Spoon’s tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is the band’s purest rock ’n roll record to date. Texas-made, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years – both in and out of lockdown – these songs mark a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more full-color.

From the detuned guitars anchoring “The Hardest Cut,” to the urgency of “Wild,” to the band’s blown-out cover of the Smog classic “Held,” Lucifer on the Sofa bottles the physical thrill of a band tearing up a packed room. It’s an album of intensity and intimacy, where the music’s harshest edges feel as vivid as the directions quietly murmured into the mic on the first-take. According to frontman Britt Daniel, “It’s the sound of classic rock as written by a guy who never did get Eric Clapton.”

While Spoon’s last album, Hot Thoughts (2017), bristled with drum machines, synths, and astral moods, the nonstop touring that followed in its wake tugged the band back toward a stripped-down sound. “I liked where we’d gone on Hot Thoughts – it had a specific style and it covered new ground for us – but we kept noticing on the road that the live versions of the songs were beating the album versions,” says Daniel. “And it got us thinking: The best rock music is not about dialing in the right patches and triggering samples. It’s about what happens in a room.”

It took some relocating. In fall of 2019, Daniel moved back to Austin from Los Angeles. A month later, guitarist/keyboardist Alex Fischel followed him with a car full of gear. The move to Texas added up for a lot of reasons: Daniel was born and grew up there, and his family never left. Drummer Jim Eno has his Public Hi-Fi studio in Austin, which allowed the band the luxury of recording at whatever pace they liked. Above all, regrouping in Austin would help the band break with the sound and the feeling of the last few Spoon albums.

That return felt like less of a homecoming than a jolt to the system. Here was an opportunity to write amidst the creative lawlessness that inspired Daniel to make music in the first place — a city where everything from outlaw country to psychedelic punk have long co-mingled at honky-tonks, house shows and backyard barbecues.

“We wanted to make a record where we could experience and draw from a scene,” says Daniel. “Where Alex and I could write all day, then go out and see Dale Watson at the Continental, then come back home and write some more.”

That scene would yield everything from the scorch and bite of “The Hardest Cut,” the first song written by Daniel and Fischel after returning to Texas, (“I spent a lot of 2018 and 2019 listening to ZZ Top,” Daniel explains), to the gentle dizziness of “Astral Jacket,” a ballad tracked after a night out at the now-shuttered Austin nightspot, Stay Gold. Bathed in atmosphere, it’s the sound of coming down – meandering Wurlitzer, brushed drums, and the thump of a timpani suspended in predawn stillness.

Working alongside producer/engineer Mark Rankin (Adele, Queens of the Stone Age) – and with contributions from Dave Fridmann and Justin Raisen – the band’s strategy was straightforward. “I’d come in with a couple new songs and instead of piecing it together like we did the last one, we said ‘Let’s rehearse it’,” Daniel says. “Let’s play it in this room over and over til it becomes something. And let’s just do it with as few instruments as we can.”

Halfway through the recording process, the pandemic hit. The studio shut down, but Daniel continued writing. “There are songs I wrote last spring [of 2020] that I wouldn’t have come up with otherwise,” he says. “It was that first-of-its-kind moment.”

The album’s title track snapshots a late night walk through downtown Austin during shutdown, steeped in the eerie dissonance of isolation and intimacy. Daniel explains: “I didn’t know where that image came from but it felt right, this idea of Satan sitting with me on my couch, staring at me. But after the song was written I figured out that the Lucifer on the sofa is the worst you can become – the bitterness, or lack of motivation or desperation that keeps you down and makes you do nothing or self-indulge. So it’s a song about the battle between yourself and that character you can become, the conflict being played out through a long night walk through downtown Austin.”

It’s also the song where the colors change, the lights turn down and the rules of the record go out the window, the way last songs on a record sometimes do. “It was always gonna be the last song. It wouldn’t have fit anywhere else,” says Daniel.

When the band reconvened in October, Daniel had a new batch of songs, and a fresh sense of momentum. “It’s certainly something we didn’t take for granted, that feeling of being in a room with each other,” Daniel says. “That moment was a once in a lifetime kind of feeling.”

Lucifer on the Sofa is the sound of that moment, a record of defiant optimism, the sound of a band cracking things open and letting them spill out onstage. At a time fraught with uncertainty, it’s shutting the door on the devil you know and never looking back.

• Andrea Domanick

The fourth annual Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards return to the MainStage at Proctors at 6 p.m. Sunday, April 24.

The Eddies is an opportunity to amplify, empower and celebrate professionals
working in the area’s wide-ranging music scene. 

