Amy Lavere & WIll Sexton

Wed. Mar 11, 2020 at 7:00pm EDT
21 and Over
Price: $10.00
21 and Over
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Price: $10.00
21 and Over
Event Description
Amy Lavere & WIll Sexton

The Cave 


71 Military Rd, Buffalo, NY 14207


 


presents


 


Amy Lavere & Will Sexton


 


Wednesday, March 11, 2020 7pm


 


$10ad/$12door


 


LavereSexton.jpg


 


Amy Lavere


There’s something uniquely fun about Amy LaVere, even when she’s breaking your heart. She is well known among songwriters and critics alike. NPR’s Robert Siegel says she “specializes in lyrics that are more barbed than her sweet soprano prepares you for.” Her growing catalogue of material and steady critical acclaim suggest a first-tier presence on the Americana and indie-folk/punk circuits.   Her latest album Painting Blue’ comes out August 16th on Nine Mile Records (Glorietta, David Wax Museum, Carson McHone, Patrick Sweany, Greyhounds).


 


Amy’s live performances are anything but predictable. She might appear on stage with a full band, sporting a mask and pink wig, or simply be a natural in blue jeans and sandals, but her upright bass and clever song delivery are constants. Her voice is at once the bully and the victim.  She’s performed in venues as wide-ranging as St. Andrew’s Hall in London and Memphis’ famed dive bar Earnestine and Hazel’s. There’s no room she can’t find an audience in and charm it to pieces. 


 


Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, this future bard moved continuously throughout childhood due to her father’s job. She spent notable parts of her life in Canada, Texas, Maryland, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. Outside of Detroit and only just entering high school, Amy formed her first band and began writing and performing.  Music fans first discovered this “sweet soprano” on This World is Not My Home in 2005, but it was her Jim Dickinson-produced breakout album Anchors & Anvils two years later that put Amy LaVere on the map. Stranger Me, the 2011 release on Archer Records, was called “the break-up album of the year” by Spin. Paste said it was “among the year’s best,” and it earned a first listen feature from NPR’s All Things Considered. She followed it in 2014 with another critical smash: Runaway’s Diary, a concept album based on her own experience as a teenage runaway, produced by Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars).  American Songwriter called it “boundary pushing… heartfelt, reflective, challenging and consistently compelling.” NPR Music’s Robert Christgau said it was her best yet.  Of Hallelujah I’m A Dreamer (Archer Records, 2015) No Depression said simply: “pure bliss.”


 


In addition to her solo records and a tireless touring schedule, Amy enjoys working with other artists. In 2012 she joined an all-star collaboration called The Wandering, composed of Amy, Luther Dickinson, Shannon McNally, Sharde Thomas and Valerie June. They released Go On Now, You Can’t Stay Here (Songs Of The South, 2012) to critical acclaim and sold-out shows.


 


In the afterglow of The Wandering, Amy and Shannon McNally hit the road together and released an EP titled Chasing the Ghost, The Rehearsal Sessions (Archer Records, 2012),  featuring songs from both artists recorded live during rehearsals for the tour. Amy next paired up with noted Memphis rocker John Paul Keith to create Motel Mirrors. Their styles clearly complemented one another, which made for magic on stage and in the recording studio. Their eponymous vinyl EP release was named one of the “10 Essential Albums of 2013” by No Depression. In 2017 Motel Mirrors released a full length effort, In the Meantime; this record had the addition of some Will Sexton co-writes and his powerful guitar work throughout. Motel Mirrors later released a live recording, Gotta Lotta Rhythm, on the Italian label Wild Honey.


 


Painting Blue, produced by her husband Will Sexton, captures perfectly the moment that Amy is in. Will Sexton’s masterful production and Amy’s soft, clarinet-like vocal pour over you, pushing and pulling, stirring and calming.  As we’ve come to expect, this record is honest, revealing and sounds uniquely like no one else.


 


Will Sexton


“Most of my life,” says Will Sexton, “I’ve complicated things musically. But, nowadays, I have a different approach: it’s less cerebral, and more about gut and soul.” 


