Nashville-based, Oregon-born Mat Kearney is back with his new studio album January Flower. Written between an isolated retreat in Joshua Tree and his home studio, January Flower sees Kearney in his rawest form, distilling the songwriting process and rediscovering the joy of making music. Over his career, Kearney has released five studio LPs, claimed the #1 spot on iTunes, topped multiple Billboard charts, made four entries into the Hot 100, amassed over 2.5 BILLION global streams. Kearney, a Multi-Platinum songwriter and producer, has performed live on TODAY Show, Ellen, The Tonight Show, Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel Live! and has garnered raves from USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, People, Billboard, PARADE and Marie Claire. He also has an incredible touring history, sharing the road with everyone from John Mayer to NEEDTOBREATHE.
Marc Scibilia
Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, chart-topping singer/songwriter Marc Scibilia’s been on a steady rise ever since the 2012 release of his breakout single, “How Bad We Need Each Other.” In the last several years alone, he’s racked up more than 125 million streams across platforms; scored the most Shazamed moment of the 2015 Super Bowl with his stripped-down take on “This Land Is Your Land”; seen his music featured in a slew of film and television soundtracks, including a recent Water.org PSA narrated by Matt Damon; written for artists as diverse as superstar DJ Robin Schulz (the pair’s “Unforgettable” is a certified Gold, #1 single, currently boasting more than 75 million streams on Spotify alone), singer/songwriters Ben Rector, Kid G, Seal, Lennon Stella and rappers Jim Jones, Rick Ross, and Fabolous; garnered praise from the likes of pop star Demi Lovato and Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas; and toured with James Bay, Zac Brown Band, Butch Walker, and Nick Jonas, among others. Scibilia was forced to put his burgeoning career on hold for the better part of 2019, though, when he welcomed his first child into the world while simultaneously caring for his ailing father, who would tragically pass away from brain cancer shortly thereafter. He chronicles the profound, emotional journey on his riveting new album, ‘Seed Of Joy,’ which he recorded alone in his basement studio in Nashville in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. While you might expect the finished product to be a dark and somber affair, ‘Seed Of Joy’ is, true to its name, just the opposite, fueled by soulful vocals and soaring melodies and overflowing with rich, anthemic exuberance at nearly every turn. Calling to mind everything from Paul Simon and Cat Stevens to Bleachers and Vampire Weekend, the result is a powerful slice of self-reflection that balances nostalgia and optimism in equal measure, a thoughtful, defiantly optimistic work that insists on finding silver linings, even in the face of gut-wrenching loss. In April 2020, Samsung picked up the original 2009 demo of “How Bad We Need Each Other” for their Stay Apart, Stay Together campaign. The vitality of the initial online release led to a worldwide campaign using Marc’s song. Upon welcoming his second child in 2021 Marc began releasing new singles and music videos and is currently completing work on his third full-length album set to release later this year.
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.
