Josh Abbott Band

live at

 The Bluestone Thursday, November 16th

as part of their

“Until my Voice Runs Out tour”

Doors for the show will open at 7pm

Opening Artist: TBD

Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 day of show

PURCHASE HERE

RESERVED LOFT TABLE SEATING

RESERVED TABLE PURCHASE DOES NOT INCLUDE ADMISSION TICKETS TO THE SHOW.  

Admission tickets must be purchased separately

The loft is located on the second level of The Bluestone

• Loft Lower Tier: $250 (seats four people-no exceptions)
• Prime view of stage!
• Includes first bucket of Miller or Coors Light
• Server
• Exclusive Private Bar access

• Loft Upper Tier: $200 (seats four people-no exceptions)
• Includes first bucket of Miller or Coors Light
•  Server
• Private Bar Access
• May be Obstruction in View

*All Reserved tables located in the loft area

ALL SALES ARE FINAL

When Josh Abbott Band recorded “Ghosts” for its fourth album, Front Row Seat, Abbott expected to redo the vocals. The final chorus had some technical imperfections, and he figured he could improve on the performance once his heart settled down. Producer Dwight Baker, one-half of the Austinbased duo The Wind and The Wave, wouldn’t let Abbott retouch it.

“I was actually crying my eyes out during that last chorus, and that’s why there’s a couple of notes in the beginning of that section that don’t really explode like normal,” Abbott says. “Dwight was like, ‘We’re keeping that. That’s real.’”

Real is the operative word for Front Row Seat, a 16-track song cycle that represents the most ambitious and emotionally challenging project yet for JAB, a highly melodic six-piece ensemble that’s managed to keep a foot in both the Texas music scene and the national country world. The band won four times during the inaugural Texas Regional Radio Awards behind an upbeat brand of country that still leans on classic instrumentation – particularly banjo and fiddle – to effect a raucous, roof-raising attitude.

The band has lobbed three singles onto the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart – including “Oh, Tonight,” the first charted track to feature Grammy-winning Kacey Musgraves – and nabbed a Top 10 album with the 2012 release Small Town Family Dreams and reached No. 12 with the 2014 EP Tuesday Night.

But Front Row Seat steps beyond the band’s honky-tonk inclinations for a more personal journey as the album traverses the emotional course of Abbott’s first marriage and subsequent divorce. It was not his original intention to depict his private life in a public way, but as he wrote the songs for Front Row Seat, beginning before the split actually occurred, he naturally mined his emotional life for a set of songs that were profoundly honest and revealing. It was only as they began recording the material at Baker’s Matchbox Studios outside of Austin, that they realized they had the germ of a tangible plot.

“We started looking at the music we’d done and had a whole bunch of other songs that we really loved and we were like, ‘Man, we could put this together and make a really neat story out of it,” fiddler Preston Wait recalls. “Especially with the song ‘Front Row Seat,’ we basically just made it kind of like you’re watching a movie and it’s your front row seat to this life.”

Owing to that silver-screen character, JAB employed screenwriting technique by assembling the project with the five elements of plot structure: the exposition, or beginning; an inciting incident; the climax; a falling action (in this case, a breakup); and the resolution.

The story begins with “While I’m Young,” in which a college-aged Abbott lives a typically carefree existence, spending much of his discretionary income in bars and living for the moment, an ideal that’s captured authoritatively in the anthemic “Live It While You Got It.” As the album progresses, he meets a woman who commands his attention for more than one evening, finding himself by track 7, “Crazy Things,” mulling what it is that would make a woman who’s dang-near perfect fall for someone so flawed.

By the time the album concludes, his once-ideal relationship has turned sour, and the two are no longer one. The fracture becomes apparent through the resignation of “Born To Break Your Heart,” and he discovers in “Ghosts” that all the memories that once lived with such passion and revelry continue to haunt his memory, taunting him with whispers of a past he can never reclaim. As Front Row Seat closes with “Anonymity,” Abbott sings a spare dirge with acoustic guitar and fiddle, fantasizing that he could return to the start of the relationship and live it out right.

Easton Corbin

February 25, 2022 7 PM

at The Bluestone

Columbus, Ohio

Bio:

Easton Corbin exudes country. His distinctive baritone has been gracing airwaves for the past decade as his chart topping debut single “A Little More Country Than That” established Corbin as a mainstay on the country charts. Billboard’s 2010 Top New Country Artist would go on to garner another No. 1 hit with the feel-good “Roll With It” as well as seven top 10 singles, further distinguishing himself from other male vocalists as a tried-and-true country traditionalist who weaves timeless story songs together while tipping his hat to the classic country artists who have come before him.

“That’s what I love and that’s what I do,” he says of his passion for traditional country music. “For me, it’s about keeping one foot in the traditional and one foot in the modern and marrying those two. I’m a country singer: That’s one of the things that I take pride in. I try to hone that craft and try to represent that.”

Though 2020 marked the 10th anniversary of “A Little More Country Than That” achieving No. 1 status, Corbin showed no signs of slowing down. With the release of his infectious single “Turn Up,” he launched a year of new releases, including tune “Didn’t Miss A Beat,” which he performed on NBC’s TODAY Show. November brought Corbin’s highly anticipated EP of the same title, which included a “wide array” of songs like “Old Lovers Don’t Make Good Friends” and “Back to Me.” He also partnered with past collaborator and global EDM star Lost Frequencies for new release “One More Night’.

As he continues on with this new chapter as an independent artist, Corbin says “A Little More Country Than That” still reflects who he is as an artist and where he sees his career going.

“That’s really how I grew up,” he says of his career-defining song. “‘A Little More Country Than That’ radiates with me and my band as well because that really is who I am. That’s where I came from, that’s what I am. It’s just as important now as it was then, because that’s the one that started it all for me. That’s definitely a staple of an Easton Corbin show. I think it also defines my audience and who they are.”

The Florida native was surrounded by music as a child. A Merle Haggard or Hank Williams record was always being spun at his grandparents’ house and a guitar was often lying around begging to be played. “My earliest memories are of me as a kid with a guitar, singing and playing along with the radio,” Corbin recalls. “I knew from an early age I wanted to be a country singer.”

After a decade in the spotlight, Corbin is more confident than ever. “I know what I want to say and what I don’t want to say, and I know what I would say and what I wouldn’t say,” he explains. “I think the new music highlights the fact that we’ve been honing these songs and trying to cut the best songs and writing the best songs we can. I think the Didn’t Miss A Beat project is a great representation of that.”

In the meantime, country fans can turn up a little Easton Corbin.

Pecos & the Rooftops

May 12, 2022 7 PM

at The Bluestone

Columbus, Ohio

BIO

Pecos & the Rooftops are a close knit group of friends from northeast Texas that came together while in college in Lubbock. The band is Pecos Hurley (Vocals/Acoustic Guitar), Brandon Jones (Rhythm Guitar), Zack Foster (Lead Guitar), Kalen Davis (Bass), and Kade Trentham (Drums).
 Their latest E.P. “Red Eye” released January 24, 2020.