producer,” he says. “I could zoom out a little bit and see what serves the song best? How can I make this better? Having a community around me really just allowed this to turn into something bigger than I could have ever imagined.”
The result is an album that showcases freedom, in all its forms. Freedom to create, to move, to love, to live. The we of the title is all of us. All of us who have lost and found community. All of us who have reached into the past to find our future. And ultimately, it is the sound of an artist finding his way back to himself by stretching beyond himself. “In making this album, I realized very quickly that I got a lot of freedom in not making it about myself,” Gallab says. “I realized I'm more than just me, there's all of us, all of us together. It's much more about community and much more about connecting with other people. But maybe, that's how I've kind of come to find myself.”
LAST-MODIFIED:20240222T001122Z SEQUENCE:2617130 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:196 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-01-23 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240621T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240621T210000 UID:328955CB-6B7A-4540-8664-D3F68C6B7C3D SUMMARY:Pigs On The Wing CREATED:20240319T160150Z DTSTAMP:20240319T160150Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/pigs-on-the-wing DESCRIPTION:“...(Pigs on the Wing) is fearless when experimenting with sound in the proper temperament of psychedelia”\N- David Victor, TOP TEN PINK FLOYD TRIBUTE BANDS 2/27/23 \N“Capturing what made Pink Floyd iconic is a hard thing to do, and Pigs on the Wing comes as close as anyone we’ve heard. That looming mystique, that inscrutable grandiosity......Those qualities are alive and well with Pigs on the Wing.” \N- Adam McKinney, OLY ARTS 5/10/17 \NFrom its garage-rock roots in 2006 as a one-off show, to full album productions and performing for thousands of fans each year, Portland Oregon-based Pigs on the Wing has built a loyal following dedicated to the band’s high-energy take on Pink Floyd’s music. All members of Pigs on the Wing are seasoned veterans of the Pacific NW rock scene and are unapologetic in bringing their wide-ranging musical influences to the table. Setting the band aside from other tribute rock acts, Pigs on the Wing balances a decidedly un-tribute-like attitude towards the music with precision to detail and a deep understanding of the importance of Pink Floyd's music in many fans' lives. \NAmongst the band’s accomplishments, Pigs on the Wing has in recent years featured full album performances of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall and was recently ranked the #4 Pink Floyd tribute worldwide. None are bigger fans of the work of Pink Floyd than the members of Pigs on the Wing themselves, a dedication which has been foremost in the band’s approach since the very beginning. \NPigs on the Wing’s 2023-2024 tour, “A Pink Floyd Retrospective”, will feature a meticulously curated collection of the very best of classic-era Pink Floyd cuts organized into 2 distinct sets. Rather than performing a single album from start to end, expect to hear the band focus on their favorite sections of the classic albums, including hits, deep cuts, and the band’s trademark willingness to explore the sonic space in experimental improvisation. Concert-goers can expect an immersive visual show in a don’t-miss event for any Pink Floyd fan! \NPigs on the Wing is: Eric Welder (bass / vocals); Matt Jones ( keys / vocals); Bryan Fairfield ( drums); Holly Brooks ( vocals); Dave Lindenbaum ( guitar / vocals) Jason Baker ( guitar / vocals); Matt Sulikowski (sax) X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:“...(Pigs on the Wing) is fearless when experimenting with sound in the proper temperament of psychedelia”
- David Victor, TOP TEN PINK FLOYD TRIBUTE BANDS 2/27/23
“Capturing what made Pink Floyd iconic is a hard thing to do, and Pigs on the Wing comes as close as anyone we’ve heard. That looming mystique, that inscrutable grandiosity......Those qualities are alive and well with Pigs on the Wing.”
- Adam McKinney, OLY ARTS 5/10/17
From its garage-rock roots in 2006 as a one-off show, to full album productions and performing for thousands of fans each year, Portland Oregon-based Pigs on the Wing has built a loyal following dedicated to the band’s high-energy take on Pink Floyd’s music. All members of Pigs on the Wing are seasoned veterans of the Pacific NW rock scene and are unapologetic in bringing their wide-ranging musical influences to the table. Setting the band aside from other tribute rock acts, Pigs on the Wing balances a decidedly un-tribute-like attitude towards the music with precision to detail and a deep understanding of the importance of Pink Floyd's music in many fans' lives.