 


It’s been an evolution years in the making for revered guitarist/vocalist Sexton, who launched his career when he still in grade school. Now the towering Texan, nearing age 50, has brought this new philosophy to bear on his first solo record in a decade, Don’t Walk the Darkness, due from Big Legal Mess on March 6, 2020. 


 


Along with older brother Charlie, the San Antonio-born Sexton was a musical prodigy who eventually moved to Austin, coming of age in the city’s hothouse environment. Playing with iconic Lone Star figures such as Doug Sahm, Joe Ely, Roky Erickson and Stevie Ray Vaughan, he scored a major label deal while still in his teens fronting Will and the Kill. 


 


Over the past three decades, Sexton has grown into a skilled musical polymath: an esteemed writer, producer, session player and solo artist with a string of acclaimed LPs to his credit. 


 


Don’t Walk the Darkness marks a belated return to his solo career, but represents something even more profound for Sexton: a personal and musical rebirth following a stroke he suffered in 2009, which robbed him of much of his verbal and language abilities, and even forced him to reconsider his approach to playing guitar. 


 


During that time, Sexton also traded one music capital in Austin for another, moving to Memphis in 2013. His shift to the Bluff City was prompted by love: he met and married fellow singer-songwriter and frequent collaborator Amy LaVere. 


 


Settling in Memphis, Sexton would become a lynchpin for artists on the Fat Possum-distributed Big Legal Mess and Bible & Tire Recording Co. labels, leading the house band at producer Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio. “Memphis is an important part of what I’ve become,” enthuses Sexton. “I’ve been able to immerse myself and tune my ear to what makes this place so magical — and it’s really about the amazing musicians here.” 


 


For his new album, Sexton set up with Watson at Delta-Sonic, combining his new digs in Memphis along with a crew of old favorites from New Orleans, tapping Crescent City legends the Iguanas to serve as his main backing band. 


 


“The Iguanas were always a fixture at the Continental Club in Austin and I would go see them and was just a big fan,” says Sexton. “I felt like this record would be the perfect opportunity to collaborate with them. They’re such a natural entity, like this powerful train that glides itself along the track. That meant I only had to worry about singing and playing a little guitar.” 


 


As part of his new quicksilver approach to recording, Sexton and company cut basic tracks for the entire album in a pair of fast five-hour sessions.


 


“The record I’ve really always loved is John Hiatt’s Bring the Family,” notes Sexton. “That’s what I was envisioning for my album — something in the spirit of that, which was a really live, dynamic record.” 


 


While the bulk of Darkness was written in the lead-up to its recording, two key tracks are unheard numbers from Sexton’s back catalog. The soulful “Only Forever” was a lost gem from his days as a staff songwriter in the early-’90s. The other, “Don’t Take It From Me,” was co-written with late outlaw-country icon Waylon Jennings in 2001. “We wrote it right before he passed away,” recalls Sexton. “Neither of those songs had been cut before and I thought it was important that they should have a life and get out into the world.” 


 


The balance of the album finds Sexton finding inspiration in the more interesting corners of Americana, whether it’s the ghostly gospel incantations of the opener/title track, the hypnotic blues shuffle of “What My Baby Don’t Know” or the R&B anthemics of “Temptations Call.” Elsewhere, Sexton’s roots show on the Tex-Mex romancer “Witness,” the Vox-organ-flecked “Mess Around With My Mind” and the horn-fueled meditation “The Whole Story.” 


 


“Being from San Antonio, those West Side horns and the Doug Sham realm, that’s something I know and love. It’s in my bones,” says Sexton, who deploys the talents of sax man Art Edmaiston, vocalists the Barnes Brothers and soul diva Susan Marshall on the record as well. “The whole thing with this album, it’s more feel-good music than overthought compositions,” says Sexton. “It’s the right place for me to be.” 


 


For Sexton, resuming his solo career after a long break feels like both a reboot and culmination of his musical journey.


 


“I just figured it was time for me to reconnect with singing and fronting a band, something I haven’t done in a long time,” he says. “This is a new start for me, but also kind of the logical extension of everything I’ve been doing since I was nine years old. The music is brand new, but I’m the same old me.”

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Venue Details
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The Cave 71 Military Raod
Buffalo, NY 14207