Wed, Jul 8 · 8:30 PM – 11:00 PM
$28.00 – $33.00
Leonie Evans / The Deslondes / Chris Acker
Doors 8pm, Show 8:30pm
$25 adv / $30 dos
Join us for the inimitable Leonie Evans' New York Debut! With support from The Deslondes and Chris Acker.
Leonie Evans is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter from South East London. With a passion for History and music from across the world she sings in multiple languages and also performed Jazz, blues, country, gospel and folk with various bands. Performing since the age of 5, she's toured extensively across the UK, Europe, Japan, and the USA, cultivating a wide-ranging family of musicians.
Her albums Collaborations Vol.1 & Vol.2 , features a different band for every track and the focus of the project is to record and connect musicians she encounters along her musical journey. She's also worked with Blasting Company on soundtracks for animations featured on HBO, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim.
Described by Cerys Matthews (BBC Radio 6) as “like nothing else I’ve ever heard in my life… I was just blown away with her.”
When The Deslondes recorded their new covers album, they didn’t want to simply exalt their heroes and catalog their influences. They wanted to give their friends a boost as well. The poignant and powerful Don’t Let It Die Vol. 1 includes new interpretations of old songs by artists who’ve guided the band for years, including Swamp Dogg, Johnny Cash, and Clifton Chenier, alongside new songs by peers, tourmates, and collaborators, including Nick Woods, Pat Reedy, and the Kernel. “We have so many friends who are songwriters, and we just love their music so much,” says John James Tourville, who plays guitar and occasionally the fiddle. “Riley and Dan are always kicking around awesome, inspiring old songs for us to do, but for this album we really wanted to do some friend songs, too.”
Don’t Let It Die maps out a community of likeminded musicians given to hopping trains, crowding tour vans, and blurring the lines between styles and scenes. “These songs are very much a close part of our lives,” says Riley Downing, who sings and usually plays guitar. “They’re all part of our circle, this big organism that keeps influencing itself. It’s mysterious, though, which musicians get heard and which ones don’t. I think we’re in a good position to tip our cap to the friends we look up to, and hopefully it will benefit our buddies. Hopefully this album will encourage people to go down those rabbit holes.”
In a genre full of tall tales and marketable lies, Chris Acker crafts candid songs – weaving his wit and woes into a body of work that exposes the stale plight of the American Songster to the honest, and sometimes hilarious, light of day.
Since leaving his childhood home of Seattle, Washington, Chris Acker has called the haggard decadence of the New Orleans Americana world his purlieu. In the tradition of Guthrie and Prine, Chris lends a quavering voice to the half-rotten romance of the unremarkable and unrefined. Regardless if you’re sitting by a backyard fire on a muggy Louisiana night or standing stage-side in some far flung town, when you hear Chris Acker playing, you’re hearing the end result of countless hours of observing the masters of the craft…and the end result of repeating their mistakes.
Some hard-times don’t happen behind plows, they happen behind dish-pits and cash registers. Some ramblers don’t feel the hot breath of freedom, just the smell of car exhaust and a couch for a bed. From the folk revival through the golden age of country music, deafened by punk shows and brass bands alike, Chris’s songwriting is a nod to the absurd yet muted brilliance that inhabits the molded corners of the bars he patrons and cratered street he treads, paired with a pained honesty that merits a long second look.
We're so excited for this very special show! Get your tickets ahead of time!
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