Music

Paul Cauthen greeted a packed house at The Union Event Center on Friday night by flipping-off his critics who doubted he’d make any money with his “uptown country” style. He started his show with “F*** You Money” which reminded skeptic that “Now my show sellin’ out on tour.” That settled, he delighted the crowd with his genre-fluid music. Indeed it was “Country as F***.”  He wailed, “You ain’t country enough. Make my own definition, bent the system, ‘bout to start a new religion. Call it country–country as F***.” 

He celebrated his success in his larger-than-life style with “Champagne and a Limo.” In Beverly Hillbillies fashion, he poked fun at someone like him joining an exclusive country club with “Country Clubbin’.” He crooned, “Champagne, shuffleboard rednecks on the tennis court.” Given his cocaine and whiskey approach to life and his frequent use of the F-bomb (it’s embedded in several of his songs) I found it odd that this was an all-ages show–especially in Utah!

He down-shifted a bit to play a few serious songs about the dangers of a hard-partying lifestyle in “Slow Down” and “Prayed For Rain.” His deep “Big Velvet” voice is tailor-made for outlaw country, but he can also knock out a soulful ballad. Cauthen gave us a sneak peak of some new material when he played a song he just recorded at Muscle Shoals Studio. 

He played a solid 16-song set covering a good array of his growing catalog of great material. He ended with his singalong signature hit “Cocaine Country Dancing.” Uncharacteristically, the show ended without an encore. He played a full-set, though I still hoped for more when the lights came up and signaled it was time to go.

Cauthen fashions his country music with elements of other musical styles like disco. With “Freaks” he gave us a little bit of country-funk (if you can imagine it.) He and his full band took the stage to hip-hop music reflecting his willingness to cross the musical and cultural divide. The late-announced local opener, Lapdog, played a five-song set of cool, ‘70s jazzy yacht rock with extended trippy jams. That wasn’t exactly what you’d expect for a country headliner show. I’m sure some of the cul-de-sac cowboys in the audience didn’t quite get it. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the whole experience. Cauthen isn’t afraid to cross-pollinate all that is great about American music: country, jazz, blues, rock, funk, and hip hop. Friday night it all worked to perfection.

Who: Paul Cauthen

What: The State Room and Postfontaine Presents: Paul Cauthen’s Country Coming Down Tour

Where: The Union Event Center

When: Friday, March 3, 2023

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Chappell Roan, a self-described thrift store pop star, is performing at Soundwell on Thursday, March 9, 2023 in support of her sold-out Naked In North America tour. Read John’s show preview here!

Chappell Roan, a self-described thrift store pop star, will transform Soundwell into her “Pink Pony Club” on Thursday, March 9, 2023 in support of her sold-out Naked In North America tour. Tickets may still be available on the secondary ticket market. 

Roan skyrocketed to success in 2022 with a series of hit singles. Her first release, “Naked in Manhattan,” channels Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl,” and adds an early 80s new-wave disco-pop beat. On “My Kink is Karma” she delights in the malicious joy of watching an ex-lover struggle post-breakup. She sings “People say I’m jealous, but my kink is watching you crashing your car, you breaking your heart, you thinking I care. People think I’m jealous, but my kink is karma.”

She teed up her latest single, “Casual,” on TikTok ahead of the song’s release to create a viral buzz. It worked. Her song about the pitfalls of a “situationship” made Billboard’s list of top 100 songs of 2022. With a sold-out tour, four well-received singles, and a full-length debut album due out sometime in the spring, Roan is riding a wave of success she’s been carefully building over the past few years. 

“Die Young,” an original composition she posted on YouTube when she was 17, went viral and landed her a recording contract with Atlantic Records. Then she left her rural Missouri home for Los Angeles to pursue a pop music career. Despite her powerful vocals, the melancholy ballads on her 2017 EP School Nights just didn’t find her audience and in 2020, Atlantic Records ended their affiliation with her just as she started to fine-tune her sound with “Pink Pony Club,” a catchy number with all the camp you’d expect from a song about a go-go dancer at a gay West-Hollywood cabaret. 

Cut loose from Atlantic Records, Roan found herself adrift just as the global pandemic took hold. Without the moorings of a major record label team to guide her, Roan needed to figure out how to proceed as a Do-It-Yourself, independent artist. She found herself back where she started as a teenager–on the Internet–trying to gain a following on TikTok and other platforms. The Atlantic Records experience brought talented people into her orbit like Grammy-winning songwriter and record producer Dan Nigro. Writing songs with Nigro helped Roan build on the success of “Pink Pony Club” and find her independent voice. 