This year, we honor 210 finalists in 36 categories for their work during 2021.
Nominations and voting are determined by a group of judges
representing the local music community. 

View the full list of 2022 categories and nominees at TheEddiesAwards.com.

The musical line-up for the 4th annual Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards will be Buggy Jive, Nite Train w/ Thomasina Winslow, Hot Club of Saratoga,
Rich Ortiz, the Erin Harkes Band and Super 400
with returning emcee Erin Harkes! 

Buggy Jive is a soul rock singer-songwriter who describes himself as “equal parts (Led) Zeppelin and D’Angelo and Prince and Joni (Mitchell).” He has been nominated in each year of the Eddies Music Awards including a record five nominations this year and was a winner of Video of the Year in 2021 for “Ain’t Going Anywhere.”

Nite Train w/ Thomasina Winslow is a seven-piece blues outfit that has been active in the Capital Region for 19 years; singer-guitarist Winslow joined the band in 2019, the year that the band was an Eddies Music Award nominee for best blues act. The band released the album “Cat on A Mission” in late 2020.

Hot Club of Saratoga is a gypsy swing collective that plays a repertoire that reflects the spirit and style originated by Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli in The Quintet of the Hot Club of France that was prominent in the 1930s. The act is a 2022 Eddies nominee for Best Jazz Artist.

Rich Ortiz is a singer-songwriter who has opened for Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Styx and many other touring artists. He is a three-time Eddies nominee for Solo or Duo Performer of the Year (covers category), having won in 2019.

Rock trio Super 400 has released one live and four studio albums in their 26 years. All proceeds from their sold-out Troy Music Hall benefit concert on March 23 will be donated to Ukraine humanitarian relief. They are 2022 Eddies nominees in the Rock/Pop Artist of the Year category.

Erin Harkes, a full-time musician and part-time comedian, was a 2020 Eddies Music Award winner in the Solo or Duo Artist of the Year (Covers) category and was a 2021 Eddies Merit Award recipient for her tenacity in developing alternative sources of income during the pandemic. She is nominated this year in the Record of the Year category for “New Year’s Day” and will perform with her seven-piece band during the awards ceremony.

The Eddies Music Awards are an initiative of Proctors Collaborative.

Catch a show with Honey Suckle Vine at the Brown’s Brewing Troy Taproom on Saturday, April 30th as they kick off the release of the new Nigel IPA. 

***This is a FREE show!***

Thursday, June 30

Empire Underground

7pm doors * 8pm show

THE WRECKS

“Better Than Ever Tour”

with special guests:

Girlhouse * Mothe

Tickets are $20adv/ $25 day of on sale Friday, April 8 at 10am through ticketweb.com and the club box office

Drive through the orchards to a beautiful field in back of the farm with a great view of the Helderberg Escarpment for a full day of live music and craft beverages. Dozens of producers will be bringing their favorite brews and ciders for you to enjoy, food made on site will be available.

Bands:
Jagaloons
Televisionaries
The Abyssmals
Brule County Bad Boys
Battleaxxx
Mystery Girl
College Farm
Ritz Carlton and more!

Commemorative Beer Glass is included in 21+ tickets only, extra glassware will be made available in case you’d like to purchase more than one glass. Beverages are not included in ticket pricing in order to make this festival available to all ages.

An opportunity for enthusiasts to both appreciate and participate, FreshGrass is a family-friendly festival, brimming with bright talent on four stages, and also in our galleries, brick-lined courtyards, and grassy field, produced in partnership by MASS MoCA, the FreshGrass Foundation, and No Depression.

The FreshGrass North Adams 2022 lineup is here featuring Gary Clark Jr., Old Crow Medicine Show, Trampled by Turtles, Yola, The Jerry Douglas Band, Aoife O’Donovan, and many more!

More about FreshGrass North Adams
Music starts early in the museum courtyards, moves to our spacious (and grassy!) urban concert meadow, and then continues until past your bedtime with wild and woolly late-night barn dances in the Hunter Center on Friday and Saturday nights. Concerts held rain or shine. The lineup is jam-packed with guitar gods and banjo gurus, traditionalists, and trailblazers — artists you already know and love interspersed with FreshGrass discoveries. Taken together, it’s an expansive group of performers who both draw on the past and look to the future. We like to think of it as “great music uprooted.”

The FreshGrass Award celebrates new talent, with cash prizes to the contest winners. Finalists in the band, banjo, fiddle, and guitar categories perform for a panel of industry professionals on Saturday and Sunday of the festival, with winners announced on Sunday afternoon. Open to all festival-goers, the contest showcases the future of bluegrass and roots music when the bands play original and traditional tunes. With prizes totaling $20,000, grand prize winners receive a performance spot at next year’s festival, recording sessions at Compass Records, and handcrafted instruments from festival sponsors.

