Abe Partridge w/ Clark Paterson in support @ Venue on Main
Doors - 5:30
Show- 6:30
Abe Partridge is a heralded musician, singer/songwriter, visual artist, storyteller and documentarian based in Mobile, Alabama. Since the release of his debut album Cotton Fields and Blood for Days in 2018, Partridge has toured relentlessly, including several tours throughout Europe. He is a regular at several great music festivals such as the 30a Songwriters Fest, and the Laurel Cove Music Fest as well as listening rooms across the country including the legendary Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, Eddies Attic in Atlanta, and Duke's in Indianapolis. Recently, he toured extensively with Matthew Sweet, Drivin' N Cryin', and Dar Williams in support of his latest release Love in the Dark. He has performed on several syndicated NPR radio programs including, Mountain Stage and Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour.
Partridge along with co-producer Ferrill Gibbs created the Alabama Astronaut podcast, where Abe attempts to properly record songs previously undocumented at holiness, serpent-handling churches in Appalachia. It was in the Top Ten documentary podcasts on Apple Podcasts within days of its release and now has over 100k downloads and a 4.9-star rating.
When Partridge is not writing or touring, he is also a highly acclaimed visual artist. His paintings, primarily acrylic on tarred board and watercolors, now hang in art galleries around the southeast and in the private collections of Tyler Childers, Mike Wolfe (American Pickers), Rick Hirsch (Wet Willie), Tommy Stinson (The Replacements) and Tommy Prine. Abe's art is featured yearly at Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens. His artwork was featured in Stephen King’s 2019 sequel to The Shining - Dr. Sleep. He painted the cover art for Charlie Parr’s, Last Of The Better Days Ahead (Smithsonian Folkways). He also created art for Tyler Childers’ 2022 release, Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven? (RCA), as well as promotional posters for The Red Clay Strays' 2024 release Made by These Moments (RCA) and a limited version cover art for their 2026 single, Demons In Your Choir (RCA).
Partridge's first major art exhibition With Signs Following was on display at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center in Mobile, AL in 2023. His book "With Signs Following - Portraits + Stories from the Serpent-Handling Faith" released following the exhibit to wide acclaim.
Three members of The Red Clay Strays occasionally join Abe for a punk side-project they share together, The Psych Peas. They have one album, Lackluster, that has only been released on physical formats. The band has created a reputation for giving high-energy, chaotic live performances, and has garnered a cult-like following. John P. Strohm of The Lemonheads compared them to "Scratch Acid and Butthole Surfers in their prime".
Abe also works with the legendary North Carolina songwriter, David Childers and his band The Serpents. Together, they are The Satan, You're a Liars, with an album, Let's Build This House Together, released on vinyl, CD, digital download, and Bandcamp in early 2025.
He is now gearing up for a 2027 release of a new album produced by Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth.
American Songwriter Magazine said, “Abe Partridge has established himself as one of the most respected songwriters and visual folk artists in the southeast.”
Clark Paterson doesn’t write songs from a safe distance. He writes them from the
middle of the wreckage: hospital rooms, court dates, bar shifts at Robert's Western
World, old farmhouses mid-restoration, garages cluttered with vintage car parts, and the
strange emotional territory between heartbreak, survival, and redemption.
Raised on his family’s farm near Sandusky, Michigan, Paterson grew up around hard
work, old machinery, and the kind of rural honesty that eventually found its way into his
songs. Before settling in East Nashville, he studied at the Old Town School of Folk
Music in Chicago and then traveled the world with a backpack and a guitar, absorbing
stories everywhere he landed. In Clark’s words “I became a backpacker dude and had a
good run. I’ve played country music in the most unlikely places. I’ve also had the shit
beat out of me and been deported.” Those experiences shaped a songwriter who can
move seamlessly between grit and poetry. Humor and heartbreak.
Paterson describes his sound as “Grindhouse Country,” a fitting label for music that
pulls equally from vintage country, punk rock nerve, dive bar philosophy, and the kind of
lived experience you can’t fake. The new record “Are You Lonely Like Me?” keeps that
grit intact, but there’s a deeper tenderness running beneath the surface.
Since his last album, Paterson has lived through both devastating heartbreak and
profound joy: the sudden loss of his father, a long custody battle for his first daughter,
multiple heart procedures, two bouts of heart failure, remarriage, and the birth of
another child. In between, he restored old homes, worked his father’s farm, and brought
vintage cars back to life. Somewhere inside all that, he wrote songs.