From a period of darkness and uncertainty, Roan emerged with what she calls “slumber party pop.” She blends color, campiness, and pageantry into her infectious disco-pop sound. I plan to catch this rising star when she brings her Naked In North America tour to Soundwell on March 9, 2023. I’m looking forward to the glitter and glam. 

Who: Chappell Roan

What: Naked In North America tour

Where: Soundwell

When: Thursday, March 9, 2023

Tickets and info: https://soundwellslc.com, www.postfontaine.com

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If you want to know how the current Dawes album, “Misadventures of Doomscroller,’ is different from the band’s previous seven albums, think about comparing Frank Zappa to the Rolling Stones or R.E.M.

“I think so much, especially with our kind of music, our scene, there’s all this talk of restraint and there’s all this talk of economy,” Dawes singer/guitarist and main songwriter Taylor Goldsmith observed in a recent phone interview. “Sometimes you’ll hear these records by these monster guitar players or monster musicians and there’s no evidence of that. While I really applaud that when the song calls for that because I think that’s the height of taste, I also think when you can, cut loose, I want to hear it.”

Dawes doesn’t sound like the Rolling Stones or R.E.M. – and no one has ever sounded quite like Zappa. But especially like R.E.M. (a band Goldsmith considers a major influence), Dawes on album has kept songs concise and saved the soloing and improvisation for their live shows.

But when the pandemic hit, Goldsmith and his bandmates, drummer and brother Griffin Goldsmith, bassist Wylie Gelber and keyboardist Lee Pardini, decided for “Misadventures of Doomscroller” to throw out their rule book and take musical liberties they had always eschewed on earlier albums.

“I think a big part of it was just the pandemic shutting everything down and us feeling like who knows if tours will ever come back. If that’s the case, let’s make sure to make the music on our terms,” Goldsmith said. “So we felt we should start embracing this part of us that we maybe felt like we weren’t allowed to express (on studio albums).”

Then there was also the Zappa factor.

 “I think a big discovery for me right before we recorded this album was Frank Zappa, and that, I think was a big catalyst for making this possible in my own brain,” Goldsmith said. “I felt like I was given permission…In listening to Zappa, oh, he’s doing everything he wants and everything he can and he’s really exploring the instrument and experimenting himself and it’s so fun. He’s taking excellence to the extent that he’s capable.

“Now it’s like instead of doing the least amount possible to see if it works, let’s do the most amount possible and see if it still works,” he said.

The seven songs on “Misadventures of Doomscroller” work well indeed. The album opens emphatically with the near-10-minute opus “Someone Else’s Café/Doomscroller Tries To Relax.” Greeting the listener with a snazzy chiming guitar hook, the song features an instrumental segment that moves from jazz-tinged edginess into a fluid guitar solo that introduces the downright pretty second half of the track. Far from feeling jammy, every note of “Someone Else’s Café/Doomscroller Tries To Relax” feels intentional and integral to a song that earns its generous length. The same can be said of other lengthy songs: “Everything Is Permanent,” “Ghost in the Machine” and “The Sound That No One Made/Doomscroller Sunrise.”  

Dawes certainly had built up enough experience playing together and exploring various sonic directions to make good on the ambitious plans for “Misadventures of Doomscroller,” which has recently gotten the deluxe reissue treatment with a full live performance of the album.

Dawes grew out of the post-punk-leaning band Simon Dawes after the 2007 departure of Goldsmith’s songwriting partner Blake Mills. As Dawes, the group pivoted to their familiar folk-rock sound with their 2009 debut album “North Hills.”

The band continued to develop their sound over the next three albums, before taking an adventurous sonic turn on the 2016 album “We’re All Gonna Die.” With Mills producing, the band incorporated a variety of synthesizers and other synthetic elements into the songs, bringing more of an edgy pop-rock accent to their songs without losing their signature folk-pop sound. The 2018 album “Passwords,” continued in a similar vein before the band returned to a more organic sound on the 2020 album “Good Luck With Whatever.” 

Dawes certainly had built up enough experience playing together and exploring various sonic directions to make good on the ambitious plans for “Misadventures of Doomscroller,” which has recently gotten the deluxe reissue treatment with the original album supplemented by a full live performance of the album.