FreshGround is a tent-camping field within easy walking distance (.7 miles; 12 minutes) of the festival, convenient to downtown merchants, bars, and restaurants. A shuttle bus runs continuously to the festival from the campsite. Camping will go on sale spring of 2022.

Stay tuned to freshgrass.com for the latest news—the music never stops at FreshGrass!

Subscribe to the FreshGrass | North Adams newsletter here and follow FreshGrass on Instagram and Facebook for updates and more.

Join us Mother’s Day Weekend in Albany’s Washington Park for a day of fun, free, family entertainment!  This year’s musical lineup on the EQX – REAL Alternative Main Stage:

1:30pm – Bad Mothers
3:00pm – Welshly Arms
4:30pm – Parquet Courts

All the info you need – click here!

Click the ticket link to register for verified TM fan presale access

General public on sale 4/8 at 10am

The National, along with special guest Lucy Dacus, make their way to Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, New York for an evening of music on Wednesday, July 20th.

***TICKETS GO ON SALE FRIDAY, APRIL 1ST AT 10AM***

Doors: 7:30pm

Show: 8:30pm

Ages: 18+

Tickets: $20 Advance / $25 Day of Show

** Click Here to Purchase Tickets **

On Sale Friday, February 10 @ 10:00am

Born and raised in California, Frasco’s first exposure to the music industry came not onstage, but rather in an office. As a young teenager, he worked with legendary indie label Drive-Thru Records and helped book bands like Hello Goodbye, and by the time he turned 18, he’d already moved to New York City for a gig with Atlantic Records. When the job fell through, though, Frasco made a leap of faith and decided to launch his own career as an artist, taking everything he’d learned working with other bands and applying it to himself.

Initially, Frasco hired local pickup musicians off of Craigslist to back him for gigs, but soon he put together a steady(ish) lineup, and Andy Frasco & The U.N. began taking the world by storm. The group would release a series of acclaimed records, share bills with the likes of Leon Russell, Galactic, Gary Clark, Jr., The Revivalists, and Marcus King among others, and slay festival stages everywhere from Mountain Jam in the U.S. to Rock am Ring in Germany and COTAI Jazz & Blues in China (this summer, Frasco will perform at multiple summer festivals including Summer Camp, FloydFest and hopefully many more to be announced). NME hailed the constantly evolving group as “party-starting touring stalwarts,” while Relix praised their “raucous energy,” and Clash lauded their live show as a “nightly high-octane experience that doubles as a celebration of life and music…energized by a powerfully entertaining multi-cultural soundtrack that will shake the foundations of all nearby structures.”

Every party has to end sometime, though, and while it seemed Frasco was living out his rock and roll dreams on his 2019 and early 2020 tours, he was facing an internal darkness few knew about.

“I hit a breaking point,” he explains. “I was sitting alone in my van, and I realized that I didn’t know who my friends were. Worse, I didn’t know who I was. I was drinking too much, I was addicted to cocaine, and I was dealing with really heavy depression. I even contemplated suicide, but I decided that if I’m fortunate enough to leave behind a legacy, I didn’t want to be remembered just as some good-time party guy. I wanted to show people that I’m more than the crowd-surfing, Jameson-drinking maniac they see onstage.”

Frasco began writing poetry that eventually became songs. He wrote about despair and anxiety, about friendship and growth, about accountability and potential, transforming the poems into defiant rock and roll anthems. These songs became his most recent album ‘Keep On Keeping On’ released at the beginning of the pandemic in April of 2020.

Like many, the pandemic hit Andy hard. He was once again feeling that ‘breaking point’ and he quickly transformed his high energy road show into a year long digital blitz of new music, a 33 episode variety show (Andy Frasco’s World Saving ShitShow) which garnered 20 millions views, a highly attended digital Dance Party and Andy further developed his already successful and compelling podcast (Andy Frasco’s World Saving Podcast). His variety show and podcast included interviews and musical performances by many notable guests such as Tony Hawk, Kurt Vile, Nathaniel Rateliff, Kamasi Washington, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and more.

Additionally, Frasco recently scored ‘The Great Depresh,’ an HBO documentary about Gary Gulman exploring the comic’s struggles with depression that was produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Mike Bonfiglio).

