The My Ideal Tour / A Tribute to Chet Baker Sings Live with special guest Daniel Bailen
SOLD OUT! Please check back for last minute availability.
Doors: 6:30 PM
Showtime: 7:30 PM
With one foot in the real world and the other in a charmed dimension of his own making, Amos Lee creates the rare kind of music that’s emotionally raw yet touched with a certain magical quality. On his eighth album Dreamland, the Philadelphia-born singer/songwriter intimately documents his real-world struggles (alienation, anxiety, loneliness, despair), an outpouring born from deliberate and often painful self-examination. “For most of my life I’ve walked into rooms thinking, ‘I don’t belong here,’” says Lee. “I’ve come to the realization that I’m too comfortable as an isolated person, and I want to reach out more. This record came from questioning my connections to other people, to myself, to my past and to the future.”
In the spirit of fostering connection, Lee made Dreamland in close collaboration with L.A.-based producer Christian “Leggy” Langdon (Banks, Meg Myers). “I met with Leggy, who I really didn’t know anything about, and before we even started to work we had a very open and vulnerable conversation about what was going on in our lives,” he recalls. “So much of what I do is solitary work, and it felt good to find someone I could connect with—sort of like, ‘I’m a lonely kid, and I wanna play.’” Thanks to that palpable sense of playfulness, Dreamland embodies an unpredictable and endlessly imaginative sound—a prime showcase for Lee’s warmly commanding voice and soul-baring songwriting.
The very first song that Lee and Langdon created together, “Hold You” set the standard for Dreamland’s open-hearted confession. With its delicate convergence of so many exquisite sonic details—luminous guitar tones, ethereal textures, tender toy-piano melodies—the track finds Lee looking inward and uncovering a deep urge to provide comfort and solace. “Especially if you’ve grown up with a less-than-appealing inner voice, you have to start with yourself,” he notes.
On “Worry No More”—the mantra-like lead single to Dreamland—Lee shares his hard-won insight into riding out anxiety. “I’ve had a lot of episodes with anxiety in my life and now I feel much more equipped to handle them, partly because my family and friends have always been so supportive of me,” he says. “Music has also been so healing for me, and helped me to find a place in my mind that isn’t purely controlled by fear.” To that end, “Worry No More” gently exalts music’s power to brighten our perspective, with the song’s narrator slipping into a headphone-induced reverie as they wander a broken world (“I’m listening to the sounds of Miles/Spanish sketches, playground smiles/Crowded streets and empty vials/For all to share”).
All throughout Dreamland, Lee embraces an unfettered honesty, repeatedly shedding light on the darkest corners of his psyche. On “Into the Clearing,” for instance, the album takes on a moody intensity as Lee speaks to a desire for obliteration. “There’s always a longing to be one with the universe, to be one with nature, to be one with the sky,” he says. “And sometimes the only way you can be with the sky is to be smoke.” A powerfully uplifting track with a gospel-like energy, “See the Light” evokes a fierce resolve to hold tight to hope (“Since I know I’m going to be singing these songs over and over, I like to infuse them with helpful messages to myself,” Lee says). With its soulful piano work and soaring string arrangement, “Seeing Ghosts” reflects on anxiety’s insidious ability to warp our perception. “For a lot of people with anxiety disorders, there’s this fog that sets in, where your brain becomes overwhelmed and you disconnect,” says Lee. “I’ve definitely seen ghosts my whole life.” In a striking tonal shift, Lee then delivers one of Dreamland’s most euphoric moments on “Shoulda Known Better,” a radiant piece of R&B-pop fueled by his dreamy falsetto. “That song’s looking at the messy side of life,” he says. “It’s saying, ‘I was dumb, I shouldn’t have done that, but we had a lot of fun. I don’t regret it at all.’”
In the making of Dreamland, Lee found his songwriting indelibly informed by his recent reading of Johann Hari’s 2018 book Lost Connections. “It’s about depression, which I have a pretty deep history with, and how our society and our generation looks at mental health and healing in terms of medication rather than thinking about our personal relationship to the people and the world around us,” he says. And with the release of Dreamland, Lee hopes that his songs might inspire others to live more fully and free of fear. “Over the course of my life I’ve come to understand that music is my bridge to other people,” he says. “I have no idea what the waters are like below that bridge—it might be lava for all I know—but music allows me to float over the whole thing and connect. To me that’s the whole point of why we do this: to give people something to listen to and be enveloped by the love of another human being, and just be reminded that humanity is beautiful.”