“We’ll definitely go deep into our catalog,” he said. “Not that we’re some big famous band with a bunch of hits, but if we were to play lead singles from all of those albums, we wouldn’t have time for anything else. Inevitably, we would just be playing more or less the very same show from night to night. And we have fans that travel. We have the kind of fans that will come to one or two or three shows in a row. I feel like the only way to help cultivate that and also to help us to stay thrilled on stage is to kind of bounce all over the place. And obviously, we want to play songs that are familiar, and we always do. But instead of playing all five of the most popular songs, we’ll play one or two a night and make sure we’re getting into some songs that we never play for anyone else so that each city feels like we had a moment.”

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Could it be that Andy Frasco is maturing? He’s returning to touring this winter, and fans can expect Andy Frasco & The U.N. to still bring the party on stage (or somewhere in front of the stage when Frasco is crowd surfing). But the singer/keyboardist is toning down the partying and other shenanigans that typically happened on and off stage on past tours. Andy Frasco & The U.N. are coming to the Commonwealth Room on March 3, 2023, and he sat down with Salt Lake magazine’s Allan Scully to talk about his new direction and the upcoming album Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

“I’m doing it for my liver,” Frasco said when he phoned in for a recent interview. “I’m turning 35 this year, I’m 34 (now). I’m all about the party, but I want people to know that I’m a songwriter, too. So I’m just really dialing in my songwriting, really dialing in my musicianship, so I know I can’t blame my partying for my sh***y songs…I love partying and I love giving the people their entertainment, but I also want to give them something to think about.”

The fact is, by the time the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, Frasco was not in a great place. He’d been drinking too much and doing cocaine and finding his life-of-the-party behavior had left him wondering who his friends were and battling some genuine bouts of depression. 

No one wanted the pandemic, but being forced off of the road gave Frasco the much-needed opportunity to take a hard look at himself, figure out how to get his life in a better place and decide if he still truly loved writing music and going on tour.

“I was just very selfish,” Frasco said, citing one of the contributing factors to his emotional issues. “I was like doing things and not thinking about others. All of a sudden people wouldn’t start calling me back. I was realizing maybe it is me. I always blamed everyone else that I am on an island. But maybe I’m putting myself on an island. So I had to like figure out the (situation) and realize what was making me sad. 

“Before the pandemic, I didn’t want to be there. And I was faking a smile because I was just too depleted,” he said. “I had to look at myself in the mirror, like what are you doing this for if you’re not going to wake up? You preach happiness and you’re not even happy, so why do you keep (doing) it?” 

One significant change was to kick his cocaine habit. He also cut back on drinking, although he admits he still enjoys his beverages. But the supply of Jameson liquor is lasting longer these days, as he and his band have moderated their intake onstage these days.

“There’s still drinking. I’m not going to lie to you there,” Frasco said. “But it’s definitely more toned down. We’re drinking half a bottle of Jameson a night, not the full bottle.”

The changes in behavior won’t surprise those who’ve been paying attention. Especially on the 2020 albums Keep On Keeping On and Wash, Rinse, Repeat., the album that arrived last April, it was clear Frasco wasn’t just offering escapism in his music.

That was a main theme for Frasco after he founded Andy Frasco & the U.N. in 2007, began touring and released the first of eight studio albums in 2010. 

One look at song titles like “Mature As F***,” “Blame It on the P***y” (from 2016’s Happy Bastards) or “Smokin’ Dope n Rock n Roll” and “Commitment Deficit Disorder” (from 2014’s Half a Man) and it was obvious that Frasco and company were bringing the party with funny, sometimes bawdy lyrics, a disregard for rules, decorum (and sobriety), and a rowdy sound that mixed rock, funk, blues, soul and pop.

The approach generated a good bit of popularity, as Frasco and the U.N. began what became a consistent routine of playing roughly 250 shows a year—a pace that continues to this day. Along the way, the band especially caught on in the jam band scene and festival circuit.

But especially with Keep On Keeping On, Frasco started to shift the narrative of his songs to more thoughtful subject matter, a direction that continued on Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Frasco still kept the tone of the lyrics light, while the music on these two most recent albums stayed buoyant and catchy as ever. But Frasco’s lyrics now wrestled with topics like getting older, maintaining his mental health, finding happiness, being considerate and appreciating life as it happens.  

Keep On Keeping On arrived shortly after the pandemic hit, and with touring halted, Frasco didn’t worry about taking the next musical step for quite a while.