Amongst the band’s accomplishments, Pigs on the Wing has in recent years featured full album performances of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall and was recently ranked the #4 Pink Floyd tribute worldwide. None are bigger fans of the work of Pink Floyd than the members of Pigs on the Wing themselves, a dedication which has been foremost in the band’s approach since the very beginning.
Pigs on the Wing’s 2023-2024 tour, “A Pink Floyd Retrospective”, will feature a meticulously curated collection of the very best of classic-era Pink Floyd cuts organized into 2 distinct sets. Rather than performing a single album from start to end, expect to hear the band focus on their favorite sections of the classic albums, including hits, deep cuts, and the band’s trademark willingness to explore the sonic space in experimental improvisation. Concert-goers can expect an immersive visual show in a don’t-miss event for any Pink Floyd fan!
Pigs on the Wing is: Eric Welder (bass / vocals); Matt Jones ( keys / vocals); Bryan Fairfield ( drums); Holly Brooks ( vocals); Dave Lindenbaum ( guitar / vocals) Jason Baker ( guitar / vocals); Matt Sulikowski (sax)
LAST-MODIFIED:20240322T160414Z SEQUENCE:259344 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:1046 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240625T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240625T210000 UID:17259AB7-8062-4641-A5E3-99D17F0E3CCD SUMMARY:James McMurtry CREATED:20240311T232446Z DTSTAMP:20240311T232446Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/james-mcmurtry-2 DESCRIPTION:In James McMurtry’s new effort, The Horses and the Hounds, the acclaimed songwriter backs personal narratives with effortless elegance (“Canola Fields”) and endless energy (“If It Don’t Bleed”). This first collection in seven years, due August 20 on New West Records, spotlights a seasoned tunesmith in peak form as he turns toward reflection (“Vaquero”) and revelation ( closer “Blackberry Winter”). Familiar foundations guide the journey. “There’s a definite Los Angeles vibe to this record,” McMurtry says. “The ghost of Warren Zevon seems to be stomping around among the guitar tracks. Don’t know how he got in there. He never signed on for work for hire.”The Horses and the Hounds is a reunion of sorts. McMurtry recorded the new album with legendary producer Ross Hogarth (Ozzy Osbourne, John Fogerty, Van Halen, Keb’ Mo’) at Jackson Browne’s Groovemaster’s in Santa Monica, California, a world class studio that has housed such legends as Bob Dylan (2012’s Tempest) and David Crosby (2016’s Lighthouse) as well as Browne himself for I’m Alive (1993) and New Found Glory, Coming Home (2006). McMurtry and Hogarth first worked together 30 years ago, when Hogarth was a recording engineer in the employ of John Mellencamp at Mellencamp’s own Belmont Studios near Bloomington, Indiana.\NHogarth recorded McMurtry’s first two albums, Too Long in the Wasteland and Candyland, for Columbia Records and later mixed McMurtry’s first self-produced album, Saint Mary of the Woods, for Sugar Hill Records. Another veteran of those three releases, guitarist David Grissom (Joe Ely, John Mellencamp, Dixie Chicks), returns with some of his finest work.Accordingly, the new collection marks another upward trajectory: The Horses and the Hounds will be McMurtry’s debut album on genre-defining Americana record label New West Records (Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Lucinda Williams, John Hiatt, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Buddy Miller, dozens more).“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.” \NMcMurtry perfectly fits a label housing “artists who perform real music for real people.” After all, No Depression says of the literate songwriter’s most recent collection, Complicated Game: “Lyrically, the album is wise and adventurous, with McMurtry — who’s not prone to autobiographical tales — credibly inhabiting characters from all walks of life.” “[McMurtry] fuses wry, literate observations about the world with the snarl of barroom rock,” National Public Radio says. “The result is at times sardonic, subversive and funny, but often vulnerable and always poignant.”His lauded storytelling — check out songs such as “Operation Never Mind” and “Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call” on The Horse and the Hounds— consistently has turned heads for decades now. “James writes like he’s lived a lifetime,” said John Mellencamp back in 1989, when Too Long in the Wasteland hit the Billboard 200. “James McMurtry is one of my very few favorite songwriters on Earth and these days he’s working at the top of his game,” says Americana all-star Jason Isbell. “He has that rare gift of being able to make a listener laugh out loud at one line and choke up at the next. I don’t think anybody writes better lyrics.” McMurtry’s albums Just Us Kids (2008) and Childish Things (2005) back the claim, each scoring endless critical praise. The former earned McMurtry his highest Billboard 200 chart position in two decades (since eclipsed by Complicated Game) and notched Americana Music Award nominations. Childish Things spent six full weeks topping the Americana Music Radio chart in 2005 and 2006, and won the Americana Music Association’s Album of the Year, with “We Can’t Make It Here” named the organization’s Song of the Year.