Andrew Bird is an internationally acclaimed, Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, whistler, and songwriter who picked up his first violin at the age of four and spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear. Since beginning his recording career in 1997, Bird has released 17 albums and performed extensively across the globe. He has recorded with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, appeared as “Dr. Stringz” on Jack’s Big Music Show, and headlined concerts at Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and festivals worldwide. Bird performed as the Whistling Caruso in Disney’s The Muppets movie, scored the FX series Baskets, and collaborated with inventor Ian Schneller on Sonic Arboretum, an installation that exhibited at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Boston’s ICA, and the MCA Chicago. Bird has been a featured TED Talks presenter, a New Yorker Festival guest, and an op-ed contributor for the New York Times. More recently, Bird released a series of site-specific improvisational short films and recordings called Echolocations, recorded in remote and acoustically interesting spaces: a Utah canyon, an abandoned seaside bunker, the middle of the Los Angeles River, and a reverberant stone-covered aqueduct in Lisbon. Additionally, Bird hosts an ongoing series of live-streamed performances called Live from the Great Room, putting the creative process on display for fans as he collaborates and converses with friends in a candid, intimate setting.
Shortly after receiving his 2020 Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album, with My Finest Work Yet, Andrew Bird made his professional acting debut in the cast of Fargo’s fourth installment, which concluded on FX in November 2020 and is currently streaming via Hulu. In June 2022, Bird released his latest album, Inside Problems, on Loma Vista Recordings.
Uwade
You’ve heard Uwade before. It’s her honeyed voice that opens Fleet Foxes’ 2020 record Shore — an experience that’s since earned her global critical acclaim. Though her career in music is now taking off, for Uwade, 21, singing has always been a kind of prayer. This stems, in part, from her spiritual upbringing — steeped in the sounds of hymnal choral music and Nigerian Highlife on her dad’s car radio — and her rigorous education. A scholar of the highest order, Uwade has studied Classics at Columbia and Oxford, and cites Catullus and Virgil among her influences (along with Julian Casablancas and Nina Simone). Knowing this, it’s easy to want to plumb the academic depths of her sound. To describe her voice as a divine signal you’d read about in classic texts, at once ancient and altogether new.
But this feels heavy. And the truth is that Uwade’s voice is an embodiment of light. Yes, there is hope and influence and complexity there, but in the end, there’s just joy. The joy of following a feeling. Of being lost in the pleasure of the present moment. Of singing together with people in a room. Uwade’s latest single “The Man Who Sees Tomorrow’ could stand as a balm to our present time, an ode to hope in the midst of unbearable loss: “And even though my memories are fading far too fast / One day I will know it all / And frolic in the grass.”
Andrew Bird is an internationally acclaimed, Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, whistler, and songwriter who picked up his first violin at the age of four and spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear. Since beginning his recording career in 1997, Bird has released 17 albums and performed extensively across the globe. He has recorded with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, appeared as “Dr. Stringz” on Jack’s Big Music Show, and headlined concerts at Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and festivals worldwide. Bird performed as the Whistling Caruso in Disney’s The Muppets movie, scored the FX series Baskets, and collaborated with inventor Ian Schneller on Sonic Arboretum, an installation that exhibited at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Boston’s ICA, and the MCA Chicago. Bird has been a featured TED Talks presenter, a New Yorker Festival guest, and an op-ed contributor for the New York Times. More recently, Bird released a series of site-specific improvisational short films and recordings called Echolocations, recorded in remote and acoustically interesting spaces: a Utah canyon, an abandoned seaside bunker, the middle of the Los Angeles River, and a reverberant stone-covered aqueduct in Lisbon. Additionally, Bird hosts an ongoing series of live-streamed performances called Live from the Great Room, putting the creative process on display for fans as he collaborates and converses with friends in a candid, intimate setting.
Shortly after receiving his 2020 Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album, with My Finest Work Yet, Andrew Bird made his professional acting debut in the cast of Fargo’s fourth installment, which concluded on FX in November 2020 and is currently streaming via Hulu. In June 2022, Bird released his latest album, Inside Problems, on Loma Vista Recordings.
