Erin McKeown / Steve Slagg
Doors: July 28, 2019 7:00 PM
ADVANCED: $15.00 DAY OF: $17.00

Erin McKeown / Steve Slagg
7 pm

21+
Purchase Tickets: https://www.etix.com/ticket/servlet/s/38178054

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Erin McKeown (pronounced “MICK-yone”) is a musician, writer, and producer known internationally for her prolific disregard of stylistic boundaries. She has released 10 full length albums over the last 20 years, all the while refining her distinctive and challenging mix of American musical forms. Her first musical, Miss You Like Hell, opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2018, where it was nominated for 5 Drama Desk Awards, including Best Lyrics, Best Music and Best Orchestrations, and The Wall Street Journal named it Best Musical of 2018.

Leading her own band, she has performed at Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, and the Newport Folk Festivals. A familiar presence on NPR and the BBC, McKeown’s songs have also appeared in numerous commercials and television shows.
While a student at Brown University, Erin was a resident artist at Providence, RI’s revolutionary community arts organization AS220. A 2011-2012 fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center For Internet & Society, she is also the recipient of a 2016 writing fellowship from The Studios of Key West and a 2018 residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Her latest solo release is 2017’s MIRRORS BREAK BACK.

Performed with: Amos Lee, Anais Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, Andrew Bird, Ben Sollee, Carrie Rodriguez, Jason Isbell, Joan Baez, Josh Ritter, Kris Delmhorst, Lake Street Dive, Mike Doughty, Richard Thompson, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, The Mountain Goats, and Welcome To Night Vale.

Appeared at: Bonnaroo, Newport Folk, Glastonbury. Beacon Theater, Olympia Theater, Royal Festival Hall, Sidney Opera House. Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Later with Jools Holland, NPR, BBC.

Songs Placed: “The Good Fight”, “Bunheads”, “Desperate Housewives”, “Awkward”, “Gilmore Girls”, “The L Word”, “Nip/Tuck”, “Roswell” , Tesco, Google, Ferraro Praline, Bose.

FUN FACT: She has written a song via text message with her friend Rachel Maddow.

FUN FACT: Erin has made 8 episodes of her acclaimed “Cabin Fever” series of live webcasts streamed from her house in rural western Massachusetts. Described as “Wayne’s World meets the Judy Garland Show”, the series has garnered considerable attention for its entertaining exploration of the intersections of art, technology, and commerce. You can watch the whole series here.

FUN FACT: #mynameiserinfuckingmckeown

“Her operative mood is effortless grace” – LA Weekly

“In several distinctive ways- voice, dynamic subtlety, and sheer songwriting ability- Erin McKeown is in a class of her own.” – Sunday Times (UK)

“Her playing is so muscular, her arrangements so well conceived that she succeeds brilliantly. As with all truly great guitarists, the wonder is less in her chops than her choices.” – Boston Globe

“It’s fun, it’s flirty, it’s morbid, but it also bangs.” – Brightest Young Things for “Pretty Little Cemetery” (2017)

“Her voice slips into the territory of Florence Welch and Elena Tonra with its depth and texture, but stands alone in its complete clarity, a dinner bell ringing through a drafty home until the whole place is warm. She is, more simply, the kind of artist who will give you a varied, confetti-colored pocketful of secrets in return for a smile and some applause. She is easy listening without anything inherently easy about it.”– Lucy Gellman, New Haven Independent

Steve Slagg -

Strange Flesh is the third album by Chicago singer-songwriter Steve Slagg, and the first released under his own name. Since 2011, as Youngest Son, Slagg has self-released a body of quietly urgent, emotionally vulnerable songs while performing and recording keyboards with other Chicago-area bands, including Mooner, and being mentored by some of his songwriting heroes, including Over the Rhine and Erin McKeown. Without the benefits of promotion or touring, these songs have managed find their way to unexpected corners of the world, finding resonance with the listeners who need them.

Strange Flesh represents a culmination of Slagg’s life as a musician as well as his work - both personal and public - as a queer person raised in the Christian church (Slagg has been involved for most of his adult life with organizations providing LGBT support within faith communities). The album’s songs mingle intensely personal details from Slagg’s own life with stories that are not autobiographical but could be - the types of stories one hears over and over again when building long-term relationships within a marginalized community. A lot of these songs’ “I”s are really “we”s, and in their triumphs and tragedies, love and sex, excommunication and communion, they aim for truth, whether through memoir or fiction.

When choosing collaborators, Slagg chose to highlight his deep bonds within the Chicago music community, working with producers (and long-time friends) Lee Ketch and Kit Shields at Harlot’s Progress and engineer Dorian Gehring at Foxhall Studio. Contributors to the record include members of Mooner, Contorno, Dusk, and The Obleeks, as well as cellist Cathy Kuna and singer-songwriter Allison Van Liere. Ketch and Shields complement Slagg’s sad-choirboy vibe by drawing out the inherent camp and humor in these songs, with arrangements that pay tribute to the baroque pop singer-songwriters of the 60s and 70s as well as queer artists from Queen to Judee Sill to Labi Siffre.


REVIEWS


“As well as adding to the indie hymnal, Youngest Son is adding to the death-haunted literature of friendship.” Eve Tushnet, The American Conservative

“If we still displayed our CDs like vinyl on shelves or in milk crates so that our friends and house guests could peruse our collection, and supposing I organized my collection by sound, texture, and vibe, I’d slip Youngest Son’s All Souls’ Day between Sufjan Stevens and Anathallo.” Josh LaMore, Midwest Action

"The masterful craftsmanship, coupled with the choice of instrumentation, brings to mind Ben Folds and Elliott Smith.” Josh Terzino, Music. Defined.

“If (God forbid) I die young, someone pay @steveslagg to write a song about me.” @samuel_ernest