\N Other accolades include a 1996 Grammy nomination for Long Form Music Video for Where’d You Hide the Body and an American Indie Award for Best Americana Album for It Had to Happen (1997). McMurtry tours year-round and consistently throws down unparalleled powerhouse performances, reflected in the release of two live discs: the universally lauded Live in Aught-Three on Compadre Records, and 2009’s Live in Europe, which captured the McMurtry band’s first European tour and extraordinary live set. Along with seasoned band members Ronnie Johnson, Daren Hess, and Tim Holt, Live in Europe features special guests Ian McLagan (Faces) and Jon Dee Graham (True Believers, Skunks). (Video of the performance is available on the included DVD.) X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:In James McMurtry’s new effort, The Horses and the Hounds, the acclaimed songwriter backs personal narratives with effortless elegance (“Canola Fields”) and endless energy (“If It Don’t Bleed”). This first collection in seven years, due August 20 on New West Records, spotlights a seasoned tunesmith in peak form as he turns toward reflection (“Vaquero”) and revelation ( closer “Blackberry Winter”). Familiar foundations guide the journey. “There’s a definite Los Angeles vibe to this record,” McMurtry says. “The ghost of Warren Zevon seems to be stomping around among the guitar tracks. Don’t know how he got in there. He never signed on for work for hire.”The Horses and the Hounds is a reunion of sorts. McMurtry recorded the new album with legendary producer Ross Hogarth (Ozzy Osbourne, John Fogerty, Van Halen, Keb’ Mo’) at Jackson Browne’s Groovemaster’s in Santa Monica, California, a world class studio that has housed such legends as Bob Dylan (2012’s Tempest) and David Crosby (2016’s Lighthouse) as well as Browne himself for I’m Alive (1993) and New Found Glory, Coming Home (2006). McMurtry and Hogarth first worked together 30 years ago, when Hogarth was a recording engineer in the employ of John Mellencamp at Mellencamp’s own Belmont Studios near Bloomington, Indiana.
Hogarth recorded McMurtry’s first two albums, Too Long in the Wasteland and Candyland, for Columbia Records and later mixed McMurtry’s first self-produced album, Saint Mary of the Woods, for Sugar Hill Records. Another veteran of those three releases, guitarist David Grissom (Joe Ely, John Mellencamp, Dixie Chicks), returns with some of his finest work.Accordingly, the new collection marks another upward trajectory: The Horses and the Hounds will be McMurtry’s debut album on genre-defining Americana record label New West Records (Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Lucinda Williams, John Hiatt, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Buddy Miller, dozens more).“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 perfectly fits a label housing “artists who perform real music for real people.” After all, No Depression says of the literate songwriter’s most recent collection, Complicated Game: “Lyrically, the album is wise and adventurous, with McMurtry — who’s not prone to autobiographical tales — credibly inhabiting characters from all walks of life.” “[McMurtry] fuses wry, literate observations about the world with the snarl of barroom rock,” National Public Radio says. “The result is at times sardonic, subversive and funny, but often vulnerable and always poignant.”His lauded storytelling — check out songs such as “Operation Never Mind” and “Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call” on The Horse and the Hounds— consistently has turned heads for decades now. “James writes like he’s lived a lifetime,” said John Mellencamp back in 1989, when Too Long in the Wasteland hit the Billboard 200. “James McMurtry is one of my very few favorite songwriters on Earth and these days he’s working at the top of his game,” says Americana all-star Jason Isbell. “He has that rare gift of being able to make a listener laugh out loud at one line and choke up at the next. I don’t think anybody writes better lyrics.” McMurtry’s albums Just Us Kids (2008) and Childish Things (2005) back the claim, each scoring endless critical praise. The former earned McMurtry his highest Billboard 200 chart position in two decades (since eclipsed by Complicated Game) and notched Americana Music Award nominations. Childish Things spent six full weeks topping the Americana Music Radio chart in 2005 and 2006, and won the Americana Music Association’s Album of the Year, with “We Can’t Make It Here” named the organization’s Song of the Year.
