Eliot Bronson at Bird's Nest Listening Room Dunn NC

Eliot Bronson at Bird's Nest Listening Room - Dunn NC

Join us for an unforgettable evening of live music with Eliot Bronson at the Bird's Nest Listening Room in Dunn, NC. Get ready to be captivated by Eliot's soulful voice and heartfelt lyrics.

Date: Sunday, May 18, 2024

Time: 6:00 (doors at 5:00pm)

Location: 311 E Broad St, Dunn, NC

Prepare to be swept away by Eliot's unique blend of folk, rock, and Americana music. This intimate in-person event promises an evening filled with incredible melodies and powerful storytelling. Don't miss your chance to experience Eliot Bronson's raw talent live!

About Eliot Bronson:

Eliot Bronson had already spent a decade on the road, playing his award-winning indie folk songs to audiences from Norway to New England, when the Covid-19 pandemic brought his touring operation to a halt.

"Once I learned that I couldn't tour, I went back to Atlanta and did nothing but play livestreams," says the songwriter, who'd already built an international following with albums like 2014's Eliot Bronson and 2017's James — both helmed by Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb — and a moody, atmospheric brand of American roots music that blurred the boundaries between genres and generations. "I played 165 weekly livestreams over the course of three years," he adds, "and I didn't miss a single week, ever. Those years felt like a personal bootcamp because I got so much better at playing alone. When it came time to make a new record, I knew it wanted to honor that growth by putting myself front and center."

That sense of stripped-down intimacy is highlighted on Eliot's sixth record, Talking To Myself. It's the most meditative, melodic album of his career, with sparse soundscapes that are laced with acoustic guitar, light touches of keyboard, and clouds of misty reverb. When Eliot's voice enters each song, it's like sunlight piercing its way through the fog. "There's a little bit of pedal steel, a little bit of bass, and a little bit of electric guitar," he explains. "Other than that, it's just me and Damon."

He's talking about Damon Moon, the Atlanta-area producer best known for his work with regional indie rock bands. "Damon usually makes records with louder bands," Eliot says, "and that was interesting to me. I wanted to work with someone who had a different sensibility than I did. He brought a new atmosphere to the album. Instead of playing bass on a song, we'd use a Moog. Instead of playing a shaker, we'd use a brush on the side of a tambourine. We wanted to get outside the box of what an Americana folk singer is supposed to sound like."

The result is a 10-song show of spacey dream-folk, with Eliot Bronson pulling triple-duty as singer, songwriter, and co-producer. On his previous record, Empty Spaces, he wrote about the messy end of a 10-year romance and the start of something new. Portions of Talking To Myself serve as an epilogue to that story, with songs like "From Rabun Gap" and "Are You Still Mean" measuring the distance between past heartbreak and present resilience. Elsewhere, Talking To Myself finds Eliot taking stock of the world around him, turning his personal experience into universal songs about the feelings we all share. "I was writing about loneliness, isolation, and reflection," he says. "The songs were written or refined during the pandemic, and that's what I was doing during that period: reflecting. It's not a pandemic album, but it's one that reflects the depth of an inner-life cultivated in a unique time in our lives."

Ever since his teenage years in working-class Baltimore, music has been a source of therapy for Bronson. He grew up within walking distance of the Pentecostal Church where his father and grandfather once preached to congregants who spoke in tongues, and he was raised by parents who took equal inspiration from religion and 1960s counterculture. It was a challenging and paradoxical upbringing, and Bronson found his own sort of escape in his father's record collection, which was filled with releases by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and the trailblazing blues duo of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. Inspired, he began writing his own music as a teenager, eventually those songwriting skills into a career — and, with it, a ticket out of town. Relocating to Atlanta, he became a regular performer at local venues like Eddie's Attic as a member of the folk-rock duo The Brilliant Inventions, then launched a solo career whose early milestones included a first-place finish in the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest.

Talking To Myself was recorded on the outskirts of Atlanta, where Eliot returned after logging a handful of years in Nashville. Quarantine restrictions prevented him from exploring the city for months, so he built his own community online, where his weekly livestreams became an opportunity for fans to meet and connect. "I became the facilitator of a community that started because of my music," he says, "but it quickly became something that was bigger than my music. I'd never experienced that before." The livestreams also gave Eliot a chance to debut the new songs he'd been writing. "What I've Done With My Life" was a retrospective look at an adulthood spent on the run, traveling from show to show, set to a soundtrack of finger-picked acoustic guitar and simple melodies. "Wait For Me" was a confessional song that found Eliot asking a lover for patience and mercy. "Take This The Wrong Way" was a minor-key folk song, as haunting as it was gorgeous.

Those songs are captured on Talking To Myself. It's an album that balances mood and melody, intimacy and atmosphere, grounded songwriting and astral, ambient arrangements. For a songwriter who's always dealt with the grey area between genres — or, he puts it, "the in-between colors that we don't really have words for" — it's the next chapter in a story that continues to unfold.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

311 E Broad St, 311 East Broad Street, Dunn, United States