Instead, he took to social media. He hosted a video “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” Dance Party and started an irreverent variety show podcast series he called Andy Frasco’s World Saving S***Show. But much of his podcasting work was devoted to a series he calls Andy Frasco’s World Saving Podcast. It features interviews—some of which get downright deep—with musicians and other celebrities, commentary and comedic bits. The series has gained considerable traction and Frasco, who is frequently joined by co-host Nick Gerlach, will continue doing these podcasts even as he returns to a full schedule of touring, songwriting and recording.

With all of this activity, it wasn’t until about six weeks before he was due to return touring in 2021 that Frasco realized he wanted to have new music for the upcoming shows and charged into making Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

He traveled to several cities—Nashville, Charleston, S.C., Los Angeles and Denver—to write and record with other songwriters, a process that helped him sharpen his songwriting chops as the album took shape.

“It was basically like going to songwriting school,” Frasco said. “Like I wrote with 20 different songwriters and I wrote with like 15 different songwriters in Nashville, and I wrote with a couple of guys in Charleston and a couple of guys in L.A., and instead of like the mental state of ‘I know everything,’ I went in there with my mental state of ‘I don’t know anything.’ It kind of helped me grow into the next phase of my career.”

Feeling he was in a creative space, Frasco spent a chunk of last year making a new album that’s now finished and is targeted for release before this summer. The new album reflects a new development in Frasco’s life.

“I think it’s a love album. I finally committed to someone and I’ve been writing about her,” Frasco said. 

The songs, though, aren’t all about romantic bliss.

“It’s scary as hell. I’ve never had a relationship,” Frasco revealed. “I don’t even know what the f*** I’m doing. That’s what I’m writing about. Like is this OK?”

Some of the songs from the next album are popping up in set lists on Frasco’s current tour with his band, along with material from Keep On Keeping On, Wash, Rinse, Repeat. and older fan-favorite songs. 

“We’re testing out the new songs we just wrote to see how they fit with our live show,” Frasco said. “I have two different philosophies when I write songs. Sometimes I write songs for the record and sometimes I write songs for the (live) set. And these new songs, I was really focusing on trying to write it for both. It’s been really nice. It’s given me confidence that I can write songs for both the (album) and for the live show.”

• Who: The Motet with Andy Frasco & The U.N.
• When: Mar 3, 2023
• Where: The Commonwealth Room
• Tickets and Information: thestateroompresents.com

See more music coverage from Salt Lake magazine.

“I was driving tractors before it got sexy. Real cowboys don’t rock to Kenny Chesney,” according to Paul Cauthen, a musician who is bringing his Country Coming Down tour to The Union Event Center on Friday, March 3, 2023.

Paul Cauthen is blazing a Zappa-like trail with his creative, tongue-in-cheek parody of today’s country music ethos. He offers us a bigger-than-life version of Outlaw Country, and like Zappa, he doesn’t always color within the musical lines of his genre. He is affectionately known as “Big Velvet” because his deep baritone voice channels the vocal spirit of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Elvis Presley (if you can imagine such a throuple.) He plays country, but will veer off into disco or funk mid-song to build a new concoction that resonates with traditional fans and those looking for something more experimental and avant-garde.

On “Cocaine Country Dancing,” for example, Big Velvet creates a giddy-up, country disco when he adds his Elvis/Cash/Jennings vocals to a seedy strip-joint dance beat. It’s something akin to The Who’s song, “Eminence Front” with outlaw-styled lyrics to which you can either line dance or do the hustle. Choose your poison. 

Cauthen’s journey started with the Austin-based Americana vocal duo Sons of Fathers, but he left to pursue a solo career. He released his debut record, My Gospel in 2016. The dark and introspective record featured a throwback sound blending outlaw and gospel country without tipping the scales either way. The record’s opening track “Still Drivin” moves along a retro Jennings-esque trail, but then Cauthen takes you down an Elvis-styled gospel path. 

On his 2017 seven-song EP Have Mercy, he started to find his satirical Big Velvet voice with catchy songs like “Everybody Walkin’ This Land” where he sings (in Johnny Cash fashion) “You racists, fascists, nihilists, and bigots we’re prayin’ for you my friend.”

With his 2019 full-length release Room 41 Cauthen makes peace with his hell-raising lifestyle with songs like “Prayed For Rain.” He sings, “The well’s runnin’ dry. Hell, so am I” and “The rain turned to hail cold, dark, and pale. It beat me as I fell. Lord, I fell.” On the song “Big Velvet,” he confessed “The train wrecked, but I walked away.” With “Cocaine Country Dancing,” his inner demon-slaying ballads give way to a sardonic acceptance of life’s occasional derailment, and the need to celebrate his wild side.

