John Craigie live in Asbury Hall with special guest Tré Burt!
presented by DSP Shows
7pm doors, 8pm show
Tickets on sale Fri Jul 19 @ 10am
General Admission Seated, $25 advance, $30 Day of show-- available at TixR.com or in person at the Babeville Box Office (M-F 11a-5p) – 3% credit card fee, no fee for cash.
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JOHN CRAIGIE:
Much like community, music nourishes us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It also invites us to come together under the same roof and in a shared moment. In similar fashion, John Craigie rallies a closeness around music anchored by his expressive and stirring song-craft, emotionally charged vocals, lively soundscapes, and uncontainable spirit. The Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer invites everyone into this space on his 2024 full-length album, Pagan Church. Following tens of millions of streams, sold out shows everywhere, and praise from Rolling Stone and more, he continues to captivate.
“The music is always evolving and devolving with each new record,” he observes. “With my last album Mermaid Salt, I really wanted to explore the sound of isolation and solitude as everyone was heading inside. With this record, I wanted to record the sound of everyone coming back out.”
In order to capture that, he didn’t go about it alone…
Instead, he joined forces with some local friends. At the time, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings booked a slew of outdoor gigs in Portland and they invited Craigie to sit in for a handful of shows. The musicians instinctively identified an unspoken, yet seamless chemistry with each other. Joined by three of the five members, Craigie cut “Laurie Rolled Me a J” and kickstarted the process. With the full band in tow, they hunkered down in an old schoolhouse TK & The Holy Know-Nothings had converted into a de facto headquarters and studio, and recorded the eleven tracks on Pagan Church.
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TRÉ BURT opens the show:
After his parents split when he was young, Tre Burt navigated a tough childhood. Often shuttling between their houses and accompanying his father to work--riding shotgun in a 1975 Cadillac Seville, they listened to The Delfonics and Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and The Temptations. Those drives were his sanctuary, that music their blessed score. Then as Burt became a musician himself, he was a traveling troubadour, tapping into American folk and blues partly as a matter of necessity.
On his latest record 'Traffic Fiction', those influences are in full bloom, from the sweet country-soul surrealism of the title track to the skywriting rock of “2 For Tha Show,” Burt as urgent and commanding as he’s ever been. 'Traffic Fiction' is the sound of Burt confidently bending a sentimental past to his present will.
To get to this new alchemy of soul, dub, and more than a little punk, Burt returned to the basics—self-recording in sequestered silence. For the better part of a lifetime, he had told himself he didn’t have the chops to sing like those childhood heroes from the Cadillac days. But now, as he built his one-man-band demos before returning to Nashville’s The Bomb Shelter to work with a trusted band of pals and esteemed producer Andrija Tokic, his versions of those sounds poured out in circumspect love songs and joyous tunes of existential reckoning. His grandfather was dying. The world was struggling with a pandemic and the specter of a third world war. But Burt gave himself permission to have fun and be funny, to let these songs lift him and, eventually, maybe others, too.
And isn’t that a crucial role of music—to show us how to handle our burdens with aplomb and vision, to model the behavior of persevering with style? At three points during 'Traffic Fiction', Burt interweaves bits of recorded conversations with his late grandfather, Tommy. They talk about Stevie Wonder, Burt’s career and the fatigue it can bring, and, finally, the sense that he’s carrying on a family tradition through these records. It’s a reminder not only of what Burt experienced while making 'Traffic Fiction' but also of what he overcame. He found strength in the soul of his youth, and, for that, he’s never sounded stronger.
Event Venue
Asbury Hall, 341 Delaware Ave, Buffalo, NY 14202-1871, United States,Buffalo, New York
Tickets