Uwade
You’ve heard Uwade before. It’s her honeyed voice that opens Fleet Foxes’ 2020 record Shore — an experience that’s since earned her global critical acclaim. Though her career in music is now taking off, for Uwade, 21, singing has always been a kind of prayer. This stems, in part, from her spiritual upbringing — steeped in the sounds of hymnal choral music and Nigerian Highlife on her dad’s car radio — and her rigorous education. A scholar of the highest order, Uwade has studied Classics at Columbia and Oxford, and cites Catullus and Virgil among her influences (along with Julian Casablancas and Nina Simone). Knowing this, it’s easy to want to plumb the academic depths of her sound. To describe her voice as a divine signal you’d read about in classic texts, at once ancient and altogether new.
But this feels heavy. And the truth is that Uwade’s voice is an embodiment of light. Yes, there is hope and influence and complexity there, but in the end, there’s just joy. The joy of following a feeling. Of being lost in the pleasure of the present moment. Of singing together with people in a room. Uwade’s latest single “The Man Who Sees Tomorrow’ could stand as a balm to our present time, an ode to hope in the midst of unbearable loss: “And even though my memories are fading far too fast / One day I will know it all / And frolic in the grass.”
Many veteran bands trade on nostalgia, on replication of past glories, and on recycled emotions from younger, more carefree days.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band trades on a mix of reimagined classics and compelling newer works. The group formed in 1966 as a Long Beach, California jug band, scored its first charting single in 1967, and embarked on a self-propelled ride through folk, country, rock ‘n’ roll, pop, bluegrass, and the amalgam now known as “Americana.” The first major hit came in 1971 with the epic “Mr. Bojangles,” which, along with insistent support from banjo master Earl Scruggs, opened doors in Nashville. Behind those doors were Earl Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Doc Watson, Mother Maybelle Carter, Jimmy Martin, and others who would collaborate on a multi-artist, multi-generational, three-disc 1972 masterpiece: Will the Circle Be Unbroken went triple Platinum, spawned two later volumes, and wound up in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Was this a cutting-edge combo or a group of revivalists? Was the goal rebellion or musical piety? Yes, to all these things. In the 1980s, the Dirt Band reeled off 15 straight Top 10 country hits, including chart-toppers “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream),” “Modern Day Romance,” and “Fishin’ in the Dark (co-written by Jim Photoglo, who would join the band in the second decade of the new century). 1989 brought a second Circle album, this one featuring singer-songwriter talents including John Prine, Rosanne Cash, and John Hiatt and garnering two Grammy awards for the band (it later won another, for a collaboration with Earl Scruggs and other fine folks). Circle II also won the Country Music Association’s Album of the Year prize. Circle III was released in 2003, featuring collaborations with Johnny Cash, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, Taj Mahal, and more.
Throughout the group’s lifetime, personnel has changed, with each change resulting in positive steps forward, new ways of playing the old songs, and renewed enthusiasm for writing and recording fresh material. The latest Dirt Band lineup is expanded to six members for the first time since 1968. Today’s group consists of founding member Jeff Hanna, harp master Jimmie Fadden (who joined in 1966), and soulful-voiced Bob Carpenter, who has more than 40 years of service in the ensemble. Those veterans are now joined by singer-songwriter-bass man Jim Photoglo, fiddle and mandolin wizard Ross Holmes, and Hanna’s son, the preternaturally talented singer and guitarist Jaime Hanna.
Blood harmony, thrilling instrumental flights, undeniable stage chemistry … these things are part of each Dirt Band show, just as they are part of Dirt Does Dylan, the first recording from the reconfigured, six-strong group. Produced by Ray Kennedy and Jeff Hanna, it’s a remarkable ride through some of the most impactful songs of the past century, penned by Bob Dylan and taken for a blue highway spin by a great American band, with help from genius-level contemporary artists like Jason Isbell and The War and Treaty.
A Dirt Band show is unlike any other. For legions of fans, it’s less about the memories than the moment, crisp as an Autumn apple and rich as a royal flush.