On his latest release, Country Coming Down, Cauthen fully commits to his unorthodox country sound. He offers us a Zappa-like parody of the Nashville gatekeepers who think he’s not “country” enough. On “Country as F***” he sings “I’m a shade tree mechanic, got a one-ton truck. I drink a 30-pack a day ‘cause I’m country as f***.” He adds an organic Elvis vocal shudder when he sings “Hot dog, holly golly, dagnabit I was two years old when I shot my first rabbit.” Cauthen seems at peace with his Big Velvet moniker and accepts he won’t fit in anyone’s box. He’s having a hell of a good time cultivating a larger-than-life and sometimes campy showmanship. I’m bringing both my cowboy boots and my platform shoes to the show, just in case. 

Who: Paul Cauthen

What: The State Room and Postfontaine Presents: Paul Cauthen’s Country Coming Down Tour

Where: The Union Event Center

When: Friday, March 3, 2023

Tickets and info: thestateroompresents.com, theunioneventscenter.com

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Like so many bands traveling between Denver and Salt Lake in the winter, white-out conditions on I-80 forced Larkin Poe to cancel their January date at The Commonwealth Room. They returned to share the love to a sold-out crowd on Valentine’s Day. They were, as their opening number suggests, “taking the long road. Ooh, diggin’ deep. We’re gonna strike gold.” On Tuesday night, they hit paydirt! They followed with “Kick the Blues,” and primed the packed house for a thrilling, rockin’ blues ride. Larkin Poe is a band made up of two sisters, Rebecca and Megan Lovell who have Georgia and Tennessee roots and play an electrifying style of blues and Southern-fried rock ‘n’ roll.

For me, Larkin Poe is at their best when they tap into that old-school blues sound. And as Rebecca Lovell explained, at every show they pay homage to the pioneers of that genre. With Rebecca Lovell playing lead guitar and vocals, accompanied by her sister, Megan, on lap steel guitar and vocals, and backed by drums and bass, they performed a 21st century rendition of Son House’s 1930s blues standard “Preacher’s Blues.” In the 1950s, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins wrote the new blues standard “I Put a Spell on You.” Shattering the hex seven decades later, Rebecca Lovell conjured up a future classic– from the spellbound perspective—and mesmerized the audience with “Bad Spell.” They teased us with the first few bars of Link Wray’s 1958 classic instrumental “Rumble” before launching into “Holy Ghost Fire.” The past and present collided with a thunderous musical explosion. 

Though anchored in the blues, Larkin Poe is at their core a southern rock ‘n’ roll band who play in 5th gear on an open highway. With only an electric guitar, a lap steel guitar, bass, and drums, Larkin Poe generated a piercing blast of down-home jams. “Blue Ridge Mountains,” “Summertime Sunset,” and “Southern Comfort” were high-octane, full-throttle numbers. “Wanted Woman” showed off the sisters’ guitar mastery and vocal dexterity.

The band downshifted long enough for Rebecca Lovell to show off her soulful voice with “Might as Well Be Me,” a great bluesy ballad. I’d like to see her explore more of this. The woman can sing the blues! She also writes great songs. “Mad as a Hatter,” a song she wrote when she was only 15 years old, describes her grandfather’s battle with mental illness and shares her fear that she might inherit his demons. Sometimes blues music isn’t just learned, it’s also experienced. 

They ended their 15-song set with “Bolt Cutters and The Family Name” and followed with an encore, “Deep Stays Down.” They embraced the old stage maxim: always leave your audience wanting more. That was certainly true of Tuesday night’s show. With so many great songs in their arsenal, and despite a full 16-song show, I hoped they’d play more from their impressive catalog.

Goodnight, Texas, opened the show with the vivid tune “Tucamcari,” imaging the windswept New Mexican town like a musical soundtrack from a gritty John Ford western. They reframed Dylan’s “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more,” into a more realistic “I’m Going to Work on Maggie’s Farm Forever.” Goodnight, Texas’s reimagined farmworker is trapped in a work/poverty cycle and doesn’t have an option to leave the farm like Dylan’s protagonist. It’s a bitingly clever and well-constructed song. In all, they played nine stunning numbers. With their finale, “The Railroad,” you could almost hear the hammer strike the spike as they laid down the track. I wanted more. A short opening set just wasn’t enough. I’d love to see them again, this time, headlining in the State Room. I can imagine a number of great local Americana acts who could open for them. Judging from the crowd’s enthusiastic response, I know I’m not the only one.

