Tuesday , May 31 at 8:30pm
The Ragbirds
For years, “home” was a place The Ragbirds rarely visited. The band’s music — a genre-bending hybrid of indie-pop melodies, global rhythms and songwriting styles influenced from all over the world — was as broad as their audience, which stretchedfrom the group’s hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, to the shores of Osaka, Japan (where they scored a Number One pop hot with the song “Book of Matches”). Show by show, in venues ranging from rock clubs and performing arts centers to festivals encompassing everything from bluegrass to electronica, The Ragbirds developeda well-deserved reputation as one of the most dynamic, high-spirited live bands in roots music.
“I feel like I’ve stumbled across a band that’s destined to achieve the same level of cult-greatness as The Innocence Mission, Bruce Cockburn,Ron Sexsmith,Sufjan Stevens, and yes, even Over the Rhine…. The Ragbirds debut album, Yes Nearby, is a work of astounding international eclecticism, mixing everything from reggae to Celtic to blues music along with plenty of world music into a unified, enchanting whole”
- Josh Hurst, Revealarts
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Cover: $10 advance, $13 day of show
Tickets on sale Monday, May 9 at Abilene, Record Archive and online at www.abilenebarandlounge.com
FRIDAY, JUNE 3 at 9:30 PM
Fred Eaglesmith with Tif Ginn
Saturday, June 11
Doors open at 7:30 PM
AN EVENING WITH SAVOY BROWN
Abilene On The Road Music Series at Montage Music Hall
British Blues/Rock pioneer Kim Simmonds and Savoy Brown celebrate 50 continuous years, 45 albums, and more than 5,000 gigs from the Royal Albert Hall to Carnegie Hall to the Fillmore East and West and now the Montage Music Hall!
But Kim Simmonds is not living in the past; he's challenging himself and his band to reach new heights and find higher ground.
"Savoy Brown is a very musical band," Simmonds says. "We're not comparing ourselves to others. We appeal to an audience who wants to hear what we are up to now, what we are rehearsing, creating as a band. I think my guys and my team is empowering me to do this."
Bands including Jethro Tull, the Doobie Brothers and Kiss supported Savoy Brown to open up their own careers. Not too many bands tour continuously for 50 years. It is a a true rarity to find one at the top of their game. Kim wakes at dawn every day he's not on the road and goes out to his White Cottage studio to play, sing, write record and continually hone his craft. "Do I have anything left to prove?" considers Kim. "Perhaps not to other people, but to myself, yes. There's always, inside of you, a song not written or a new guitar lick waiting to come out. I still have the drive I had when was I was young, and that keeps the dream going."
Thursday, June 16 at 8:30 PM
Wreckless Eric
Wreckless Eric is a hero to all those of us who love a good kitchen sink drama set to music. He takes the strangeness in the everyday and sets it to song. Like Ray Davies, Kevin Ayers and Ian Dury, he is a truly great British songwriter
– Phil Alexander, editor in chief, MOJO magazine
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Tickets $10 at the door
Tuesday, June 21 at 8:00 PM
Miss Tess & The Talkbacks
On her new release Baby, We All Know, Miss Tess continues to explore her own personal crossroads of American roots music. This full-length release features eleven finely crafted and well-sung original songs. Heightened by Tess’ prowess on her Weymann archtop guitar, she is accompanied by her top-notch band, The Talkbacks, featuring guitar ace and co-conspirator Thomas Bryan Eaton. The songs were further enlivened with piano, organ, pedal steel, and fiddle in the studio.
Tess says “I consider this my best yet collection of original music. In writing these tunes I stepped out of myself and into many different characters, based on real life and my imagination, and pulled sounds and stories from my musical fantasyland. Baby, we all know their secrets and on goings, in a world of mischief and troubled fun.” These songs were penned at Tess’s yearly writing retreat in New Hampshire, and at her home in Nashville. Yet time and place don’t bear much relevance here; the subjects she speaks through live in the streets of New Orleans, in the backwoods hollers of Tennessee, on a train heading to Mexico, and under the sheets.
Visit Tess’s website
Click here to buy tickets
Advance tickets $10 at the door, $12 day of show
FRIDAY, JUNE 24 at 7:30 PM
COMMANDER CODY AND HIS
MODERN DAY AIRMEN
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Tickets $20 at the door