Name: Town Mountain w/ special guest John R Miller
Start: 2024-11-12T20:00:00-05:00
Location: 1159 24th Street Des Moines IA 50311

$Town Mountain w\/ special guest John R Miller$

xBk presents
Town Mountain
with special guest John R Miller
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Doors: 6pm | Show: 7pm
All Ages
Tickets: $25 ADV // $30 DoS (+ Fees)
*Limited seating available on a first come, first served basis. If you require ADA accommodations please reach out to [email protected]*
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ADD ON OPTIONS
(does not include tickets for the show)
Reserved seating is offered for this event. Please note that the Reserved Table Add-On does not include a general admission ticket; each person must have their own general admission ticket for entry. Tables can comfortably accommodate up to four individuals. For the remaining tables, seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Option #1: Floor High-Top Table : $50 (+ Fees)
Option #2: Mezzanine Lower Deck High Top Table: $50 (+ Fees)
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•• TOWN MOUNTAIN ••
Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, Town Mountain is the sum of all its vast and intricate influences — this bastion of alt-country rebellion and honky-tonk attitude pushed through the hardscrabble Southern Appalachian lens of its origin.
“For us, it’s all about the interaction between the audience and the band — doing whatever we can onstage to facilitate that two-way street of energy and emotion,” says mandolinist Phil Barker. “Whether it’s a danceable groove or a particular lyric in a song, we’re projecting what we’re going through in our daily lives, and we feel that other people can attest to that, as well — it’s all about making that connection.”
Amid a renewed sense of self is the group’s latest album, “Lines in the Levee,” a collage of sound and scope running the gamut of the musical spectrum in the same template of freedom and focus found in the round-robin fashion of the musical institution that is The Band — a solidarity also found in the incendiary live shows Town Mountain is now revered for from coast-to-coast, this devil-may-care gang of strings and swagger.
“This is the sound we’ve been working towards since the inception of the band,” says guitarist Robert Greer. “We realized we needed to do what’s best for us. We’re being true to ourselves. It isn’t a departure, it’s an evolution — the gate is wide open right now.”
“We’ve always had such a reverence and respect for those first and second-generation bluegrass bands, and it was that sound that initially inspired all of us to get together,” Barker adds. “And that will always be part of our sound. But, we also need to grow as artists, and as individuals — for us, that means bringing in a wider palette of sonic influences.”
Formed by Greer and banjoist Jesse Langlais over 15 years ago on a ridge high above the Asheville skyline, the sturdy foundation of Town Mountain came into play with the addition of Barker not long into the band’s tenure. From there, the group pulled in fiddle virtuoso Bobby Britt and bassist Zach Smith. And though the road has been long, it’s also been bountiful.
“It’s definitely been a slow climb. But, it’s been a climb nonetheless, where each new opportunity is filled with a sense of gratitude — to be able to make music, to be able to play music with your friends,” Barker says. “And to be able to bring music to the people, and have them want to show up and listen to it? Well, we’re thankful for that every single day.”
“Lines in the Levee” also marks the band’s debut album release for famed Nashville label, New West Records. Well-known and championed as a fiercely independent act, the members of Town Mountain felt an immediate kinship with the record label — this genuine bond of creative fulfillment and sustained artistic growth to ensure the long game for the ensemble.
“We’ve always wanted to have a relationship with a label that felt right, and New West felt right,” Langlais says. “New West came to some of our shows and the ball started rolling. They knew they wanted to work with us, and we knew we wanted to work with them. New West lets the artist steer the ship and that’s what we were looking for — to have the autonomy to do what we want, but also have a great label behind us.”
Recorded at Ronnie’s Place (part of the Sound Stage Studios) on Music Row in the heart of Nashville, “Lines in the Levee” is a bona fide workshop in the seamless blend of Americana, country, bluegrass and folk roots — this crossroads of deep influences and cultivated visions each member of Town Mountain brings to the table.
“The studio has been part of Nashville for over 50 years, and there’s a certain mojo that comes from a space like that — you’re literally stepping into history and that history is in the air when you hit the record button,” Langlais says.
The album also cements the standing of drummer Miles Miller (of Sturgill Simpson musical lore) a creative force of nature, one who throws several more logs of ideas and inspiration onto the fire that burns brightly within the group — onstage and in the studio.
“When we were looking to add percussion to our sound, Miles was the guy we wanted. We’ve been good friends for a long time, and it just seemed like the natural fit to have him join us,” Greer says. “He’s a fantastic drummer who really elevates the music so high. And he truly understands how to bring drums into a string band setting, something not a lot of people can do.”
“Lines in the Levee” is also a moment in time for Town Mountain to take pause and glance over its shoulder at the road to the here and now. It’s this whirlwind blur of people, places and things that fly by, especially when your hardscrabble existence is spent along that lost highway — bouncing from town to town, show to show, all in an effort to turn long-held dreams into a daily reality.
“Right from the beginning, it’s always been about camaraderie and the creation of something unique, where we haven’t let any of the bumps on the music business road get us down too much,” Langlais says. “And I think we feel really comfortable with where the Town Mountain sound is right now — that’s a damn good feeling.”For more information, please visit Town Mountain's Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/TownMountain], Twitter [https://twitter.com/TownMountain], and Instagram [https://instagram.com/townmountainbluegrass].