Who: Larkin Poe w/Goodnight, Texas

What: Blood Harmony Tour

Where: The Commonwealth Room

When: February 14, 2023

Info: https://thestateroompresents.com

         www.larkinpoe.com

         www.hiwearegoodnighttexashowareyou.com

The Lone Bellow offered us a little teaser last summer when they opened for country-pop sensation Maren Morris at Red Butte Garden (she hand-selected them). That seven-song set whet our appetite for the main course, a full-set, KRCL Presented show at the Commonwealth Room on Feb. 5, 2023. The band is touring in support of their just-released Love Songs For Losers, an 11-song gem that’s rising in the charts. Recorded in the supposedly haunted house of the late Roy Orbison (if you believe in that sort of thing), the end result is a highly spirited record. The single “Honey” has already hit #2 on the Americana Singles chart and the band is sure to fill their setlist with a hardy sampling of their great new material.

The Lone Bellow, a trio of southerners who met in New York City in 2012, play contemporary country/folk or what they term Brooklyn Country. Featured musicians include Zach Williams on guitar and lead vocals, Kanene Donehey Pipkin on mandolin, bass, keyboard and vocals and Brian Elmquist on guitar and vocals. The trio inked a record deal with Sony imprint Descendant Records and released their debut self-titled album which reached #64 on the Billboard Top 200 in 2013. People magazine placed the record in their top ten albums of 2013. The record provided listeners with a visceral musical experience of alluring harmonies and impassioned lyrics. “Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold,” is an exuberant song about how a strong relationship can get you through hard times. The trio sings “Green eyes and a heart of gold. All the money’s gone and the house is cold and it’s alright.” Their sophisticated blend of country/folk/rock/gospel/blues appeals to fans of both heartfelt country ballads and urbane folkish grit.

The band stayed in the center lane of Americana for their next two records. Stunning three-part harmonies and rich tales of love, loss, pain and joy remained the secret formula that earned them an Americana Music Award nomination for best group in 2015. A move to Nashville in 2016 didn’t untether their musical moorings and years on the road only strengthened their place as roof-raising roots revivalists. 

On Feb. 7, 2020, The Lone Bellow hit a home run with the release of their most creatively daring and emotionally intelligent, full-length album Half Moon Light. Then, the global pandemic abruptly halted their touring schedule. Undeterred, the band continued to make music. In 2021 they released a deluxe edition of Half Moon Light, expanding the original release from 15 songs to 21 (what we called a double album back in the vinyl days). Despite the pandemic, the album soared to #4 on the Billboard US Folk Album charts and #11 on the Billboard Top 200. The first single “Count on Me” seemed ready-made for the emotional rollercoaster we were all on (though it was written pre-pandemic) with soothing harmonies chanting like a mantra “Count on me, if I can count on you.” The line “Let it break you. Let it help you lay down what you held on to” also resonated as many of us used the pandemic to take stock of what really matters in life. The song reached #1 on the Americana Singles chart. Its companion release “Dried Up River” is an equally emotional anthem that found its audience, despite the lockdown. It made it to #1 in the charts.  

Opening for The Lone Bellow is Tow’rs, a Flagstaff-based band featuring husband and wife duo Kyle and Gretta Miller who provide winsome folk harmonies. Their songs blend personal and spiritual growth with a collective sense of neighborliness and nature. Their sound reminds me of a stripped-down version of Elephant Revival with their breezy melodies and Elysian vocals. They’ll be the perfect warm-up for a blissful night of soul-regenerating folk-rock music.

Fans of the Avett Brothers, CSNY, Lumineers, Jamestown Revival, Nathaniel Rateliff, or Watchhouse won’t want to miss this show. I will pair the evening’s music with a  refreshing Yacht Rock Juice Box Hazy IPA from Proper Brewing.

• Who: The Lone Bellow w/ Tow’rs
• What: KRCL Presents: The Love Songs For Losers Tour
• Where: The Commonwealth Room
• When: February 5, 2023
• Tickets and Info: thestateroompresents.com and KRCL.org

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For more than a decade, Larkin Poe has delivered their electrified, modernized, Southern-fried rockin’ blues to stadiums and festivals all across the globe. On Friday, Jan. 27, 2023 we get a chance to see them up close and personal at The Commonwealth Room.

Sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell from Georgia, who make up Larkin Poe, are reinvigorating the blues by blending their blood harmonies with super-charged guitar and lap steel riffs. They’re touring in support of their new record Blood Harmony, a great rockin’ blues album that weaves threads of home and family together into a complicated, sometimes painful narrative. In the first chords of the opening track, “Deep Stays Down” Megan Lovell’s haunting swamp blues slide guitar riff takes us somewhere dark and foreboding while sister Rebecca’s soulful voice tells us about the subterranean demons that get buried in the rural South with lyrics like: “The cat’s in the bag, the bag’s in the river and the river runs deep and the deep stays down.” 

The title track “Blood Harmony” celebrates growing up in a musical family and singing with a sibling to create powerful blood harmonies. Rebecca sings: “More than flesh, more than bone. When I sing, I don’t sing alone.” The sister’s bittersweet move from Georgia to Nashville is captured in the radio-ready, Bonnie Raitt-styled “Georgia Off My Mind.” One of my favorite tracks on this amazing record is “Bad Spell.” Rebecca Lovell pens a clever response to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ 1950s macabre blues classic “I Put a Spell on You” from the perspective of the spellbound. The sisters offer us a bad-ass, full-throttled rockin’ blues retort. “Boy, you cast a bad spell, a bad spell over me. And when I catch you, you’re gonna catch hell. I’m gonna get ya in the first degree.”

The Grammy-nominated duo is firmly rooted in the blues and they offer a fresh, new, female perspective that’ll lead the genre into the 21st century. Fun fact: The band is named for the Lovell sister’s great, great, great grandfather, Larkin Husky Poe, who was a cousin of the gothic writer Edgar Allen Poe. That dark literary DNA passed to the Lovell sisters making the blues the perfect vehicle for their artistic expression.

Larkin Poe put a fresh coat of paint on Son House’s 1930s blues standards, “John the Revelator” and “Preachin’ Blues” making them shine for a new generation of listeners. Ninety years ago Lead Belly recorded a 1-minute acapella version of an old, southern field workers’ song “Black Betty” which recounts oppression, injustice and living under the whip. Other artists have recorded versions of the standard, but none captured Lead Belly’s intensity until 2017 when Larkin Poe gave the song a new-age authenticity with their powerful foot-stomping female harmonies.

In 2020, Larkin Poe released Kindred Spirits, a full-length album of contemporary covers. Their version of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” features a slower, more acoustic tempo and the duo’s beautiful harmonies transform the song with a haunting and visceral depth. Their renditions of “Nights in White Satin,” “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Fly Away” are also fabulous reworks.

2020 also brought a full dose of new, original material with Self Made Man, a hard-charging album that reached #1 on Billboard’s blues album chart and featured great new power blues ballads like “Holy Ghost Fire.” Rebecca Lovell sings: “lift our voices with the smoke rising higher. Burn with that holy ghost fire.” While Megan Lovell harmonizes to an uptempo beat, both sisters duel it out with thunderous guitar licks.

In 2018, their album Venom and Faith reached #1 on the Billboard blues album chart and received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album. The record produced the single “Bleach Blonde Bottles Blues,” a song that defines the duo’s driving blues guitar and lap steel sound with a thunderclap beat and mesmerizing siren harmonies. 

Opening the evening is American roots quintet Goodnight, Texas, a band fronted by two lead singers and songwriters, Avi Vinocur from San Francisco, and Patrick Dyer Wolf from North Carolina (so, they’re not actually from Texas). Goodnight, Texas is named for the small town halfway between the two, representing the “meet in the middle” of their songcraft. Blending folk, rock and blues, Goodnight, Texas creates a musical landscape of scenic vistas and open roads. Their song “Tucumcari” captures images of the windswept New Mexican town with a gritty western musical soundtrack. The band creates an Old Crow Medicine Show vibe with old-timey styled Americana songs like “The Railroad,” “A Bank Robber’s Nursery Rhyme,” and “Moonshiners.” Their rural roots style will pair well with Larkin Poe’s electrified Delta blues.

Fans of southern-styled blues like the Allman Brothers, Black Crowes, Gary Clark Jr, Samantha Fish, Kaleo, or ZZ Ward won’t want to miss seeing Larkin Poe in the intimate confines of the Commonwealth Room on January 27, 2023. They’re sure to get your feet stompin’, your hands clapping and your head bobbing. I will pair the evening’s music with a fine Golden Spike Hefeweizen from Uinta Brewing. Cheers!

