WHEN: Thursday June 2, 2016
DOORS: 7pm | SHOW: 8pm
GENRE: rock / soul
AGES: all ages
TICKETS: $10 adv. / $12 d.o.s. / $20 VIP (guaranteed seating in 1st three rows!)
SEATING: seated general admission
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Reed Turchi & The Caterwauls:

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Raised in the Swannanoa Valley just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, Reed Turchi grew up playing piano, focusing on boogie woogie and New Orleans styles before becoming infatuated with slide guitar. While learning Hill Country Blues (RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Mississippi Fred McDowell) firsthand in North Mississippi, he founded his blues-rock trio “TURCHI,” which released its debut album Road Ends in Water in 2012. Called “everything a blues fan could want” (LA Examiner), the album featured guest Luther Dickinson on three tracks.

After a series of national tours, TURCHI released Live in Lafayette in early 2013, and exploded on the blues-rock scene, notably earning high praise from Living Blues Magazine (“for all of their communion with the past, TURCHI sounds vital, alive, and essential”), landing on the cover of Buscadero (Italy) and being showcased in a five-page feature in Il Blues Magazine (Italy). At that point, TURCHI’s national touring grew to include Europe, highlighted with a headlining spot at Mojo Festival (Rome) in June 2014 after the release of Can’t Bury Your Past, which expanded the trio with keyboards/organ (Anthony Farrell) and saxophone (Art Edmaiston).

Also in 2014, stemming from his tours in Italy, Reed began collaborating with renowned Italian guitarist Adriano Viterbini, leading to Scrapyard, an intimate, intense, guitar duo album recorded in Memphis and in Rome. Called “a marvelous example of talent and simplicity” (Bluebird Reviews, UK), the album earned a editor’s feature from iTunes (“blues chemistry overflowing with earthy delta slide and dark pulsing electric guitar”), and a spot on Tidal’s “editor’s playlist.”

At around the same time, seeking new inspirations and sounds, Reed moved from Western North Carolina to Memphis, where he began digging into the trademark rhythms and styles that made the music from Stax and Muscle Shoals groove so powerful. It was a time of personal and musical change, leading Reed to disband TURCHI with the release of sendoff EP We Spoke in Song, recorded at an old JC Penney in Richmond VA amidst their final performances in October 2014.

As they toured in support of Scrapyard in Europe and the US, Adriano introduced Reed to Tuareg music (Tinariwen, Bombino, Terakaft). Back in Memphis, Reed wrote songs with a new sound and band in mind, and began recording at Ardent Studios in April 2015. The result, Speaking in Shadows, will be released March 4th 2016 on Devil Down Records.

Revealing musical and songwriting influences ranging from Randy Newman and JJ Cale to Beck, T Rex, and Tinariwen, Reed steps out from behind the gruff fuzz into a multi-faceted sound built on finely crafted songs and ear- & rear-moving grooves. Featuring an all-star group of musicians including drummer/bassist Paul Taylor, saxophonist Art Edmaiston, Andrew Trube and Anthony Farrell (Greyhounds), and Adriano Viterbini, Speaking in Shadows is built on a foundation of Memphis groove and fat-back rhythm. Fresh textures abound, from the carnival of sounds on tongue-in-cheek “Drawn and Quartered” to the heartbreaking vocals of Heather Moulder on the spare, haunting lead track “Pass Me Over.” As a songwriter, Turchi confidently mines the classic blues/rock vein in “Offamymind” (“Well I can barely walk, so I guess I oughta/ Get behind this wheel and drive”), effortlessly shifts gears to the satirical “Everybody’s Waiting (for the end to come),” and turns introspective in “Looking Up Past Midnight.” Reuniting with engineer Adam Hill (Big Star, Dirty Streets, White Stripes), Reed strikes out for new territory with co-production by Billy Bennett (MGMT, Drive-By Truckers, Los Colognes). The album was mastered by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Natural Child, The Whigs) at Bombshelter Studios in East Nashville, with artwork and design from Charles Ritchie.