After over a decade of relentless touring and recording in all but complete obscurity, the Texas-bred quasi-collective suddenly found itself held up by the press and public as one of the major figures in the jazz world. But as the category names for all five of the band’s Grammy® awards would indicate (Best R&B Performance in 2014, Best Contemporary Instrumental Album in 2016, 2017, 2021, and 2023), Snarky Puppy isn’t exactly a jazz band. It’s not a fusion band, and it’s definitely not a jam band. It’s probably best to take Nate Chinen of the New York Times’ advice, as stated in an online discussion about the group, to “take them for what they are, rather than judge them for what they’re not.”
Snarky Puppy is a collective of sorts with as many as 20 members in regular rotation. At its core, the band represents the convergence of both black and white American music culture with various accents from around the world. Japan, Argentina, Canada, and the United Kingdom all have representation in the group’s membership. But more than the cultural diversity of the individual players, the defining characteristic of Snarky Puppy’s music is the joy of performing together in the perpetual push to grow creatively.
Their latest Grammy® winning album – Empire Central – was released in September 2022. Its sound is big and bold, chill and laid back, rooted in its native culture while reaching outward, forward bound. With 16 new compositions, the group looks fondly at where it’s come from, confident in the polished power from which its members continue to build the unique Snarky Puppy sound.
The sound now rises like a skyscraper from a 21st-century orchestra comprising three guitarists, four keyboardists, two brass, two reeds, a violinist, multiple percussionists and drummers, and the accomplished, yet modest, Michael League keeping it all together with his bass.
“Our soundscape has expanded dramatically over the years” says League. “When the band started, we were jazzier, brainy, and music-oriented. Moving into the Dallas scene we became groovier, more emotional, deeper in a sense. We focused more on communicating a clear message, understandable to a listener without dumbing things down”.
“Snarky Puppy has always been a band that prioritizes the sound of music” says League. “On this record, the songs ended up being a lot more direct and funkier than those on our previous records. I think it reflects the many moods of the city’s scene”. “Our rule is that it can’t sound like it sounded before” he continues, “the music has to feel like it’s moving somewhere”
And moving somewhere it most definitely is. Empire Central shouts from the rooftops how far Snarky Puppy has come since ten friends got together at the University of North Texas in 2004. It also raises the question – Where will Snarky Puppy go next? For Snarky Puppy fans, the answer to this question is a very exciting prospect.
Nate Wood – fOUR
The Grammy Nominated multi-instrumentalist has created a project that is a truly ambitious take on going solo. Wood is playing everything — analog synths, drums, bass, guitar, and vocals — at the same time! As well, he’s recording every song in one pass with no overdubs, click track, or pre-recorded backing tracks. “That’s why it’s called fOUR, because it’s me with four limbs playing four instruments at once.” fOUR veers from complex, spacey prog rock to electronic-tinged instrumentals.
Currently, fOUR has released a number of viral videos on YouTube and Facebook (where some of the clips have topped one million views). fOUR’s first full-length record “X.it” was released in the summer of 2018, followed by a performance on NPR’s “Tiny Desk” in January 2019. Since then, fOUR has been touring around the globe with his one-man show, most recently opening for Snarky Puppy in support of their new record. Nate Wood – fOUR’s second record was released via GroundUPmusic in April of 2023.
“Wood’s brain splits attention between four synthesizers, an electric bass, and a drum kit, all while singing about futurism. Wood plays all of fOUR’s tunes in one take. No backing tracks. No overdubs. Nate Wood pulls us into an industrial, neon dystopia with tunes that stand alone as headphone music without the accompanying visuals, meticulously crafted, and with precise execution. This isn’t novelty music. You’re hearing (and seeing) a mastermind songwriter and mad scientist at work.” – NPR Music
Nate is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated quintet Kneebody. He has also performed or recorded with many notable artists including Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders, Dave Grohl, Brian May and Roger Taylor (Queen), Chris Squire (Yes), Elliot Easton (The Cars), Chaka Khan, Wayne Krantz, Billy Childs, Tigran Hamasyan, Donny McCaslin, and many others. Nate is endorsed by Gretsch Drums, Istanbul Agop Cymbals, Promark Sticks, Remo Drumheads, Drum Workshop Hardware, D’addario Strings, Aguilar Amplification, and Moollon instruments.