Other accolades include a 1996 Grammy nomination for Long Form Music Video for Where’d You Hide the Body and an American Indie Award for Best Americana Album for It Had to Happen (1997). McMurtry tours year-round and consistently throws down unparalleled powerhouse performances, reflected in the release of two live discs: the universally lauded Live in Aught-Three on Compadre Records, and 2009’s Live in Europe, which captured the McMurtry band’s first European tour and extraordinary live set. Along with seasoned band members Ronnie Johnson, Daren Hess, and Tim Holt, Live in Europe features special guests Ian McLagan (Faces) and Jon Dee Graham (True Believers, Skunks). (Video of the performance is available on the included DVD.)
LAST-MODIFIED:20240319T211445Z SEQUENCE:683399 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:434 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-03-12 16:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240628T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240628T210000 UID:303E90C2-A71F-43FD-8DEE-E9BAA4462C3D SUMMARY:Lamont Landers CREATED:20240320T155947Z DTSTAMP:20240320T155947Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/lamont-landers DESCRIPTION:Born and raised in Alabama, Lamont Landers grew up absorbing the soulful sounds of the South that surrounded him. At the age of 14, he taught himself how to play guitar, and, at the age of 19, began singing. He spent years quietly honing his talents behind his bedroom doors, listening to records by Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Sly & The Family Stone, and Ray Charles on repeat. At the age of 22, a candid video recorded by his sister of Lamont performing the Ray Charles’ classic “Hit the Road Jack” went viral on YouTube and garnered over 400,000 views overnight. In the summer of 2023, history repeated itself with similar enthusiastic fan response propelling five Lamont Landers TikTok videos to over 1,000,000 views each. A feature on the Bobby Bones nationally syndicated radio show and shoutouts from music tastemakers ranging from Snoop Dogg to Questlove soon followed. No longer a secret of North Alabama, Lamont will be touring throughout North America in 2024. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Born and raised in Alabama, Lamont Landers grew up absorbing the soulful sounds of the South that surrounded him. At the age of 14, he taught himself how to play guitar, and, at the age of 19, began singing. He spent years quietly honing his talents behind his bedroom doors, listening to records by Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Sly & The Family Stone, and Ray Charles on repeat. At the age of 22, a candid video recorded by his sister of Lamont performing the Ray Charles’ classic “Hit the Road Jack” went viral on YouTube and garnered over 400,000 views overnight. In the summer of 2023, history repeated itself with similar enthusiastic fan response propelling five Lamont Landers TikTok videos to over 1,000,000 views each. A feature on the Bobby Bones nationally syndicated radio show and shoutouts from music tastemakers ranging from Snoop Dogg to Questlove soon followed. No longer a secret of North Alabama, Lamont will be touring throughout North America in 2024.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240322T160429Z SEQUENCE:173082 X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:135 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20240922T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20240922T233000 UID:F59FF0BF-9DFE-4AED-BA08-F49B8F0BAED1 SUMMARY:Hoodoo Gurus CREATED:20231204T165708Z DTSTAMP:20231204T165708Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/hoodoo-gurus-2 DESCRIPTION:Formed in Sydney in 1981, the band were led by singer/songwriter Dave Faulkner, along with drummer James Baker. Ex-Scientist Rod Radalj and Kimble Rendall rounded out the group's lineup and their unique sound (three guitars, no bass). With Faulkner's infectious songs they quickly earned a record deal. After the 1982 debut single "Leilani," both Radalj and Rendall quit, replaced by guitarist Brad Shepherd and bassist Clyde Bramley. In 1983, the Hoodoo Gurus recorded their excellent debut record, Stoneage Romeos. Mark Kingsmill replaced Baker in 1985 but along came 1985's college radio smash Mars Needs Guitars! With 1987's Blow Your Cool, the Hoodoos appeared poised for the big time; their tourmates, the Bangles, even contributed to the singles "What's My Scene" and "Good Times”. In this time Bramley exited, replaced by onetime Divinyl Rick Grossman. Released in 1989, Magnum Cum Louder provided the singles "Come Anytime," and "Another World". 1991's Kinky featured "Miss Freelove '69," alongside enduring fave “1000 Miles Away”. After a three-year hiatus, the Hoodoo Gurus returned with the harder-edged Crank. Blue Cave followed in 1996. In 1998, the Gurus announced they were splitting up but two years later, Dave Faulkner, Brad Shepherd, and Mark Kingsmill were working together again as members of the garage-influenced the Persian Rugs. In 2004 the band reunited, releasing a new album, Mach Schau. In 2009 the band issued their ninth album, 2010's Purity of Essence. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:Formed in Sydney in 1981, the band were led by singer/songwriter Dave Faulkner, along with drummer James Baker. Ex-Scientist Rod Radalj and Kimble Rendall rounded out the group's lineup and their unique sound (three guitars, no bass). With Faulkner's infectious songs they quickly earned a record deal. After the 1982 debut single "Leilani," both Radalj and Rendall quit, replaced by guitarist Brad Shepherd and bassist Clyde Bramley. In 1983, the Hoodoo Gurus recorded their excellent debut record, Stoneage Romeos. Mark Kingsmill replaced Baker in 1985 but along came 1985's college radio smash Mars Needs Guitars! With 1987's Blow Your Cool, the Hoodoos appeared poised for the big time; their tourmates, the Bangles, even contributed to the singles "What's My Scene" and "Good Times”. In this time Bramley exited, replaced by onetime Divinyl Rick Grossman. Released in 1989, Magnum Cum Louder provided the singles "Come Anytime," and "Another World". 1991's Kinky featured "Miss Freelove '69," alongside enduring fave “1000 Miles Away”. After a three-year hiatus, the Hoodoo Gurus returned with the harder-edged Crank. Blue Cave followed in 1996. In 1998, the Gurus announced they were splitting up but two years later, Dave Faulkner, Brad Shepherd, and Mark Kingsmill were working together again as members of the garage-influenced the Persian Rugs. In 2004 the band reunited, releasing a new album, Mach Schau. In 2009 the band issued their ninth album, 2010's Purity of Essence.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240222T000835Z SEQUENCE:6851487 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:514 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2023-12-04 18:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20241011T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20241011T210000 UID:9F045458-2293-43BD-9D17-071149205D24 SUMMARY:The Ocean Blue (Night 1) CREATED:20240122T223805Z DTSTAMP:20240122T223805Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/the-ocean-blue-night-1 DESCRIPTION:In 2024, the band will be performing their first two albums in full - The Ocean Blue and Cerulean - in their entirety over two consecutive nights in cities throughout the U.S.Getting their start as teenagers in the late ‘80s in Hershey, PA, The Ocean Blue released their self-titled debut on the famed Sire Records that launched many of their musical heroes. Embraced by MTV and college radio, the band quickly made their mark on the onset of the Alternative Music scene. Their early singles “Between Something And Nothing” and “Drifting, Falling” notched them Top Ten hits on College and Modern Rock radio, setting in motion a run of four successful major label albums, followed by a string beloved independent releases from 2000 to the present. With eight albums and several EPs under their belt, the band continues to perform and record, with work underway on a new album.The Ocean Blue arrived as the 1980s drew to a close, and their debut record on the famed Sire Records label in 1989 seemed to summarize the best of the passing musical decade. With the release of The Ocean Blue, the band of four teenagers from Hershey, Pennsylvania quickly achieved widespread acclaim and radio & MTV airplay with top 10 Modern Rock/College Radio hits like Between Something and Nothing, Drifting, Falling, and Vanity Fair. They followed their debut with the dreamy and atmospheric Cerulean, which includes perhaps their most beloved song,Ballerina Out of Control. Their third Sire release and highest charting pop album Beneath the Rhythm and Sound featured the single Sublime, with a video of the band in the sublime landscape of Iceland. The band's fourth major label album on Mercury/ PolyGram, See The Ocean Blue, delved into wider 60s and 70s stylings but with the band's 80s DNA peeking through.\NThe band left the majors in the late 90s and released several independent records in the ensuing decade, including 2000's Davy Jones Locker and 2004's Waterworks. In 2013, after a long hiatus and much anticipation, the band released their first full length record in a decade, Ultramarine, on Korda Records, a label cooperative the band helped launch that same year. The record was a welcome return for both long-time fans of the band and a younger generation of like-minded fans, and it garnered widespread praise as one of their very best albums. In 2015, the band worked with Sire Records to reissue their first three albums on vinyl, and did wider touring in North America and in South America, where some of their most passionate fans reside.\NIn 2019, the band returned with the beautifully powerful Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves, and has continued to tour for this release and the newly re-issued vinyl of See The Ocean Blue (2022) and Davy Jones’ Locker (2023). The band is on tour with select dates in 2024 performing their first two albums in full. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:In 2024, the band will be performing their first two albums in full - The Ocean Blue and Cerulean - in their entirety over two consecutive nights in cities throughout the U.S.