To implement the new album’s sound live, Reed assembled The Caterwauls: Memphis drummer Andrew McNeill; Murfreesboro, TN-based slide guitarist Joey Fletcher; and Woodsbury, TN singer / piano player Heather Moulder. The Caterwauls combine soul, funk, rock, country, and gospel, creating deep grooving rhythms. Reed and The Caterwauls are preparing for a busy 2016, and the launch of Speaking in Shadows.

Nive & The Deer Children:

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If you got a team of the greatest children’s book writers in the world together, they couldn’t invent Greenlandic folk pop singer Nive Nielsen. In her case at least, band bios are simply stranger than fiction. A few facts about her: The first concert she ever played was for the queen of Denmark on national television; she acted in the Hollywood movie The New World starring Colin Farrell; and she actually is Inuit — well, Inuk — an indigenous Greenlander. Also, it’s daylight all summer where she lives.

A few more facts: She plays a little red ukulele in a band called the Deer Children. She writes songs about love and reindeer. She won an IMA independent music award in the US, worked with Howe Gelb and John Parish and friends from such indie royalty outfits as The Black Keys and Wolf Parade. Really, I’m not making it up.

What’s even more surprising is that her fanciful back story is matched by her own ability to tell stories or sometimes just hint at them with her warm, reedy voice. Sometimes she sings out with and old-timey quaver; sometimes she sings in a soft, childlike murmur. The songs themselves are straight out of a storybook that never was. They could be from anywhere, and they are hard to place in time. They are hummable folk melodies with a streak of vocal jazz, or cowboy ballads with an elfin side. They have a way of sticking in your mind — and not just because they were written by the only Greenlandic Inuit indie ukulele player that you can think of off hand. Snow Songs? Inuit Indie? Do check them out!

Chris Milam:

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What happens when a plan fails or a path forward disappears? What happens as you walk your way back?

After a tumultuous year, Chris Milam went to the studio with a dozen new songs that tackle these questions and define his sound. He emerges after months of recording with an eagerly-anticipated slate of new material, a collection of songs called Kids These Days. Its next single—title track “Kids These Days”—comes out May 26 on Namesake Records.

Following a broken engagement, Chris Milam lost everything but what he could fit in his car. Then, while on tour, that car—and everything in it—was stolen.

“That was the lowest moment. All I had was a garbage bag of clothes and some songs.”

The songs became the turning point: Milam teamed up with Memphis producer Toby Vest [High/Low Recording] to begin work on what would become Kids These Days. To fund the project, Milam spent a year without a home–couch-surfing, pet-sitting, troubadouring—saving for studio time rather than rent.

He called in Memphis musicians Greg Faison (drums), Pete Matthews (bass), Luke White (guitar), Jana Misener (cello) Krista Wroten (violin), and Vest (keys, effects) to illustrate the tension and sense of loss in each song.

“We wanted the record to feel atmospheric, dynamic, and unpredictable. It was important to me that these songs were built around live takes. Memphis musicians have a way of filling a song with life—beautiful, weird life.”

Last fall, Milam released the first single from this material, “Autumn,” a richly-orchestrated ballad about the moment his engagement ended. Its anthemic chorus identified the source of his heartache: “it’s not the break, but the breaking.” If “Autumn” depicts the breaking point, “Kids These Days” occupies the moment just before everything falls apart.

“Kids These Days” typifies a record full of inflection points. Milam’s gift for melody and lyricism revisits the earlier comparisons to Paul Simon, but these songs draw heavier from other influences: Chris Bell, Damien Rice, and R.E.M. Reflecting the songs themselves, Milam’s voice has matured: plaintive vibratos shift in a flash to a shout, growl, or croon.

The album explores the ways in which “kids these days” aren’t kids any more. Each song has as its underlying question: “what now?” For Milam, the loss of a defining relationship carried with it the loss of youth. And it’s a break from that path, and that youth, that this record really mourns. Kids These Days examines loss while seizing the opportunity for change. For Chris Milam, this isn’t a break-up record; it’s a break from record.