XPN WELCOMES Lydia Loveless - SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7th
with special guest the silks
saturday, february 7th
Doors 7:00 PM / Showtime 8:00 PM
All Ages
Pre-sales end at noon on the day of the show. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the door on a first-come, first-served basis.
Ticket Policies:
- Will Call only. No physical tickets are printed.
- Tickets are non refundable.
- Tickets may not be exchanged for a different show.
- Tickets may be transferred to another person for that show.
NAMED A NEW ARTIST YOU NEED TO KNOW IN 2014 BY BOTH ROLLING STONE AND SPIN
“Love this woman. Love her. Is “Stevie Nicks singing lead on ‘Born to Run’” overstating it? Probably, but too bad.” –SPIN
“If you believe in Rock ‘N’ Roll, you pray for people like Lydia Loveless.”--PopMatters.com
“Her defiant tone is matched by songs that put country and punk on equal ground, unvarnished and direct.” --Chicago Tribune
Two years after the critical success of her breakout second album, Indestructible Machine, Lydia Loveless emerges from the trenches of hometown Columbus, OH with the gloves off and brimming with confidence on Somewhere Else. While her previous album was described as “hillbilly punk with a honky-tonk heart” (Uncut), this one can’t be so quickly shoehorned into neat categorical cubbyholes. No, things are different this time around—Loveless and her band have collectively dismissed the genre blinders and sonic boundaries that come from playing it from a safe,familiar place.
Writing from this new-found place of conviction, Lydia crafted 10 songs that are stark in their honesty, self-examination,and openness. Somewhere Else is more elemental than any of Loveless’s previous material; it’s about longing for the other, whether that’s something emotional, physical, or mental, all anchored by her arresting voice that sounds beyond her years. Creatively speaking, if Indestructible Machine was an all-night bender, Somewhere Else is the forlorn twilight of the next day, when that creeping nostalgia has you looking back for someone, something, or just… anything.
Blessed with a commanding, blast-it-to-the-back-of-the-room voice, the 23-year-old Lydia Loveless was raised on a family farm in Coshocton, Ohio—a small weird town with nothing to do but make music. With a dad who owned a country music bar, Loveless often woke up with a house full of touring musicians scattered on couches and floors.
When she got older, in the time-honored traditions of teenage rebellion, she turned her back on these roots, moved to the city (Columbus, OH) and immersed herself in the punk scene, soaking up the musical and attitudinal influences of everyone from Charles Bukowski to Richard Hell to Hank III.
the silks
Rock and Roll may not be dead, but it does seem like there’s a priest leaning over its bed, reciting the last rites. However, if The Silks have anything to do with it, the body will soon be out of bed, bopping around the room.
What makes their debut disc, Last American Band, so special is this Rhode Island trio not only rocks but also rolls. While longhaired singer-g…uitarist, Tyler-James Kelly belts it out like early Paul Rodgers, bassist Jonas Parmelee and drummer Matthew Donnelly, keep the beat swinging. One listen to these guys and you’ll remember this music is for the body as well as the mind. The minute you hear The Silks? You can’t sit down.
It was all meant to be. Kelly somehow lost his backing group, but then veterans players Parmelee and Donnelly heard his songwriting and guitar-playing and nearly trampled over the competition to be in a band with him. For the last year, they’ve been blowing the minds of barflies in R.I. When ‘Last American Band’ comes out, it’ll be an invitation across the nation. The Silks are positioned for national prominence.
“I never wanted to be a solo artist, with a backing band,” says Kelly. “You can always get pros who can play behind you. But it doesn’t have the organic feel of a band. I don’t know what it is about playing with these cats. But we all totally lock in when we play. At the end of the day, we’re just a bunch of animals who want to rock. It’s not a careerist thing. We got together so we could f*ckin’ play music together.”
The sheer rockin’ power of this album is also due to the fella who produced it. This guy named Paul Westerberg, leader of The Replacements. Between Westerberg’s experience and the excitement of his new charges, this disc is like a wonderfully-controlled explosion. As Mr W. says, “We have a hit record here. It really stands up to all of the other mess in a big way.”
From the Mountain-like heaviness of Down At The Heel to the Dylanesque blues of Try All You Want to the stomping rocker, Living In The World Today, The Silks sound like the first band in ages who could conceivably appeal to kids who are horrified at having Miley shoved down their throats, to aging hipsters who once hung out at The Fillmore. Though they’re young, The Silks seem somehow ageless. They’ve learned their lessons. They know their history. They rock. They also roll. Look! The body is out of bed. And dig it: he’s dancing!
– Peter Gerstenzang is an award-winning humorist and freelance journalist, who has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Esquire and a number of other of publications.
“On barn burning tracks like the aforementioned “Down at the Heel,” Kelly plays like a man twice his age and with decades more experience, cycling through the myriad styles of playing that saturate The Silks music with swampy slide guitar, deft and delicately finger-picked country folk and great swaggering waves of English blues and rock ‘n roll. Kelly channels dirty delta blues out of what sounds like a rusty tin can on “Mean Old Woman” as easily as the beautiful country blues of “Try All You Want,” and along with the incredible dynamics of Parmelee and Donnelly, they bring each fantastic song to barroom stomping grandeur” – Eric Smith, Providence Monthly
