Presented by Bowery Boston
Doors: 6:00 pm / Show: 7:00 pm
Tickets on sale Fri. 4/13 at noon!
Tickets available at AXS.COM, or by phone at 855-482-2090. No service charge on tickets purchased in person at The Sinclair Box Office Wednesdays-Saturdays 12-7PM.
Please note: this show is 18+ with valid ID. Patrons under 18 admitted if accompanied by a parent. Opening acts and set times are subject to change without notice. All sales are final unless a show is postponed or canceled. All bags larger than 12 inches x 12 inches, backpacks, professional cameras, video equipment, large bags, luggage and like articles are strictly prohibited from the venue. Please make sure necessary arrangements are made ahead of time. All patrons subject to search upon venue entry.
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Allen Stone
Soul/ R&B artist Allen Stone proves himself deeply devoted to making uncompromisingly soulful music that transcends all pop convention. His vocals and melodic style show the clear influence of classic soul and R&B of the 1960s and ’70s, while his lyrics reveal an idealism and passion that recall the folk-inspired singer/songwriters of the same era.
Born in Chewelah Washington, Stone started discovering those vocals as a kid, thanks largely to his parents’ influence. “My father was a minister so I spent about half my childhood in church, watching my mom and dad sing together and lead the congregation in song,” he recalls. By the time he was 11 he’d picked up a guitar and written his first song, and soon began self-recording demo tapes to pass along to classmates. Although Stone enrolled in Bible College after high school, he quickly dropped out to move to Seattle and kick start his music career. “I had an ’87 Buick and I’d drive up and down the west coast, playing any gig I could get just to try to put my music out there,” he says.
In 2010, Stone recorded an album called Last to Speak that he released digitally through his own Stickystones label. A second album, simply titled Allen Stone, followed in the fall of 2011, and quickly became an independent success story. Online sales took the album to the top of the online charts, and it placed on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, all without a formal distribution deal. The artist-friendly ATO Records label signed Stone in 2012, and reissued his eponymous album in the summer of that year. He then signed to Capitol Records and worked extensively with fellow singer and songwriter Tingsek. The result, Radius, was released in May 2015.
Stone decided to return to ATO Records and released his latest album, Radius Deluxe. As the New York Times recently said Stone’s lyrics “promise honest sentiments, grooves built with physical instruments and a gospel-rooted determination to uplift … glimmers of Al Green, Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield, George Clinton, Prince and a bit of Sting.”
Stone is currently working on his next album, which is set be released on ATO Records later this year.
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Nick Waterhouse
Nick Waterhouse is the New Breed – An R&B fanatic who combines an uncanny old-school sensibility with a charged, contemporary style. At just 25, He joins the ranks of a growing cabale of similar acts and producers of recent times – Mark Ronson, Mayer Hawthorne, the Daptone Crew et al – that are all moving forward into the past, yet all quite different. For Waterhouse, his muse is the over-modulated sound of vintage R&B, and his take on such a time-honored tradition evokes the back-alley thrill of New Orleans, Detroit and Memphis in their heyday. He combines an astute attention to detail with an honest desire to match the emotional impact of the music that inspires him.
When asked to pinpoint the sound or style he strives for, Nick Waterhouse simply shrugs and responds, “American music. And I know that’s pretty general, but it is what it is. I have spent so much of my life immersed in this stuff, because I wanted to figure it out, [yet] all I figured out was that there was no plan.” In other words, whatever musical style Nick may choose to espouse, it’s not done because someone else did it, but done for the same reason someone else did it. “To me, [the music I play] is not a ‘type’ of music,” he emphasizes; “it IS music. The records I listen to ARE music. A record is a moment in time, and something recorded in 1955 is the same as something recorded in 2010.” Growing up in the Southern California, Waterhouse eschewed his surroundings and found emotional authenticity in the vintage wax of Ray Charles, Roy Head, Little Willie John and the whole panoply of American music, where feel so often trumps technique. After the sold out release of his own self-produced 45, the raunchy ‘Some Place’, and a string of exciting shows with his live group The Tarots, Nick went to work on his forthcoming full-length for Innovative Leisure – continuing an undeniably raw and rhythmic take on American music.
His approach to production – entirely vintage analog equipment, open-reel tape machines, lacquer cutting machines, and even hand letter-pressed labels – has left a few fans wondering where and when he comes from; Long-lost deadstock Rhythm & Blues artifact? White or Black? New or old? It’s a fitting recall to the days of early Rock & Roll, when rhythms crossed the tracks and no-one was quite sure WHAT or WHO this music was. As LA Record bears witness, “You’ve gotta be one kind of maniac to produce like this, and a whole other kind to shout like this, and an even more frightening kind to make the first two maniacs work together. Nick pulling this all off simultaneously means preternatural powers in play”