Kris Delmhorst and Rose Cousins

Thu Mar 6 2025

7:30 PM (Doors 6:30 PM)

SPACE

1245 Chicago Avenue Evanston, IL 60202

$20.00 - $30.00

All Ages

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Ghosts in the Garden, the gorgeous and searching new album from Kris Delmhorst, is a layered, kaleidoscopic meditation on grief, loss, and fate. Inhabiting the songs are a host of vivid spirits made tangible: the departed and the disappeared, sins and their consequences; lost loves, missed chances, and the invisible sorrows that accompany us all. With richly observed details and finely calibrated emotional range, Delmhorst finds the wavelength that illuminates these multitudes. Having summoned them, she doesn’t avert her eyes from her ghosts – or ours – but invites them into an expansive conversation about the ways we’re shaped by loss, and woven together by unseen threads of love.

Working at Great North Sound Society, a studio built into an 18th-century Maine farmhouse that no doubt harbors ghosts of its own, Delmhorst tracked live with a core band of Ray Rizzo on drums, Jeremy Moses Curtis on bass, and Erik Koskinen on guitars. Engineer Sam Kassirer added keys, and Rich Hinman contributed pedal steel. An illustrious procession of guest vocalists – Anaïs Mitchell, Rose Cousins, Anna Tivel, Ana Egge, Taylor Ashton, Rachel Baiman, Jabe Beyer, and Jeffrey Foucault – brings prismatic brilliance to the tracks, refracting the individual slant of each song’s light.

The stories on this record unfold from the inside out like fables, sketching archetypical characters – a fisherman recalling details of a life tethered to the margins, a soldier remembering the universe of a single day and night of love – and transforming them into proxies for our own hauntings. The darkly hypnotic “Wolves” reckons with the mortality of parents, the ordinary and inevitable orphaning that we all face. “I see wolves / circling the fire / circling the fire with their yellow eyes,” Delmhorst sings, steadying and challenging us to meet death’s gaze with respect, before posing the album’s central question: “Do you really love the story if you don’t love the end?”

_____

On her new album, Rose holds her listeners’ hands as she guides them on a journey through the "conditions of love." Ever the emotional explorer, the Nova-Scotia-based artist seeks truth, in all its imperfection, in the depths of humans’ most complicated of emotions: love. The journey results in a striking clarity, and it’s the gift of that clarity that brings on surprising tears.

Rose shares, “Love feels great and makes us ridiculous. It's tiring and intense, joyful and devastating. Falling in love, being in love and staying in love are all such different things. Being human is emotionally complicated enough without attempting to relate to another who is just as complex, and in the most vulnerable of arenas: romance. Love is wondrous and absurd (and very hard). Humour helps.”

Co-produced with trusted friend and longtime bandmate Joshua Van Tassel, Conditions of Love, Vol. 1 sees Rose return to her first love, the piano. “Piano is where I feel the most connected. It’s the best partner in expressing the emotion I’m mining,” she shares. She first introduced the upcoming body of work with the gorgeous, piano-driven ballad “Forget Me Not,” followed by the slow-burning, nostalgic “Borrowed Light.”

Kris Delmhorst and Rose Cousins

  • Kris Delmhorst

    Kris Delmhorst

    Singer-Songwriter

    “Exceptional lyrics and captivating voice” -Utne Reader
     
    “Deeply felt songs held close to the chest, full of dusky memories … and hope for a bright future.”  -The Boston Globe
     
    “Light as air, Delmhorst’s voice soars…” -No Depression

    On May 13th, Delmhorst released her seventh album, BLOOD TEST (Signature Sounds) – her first of original music since 2008′s critically acclaimed album SHOTGUN SINGER. A prolific writer and constant collaborator, Delmhorst continues to share her unique perspective in this new work. The album describes a moment of reckoning and centering in the songwriter’s life, and in society as a whole. In a collection of songs that move between triumph and heartbreak, restlessness and responsibility, Delmhorst acknowledges the weary work of an intentioned life – and the new American dream of presence and perspective in a frenetic time.

    BLOOD TEST’s fresh perspective was realized sonically by Delmhorst turning to a totally new collaborator – friend and fellow songwriter Anders Parker (Varnaline, Gob Iron, New Multitudes). Parker brought two band members to Delmhorst: drummer Konrad Meissner (Brandi Carlile, The Silos) and multi-instrumentalist Mark Spencer (Blood Oranges, Lisa Loeb, Laura Cantrell, Son Volt). And together, the four shaped BLOOD TEST’s landscape:

    “I was focused on paring things down to their elements, less flesh, more bone. So it’s just the four of us on BLOOD TEST, with very few overdubs, playing the songs and letting the imperfections be part of the story. We were new to each other as a band, and the songs were new to everyone, many of them even to me. So there’s a freshness and spirit of discovery in the tracks which I think shines through and which gives them a lot of life. It’s a situation that requires intense focus, listening, responsiveness if it’s going to work. Everyone involved brought these things and more.”

    The spareness of the arrangements allows a wide range of dynamics in the songs, from the delicate duet of nylon-string guitar and pedal steel in “My Ohio,” to the glowering Hammond organ and brittle electric guitar of “Saw It All.” “Little Frame” floats the listener on a sonic hammock of easy drums and simple piano riffs, while “Temporary Sun” takes less than a minute and a half for Mark Spencer’s scorched-earth country-rock guitar to lay waste to the place. And Delmhorst is not afraid to take dynamic leaps within a single song, as evidenced by “92nd St,” which travels all the way from a single pulsing note on an acoustic guitar to a churning wall of distortion out of PJ Harvey’s playbook, and all the way back again.