Website: www.andyfrasco.com 

Doors: 7:30pm 

Show: 8:30pm

Ages: 18+

Tickets: $20 Advance / $25 Day of Show

(on sale Friday, February 25 @ 10am)

** Click Here to Purchase Tickets **

For as long as he can remember, Ryan Montbleau’s been a seeker. From the jungles of Peru to the volcanoes of Hawaii, from the beaches of Costa Rica to the streets of Brooklyn, from the backseat of a 16-passenger van to backstage at Carnegie Hall, the acclaimed singer/songwriter has spent much of his life crisscrossing the globe on a perpetual search for meaning, purpose, and understanding. It’s a quest that’s guided him both personally and professionally over the years, one that’s come to define not only his music, but his very sense of self. And yet, listening to Montbleau’s ambitious new multi-part album, Wood, Fire, Water, and Air, there is a profound sense of satisfaction in sitting still, a recognition that perhaps all those spiritual treasures he’s been chasing for so long were closer than he thought.

“My whole adult life has been this journey of trying to figure out where home is,” Montbleau reflects. “I think I’ve finally found it.”

Set to roll out across four distinct EPs, Wood, Fire, Water, and Air marks Montbleau’s first studio release since putting down permanent roots in Burlington, Vermont, where he recently purchased a house after more than two decades of living on the road. While much of the material here was written in fits and starts over the past several years, it’s clear that the desire for stability was very much on Montbleau’s mind even before he settled on the banks of Lake Champlain, and the songs reflect a maturity and self-awareness that can only come from the difficult work of rigorous self-examination. Montbleau is quick to credit therapy for his growth of late, but he sings about more than just himself here, mixing sly humor and deep revelations as he meditates on the ties that bind all of us perfectly imperfect humans together. Taken as a whole, it’s a broad, insightful collection balancing boisterous rock and roll energy with intimate folk introspection, a sprawling, magnetic record all about listening, letting go, and living life.

“I’ve been through a lot over these past few years,” says Montbleau, “and I’ve experienced some monumental shifts in my perspective. The only way for me to write about it was to just get as honest and vulnerable as I could.”

Honesty and vulnerability have been hallmarks of Montbleau’s career since the early 2000’s, when he first began performing around his native Massachusetts. In the years to come, he’d go on to collaborate with artists as diverse as Martin Sexton, Trombone Shorty, Tall Heights, and Galactic, and rack up more than 100 million streams on Spotify alone. Along the way, Montbleau would share bills with stars like Tedeschi Trucks Band, Ani DiFranco, The Wood Brothers, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Mavis Staples, but it was his ecstatic headline shows—often more than 200 of them a year—that solidified his reputation as a roots rock powerhouse and an inexorable road warrior. NPR’s Mountain Stage compared his “eloquent, soulful songwriting” to Bill Withers and James Taylor, while Relix celebrated his “poetic Americana,” and The Boston Herald raved that “he’s made a career of confident, danceable positivity.”

That positivity would serve Montbleau well on the long and winding road to Wood, Fire, Water, and Air. Work on the record first began in the summer of 2019 at the gorgeous Guilford Sound studio in southern Vermont, where Montbleau and producer Adam Landry (Deer Tick, Rayland Baxter) laid down basic tracks with a rotating cast of players. At the time, Montbleau had little idea what he was getting himself into.

“I honestly didn’t know what this project was going to be for a very long time,” he explains. “All I knew was that I had a bunch of songs I was really excited about, and that I wanted to take a new approach to recording them.”

For much of his career, Montbleau had worked fast and loose in the studio, capturing music as raw and organically as possible. This time around, though, he found himself craving a bolder, more fully realized sound, and by the time he finished basic tracking in Guilford, it was clear that his work had only just begun. What followed was a yearlong odyssey of adding, subtracting, revising, and reimagining, as Montbleau and mixer/engineer James Bridges fleshed out the sessions with a broad array of instruments, textures, and colors.

“It took a long time for me to get to a place where I could trust myself enough to stretch out like this,” says Montbleau, who experimented with synthesizers and drum machines and added piano and mandolin to his repertoire for the project. “I’d always kind of deferred to other people’s expertise in the studio, but learning to trust my ears and get my hands dirty with the music was a totally empowering experience.”

As the songs took shape, it became clear to Montbleau that there were discrete themes at work within the larger collection, both sonically and emotionally. Rather than release the entire 15-track record all at once, then, he decided he would unveil the album more deliberately over the course of four separate EPs, each inspired by an element of the natural world. First up: Wood, a rustic, earthy trio of tracks taking stock of just what it means to be human in these bewildering times. Songs like the playful “Perfect” and soulful “Ankles” wrap weighty ruminations inside deceptively lighthearted packages, and the spare, stripped-down arrangements make for an ideal bridge between Montbleau’s earlier work and the more adventurous sounds to come on the album’s second installment, Fire. Infused with an infectious energy and feel-good pop optimism, Fire showcases the rock and roll side of Montbleau’s personality, celebrating the joy and liberation that comes with learning to live in the moment.