Getting their start as teenagers in the late ‘80s in Hershey, PA, The Ocean Blue released their self-titled debut on the famed Sire Records that launched many of their musical heroes. Embraced by MTV and college radio, the band quickly made their mark on the onset of the Alternative Music scene. Their early singles “Between Something And Nothing” and “Drifting, Falling” notched them Top Ten hits on College and Modern Rock radio, setting in motion a run of four successful major label albums, followed by a string beloved independent releases from 2000 to the present. With eight albums and several EPs under their belt, the band continues to perform and record, with work underway on a new album.
The Ocean Blue arrived as the 1980s drew to a close, and their debut record on the famed Sire Records label in 1989 seemed to summarize the best of the passing musical decade. With the release of The Ocean Blue, the band of four teenagers from Hershey, Pennsylvania quickly achieved widespread acclaim and radio & MTV airplay with top 10 Modern Rock/College Radio hits like Between Something and Nothing, Drifting, Falling, and Vanity Fair. They followed their debut with the dreamy and atmospheric Cerulean, which includes perhaps their most beloved song,Ballerina Out of Control. Their third Sire release and highest charting pop album Beneath the Rhythm and Sound featured the single Sublime, with a video of the band in the sublime landscape of Iceland. The band's fourth major label album on Mercury/ PolyGram, See The Ocean Blue, delved into wider 60s and 70s stylings but with the band's 80s DNA peeking through.
The band left the majors in the late 90s and released several independent records in the ensuing decade, including 2000's Davy Jones Locker and 2004's Waterworks. In 2013, after a long hiatus and much anticipation, the band released their first full length record in a decade, Ultramarine, on Korda Records, a label cooperative the band helped launch that same year. The record was a welcome return for both long-time fans of the band and a younger generation of like-minded fans, and it garnered widespread praise as one of their very best albums. In 2015, the band worked with Sire Records to reissue their first three albums on vinyl, and did wider touring in North America and in South America, where some of their most passionate fans reside.
In 2019, the band returned with the beautifully powerful Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves, and has continued to tour for this release and the newly re-issued vinyl of See The Ocean Blue (2022) and Davy Jones’ Locker (2023). The band is on tour with select dates in 2024 performing their first two albums in full.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240215T184920Z SEQUENCE:2059875 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:242 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-01-23 17:00:00 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20241012T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Denver:20241012T210000 UID:804D76E9-B327-4615-AC40-6AF2AE99DBFF SUMMARY:The Ocean Blue (Night 2) CREATED:20240122T223805Z DTSTAMP:20240122T223805Z URL:https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/the-ocean-blue-night-2 DESCRIPTION:In 2024, the band will be performing their first two albums in full - The Ocean Blue and Cerulean - in their entirety over two consecutive nights in cities throughout the U.S.Getting their start as teenagers in the late ‘80s in Hershey, PA, The Ocean Blue released their self-titled debut on the famed Sire Records that launched many of their musical heroes. Embraced by MTV and college radio, the band quickly made their mark on the onset of the Alternative Music scene. Their early singles “Between Something And Nothing” and “Drifting, Falling” notched them Top Ten hits on College and Modern Rock radio, setting in motion a run of four successful major label albums, followed by a string beloved independent releases from 2000 to the present. With eight albums and several EPs under their belt, the band continues to perform and record, with work underway on a new album.The Ocean Blue arrived as the 1980s drew to a close, and their debut record on the famed Sire Records label in 1989 seemed to summarize the best of the passing musical decade. With the release of The Ocean Blue, the band of four teenagers from Hershey, Pennsylvania quickly achieved widespread acclaim and radio & MTV airplay with top 10 Modern Rock/College Radio hits like Between Something and Nothing, Drifting, Falling, and Vanity Fair. They followed their debut with the dreamy and atmospheric Cerulean, which includes perhaps their most beloved song,Ballerina Out of Control. Their third Sire release and highest charting pop album Beneath the Rhythm and Sound featured the single Sublime, with a video of the band in the sublime landscape of Iceland. The band's fourth major label album on Mercury/ PolyGram, See The Ocean Blue, delved into wider 60s and 70s stylings but with the band's 80s DNA peeking through.