Sean Hayes and Esme Patterson
Schedule
Tue Apr 30 2024 at 07:00 pm
Location
107 Manitou Avenue Manitou Springs, CO, United States, Colorado 80829 | Manitou Springs, CO
Doors 7pmShow 8pm
Esmé Patterson
Gold-selling Esmé Patterson releases her long-awaited 5th full-length album, Notes from Nowhere, early this October; creating a genre-avoidant musical realm that blooms with honesty and magic. Now living in the woods of Tennessee, the Colorado-born singer/songwriter never fails to give her devoted following what they want – something completely new yet somehow familiar.
Esmé emerged from the wreckage of a crowded Colorado folk experiment (Paper Bird) and struck out on her own path in a 2012 solo debut, All Princes, I. Her followup was an AMA-nominated Song of the Year that went Gold in the US and Canada, landed Patterson performances on Letterman and Conan, and brought sold-out shows nationwide. Predictably unpredictable, she deftly ditched the folk/americana tags to offer barbed responses to male-gaze hits in 2015’s Woman to Woman, then to death, sex, and feedback in 2016’s fanged We Were Wild, from which her performance on NPR’s Tiny Desk derived.
Ever provocative, poignant, polymorphic, and prescient (her last album, the apocalypse-themed There Will Come Soft Rains, was released on the first day of Covid19 lockdowns in March 2020), Esmé’s latest release, Notes from Nowhere, returns to the (super)natural world, evoking the chill of dead winter, parched forest lightning, midday moons, and the cicada hum of summer swamps. Esmé’s intense performances arrest her audience in ears-open shared contemplation. Her music churns and crackles until you find yourself frozen, staring into the fire.
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Sean Hayes is a Bay Area singer-songwriter who makes music to dance to or cry to, or maybe both at the same time. He was born in New York City, raised in North Carolina, and honed his earliest musical chops in a band playing Irish and old-time tunes — but his unique style of deeply felt, R&B-inflected folk really matured during his two decades singing and playing in cafes, bars, and night clubs of San Francisco.
His voice layers wonder and heartache upon grit and gravel, sex and soul. His lyrics carry an unpretentious wisdom. He’s dueted with Aimee Mann; been covered by the Be Good Tanyas; and toured with Anais Mitchell (performing songs from Hadestown, before it was an award-winning Broadway show). His songs have appeared on NPR, NBC and HBO.
Be Like Water, is Hayes’ ninth full-length, and his first record in five years — a time period in which, after nearly 20 years in San Francisco, Hayes moved north with his family to Sonoma County. The resulting songs are warm and enveloping, bluesy and lived-in, and have the feel of someone stretching out their legs on a back porch, perhaps a little unused to having the space to do so.
Album opener “Shine” sets the tone — exuberant yet unhurried, it serves as a get-well note and rally cry for his friend Charley Crockett, the acclaimed country-blues singer who underwent heart surgery in 2019. On tour together in 2016, the musicians bonded over their shared history of busking — of singing for the joy of it in the humblest of settings.
“Tell me how you keep believing, is it just a feeling?” asks Hayes over layered, effervescent guitar, before landing on the song’s hymn-like refrain: “You shine when you’re singing; keep shining, keep singing.”
Other inspirations run the gamut: sly, funky jams like “Bell” and “Gold Tooth” revolve quite literally around a celebration of the bell shape and Hayes’ gold tooth, respectively; while “Joy” is a seductive, slow-burning afternoon love song, and “Invisible Weight” sings the praises of a simple apology, no matter how long overdue. Taken together, these tracks comprise a meditation on balance and acceptance — on learning to see life’s bruises and heartaches as necessary parts of the ride.
“To me, the phrase Be Like Water is about being patient,” says Hayes, of the record he made during a year when such a mantra felt perhaps more necessary than ever. “Rolling with your nature, and trying to stay present. I think of it as James Brown meets the I Ching: You have to get up to get down.”
Where is it happening?
107 Manitou Avenue Manitou Springs, CO, United States, Colorado 80829, 107 Manitou Ave, Manitou Springs, CO 80829-2426, United States,Manitou Springs, Colorado