A lot of songs.
Written with the help of longtime collaborator Mark Cline Bates, the songs on Are You
Lonely Like Me? find Paterson wrestling with mortality, loneliness, memory, love, the
absence of love, family, and the uneasy comedy of living long enough to feel your body
begin negotiating against you. In “Liver,” he defiantly sings, “It’s my liver and I’ll do what
I want with it,” before tossing off the line, “the least of my concerns are the enzymes of
my liver.” It’s humor that never reaches for the punchline. Clark delivers hard truths with
such dry conviction that sometimes you catch yourself laughing a second before
realizing the song just quietly gutted you.
Then there are the heartbreaking poetry songs like the aching title track:
“Like a wave in the sea, like a leafless winter tree, like the songs I sing when the moon
hits everything… baby, baby, baby are you lonely like me.”
Produced by Eric McConnell (Jack White/Loretta Lynn, Todd Snider) and Shawn Byrne
(Abe Partridge, Jamie Johnson, Friendly Fire) “Are You Lonely Like Me” is atmospheric
and cinematic yet intimate, rough-edged and deeply human. Paterson’s voice remains
one of his greatest strengths: Ragged but right. Warm, and at times more spoken than
sung, recalling Leonard Cohen in spirit while remaining unmistakably his own. He
doesn’t so much perform songs as haunt them like a ghost.
The record features a cavalcade of some of Nashville’s grittiest players including John
McTigue (Dale Watson, Raul Malo, Rodney Crowell) on Drums, Paul Niehaus
(Lambchop, Calexico) on pedal steel and Billy Contreras (George Jones, Ricky Skaggs)
on fiddle and piano.
We also get stellar guest appearances from artists like Sierra Ferrell and Abe Partridge,
along with background vocals from artist and vocalist Luella Mathes, whose voice drifts
through the record like a cracked beam of light cutting through the dust and smoke of
the album’s darkest corners.
Clark Paterson’s songs carry dirt under their fingernails and poetry in their back
pockets. They don’t try to impress you. They tell the truth, crooked smile and all.
Show- 6:30
Abe Partridge is a heralded musician, singer/songwriter, visual artist, storyteller and documentarian based in Mobile, Alabama. Since the release of his debut album Cotton Fields and Blood for Days in 2018, Partridge has toured relentlessly, including several tours throughout Europe. He is a regular at several great music festivals such as the 30a Songwriters Fest, and the Laurel Cove Music Fest as well as listening rooms across the country including the legendary Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, Eddies Attic in Atlanta, and Duke's in Indianapolis. Recently, he toured extensively with Matthew Sweet, Drivin' N Cryin', and Dar Williams in support of his latest release Love in the Dark. He has performed on several syndicated NPR radio programs including, Mountain Stage and Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour.
Partridge along with co-producer Ferrill Gibbs created the Alabama Astronaut podcast, where Abe attempts to properly record songs previously undocumented at holiness, serpent-handling churches in Appalachia. It was in the Top Ten documentary podcasts on Apple Podcasts within days of its release and now has over 100k downloads and a 4.9-star rating.
When Partridge is not writing or touring, he is also a highly acclaimed visual artist. His paintings, primarily acrylic on tarred board and watercolors, now hang in art galleries around the southeast and in the private collections of Tyler Childers, Mike Wolfe (American Pickers), Rick Hirsch (Wet Willie), Tommy Stinson (The Replacements) and Tommy Prine. Abe's art is featured yearly at Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens. His artwork was featured in Stephen King’s 2019 sequel to The Shining - Dr. Sleep. He painted the cover art for Charlie Parr’s, Last Of The Better Days Ahead (Smithsonian Folkways). He also created art for Tyler Childers’ 2022 release, Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven? (RCA), as well as promotional posters for The Red Clay Strays' 2024 release Made by These Moments (RCA) and a limited version cover art for their 2026 single, Demons In Your Choir (RCA).
Partridge's first major art exhibition With Signs Following was on display at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center in Mobile, AL in 2023. His book "With Signs Following - Portraits + Stories from the Serpent-Handling Faith" released following the exhibit to wide acclaim.