\NThe band left the majors in the late 90s and released several independent records in the ensuing decade, including 2000's Davy Jones Locker and 2004's Waterworks. In 2013, after a long hiatus and much anticipation, the band released their first full length record in a decade, Ultramarine, on Korda Records, a label cooperative the band helped launch that same year. The record was a welcome return for both long-time fans of the band and a younger generation of like-minded fans, and it garnered widespread praise as one of their very best albums. In 2015, the band worked with Sire Records to reissue their first three albums on vinyl, and did wider touring in North America and in South America, where some of their most passionate fans reside.\NIn 2019, the band returned with the beautifully powerful Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves, and has continued to tour for this release and the newly re-issued vinyl of See The Ocean Blue (2022) and Davy Jones’ Locker (2023). The band is on tour with select dates in 2024 performing their first two albums in full. X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:In 2024, the band will be performing their first two albums in full - The Ocean Blue and Cerulean - in their entirety over two consecutive nights in cities throughout the U.S.
Getting their start as teenagers in the late ‘80s in Hershey, PA, The Ocean Blue released their self-titled debut on the famed Sire Records that launched many of their musical heroes. Embraced by MTV and college radio, the band quickly made their mark on the onset of the Alternative Music scene. Their early singles “Between Something And Nothing” and “Drifting, Falling” notched them Top Ten hits on College and Modern Rock radio, setting in motion a run of four successful major label albums, followed by a string beloved independent releases from 2000 to the present. With eight albums and several EPs under their belt, the band continues to perform and record, with work underway on a new album.
The Ocean Blue arrived as the 1980s drew to a close, and their debut record on the famed Sire Records label in 1989 seemed to summarize the best of the passing musical decade. With the release of The Ocean Blue, the band of four teenagers from Hershey, Pennsylvania quickly achieved widespread acclaim and radio & MTV airplay with top 10 Modern Rock/College Radio hits like Between Something and Nothing, Drifting, Falling, and Vanity Fair. They followed their debut with the dreamy and atmospheric Cerulean, which includes perhaps their most beloved song,Ballerina Out of Control. Their third Sire release and highest charting pop album Beneath the Rhythm and Sound featured the single Sublime, with a video of the band in the sublime landscape of Iceland. The band's fourth major label album on Mercury/ PolyGram, See The Ocean Blue, delved into wider 60s and 70s stylings but with the band's 80s DNA peeking through.
The band left the majors in the late 90s and released several independent records in the ensuing decade, including 2000's Davy Jones Locker and 2004's Waterworks. In 2013, after a long hiatus and much anticipation, the band released their first full length record in a decade, Ultramarine, on Korda Records, a label cooperative the band helped launch that same year. The record was a welcome return for both long-time fans of the band and a younger generation of like-minded fans, and it garnered widespread praise as one of their very best albums. In 2015, the band worked with Sire Records to reissue their first three albums on vinyl, and did wider touring in North America and in South America, where some of their most passionate fans reside.
In 2019, the band returned with the beautifully powerful Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves, and has continued to tour for this release and the newly re-issued vinyl of See The Ocean Blue (2022) and Davy Jones’ Locker (2023). The band is on tour with select dates in 2024 performing their first two albums in full.
LAST-MODIFIED:20240307T202332Z SEQUENCE:3879927 LOCATION:638 South State Street\, Salt Lake City\, Utah 84111 GEO:40.75528240;-111.88872990 X-LOCATION-DISPLAYNAME:The State Room X-ACCESS:1 X-HITS:204 X-COLOR:125369 X-SHOW-END-TIME:0 X-PUBLISH-UP:2024-01-23 17:00:00 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR