Jon McLaughlin: Coast to Coast Tour
ALL AGES SEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEJON McLAUGHLIN 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. 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 acapella version of the title track “Indiana” featuring Straight No Chaser as well as never-before-released b-sides. 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. LEO SAWIKINLeo Sawikin is a NYC-born and bred singer/songwriter, who debuted as a solo recording artist with his 2021 album, Row Me Away. While Leo often records from his home studio in New York’s Little Italy, over the last year he traveled to Seattle to work with the legendary Phil Ek, who produced breakthrough albums by Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, The Shins, and Fleet Foxes.
LowDown Brass Band
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYTHE LOWDOWN BRASS BAND The LowDown Brass Band is a uniquely strong representation of Chicago Music culture. Providing a modern take on soul, funk, hip hop, and jazz, this multifaceted all-horn band boasts freedom through the art of their craft, whilst gaining critical acclaim from The Gazette, Fame Magazine, The Chicago Reader and more. LowDown kick started 2023 with the release of the sun-drenched soul and jazz-infused single Call Me. It was followed by the summer release of Take Me Away, which is a club inspired dance floor lover’s track. This next single So Long mellows the atmosphere and is a classic hip hop heartbreaker. So Long uses 808, horns, and the story telling of MC Billa Camp and singer Shane Jonas. Let’s take a pause on the dance floor and reflect on the long winter ahead. There is warmth in the flow. LowDown maintains a constant performing and touring schedule, blessing every venue with their unique blend across multiple genres, and showcasing their ability to amplify the energy of any room with their positive and infectious spirit.LowDown Brass Band has built a highly-impressive discography, accumulating over 1.1 million streams across Spotify alone with notable performances at Cotai Jazz Fest, The Montreal Jazz Festival, Winnipeg Folk Fest, SummerCamp, Vancouver Jazz Fest, Folk Alliance, Green River Fest, Chicago Jazz Fest, Aspen Jazz Fest, Mile of Music, Alaska’s infamous Salmon Fest, and opening runs with Galactic, Rebirth Brass, Bon Jovi, and others. LowDown’s next record will be released in February 2024 and is titled Citizens of the World. LowDown is repped by the Fata Booking Agency (USA and International), Paquin Booking (Canada), and Liberty Music PR (UK). Their music has been featured on Hulu’s Cruel Summer and is also on the Nintendo Switch’s Dec 2023 release Super Crazy Rhythm Castle. So long adaptation. BIG FURBIG FUR is a slick, versatile animal of a band that pounces between genres and sounds through elaborate compositions and intense improvisation. The band cultivates an original sound that takes southern rock, country, and bluegrass to its highest dynamic peaks, and most electrifying, psychedelic edges.
Eddie 9V
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLYEDDIE 9VAs far back as he can remember, Capricorn Studios was calling Eddie 9V. As a kid scanning the sleeves of his favorite vinyl records, this fabled facility in Macon, Georgia, was always the secret ingredient, adding a little grit and honey to every song born on its floor. Capricorn and the bands who blew through it urged the Atlanta guitarist to ditch school at 15, play his fingers bloody throughout the south, and turn apathy into acclaim for early albums Left My Soul in Memphis (2019) and Little Black Flies (2021).Eddie spent his first quarter-century admiring Capricorn from afar. But in December 2021, the 26-year-old finally put his thumbprint on the studio’s mythology, corralling an eleven-strong group of the American South’s best roots musicians to track his third album. “There was overwhelming excitement at being in such a legendary studio,” he says. “But we hugged and got right to work. Everyone was joyous, loving, and flat-out playing their asses off.”You don’t come to Capricorn Studios for polish. Frozen in time since its opening day in 1969, the mojo from sessions by giants like the Allman Brothers and Bonnie Bramlett still hangs in the air, while the recording philosophy remains gloriously raw. That suited Eddie, whose output has been celebrated for its warts-and-all snapshot of what went down. “In a world where everyone is trying to sound the best, I’m trying to sound like me,” he reasons. “I always want the listener to feel like they’re in the room with us. So I’d leave it in if a drum pedal squeaked or someone laughed during a take on the Capricorn album. It’s our way of putting a stamp on the song.”Eddie’s old-school ethos goes way back. Born Brooks Mason in June 1996, he acquired his first guitar aged six, “One of those with the speaker in it – the most bang for your buck, y’know?”, ignored the prevailing pop scene at Oak Grove High School in favor of local heroes like Sean Costello and studied “older cats” like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Freddie King, and Rory Gallagher “to see what made them groove and tick.” His shoot-from-the-lip lyrics adds Eddie came from family fish fries, where his Uncle Brian “taught me to make people laugh, how to hold an audience’s attention.”When Eddie infiltrated his home state’s live circuit – first with covers band The Smokin’ Frogs, then its more adept blues-rock offshoot, The Georgia Flood – he quickly pricked up ears everywhere he played. His artistic vision became full realized when he killed Brooks Mason and adopted the solo moniker that promises an electrifying night out, “Eddie 9 Volt”. “There are too many Joe Schmo r&b bands,” he reasons. “I was on the road with another band, and we were talking like mobsters. So we gave each other names – mine was Eddie.”Already, there has been massive acclaim for his early output, with Left My Soul in Memphis dubbed “fresh and life-affirming” by Rock & Blues Muse and Little Black Flies praised by Classic Rock as “the most instinctive blues you’ll hear all year.” But as the Capricorn sessions ticked closer, Eddie fused the nervous energy into his best songs yet. “Coming off a straight blues record, I wanted to show people we’re more than that,” he reflects. “I was listening to Muscle Shoals and soul, a lot of music recorded at Capricorn in the late-’60s too. So we spent way more time crafting the new tunes. Each song took a week to write, instead of five in one night like Little Black Flies.”
Ruston Kelly – The Too Chill to Kill Tour
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLY- ACOUSTIC SHOW- LIMITED NUMBER OF VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE (click here for 237Global legal disclaimer)RUSTON KELLY In the past few years alone, Ruston Kelly has established himself as an essential songwriting voice, capable of transforming his unsparing and often-painful self- examination into moments of sublime catharsis. With a lyrical sensibility that constantly shifts from candid to poetic, the South Carolina-born singer/songwriter/guitarist imbues his songs with equal parts nuanced confession and punk-rock irreverence, mining inspiration from such eclectic sources as the Carter Family, transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, and seminal emo act Dashboard Confessional. His third full-length album The Weakness – his most personal and intimate collection of songs to date — was released to tremendous critical acclaim in early 2023. The New York Times hailed it as his “most assured and expansive studio album.” NPR Music noted, “Ruston Kelly’s torn it all down on his new album, The Weakness, so he could build something better,” while Rolling Stone lauded it as an “emotionally daring statement.” Based in Nashville, TN, Kelly first started playing guitar under the guidance of his dad, Tim “TK” Kelly, a pedal-steel guitarist who frequently performs and records with his son. Because his father worked for a paper mill and often changed job locations, Kelly grew up moving nearly every two years, residing everywhere from Alabama to Belgium. At 17, he took off for Nashville to live with his sister, and in 2013 landed a publishing deal with BMG Nashville. Along with penning songs for artists like Tim McGraw and Josh Abbott Band, he continued working on his own music and later made his debut with the widely praised EP Halloween (a 2017 effort produced by Mike Mogis, who’s also worked with Bright Eyes, First Aid Kit, and Jenny Lewis). Soon after signing with Rounder Records, Kelly released Dying Star: an album that closely details his experience with addiction—including time in rehab and a 2016 overdose—and ultimately captures all the chaos and heartbreak on the way to redemption. The follow-up to Dying Star, 2020’s Shape & Destroy arrived as an up-close look at his experience in getting sober and finally facing the demons that led him to drug abuse in the first place, each revelation presented with an unvarnished honesty. Kelly’s most full-realized work to date, The Weakness is a blisteringly honest but profoundly hopeful album revealing our vast potential to create strength and beauty from the most trying of experiences. Made with producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Nate Mercereau (Sharon Van Etten, Leon Bridges, Maggie Rogers), Kelly’s third full-length album emerged as he began processing a number of life-altering changes he’d endured over the previous year, including a very public divorce as well as immense upheaval in his immediate family. A bold departure from the elegant simplicity of his first two albums, the resulting body of work matches its kaleidoscopic sound with some of Kelly’s most illuminating material to date. Buoyed by recent stints opening for Maren Morris and Noah Kahan, Kelly is looking ahead to his headline acoustic tour in support of Weakness, Etc, an all-new EP collecting seven songs recorded in tandem with Kelly’s much-admired third studio album, 2023’s The Weakness. Weakness, Etc arrives via Rounder Records on Friday, March 22.
