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.

Carter Winter Live January 21, 2023

January 21, 2023, at 8 PM

Doors Open 7 PM

Hometown native Carter Winter will headline our stage on January 21, 2023

With a rich baritone voice and a talent for crafting engaging lyrical stories, singer/songwriter Carter Winter is quickly becoming established as one of the most brilliant new singer/songwriters in country music.

His passion for touring the country and meeting fans has put him on stages coast to coast, where inspiration can strike at any time. The passion for each song he writes is what ultimately drives him to be even better, saying “each song is its own piece of art.”

“Higher on You,” Winter’s latest work of art, is a brand new song co-written with label mate Sam Grow and hit songwriter Taylor Phillips. The single’s artwork — a whimsical hand-drawn self-portrait — reveals yet another dimension of Winter’s artistry not as well known.

“With every new song and project I create, I feel like I get closer to my sound and who I am as an artist,” commented Winter. “This song is such a good vibe, it’s different yet familiar and I’ve never been more excited for a single release!”

The song is the first new music released by Winter following his Average Joes Entertainment debut album, “Temptation,” released to critical acclaim in late 2018. Produced by Grammy award-winning producer, Chad Carlson, the album yielded the hit song and video, “Skylines,” which was added to rotation on CMT Music.

The Ohio native’s first EP, “Some Kind of Fire,” was released in 2015, and was followed by 2016’s “The Whiskey In Me.” Winter is currently writing and recording songs for his next album scheduled for release in late 2020.

Called “country music’s modern traditionalist,” Carter Winter connects with an audience through a fresh sound that like Carter himself, is surprisingly familiar, yet raw and honest. Winter has been influenced by living a life on the edge, but having the wherewithal to share life’s ups and downs through songs. As a creative talent, he has always been compelled to do what he does, even if there’s no fallback option. When it’s all said and done, the challenges are what makes the music stand out, on its own perch.