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September 1 @ 9:00 pm
Ally Venable
Ally Venable
Heart Of Fire
Released 2021 on Ruf Records
This is no time for faint hearts. The pandemic might have silenced the music scene, shuttered the live circuit and divided artists from their fans. But with Heart Of Fire, Texas’s favourite new gunslinger Ally Venable is coming off the ropes swinging. Defying dark times and rolling up the amps, this fourth release from the acclaimed singer-songwriter is a record to rattle your speakers and signpost better times ahead. “My vision was to really spread a positive message of love,” says Venable. “The world needs that right now.”
If Heart Of Fire finds Venable giving the globe some much-needed love, then the feeling is entirely mutual. Still in her early twenties, the guitarist’s breakneck two decades have moved as fast as her fingers, her path winding from childhood church choirs to the teenage influence of local heroes like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Miranda Lambert. Early releases No Glass Shoes (2016) and Puppet Show (2018) earned her international fans, Top 10 chart placings and ETX Awards, but it was 2019’s #2 Billboard-charting Texas Honeyand house-rocking sets on that year’s Blues Caravan tour that sent her stratospheric. Now, with Venable’s fanbase snaking further around the block every time she blows into town, Texas roots icon and Texas Honeyproducer Mike Zito is in no doubt: “Ally is the future of blues and the crossover music of American roots-rock.”
Not even a global pandemic could derail her momentum. Working at the Bessie Blue Studio in Stantonville, Tennessee last February with world-renowned producer Jim Gaines, Heart Of Fire finds Venable laser-focused on her songcraft, challenging herself to write with unguarded honesty, even if it hurts. “On this album, I really wanted to create a tone of overcoming your struggles and persevering through them,” she explains.
Like any battle, this record gets loud. Anyone who has left an Ally Venable show with ringing ears will come expecting rip-it-up guitar work, and Heart Of Fire is a lovely way to burn. In a world of electronic pop, this old-soul gunslinger riffs up a storm on the Led Zeppelin-worthy sting of Hard Change and Do It In Heels, revs up the slinky hook of Sad Situation and drives the title track’s intro with a heavy-booted wah lick. “That song is about being in a state of sadness,” she explains, “and someone comes along and brings you out of it, and then nobody is able to take out your flame.”
Guest Kenny Wayne Shepherd, tears up Bring On The Pain. As Venable says: “That song is about loving someone, staying true to yourself during the bad times and saying, ‘No matter what’s going on, my love won’t change’. Kenny is one of my heroes, so I’m very honoured he said yes to be a part of the song.”
While nobody is better at squeezing fresh juice from the blues-rock genre, Venable’s songwriting frequently forks into leftfield. There’s the chain-gang stomp of Hateful Blues, its lyric cursing a cruel lover (‘Oh, my love has been abused/and that’s why I’ve got these hateful blues’). There’s the pace-changing cover of Bill Withers’ classic Use Me, reborn here with congas, rubberband bass and a grooving lick. And don’t miss the impossibly wistful Road To Nowhere, with Southern rock great Devon Allman dovetailing with Venable on the chorus harmonies. “Devon jumped right into the song, elevated it and brought it to life,” she remembers. “His vision for the song aligned perfectly with mine, and I’m so happy with how it turned out.”
The same could be said for Heart Of Fire. Defiant, passionate, honest and raw, this is the record these times demand, from an artist who refuses to wait for the storm to pass, but prefers to dance in the rain. “My goal for this album was to give an outlet for people,” Venable considers. “That’s really where the core of these songs comes from…”
October 30 @ 9:00 pm - October 31 @ 12:00 am
3rd Annual Halloween Bash with The Sextones
From the high deserts of Nevada, The Sextones have emerged with their debut album, Moonlight Vision.
Moonlight Vision is a diligently crafted work showcasing their distinctive brand of soul music with smoked out guitar riffs, growling bass lines, commanding drums, sticky organ comping and honest, but catchy vocal acrobatics.
The release of Moonlight Vision is the first step forward for a group that has already accomplished what most musicians spend a lifetime trying to achieve –touring across the nation and sharing stages with the likes of Macy Gray, Ziggy Marley, and Charles Bradley, as well as working with renowned funkologist Alan Evans of Soulive.
The mighty band is formed from acclaimed west coast musicians, Mark Sexton (guitar/vocals), Alexander Korostinsky (bass), Daniel Weiss (drums), and Ryan Taylor (keys).
The Sextones have musical chops beyond their years and Moonlight Vision shows how well- versed the band is across musical styles. The members have been touring since they were minors in high school, and now continue to spread the sound with The Sextones.
December 31, 2021 @ 10:00 pm - January 1, 2022 @ 1:00 am
Jelly Bread New Year’s 2022
Jelly Bread has risen from Reno/Lake Tahoe area favorites into a nationally- touring, powerhouse quintet that delivers a high-energy, chameleonic playlist all over the United States. Jelly Bread’s distinct style is identified by a blend of desert twang meeting the urban tones of funk and rock. Exceptional songwriting and storytelling interlaced with four part harmonies, intricate “in-the-pocket” drum and bass grooves, swampy lap steel guitar, dirt under the fingernails guitar licks, tasty talkbox, “take-’em-to-church” organ come together into a sound that is downright appetizing.
Here, There & Everywhere was mixed by renowned engineer/producer Justin Phelps (Cake, Galactic, Fruition, The Mars Volta, The Neville Brothers, and Dead Kennedys among many others). Jelly Bread has performed direct support for the likes of Robert Cray, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Moe, Rusted Root, JJ Grey, Dragon Smoke (members of Galactic), The Motet, Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Lukas Nelson and the Promise of the Real, Pimps of Joytime, Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds, Allen Stone Band, Orgone, Kyle Hollingsworth Band, Carolyn Wonderland, and The California Honeydrops. The band has also appeared at premiere festivals including the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival, Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival, High Sierra, Joshua Tree, Strawberry, and Mammoth Festival of Beers and Bluesapalooza.
Jelly Bread is Dave Berry – guitar/vocals, Cliff Porter – drums/vocals, Alvin Johnson – keys/vocals, Ian Lindsay – bass/vocals, and Kevin Russell – lead guitar
April 20, 2022 @ 9:00 pm
420 Celebration with Pato Banton
Memberships and ticket sales will go on sale later
Patrick Murray, Birmingham, England. Murray’s unusual stage name came from the Jamaican patois for ‘wise owl’ (Pato) and disc jockey slang for a ‘heavyweight DJ’ (Banton). He first came to the public’s attention in 1982 on the Beat’s Special Beat Service album, duelling with Ranking Roger on ‘Pato And Roger A Go Talk’, before releases on the Fashion Records and Don Christie labels.
His debut single, ‘Hello Tosh’, was a novelty take on the Toshiba advertising campaign of 1985. His first long-playing effort saw him paired with the wizardry of the Mad Professor, a combination to which he would return four years later for the Recaptured set. On his solo debut Banton was backed by the Birmingham-based Studio 2 house band.
Throughout, he coloured his Rasta toasting/dub with comic impersonations of the characters populating his songs. Since then, his records have leaned progressively towards pop and soul, blurring the dividing lines between Jamaican toasting and American rap. For 1990’s Wize Up!, which contained an unlikely alternative radio hit in his cover version of the Police’s ‘Spirits In The Material World’, Banton was joined by David Hinds of Steel Pulse.
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