An Evening With Chris Smither
ALL AGESSEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLECHRIS SMITHERThe sound and imagery of the 20th release by Chris Smither, All About the Bones, (release date: May 3, 2024 on Signature Sounds/Mighty Albert, distributed by Redeye) is as elemental as the inky black shadows cast by a shockingly bright moon. The listener is welcomed into some gothic mansion on an imaginary New Orleans street, and there in the lamplit parlor confronts the band, a minimalist skeleton crew: Smither’s inimitable propulsive guitar and rumbling baritone are joined seamlessly to producer David Goodrich’s carpetbag of instruments, Zak Trojano’s rock-steady, primal drumming, BettySoo’s diaphanous harmony vocals, and the flat, mournful flood of Jazz legend Chris Cheek’s saxophone. Recorded at Sonelab Studios in Easthampton MA by Justin Pizzoferrato (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., the Hold Steady) All About the Bones has a feel that is somehow baroque and austere at once. Smither and his longtime producer David Goodrich have been refining their musical conversation for decades, both in the studio and onstage, and by now, their bond verges on the telepathic. Goodrich plays on nearly every track. His sound is by now so translucent that it seems to function as a swath of silence, allowing the songs to burn like ciphers in the crackling air. And oh, the songs on All About the Bones. Chris Smither, after six decades of sharpening his knife as a songwriter, can at this point open damn near anything with a flick of his wrist. God and the Devil are opened here. Mortality is too. Politics, consciousness, renewal, family, vulnerability, surrender… Smither has sat with these topics like so many Zen koans, for so long, that every line is a pearl. The title track, “All About the Bones,” kicks the record off with “Consider your high station/ think about your fame. All of your creation depended on your frame.” Irony, wit, the double meaning of “depended”… each verse is a master class in songwriting. Yet the stark, elemental sage always has a twinkle in his eye, a light touch at your elbow as he guides you along. From the wickedly funny defense of the Adversary in “If Not for the Devil” to the unsentimental open-heartedness of “Still Believe in You,” he is as human as we all long to be. The disjointed imagery of “In the Bardo” and the dystopian mirror of “Close the Deal” find Smither unflinchingly staring down the mortality of both individuals and republics, and yet he is at peace, among loved ones in his cover of Eliza Gilkyson’s “Calm Before the Storm,” and turning his gaze to the future in “Completion”. He sends us on our merry way, startled, dazzled, unsettled and then comforted, with Tom Petty’s “Time to Move On.”
OUTPOST: Fruit Bats
– RAIN OR SHINE- STANDING ROOM ONLY – LIMITED NUMBER OF VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE FRUIT BATSEric D. Johnson rarely lingers at one location too long.“There’s always been motion in my life between one place and another,” says the Fruit Bats songwriter. As a kid growing up in the Midwest, Johnson’s family moved around a lot, but it wasn’t until he became a touring musician years later that motion became a central part of his identity. That transient lifestyle stoked an enduring reverence for the world he watched pass by through a van window.“It weighs heavily on me—the notion of place,” Johnson says. “The places I’ve been and the places I want to go.”A sense of place is a unifying theme he’s revisited with Fruit Bats throughout its many lives. From the project’s origins in the late ’90s as a vehicle for Johnson’s lo-fi tinkering to the more sonically ambitious work of recent years, Fruit Bats has often showcased love songs where people and locations meld into one. It’s a loose song structure that navigates what he calls “the geography of the heart.”“The songs exist in a world that you can sort of travel from one to another,” says Johnson. “There are roads and rivers between these songs.”Those pathways extend straight through the newest Fruit Bats album, aptly titled A River Running to Your Heart. Self-produced by Johnson—a first for Fruit Bats—with Jeremy Harris at Panoramic House just north of San Francisco, it’s Fruit Bats’ tenth full-length release. The album finds the project in the middle of a people-powered climb leading to the biggest shows, loudest accolades, and most enthusiastic new fans in Fruit Bats history! It’s hard to pinpoint a single reason for this mid-career resurgence. But after two decades of making music, hard-earned emotional maturity has clearly seeped into Johnson’s already inviting songs, resulting in a sound that’s