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The Bones of JR JonesDoors: 7:00 PM
Show: 8:00 PM
ALL AGES
STANDING ROOM ONLY
Purchase Tickets: https://www.etix.com/ticket/servlet/s/38214648
THE BONES OF JR JONES
“There was no ‘a-ha’ moment,” says Jonathon Linaberry, “no life-changing revelation, no singular flash of inspiration. It was just a fierce, steady, undeniable energy, a force of nature I had to wrestle and wrangle with for years until I could harness it.”
It’s easy to understand, then, why Linaberry—better known as The Bones Of J.R. Jones—would call his mesmerizing new album Slow Lightning. As its title would suggest, the collection is raw and visceral, pulsating with an understated electrical current that flows just beneath its seemingly placid surface. The songs are restless and unsettled here, often grappling with doubt and desire in the face of nature and fate, and frequent collaborator Kiyoshi Matsuyama’s production is eerily hypnotic to match, with haunting synthesizers, vintage drum machines, and ghostly guitars fleshing out Linaberry’s already-cinematic brand of roots noir. The result is a moody, ominous work that’s equal parts Southern Gothic and transcendentalist meditation, an instinctual slice of piercing self-reflection that hints at everything from Bruce Springsteen and Bon Iver to James Murphy and J.J. Cale as it searches for meaning and purpose in a world without easy answers.
Linaberry’s no stranger to putting in the work. Born and raised in central New York, he got his start playing in hardcore and punk bands before becoming enamored with the field recordings of Alan Lomax, who documented rural American blues, folk, and gospel musicians throughout the 1930s and ’40s.
Inspired by the unvarnished honesty of those vintage performances, Linaberry launched The Bones of J.R. Jones in 2012 and, operating as a fully independent artist over the course of the ensuing decade, released three critically acclaimed albums along with a trio of similarly well received EPs; landed his songs in a slew of films and television series including Suits, Daredevil, Longmire, and Graceland; and toured the US and Europe countless times over as a one-man-band, playing guitar or banjo while simultaneously stomping a modified drum kit everywhere from Telluride Blues to Savannah Stopover. Along the way, Linaberry also shared bills with the likes of The Wallflowers, G. Love, and The Devil Makes Three, soundtracked an Amazon commercial helmed by Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi, and earned praise from Billboard, American Songwriter, and Under the Radar, among others.
Despite the looming sense of danger that permeates the album, Slow Lightning still manages to find moments of humor and levity. The darkly romantic “I’ll See You In Hell” revels in a love so strong it carries on through eternal damnation; the sardonic “I Ain’t Through With You” gets high on an addictively toxic relationship; and the relentlessly taut “Heaven Help Me” surrenders to overwhelming infatuation, with Linaberry recalling, “Love is the kind of thing that will keep you warm / That's what she said / As she was burning down my home.”
In the end, though, it’s perhaps the breezy “Salt Sour Sweet” that best encapsulates the spirit of the record, with Linaberry looking back on a lifetime of love and heartbreak, dreams and disappointment, success and failure, and ultimately recognizing that it’s the grand sum of them all that make us who we are. “It’s the salt sour and sweet / That holds,” he sings in an airy falsetto. Call it maturity, call it self-awareness; it’s the kind of wisdom that can only arrive on a bolt of Slow Lightning.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Grey Eagle, 185 Clingman Ave,Asheville, North Carolina, United States
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