Spencer Thomas / Rose Hotel - Live at Yellow Racket!

WHERE: Yellow Racket Records, 2311 E Main St, Chattanooga, TN

WHEN: 4 - 5 PM

ADMISSION: All ages, FREE

About Spencer Thomas

The songs on Spencer Thomas’ new LP, The Joke of Life, much like a good joke, are many-layered. His talent is immediately obvious, with sleek composition and production throughout. There’s a nostalgic, everyman flair to his music that doesn’t hang on the influences of the past, but uses them as a guiding light to elevate his voice.

Songwriting reminiscent of Warren Zevon’s later work takes the helm as Thomas examines the gap that can be left between the expectations of life and the sometimes tenuous reality. Songs like “Misty Eyes”, “Fake Rain” and the album’s title track “The Joke of Life” present light-hearted, even laughable, acceptance of the often undesirable cards we’re dealt. The album chronicles a period of change and rebirth for Spencer, who is no stranger to the open road. Beneath the album’s more obvious virtues is a wit and longing borne from the experiences and struggles of a working-class musician.

About Rose Hotel

Rose Hotel’s label debut A Pawn Surrender sees Atlanta-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Reynolds claiming her agency with a 10-song set of nuanced indie-rock songcraft that pulls from a palette of psychedelic shimmer and folk influence via her Southeastern roots. With a drive to pay homage to the legends of the art form, she uses the trappings of psychedelic rock not as source material, but as ornamentation, as she explores relationships, feminine rage, lust, temptation, blissful ignorance, frightening apathy, delusions, and illusions.

From her hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Reynolds started her music career playing keys in psych-rock band Buffalo Rodeo when she was 19. “We bought an Econoline van that didn’t even have seats in it for like $1,500. We fixed it up, and I learned how to be in a band,” she says. “I learned how to communicate with sound guys, how to fix a pedal board on the fly, how to be the only girl on a tour with 10 dudes. It was a super formative time for me. When rubber hit the road, I was like ‘oh, this is actually what I really want to be doing.’”

Those formative years paid off as Reynolds has since built a career as a side musician playing keys and guitar and singing for acts like Neighbor Lady, Susto, Faye Webster, and She Returns From War — all while continuing to record as Rose Hotel. Her 2017 collaboration with Rich Ruth resulted in Rose Hotel’s first EP, Always a Good Reason, which she followed with her self-released 2019 debut full-length, I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes. Paste Magazine listed Rose Hotel among “25 Atlanta Indie Rock Bands You Need to Know in 2019,” praising, "It's a miraculous mix of psych-rock, pop and jazz that shouldn’t work, but Reynolds and her band knit them all tightly together for a full, bold sound."

Host or Publisher Yellow Racket Records