“The songs on Fire were a chance for me to just let loose and have fun,” says Montbleau. “They were an opportunity to not overthink things for a change, to trust my gut and follow what felt good.”

The arrival of Water quickly cools things down, though, bringing the music back to Earth with a more sober, meditative quality. Montbleau wrote several of the tracks while doing medicine work in Peru, and the healing, regenerative nature of that trip is obvious on songs like the dreamy “Forgiveness,” which features extensive keyboard contributions from avant-garde icon John Medeski. By the time we reach the album’s final chapter, Air, Montbleau seems to have found peace within himself, coming to terms with the transient, fleeting nature of our existence. “Just know that you are not alone,” he sings on “The Dust,” “and that’s all you get to know now.”

“Even though COVID kind of upended everything with my career, this past year has been a rare chance for me to stay put for a while and focus on what really matters,” says Montbleau, who recently invited his girlfriend and her daughter to move in with him in Burlington. “I feel like I finally have a real family life now, and I’m living on stable ground for the first time.”

That doesn’t mean the hunt for purpose and meaning is over. Ryan Montbleau will always be a seeker, and that’s alright. As Wood, Fire, Water, and Air so beautifully demonstrates, sometimes the search is its own reward.

Website: www.ryanmontbleau.com

Conscious, soulful, uplifting, even healing—that’s how many fans of Root Shock have described the band’s infectious sound and energy. With a reputation like that, it’s unsurprising that this group is indebted to reggae, a class of music forever married to love, humanity, social change, and an almost tangible sense of sunlight. But Root Shock didn’t form on a beach. Instead, they came up in snowy Syracuse, New York in 2012, and since then, they’ve developed a voice that transcends genre.

Spearheaded by the acrobatic, powerhouse vocals of Jessica Brown, the Root Shock sound is at once commanding and cathartic, but never at the expense of a velvety, carefully placed jazz or neo-soul lick. When he isn’t complementing Brown’s pipes with his own earthy vocal turns, Phil Grajko gets weird on the guitar, seamlessly moving from chop chords to girthy riffs and spellbinding solos colored by Latin, prog, and psychedelic rock textures—often in tandem with mad keyboard genius Brian Lauri. Rounding out the band, bassist Bill Eppel and drummer Tyre Outerbridge make for a formidable rhythm section fluent in patterns ranging from dancehall to ska to heavy dub style and funk.

In 2016, Root Shock released a self-titled album, produced by Jason “Jocko” Randall at More Sound Studio, and followed that up with the “Many Paths” EP in 2018 & the Waves single in 2019. These recordings are proof of the band’s democratic songwriting process, with thoughtful lyrics from Brown and Grajko that invoke hope in dark times, warn against injustice, and imagine a future in which all are free and equal and united by music.

Today, Root Shock is bringing their renowned live show to clubs, festivals, and concert halls across the Northeast and beyond, delighting audiences from all walks of life with a positive message and danceable tunes.

Band Website: www.rootshockmusic.com

Doors: 8:00pm

Show: 9:00pm

Ages: 18+

Tickets: $17

** Click Here to Purchase Tickets **

All attendees must have proof of a vaccination or a negative test result within 72 hours of the show.

Born of a life-long friendship rooted in music, paired with an endless appetite for elevating and evolving their craft, indie-jam rock group Aqueous has definitively carved out their place on the national music scene. Following several full-length studio albums, EP’s, and live releases, high profile performances at music festivals like Electric Forest, The Peach Music Festival, and Summer Camp Music Festival, as well as favorable press from Billboard, Huffington Post, and Guitar Player Magazine, the band finds themselves touring all over the United States.

With instrumental prowess channeled through pop infused hooks, meaningful songwriting, and all out rock n’ roll, the band is a joyful musical tour-de-force. Being no strangers to improvisational music, the natural extension of many songs live is what makes every Aqueous show unique. No two shows are ever the same. Blurring the lines between a multitude of styles and genres, Aqueous’ sound is explosive, fresh, and undeniably their own.

Website: www.aqueousband.com

Wednesday, July 13

Empire Underground

7pm doors * 8pm show

WILDERADO

With special guest:

Toledo

Tickets are $20 adv/$25 day of on sale Friday, April1 at 10 am

Friday, June 24

Empire Live

6:30pm doors * 7:30pm show

BOWLING FOR SOUP * LESS THAN JAKE

With special Guests:

Aquabats

Tickets $39.50 adv/$45 day of on sale Friday, April 1 at noon