6:30 - Doors
7:00 - Volores
8:00 - Vandoliers
$15 - Advance / $20 - Day of
Vandoliers
"Most personal album yet" is a well worn cliché within the cliché addled world of music promotion. But Life Behind Bars,mthe fifth studio album from beloved Texas country punk ensemble Vandoliers, brings new meaning to that phrase. This album marks a series of firsts for the band, it's their first release with upstart Break Maiden Records and distributed by storied indie Thirty Tigers, their first with Grammy winning producer Ted Hutt (The Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly, Lucero), and their first recorded at the sprawling Sonic Ranch studios in West Texas. Most importantly, though, this collection of songs offers a window into frontwoman Jenni Rose's journey through addiction and gender dysphoria a journey that has culminated in her decision to come out as a trans woman while working in the macho worlds of Texas country and punk rock, at a moment when the rights of trans people are more intensely threatened by the day.
For the uninitiated, even the most melancholy Vandoliers song has a degree of exuberance and verve, full of an irrepressible energy that has led the band to tour with everyone from Flogging Molly to the Turnpike Troubadours to fellow Dallas Fort Worth natives the Toadies and the Old 97s. Their unique ability to bring together the worlds of the square-toed boot clad hicks with the steel-toed boot wearing punks has helped the band find a devoted following across the world, fans who pack out shows that are always life affirming and usually end with some Vandoliers hopping around onstage shirtless.
While the 10 tracks on Life Behind Bars are upbeat and sing-a-long ready in classic Vandoliers fashion, they're a little more stripped-down and intimate than the band's typical raucous fare. The title track has all the sharp observations and catchy melodies of Vandoliers' best work, but with the added context and depth of Rose's path to self-discovery. The album has more explicitly political tracks as well: "Bible Belt," which Rose wrote about the fear and pain of feeling like an outsider deep in the Fort Worth suburbs, and "Thoughts and Prayers," a darkly funny composition written and sung by Graves about the epidemic of gun violence in America.
These are the songs of a band that is fearless and fun, hellbent on spreading joy wherever they go, and who has made a career of pushing boundaries and taking all-comers—of making a bigger, brighter, bolder tent in a musical space that is still too often hidebound by tradition.
"We've been breaking rules in country for 10 years," says Rose. "'You play too fast.' 'You're too loud.' 'You're more of a punk band.' All that matters, though, is that people hear our songs and they help them in any way that's all we can hope for. I'm struggling so much on this record, but I hope that another person listens to it and finds something in it for themselves."
Volores
“It’s simple, but in a stylish and very beautiful way,” mulled Flogging Molly bassist Nathen Maxwell of his new band VOLORES, with his singer-songwriter wife Shelby.
The duo’s debut album, AGES, explores universal themes of life, love, and death through dark, indie rock motifs and disarmingly frank lyricism. The Colorado-based couple jokingly dub their sound “mountain goth.” Organic, haunting, and relentlessly authentic, VOLORES’ broad appeal lies in its raw channeling of the mortal condition, including mental health struggles, that the couple have not only experienced, but experienced together.
“I feel like the honesty and vulnerability is a large part of what makes us accessible and human,” offered Shelby. “I’m screaming my fears and insecurities out into the world.”
Shelby spent several years crafting the songs that would become AGES, often while Nathen was on tour with Celtic-punk icons Molly. She sent her home demos to Nathen out on the road for structuring and arranging. Counterintuitively, it was COVID that cemented what was brewing.
“The silver lining of the pandemic was that it really gave us time to realize that this body of work could become this collaboration, this songwriting partnership,” Nathen recalled.
The twelve tracks they settled on were captured, mostly live, in just five days at Texas’ storied Sonic Ranch studios. The album’s understated self-production strictly serves its sentiments and songs, without regard for commercialism or genre. Every note remains visceral and personal.
“It’s a coping mechanism; to put into music these really dark pieces of ourselves that can so easily be hidden from the world,” said Shelby. “Hiding them in plain sight, within our music.”
The album’s title track and first single showcases Shelby’s subtly tremulous, Chrissie Hynde-inflected timbre in lurking verses and a defiant hook stained with VOLORES’ distinctive, couple-close harmonizing. Palpably anxious follow-up “All That We Could Need” frames Shelby’s glacial, imploring vocal with Interpol/Cure-ish upper-register bass countermelodies, personifying VOLORES’ intuitive marriage of outdoorsy Americana and elegant post-punk.
Ostensibly breezy standout “Carrion Cry” reveals itself in its play-on-words hook. “Carrion is the decaying flesh of a dead animal,” said Shelby. “But we sing it as a carry-on cry: to continue moving forward; to allow the death and decay to fall off you and be reborn into something new.”
The Maxwells will take VOLORES as far as they can, for as long as they can, including touring as a trio (completed by drummer Art Brown) that sounds refreshingly close to their recordings.
“This is an extension of my life’s work; of Shelby’s life’s work,” Nathen concluded. “Our ambition is to maximize this band within the time that we have to do it.”
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