Three members of The Red Clay Strays occasionally join Abe for a punk side-project they share together, The Psych Peas. They have one album, Lackluster, that has only been released on physical formats. The band has created a reputation for giving high-energy, chaotic live performances, and has garnered a cult-like following. John P. Strohm of The Lemonheads compared them to "Scratch Acid and Butthole Surfers in their prime".
Abe also works with the legendary North Carolina songwriter, David Childers and his band The Serpents. Together, they are The Satan, You're a Liars, with an album, Let's Build This House Together, released on vinyl, CD, digital download, and Bandcamp in early 2025.
He is now gearing up for a 2027 release of a new album produced by Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth.
American Songwriter Magazine said, “Abe Partridge has established himself as one of the most respected songwriters and visual folk artists in the southeast.”
Clark Paterson doesn’t write songs from a safe distance. He writes them from the
middle of the wreckage: hospital rooms, court dates, bar shifts at Robert's Western
World, old farmhouses mid-restoration, garages cluttered with vintage car parts, and the
strange emotional territory between heartbreak, survival, and redemption.
Raised on his family’s farm near Sandusky, Michigan, Paterson grew up around hard
work, old machinery, and the kind of rural honesty that eventually found its way into his
songs. Before settling in East Nashville, he studied at the Old Town School of Folk
Music in Chicago and then traveled the world with a backpack and a guitar, absorbing
stories everywhere he landed. In Clark’s words “I became a backpacker dude and had a
good run. I’ve played country music in the most unlikely places. I’ve also had the shit
beat out of me and been deported.” Those experiences shaped a songwriter who can
move seamlessly between grit and poetry. Humor and heartbreak.
Paterson describes his sound as “Grindhouse Country,” a fitting label for music that
pulls equally from vintage country, punk rock nerve, dive bar philosophy, and the kind of
lived experience you can’t fake. The new record “Are You Lonely Like Me?” keeps that
grit intact, but there’s a deeper tenderness running beneath the surface.
Since his last album, Paterson has lived through both devastating heartbreak and
profound joy: the sudden loss of his father, a long custody battle for his first daughter,
multiple heart procedures, two bouts of heart failure, remarriage, and the birth of
another child. In between, he restored old homes, worked his father’s farm, and brought
vintage cars back to life. Somewhere inside all that, he wrote songs.
A lot of songs.
Written with the help of longtime collaborator Mark Cline Bates, the songs on Are You
Lonely Like Me? find Paterson wrestling with mortality, loneliness, memory, love, the
absence of love, family, and the uneasy comedy of living long enough to feel your body
begin negotiating against you. In “Liver,” he defiantly sings, “It’s my liver and I’ll do what
I want with it,” before tossing off the line, “the least of my concerns are the enzymes of
my liver.” It’s humor that never reaches for the punchline. Clark delivers hard truths with
such dry conviction that sometimes you catch yourself laughing a second before
realizing the song just quietly gutted you.
Then there are the heartbreaking poetry songs like the aching title track:
“Like a wave in the sea, like a leafless winter tree, like the songs I sing when the moon
hits everything… baby, baby, baby are you lonely like me.”
Produced by Eric McConnell (Jack White/Loretta Lynn, Todd Snider) and Shawn Byrne
(Abe Partridge, Jamie Johnson, Friendly Fire) “Are You Lonely Like Me” is atmospheric
and cinematic yet intimate, rough-edged and deeply human. Paterson’s voice remains
one of his greatest strengths: Ragged but right. Warm, and at times more spoken than
sung, recalling Leonard Cohen in spirit while remaining unmistakably his own. He
doesn’t so much perform songs as haunt them like a ghost.
The record features a cavalcade of some of Nashville’s grittiest players including John
McTigue (Dale Watson, Raul Malo, Rodney Crowell) on Drums, Paul Niehaus
(Lambchop, Calexico) on pedal steel and Billy Contreras (George Jones, Ricky Skaggs)
on fiddle and piano.
We also get stellar guest appearances from artists like Sierra Ferrell and Abe Partridge,
along with background vocals from artist and vocalist Luella Mathes, whose voice drifts
through the record like a cracked beam of light cutting through the dust and smoke of
the album’s darkest corners.
Clark Paterson’s songs carry dirt under their fingernails and poetry in their back
pockets. They don’t try to impress you. They tell the truth, crooked smile and all.
Where is it happening?
VENUE on Main, 202 West Main Street,Belleville, Illinois, United States
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
Host or PublisherAbe Partridge
