Doors 3pm, Music 4pm

There’s something uniquely fun about Amy Lavere, even when she’s breaking your heart. She is well known among songwriters and critics alike. NPR’s Robert Siegel says she “specializes in lyrics that are more barbed than her sweet soprano prepares you for.” Her growing catalogue of material and steady critical acclaim suggest a first-tier presence on the Americana and indie-folk/punk circuits. Her latest album Painting Blue came out last Summer on Nine Mile Records (Glorietta, David Wax Museum, Carson McHone, Patrick Sweany, Greyhounds).
Amy’s live performances are anything but predictable. She might appear on stage with a full band, sporting a mask and pink wig, or simply be a natural in blue jeans and sandals, but her upright bass and clever song delivery are constants. Her voice is at once the bully and the victim. She’s performed in venues as wide-ranging as St. Andrew’s Hall in London and Memphis’ famed dive bar Earnestine and Hazel’s. There’s no room she can’t find an audience in and charm it to pieces.

“Most of my life,” says Will Sexton, “I’ve complicated things musically. But, nowadays, I have a different approach: it’s less cerebral, and more about gut and soul.” It’s been an evolution years in the making for revered guitarist/vocalist Sexton, who launched his career when he still in grade school. Now the towering Texan, nearing age 50, has brought this new philosophy to bear on his first solo record in a decade, Don’t Walk the Darkness, due from Big Legal Mess on March 6, 2020.
Along with older brother Charlie, the San Antonio-born Sexton was a musical prodigy who eventually moved to Austin, coming of age in the city’s hothouse environment. Playing with iconic Lone Star figures such as Doug Sahm, Joe Ely, Roky Erickson and Stevie Ray Vaughan, he scored a major label deal while still in his teens fronting Will and the Kill.
Over the past three decades, Sexton has grown into a skilled musical polymath: an esteemed writer, producer, session player and solo artist with a string of acclaimed LPs to his credit.

Over the last thirty years, Johnny Dowd has been creating records that defy trends, a unique catalog of work that stands head and shoulders above many of his lauded contemporaries. Now in his seventieth year on God’s good earth, Dowd has lost none of the vigor, enthusiasm, and attitude that has seen him forge his position as one of America’s most inquisitive artistic minds, a musical explorer who has charted expeditions to genre-defying destinations that, at their heart, question, challenge, and dissect notions of the American Dream.

He released his first album Wrong Side of Memphis in 1997, and in the wake of critical acclaim his second album in 1999, Pictures From Life's Other Side, also to positive reviews. That year saw the first of Dowd's US and European tours. A Dutch TV documentary on Dowd was filmed in 2000, and in early 2001, the New York Times highlighted him as one of four "Country Singers Who Still Display a Country Heart". He continued to release a record every year while touring both the US and Europe, making his his major film appearance in 2003 with Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus and winning the the Alt Country award in the 7th Annual Independent Music Awards with Cruel Words in 2007, as well as acting as an IMA judge for the 8th annual awards. Over the years, he has toured, recorded, produced or collaborated with such musical luminaries as The Mekons, Jim White and Amy LaVere, to name a few (not in order of importance, and an unforgivably abbreviated list) . He has contributed to numerous tribute albums, most recently 2021’s release of The Wanderer - A Tribute To Jackie Leven.

https://www.amylavere.com/
http://www.willsexton.com/

http://www.johnnydowd.com/

Tickets:$20 and on sale now online at https://abilene.showare.com/ and this afternoon at the door