connected with audiences like no other previous version of the band.A River Running to Your Heart represents the fullest realization of Johnson’s creative vision to date. It’s a sonically diverse effort that largely explores the importance of what it means to be home, both physically and spiritually. And while that might seem like a peculiar focus for an artist who’s constantly in motion, for Fruit Bats, home can take many forms—from the obvious to the obscure.Lead single “Rushin’ River Valley” is a self-propelled love song written about Johnson’s wife that clings to the borrowed imagery of the place where she grew up in northern California. Then, there’s the gentle and unfussy acoustic ballad “We Used to Live Here,” which looks back to a time of youthful promise and cheap rent. But the wistful “It All Comes Back” is perhaps the most stunning and surprising track on the album, Johnson’s production skills on full display. Built upon intricate layers of synths, keyboards, and guitars, it’s a pitch-perfect blend of tone and lyricism that taps into our shared apprehensions and hopes for a post-pandemic life.TORRESTORRES is the pseudonym of Mackenzie Scott. She was born January 23, 1991, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her wife Jenna, stepson Silas, and puppy Sylvia. She has been releasing albums and performing as TORRES since 2013. What an enormous room is TORRES’ sixth studio album (her third with Merge).
Twin Tribes
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYTWIN TRIBES Hailing from Texas, Twin Tribes is an emerging force in the darkwave scene, turning heads in 2018 with the release of their debut album “Shadows” that featured dark melodic sounds, synthesizers, lyrics about the undead, and the occult and parallel universes. They returned in 2020 with the ten-track album “Ceremony” with an evolved sound that explored love and loss while showcasing their progression as a band. With songs that are both dynamic and introspective, they balance the darker shades of the emotional spectrum with an energy and momentum that gifts their music a powerful sense of urgency and drama. Their lyrics dig deep into the personal turmoil of love, life and loss, and have forged a new aesthetic that fuses the gothic with the romantic, viewing emotional themes through a darker lens. As their second LP gains increasing critical and commercial attention, these pillars of the independent music scene continue to re-define what genres such as darkwave and post-punk mean in 2023. URBAN HEAT Urban Heat is poised to break nationally in 2023. In March Urban Heat joined TikTok darlings Vision Video for a 3-week tour, taking them to the East Coast and Canada. The success of the tour led them to extend the joint run to the West Coast in August, where many shows sold out. Their official SXSW performances had them playing to packed crowds at Stubb’s Outdoor Ampitheater, the Austin Chronicle’s day party, and a SPIN party, who of frontman Jonathan Horstmann wrote “The star power is there, more so than any Austin musician in recent history.” In May Urban Heat delivered a powerful set at Cruel World Fest in Pasadena California, joining a lineup that included Siouxsie, Iggy Pop, Gary Numan, and other genre icons. They are following up with a national headline tour in November, beginning with a performance at Darker Waves in Huntington Beach. After winning an Austin Music Award for “Song of the Year” for “Have You Ever”, they graced the coveted cover of the Austin Chronicle and topped Austin Monthly’s list of “8 Austin Acts Poised to Break Out at SXSW 2023”.2022 was already a year of exponential growth for the band. Before winning “Song of the Year”, their single “Have You Ever” had a viral moment on TikTok. This propelled them into their first national headline tour after playing at the Austin City Limits Festival. They were selected as Sonic Guild grant recipients and featured as KUTX 98.9’s Artist of the Month in July.”A lightning rod of dark electro/proto-punk/new wave/synth wave/part goth/part industrial sound that is all the things but… simultaneously transcending them into something fresher.” – Laurie Gallardo, KUTX 98.9DANCING PLAGUE
Fat Tuesday Fiesta ft Tuxedo Junction
-ALL AGES-MIXED SEATED and STANDING SHOW with DANCE FLOORTUXEDO JUNCTIONCalling all music lovers, dancers, and supporters of a worthy cause! Celebrate Mardi Gras during a singular evening benefitting the Asheville Breakfast Rotary Foundation! Tuxedo Junction covers a HUGE variety of danceable hits from Swing Jazz to Classic Rock, Pop, Funk, Motown, Beach, Country, and Rockabilly! All proceeds go back into the community for charitable organizations and scholarships.