• Who: Larkin Poe w/Goodnight, Texas
• What: Blood Harmony Tour
• Where: Commonwealth Room
• When: Jan. 27, 2023
• Tickets and info: thestateroompresents.com

The State Room hosted a fruitful Harvest in a sold-out show on Saturday night. Singer-songwriter Paul Jacobsen served as master of ceremonies (and more) ushering in a bounty of talented, local artists to pay tribute to Neil Young’s influential 1972 album. It was a massive, three-part-24-song-musical feast that thrilled the jam-packed audience (ok, I’m done with the produce metaphors). With so many talented, local artists it’s impossible to highlight the standout performances. So, here’s the setlist.  

Act One included a handful of Young’s non-Harvest treasures like “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” performed by Provo pop-duo Adam and Darcie. Daniel Young, who kept the ensemble on time all night with his skillful drumming, took lead vocals on a fine rendition of “From Hank to Hendrix” accompanied by Dylan Schorer on pedal steel, M. Horton Smith on guitar, and Julieanne Brough on keys. Hollering Pines lead singer and songwriter Marie Bradshaw rocked “Harvest Moon” while also providing backup vocals throughout the evening. American Songwriter contest winner Ryan Tanner took the keys and wrapped up Act One with a superb rendition of “After the Gold Rush.” 

Act Two of this star-studded performance featured Harvest in its entirety with Paul Jacobsen skillfully launching the first track “Out on the Weekend.” An assembly of other great players subbed in and out all night, but the foundation of the evening’s host band included Paul Jacobsen on acoustic guitar, Daniel Young on drums, Pat Boyer (Desert Noises) on bass and occasionally shredding a mean lead guitar, TJ Nokleby (Parlor Hawk) on guitar, Brian Hardy (The Lower Lights) on keys, Marie Bradshaw on backing vocals, Dylan Schorer (Hollering Pines) on pedal steel and Megan Nay (Fire Guild) on fiddle.

Provo’s Mia Grace “filled our cup” with “Harvest,” the album’s title track. The next song from the album reminded us that in 1972 even hippy folk artists, marching for peace and justice, could be tone deaf to misogyny. “A Man Needs a Maid,” is a cringeworthy song title that went unchallenged fifty years ago. On Saturday night however, Julianne Brough tackled the song from a female perspective and turned it inside out with her poignantly beautiful rendition. Her reinterpretation was a true highlight in an evening full of high art. 

Porter Smith of the indie rock band Lantern By Sea shined on “Heart of Gold.” Cory Mon delivered an upbeat “Are You Ready for the Country” before handing it off to Kimball Frank for a heartfelt singalong with “Old Man.” Stephanie Mabey brought us back to the album’s  orchestral folkiness with an ethereal “There’s a World.” Dr. Dominic Moore took us on an electrified trip to a subterranean world with the rafter-shaking “Alabama.” Sadly, that powerful song still rings true.

The full stage momentarily cleared and Joshua James came out with his guitar and did an amazing (you could hear a pin drop) rendition of  “Needle and the Damage Done.” Cardinal Bloom’s Joey St. John offered his last “Words” to the show’s loving rendition of Harvest. 

A short intermission gave way to Act Three: A final round of Young’s classics. Whisperhawk (Michael Gross) launched into a thunderous “Cinnamon Girl.” Michelle Moonshine did a lovely “Comes a Time” with Marie Bradshaw on backup vocals. To see both singers/songwriters on stage together was a treat. Bradshaw then took us on a musical ride somewhere on a desert highway with “Unknown Legend.” Ryan Innes (NBC’s The Voice) belted out a soulful “Helpless” and left us wanting more. Neon Trees bassist Branden Campbell joined the ensemble and Porter Smith returned for a lively version of  “Ohio.” M. Horton Smith (Hollering Pines) set his mandolin aside and took lead vocals on “Farmer John.” Mick Rudolph (Seaslak) jammed out a mesmerizing and dreamy “Cortez the Killer” before Joshua James pulled the trigger on “Powderfinger.” The stage filled for the group finale with “Rockin’ in the Free World.” 

Let me catch my breath. This show could have easily sold-out a second night (I’d actually go see it again). I hope the success of this event will generate renewed interest in this type of collaborative celebration. We could use more performances that showcase our locally-based talent. Next time, I’d like to see merch tables so fans can purchase the great original music many of these artists have recorded.

I apologize for failing to mention any of the many players who contributed so much to make the evening a success.

What:  Fifty Years of Neil Young’s Harvest–A Tribute

Who: An all-star lineup of locally-based artists

Where: The State Room

When: January 7, 2023

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