•• JOHN R MILLER ••
John R Miller is a true hyphenate artist: singer-songwriter-picker. Every song on his thrilling upcoming debut solo album, Depreciated, is lush with intricate wordplay and haunting imagery, as well as being backed by a band that is on fire. One of his biggest long-time fans is roots music favorite Tyler Childers, who says he’s “a well-travelled wordsmith mapping out the world he’s seen, three chords at a time.” Miller is somehow able to transport us to a shadowy honkytonk and get existential all in the same line with his tightly written compositions. Miller’s own guitar-playing is on fine display here along with vocals that evoke the white-waters of the Potomac River rumbling below the high ridges of his native Shenandoah Valley.
Miller grew up in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia near the Potomac River. “There are three or four little towns I know well that make up the region,” he says, name-checking places like Martinsburg, Shepherdstown, Hedgesville, and Keyes Gap. “It’s a haunted place. In some ways it’s frozen in time. So much old stuff has lingered there, and its history is still very present.” As much as Miller loves where he’s from, he’s always had a complicated relationship with home and never could figure out what to do with himself there. “I just wanted to make music, and there’s no real infrastructure for that there. We had to travel to play regularly and as teenagers, most of our gigs were spent playing in old church halls or Ruritan Clubs.” He was raised “kinda sorta Catholic” and although he gave up on that as a teenager, he says “it follows me everywhere, still.”
His family was not musical—his father worked odd jobs and was a paramedic before Miller was born, while his mother was a nurse—but he was drawn to music at an early age, which was essential to him since he says school was “an exercise in patience” for him. “Music was the first thing to turn my brain on. I'd sit by the stereo for hours with a blank audio cassette waiting to record songs I liked,” he says. “I was into a lot of whatever was on the radio until I was in middle school and started finding out about punk music, which is what I gravitated toward and tried to play through high school.” Not long after a short and aimless attempt at college, I was introduced to old time and traditional fiddle music, particularly around West Virginia, and my whole musical world started to open up.” Around the same time he discovered John Prine and says the music of Steve Earle sent him “down a rabbit hole”. From there he found the 1970s Texas gods like Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, Billy Joe Shaver, and Blaze Foley, the swamp pop of Bobby Charles, and the Tulsa Sound of J.J. Cale, who is probably his biggest influence.
As much as the music buoyed him, it also took its toll. “I always prioritized being a touring musician above everything, and my attempts at relationships suffered for it,” he says. Miller was also often fighting depression and watching many of his friends “go off the rails on occasion.” He says that for a long period he did a lot of self-medicating. “I used to go about it by drinking vodka from morning to night for months on end,” he says. “I shouldn't have made it this far. I'm lucky, I think.” Ultimately, the music won out and Depreciated is the hard-won result of years of self-education provided by life experiences that included arrests, a drunken knife-throwing incident, relationships both lost and long-term, and learning from the best of the singer-songwriters by listening.