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[SOLD OUT] Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls – Night 3

June 29, 2018 @ 5:30 pm - 9:30 pm



[SOLD OUT] Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls – Night 3

June 29, 2018 @ 5:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Dress Code

NO DRESS CODE

Venue

Royale Nightclub Boston, MA
279 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02116 United States

Organizer

Bowery Boston
Phone
617-451-7700
Email
info@boweryboston.com
View Organizer Website

Other

with
Tim Barry
advance:
$35
day of show:
$35

NOTE: June 26, 27, 29, and 30 shows are now SOLD OUT. 

Due to overwhelming demand, TWO MORE shows have been added on July 1 and 2.

Tickets for July 1 and 2 shows are still available HERE.

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Presented by Bowery Boston

Doors: 5:30 pm / Show: 6:00 pm

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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Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls

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Frank Turner has announced details of his forthcoming seventh studio album entitled Be More Kind available on May 4th via Xtra Mile Recordings/Polydor UK /Interscope Records. The album is available for pre-order and those who pre-order will receive instant downloads of “1933” and the previously released track “There She Is” from the 2017 release Songbook.

Months after the release of Songbook, a career-spanning retrospective which also saw reworked versions of tracks from across the past decade, Be More Kind represents a thematic and sonic line in the sand for the 36-year-old. It’s a record that combines universal anthems with raw emotion and the political and the personal, with the intricate folk and punk roar trademarks of Turner’s sound imbued with new, bold experimental shades. Be More Kind is produced by Austin Jenkins and Joshua Block, formerly of psychedelic-rock Texans White Denim, and Florence And The Machine and Halsey collaborator Charlie Hugall. “I wanted to try and get out of my comfort zone and do something different,” says Turner.

Turner was halfway through writing a very different sort of album, a concept record about women from the historical record who had been ignored, when he was reading a collection of Clive James’ poetry and one particular line compelled him to re-think his direction. It was from a poem called Leçons Des Ténèbres: “I should have been more kind. It is my fate. To find this out, but find it out too late.” “It devastated me the first time I read it,” he says.

Turner and his band, the Sleeping Souls, were on tour in the USA in 2016 “when the world decided to go collectively nuts” and the songs that make up Be More Kind started to come together. “Somewhere in the record, there’s a convergence of the ideas of personal and political, which is a central theme of the album,” Turner says. One of the driving themes of the album is empathy, even for your enemy. “You should at least be able to inhabit the mental universe of the people you disagree with. If you can’t do that, then how do you communicate with people other than through force of arms, which is something we all agree is a bad idea.”

Turner’s last two records, 2013’s Tape Deck Heart and 2015’s Positive Songs For Negative People, dealt with the fallout from a break-up and saw Turner struggling to cover the cracks in his personal life. Now happily in a relationship and living with his partner and their cat, he again set his sights to the bigger picture. Positive Songs… was cut in nine, intense days whereas Be More Kind was made over a period of seven months, giving Turner the opportunity to turn songs on their head, try different versions and shake up the dynamics within his band.

The first track to be released from Be More Kind is “1933,” a clattering, state-of-the-nation anthem. Furious and direct, it’s inspired by articles Turner saw that suggested the alt-right was punk rock. “That filled me with a mixture of incredulity and anger,” says Turner. “The idea that Breitbart or Steve Bannon think they have anything to do with punk rock makes me extremely angry.”

The Be More Kind World Tour will begin in the UK in April and head to North America on May 31, with its first leg playing to over 200,000 people across the UK, the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, taking them through to Christmas. Turner promises that 2019 will include visits to some “slightly more weird and wonderful places.”

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Tim Barry

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The first time one of his friend’s fathers saw singer/songwriter Tim Barry perform, he summed up his thoughts with a Yogi Berra-worthy declaration: “You’re old-timey in a modern way.”

That’s a near perfect description for the artist who sums up his latest solo release, Lost & Rootless in a single word: WOODEN. “That’s the feel that I was going for when I picked the songs,” says Barry. “There’s violin, voice, a wooden resonator guitar…there’s a very subtle electric bass on one track, but otherwise I wanted to do a wooden record.”

To create that stripped-down, earthy sound, Barry (along with sometime accompanists Josh Small and sister Caitlin Hunt) selected an equally wooden venue: his own shed, mic’d up and MacGyvered with blankets, bits of carpet, and pallets for soundproofing. This gave Tim an opportunity musicians are rarely afforded: the ability to record any moment that inspiration struck, without racing the clock or pulling out the wallet. “It’s not always relaxing in the studio unless you have so much loot you don’t care how much time you spend in there. To be able to go into my shivering cold shed and play music whenever it hit me was pretty awesome,” he says.

Opening Lost & Rootless with the forlorn “No News From The North” (drawn from 2005’s solo debut Laurel Street Demos, one of which he has re-recorded for each subsequent release), Barry then unspools twelve more songs toggling between spare soliloquies and toe-tappers, telling tales of sadness and of celebration, and portraying the narrator as both partier and poet.

With a cohesive musical feel, a vivid cast of characters, and not one but two mentions of his own daughter Lela Jane, one might think there’s a larger tale being told here. Don’t spend too much time trying to tie it all together, though: “I’m not bright enough to make a concept record!” Tim exclaims. “Going all the way back to the early days of my music, I just write what’s around me, what I feel, who I know.”

The album is thick with examples of that that autobiographical (and auto-geographical) writing style, featuring references to Richmond’s Laurel Street, its Manchester neighborhood, and the James River (each also calling back to Barry’s past recordings). His surroundings also set the scene for one of the album’s story song highlights: “Solid Gone,” about one family’s fight to survive outside the confines of the law. Tim notes that the subject matter reads a bit like a country music stereotype, “But that’s what it’s about: drugs, guns and family. I’m not sure the average fan of Willie Nelson would like it, but it’s what happens in the state of Virginia.”

The one song on the album that’s not drawn from Barry’s background or environment is a reverent cover of “Clay Pigeons” by the late Austin musician Blaze Foley (the subject of the Lucinda Williams song “Drunken Angel”). Originally turned on to the song via a mixtape from a friend, Tim quickly became obsessed. “It was just TOO GOOD,” he stresses. Seeing that the song only had a paltry number of YouTube views, “I started asking everyone I knew if they knew the song. Only two people out of maybe twenty did, so I said, “F*** that, I’m recording this!”

Of course, the challenges of making an album don’t end with the recording: figuring out the best order for the songs is another chore entirely. In keeping with his old-school approach to creating the music, Tim took to a slightly vintage sequencing method. “My favorite part of the entire recording project is using cassette to sequence the album,” he says. “I really believe in listening beginning to end, and it forces me to listen all the way through. Then if I want to change it, I’ve got to sit down with the CD and hit play and record and do it all over again. That’s how I’m going to do it from now on.”

With the release of Lost & Rootless this fall, and the tenth anniversary of his solo career in 2015, you can bet that Tim will be playing a town near you soon, whether it’s a bourbon-soaked hole in the wall or as the opener for one of his longtime comrades. As he chuckles, “All my peers are becoming stars, and I’m staying exactly the same. I’m just excited to get the record out and get back on the road!”