[SOLD OUT] Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls – Night 4

With: Dave Hause & The Mermaid
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[SOLD OUT] Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls – Night 4

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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Dave Hause & The Mermaid

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Sometimes you have to move forward in order to see where you started out—and the hardscrabble wisdom that one gains from that type of journey forms the backbone of Dave Hause’s third full-length, Bury Me In Philly. “Punk rock guilt is a real thing,” the lifelong Philadelphian says from his new home in California. “I like to make rock n’ roll music because that’s what I love and I don’t care if Zeppelin or the Stones aren’t cool to the punks… it’s cool to me and that’s what matters.” In that spirit, Bury Me In Philly is a love letter both to his hometown as well as the larger-than-life rock acts he grew up worshiping as a teenager.

For the follow-up to 2013’s Devour, a newly sober Hause holed up in his new home and wrote nearly forty songs, eleven of which would end up as Bury Me In Philly. “The first song I wrote for this album was the title track and I didn’t realize it at the time but that really set the tone for the album,” he explains. “One thing I was focused on was trying to make the songs more concise and uplifting than the last record. My last album was a divorce record and during the touring of it I fell in love with my fiancé, moved to California and things got a lot better.” Hause’s newfound perspective allowed him to dig even deeper as a songwriter whether he’s getting intimately introspective on the tender ballad “Wild Love” or channeling that into shot of sonic adrenaline on monster anthems such as “Shaky Jesus.”

Although Bury Me In Philly is a Dave Hause album, it was also greatly inspired by the other people involved in the production of the album, most notably Eric Bazilian of Philadelphia rock legends The Hooters. “The Hooters were the first concert I ever saw when I was eight years old and it definitely made a huge impression on me,” Hause explains. In fact, during the pre-production process Hause was constantly sending songs to Bazilian who actually performed The Hooters classic “And We Danced” onstage with the Hause the last time he was in town. “Things weren’t working out with my original producer and Eric expressed that he would want to produce the album and suddenly he went from my hero to a causal friend to a co-collaborator.” Recorded at Bazilian’s home studio with him and Grammy Award winning producer William Wittman, the album is the ultimate homage to Hause’s past and is a timeless take on rock music’s enduring spirit.

Additionally, these songs are united by Hause’s intent dedication to his craft, which punk fans are already familiar with from his role as front man in The Loved Ones and guitarist/vocalist in The Falcon. From the fuzzed-out boogie of “Dirty Fucker” to the folksy sing-along vibe of “Helluva Home” and the classic rock-inspired groove of “The Mermaid,” Bury Me In Philly may not be an easy album to categorize but it’s a joy to get lost inside. Hause also kept things in the family this time around by co-writing the album with his 23-year-old brother Tim, who helped bring a fresh perspective to the recordings. “I’ve never had a musical soulmate but during this process I realized it’s my brother,” Hause explains. “Who I think of as this cute cuddly infant is now this grown man who is really talented and focused and he’s not drinking and partying his way through life the way that I was at that age. It’s really cool.”

While virtually every song on Bury Me In Philly could be played on the radio, the album is much more than a collection of singles. “I still write in the paradigm of albums you know?” Hause says. “I think there should be melodic through lines and each track on the album should compliment the other ones. You want to plan an album like a live set: You want a batch of songs that kick off the record, then you want some left turns. You want to take people on a journey.” The road to get to this point may have had its share of obstacles but looking back Hause wouldn’t trade his experiences for anything. “The ringing of that broken bell, it always seems to cast its spell. I was young and I flinched before, but I ain’t flinching anymore,” Hause sings over a soaring slide guitar on “The Flinch” ….and you can tell that he means it. Coming full circle rarely sounds this inspired.