Willi Carlisle
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYWILLI CARLISLE For folksinger Willi Carlisle, singing is healing. And by singing together, he believes we can begin to reckon with the inevitability of human suffering and grow in love. On his latest album, Critterland, Carlisle invites audiences to join him: “If we allow ourselves to sing together, there’s a release of sadness, maybe even a communal one. And so for me personally, singing, like the literal act of thinking through suffering, is really freeing,” he says. Rooted in the eclectic and collective world of his live shows, Carlisle’s third album, Critterland takes up where his sophomore album, Peculiar, Missouri left off, transforming Peculiar’s big tent into a Critterland menagerie and letting loose the weirdos he gathered together. The album is a wild romp through the backwaters of his mind and America, lingering in the odd corners of human nature to visit obscure oddballs, dark secrets and complicated truths about the beauty and pain of life and love. Produced by the GRAMMY Award-nominated Darrell Scott and to be released Jan. 26, 2024 by Signature Sounds, Critterland considers where we come from and where we are going. On the album, he takes on human suffering through stories about forbidden love, loss, generational trauma, addiction, and suicide, believing that by processing the traits and trauma we inherit, he can reach a deeper understanding of what it means to succeed and to exist. NAT MYERSA poet with a staggering and true voice, Korean-American troubadour Nat Myers’ folksy blues and remarkable pickin’ are authentic, timeless, and enduring. The Kenton County, KY native’s delivery harkens to traditional blues giants, but it’s his unique blend of modern roots and Americana that continues to make crowds drop their jaws. Recorded live at the 100-year-old-plus home of producer Dan Auerbach, Yellow Peril is haunted with the ghosts of the rich history of the blues.
Turnover
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYTURNOVERThe title track of the band’s new album, Myself in the Way, speaks to this mindset. “I can’t put myself in the way of love again,” sings Getz, “I promise I’m going to go all the way with you,” is specifically about Getz getting engaged to his longtime partner, but applies to the general outlook he had toward life in lockdown. “I was living in Sebastopol, California at the time and felt like I truly lived there for the first time since I wasn’t leaving for tour. I was able to go meditate at the Zen Buddhist dojo down the road, run and bike around the hills in Sonoma county, learn about plants and gardening, take some Spanish and arboriculture classes, and get involved with the volunteer fire department. Just do a bunch of new things to challenge and inspire me in a natural way.” Turnover’s other members also used the time to deepen interests they hadn’t been able to fully explore before covid. Bass player Dan Dempsey was in New York City and responded to lockdown by spending more time practicing his visual art in drawing and painting. He painted the album’s cover during this period and developed a style that has become a central theme for the band in its current iteration. Drummer Casey Getz found work at a Virginia Beach state park as touring continued to be postponed. He was in search of and inspired by having a work-life balance different than he’d experienced since he was younger. Through this, he was able to nurture current relationships more and find new ones, something touring made much more difficult. This led to Casey playing drums with a group of longtime friends in Virginia Beach and further developing his drumming style – adding a new prowess for fluidity and improvisation through lengthy jam sessions with the group. Guitarist Nick Rayfield was focused on sharpening his guitar and piano playing and was able to devote energy to skateboarding and his retail business more than he had been able to for the last few years. This was also the band’s first album with Rayfield making songwriting contributions after touring with them for years as a live member, adding a new creative element to the songs. MSPAINTIt’s exceedingly rare to hear something truly original. Something that’s actually breaking new ground, something that maybe we don’t even have words for just yet. Something like MSPAINT. In a time when so much musical territory feels well-trodden, MSPAINT are the exception. On their debut full-length Post-American, the Hattiesburg, Mississippi-based four-piece draw on everything from hardcore, to hip hop, to synth-punk, and beyond to make an unabashedly weird amalgam that sounds as fresh and compelling as it is instantly satisfying.DROOKDrook is a pop band from Richmond, Virginia. Formed in 2019, the group splices together elements of indie, rock, and electronica, focusing them all to a single point on their recordings. Drook’s live show puts this synthesis on full display, bringing energy and dynamism to the band’s musically diverse catalog.LAWN ENFORCEMENT