    That song, drawn from Delmhorst’s New York upbringing, had particular resonance during the recording, as the sessions were taking place just a few blocks from her childhood home.

    “The studio where we made the record, Brooklyn Recording, turned out to be right in my old stomping grounds… I was getting coffee at the deli I used to go to high school, and then walking to the studio. It was a kind of vertigo feeling to be working there, a little dizzying, but also really satisfying; it somehow completed the circle.”

    Geography aside, “92nd St” may also contain the thematic heart of the album – with its soaring chorus “There ain’t no real mistakes.”

    For all the big questions that BLOOD TEST asks, it offers this conclusion: That everything we have done and seen and been and felt has led to this day. Who we are now. In this moment. That we have arrived. And we are right on time.

    The product of a musical family, Delmhorst released her debut album, Appetite, in 1998 and has since recorded and released multiple albums and EPs spanning a range of musical genres— both as a solo artist and as a band member/collaborator. She has recorded vocals, fiddle and cello on over 50 albums from artists such as Peter Wolf, Mary Gauthier, Chris Smither and Lori McKenna, and also records and performs with Jeffrey Foucault and Peter Mulvey as Redbird.

  • Rose Cousins

    Rose Cousins

    Singer-Songwriter

    There are many turns along the journey of a heart breaking, mending and thriving again. Moments of sorrow, bareness, determination, courage, risk, restraint and resilience. When acceptance finally appears, we arrive at what is and always would be a Natural Conclusion.   Rose Cousins took a deliberate break from her active touring schedule and traveled to create. Toronto. Los Angeles. Boston. Nashville. Ireland. Her goal was to connect with artists, writers and producers to make songs in new ways, new sounds with new people, not knowing where they would go and not needing to. Her catalogue and perspective expanded, and her new album was conceived. On Natural Conclusion Rose Cousins steps boldly forward, a fully mature writer/artist in her next great stride. Cousins enlisted Grammy Award winning producer Joe Henry, who she befriended in 2012. She and Henry each gathered trusted colleagues and met in Toronto.   Henry brought longtime collaborators from Los Angeles - Engineer Ryan Freeland, drummer Jay Bellerose and bassist David Piltch who collectively worked on many notable projects (Bonnie Raitt, Solomon Burke, Allen Toussaint, Billy Bragg).   Cousins invited Toronto pianist Aaron Davis (Holly Cole, Jane Siberry) and guitar player Gord Tough (Kathleen Edwards, Sarah Harmer); touring mates Asa Brosius (Anais Mitchell, Heavy Blinkers) from Halifax on pedal/lap steel & dobro and Zachariah Hickman (Josh Ritter, Ray Lamontagne) from Boston on bass; friend and fellow PEIslander violin/violist Kinley Dowling (Hey Rosetta!) added strings and joined the choir that also included Hickman and longtime friends Jill Barber, Caroline Brookes (Good Lovelies), and Miranda Mullholland (Great Lake Swimmers). The result is what Cousins calls “the most honest and vulnerable thing” she has made to date.

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Table 34
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Table 35
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Table 41
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Table 42
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Table 43
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Table 44
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GA Seated

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Standing Room Only
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ADA
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Kris Delmhorst and Rose Cousins

Thu Mar 6 2025 7:30 PM

(Doors 6:30 PM)

SPACE Evanston IL
Kris Delmhorst and Rose Cousins

$20.00 - $30.00 All Ages

Ghosts in the Garden, the gorgeous and searching new album from Kris Delmhorst, is a layered, kaleidoscopic meditation on grief, loss, and fate. Inhabiting the songs are a host of vivid spirits made tangible: the departed and the disappeared, sins and their consequences; lost loves, missed chances, and the invisible sorrows that accompany us all. With richly observed details and finely calibrated emotional range, Delmhorst finds the wavelength that illuminates these multitudes. Having summoned them, she doesn’t avert her eyes from her ghosts – or ours – but invites them into an expansive conversation about the ways we’re shaped by loss, and woven together by unseen threads of love.

Working at Great North Sound Society, a studio built into an 18th-century Maine farmhouse that no doubt harbors ghosts of its own, Delmhorst tracked live with a core band of Ray Rizzo on drums, Jeremy Moses Curtis on bass, and Erik Koskinen on guitars. Engineer Sam Kassirer added keys, and Rich Hinman contributed pedal steel. An illustrious procession of guest vocalists – Anaïs Mitchell, Rose Cousins, Anna Tivel, Ana Egge, Taylor Ashton, Rachel Baiman, Jabe Beyer, and Jeffrey Foucault – brings prismatic brilliance to the tracks, refracting the individual slant of each song’s light.

The stories on this record unfold from the inside out like fables, sketching archetypical characters – a fisherman recalling details of a life tethered to the margins, a soldier remembering the universe of a single day and night of love – and transforming them into proxies for our own hauntings. The darkly hypnotic “Wolves” reckons with the mortality of parents, the ordinary and inevitable orphaning that we all face. “I see wolves / circling the fire / circling the fire with their yellow eyes,” Delmhorst sings, steadying and challenging us to meet death’s gaze with respect, before posing the album’s central question: “Do you really love the story if you don’t love the end?”

_____

On her new album, Rose holds her listeners’ hands as she guides them on a journey through the "conditions of love." Ever the emotional explorer, the Nova-Scotia-based artist seeks truth, in all its imperfection, in the depths of humans’ most complicated of emotions: love. The journey results in a striking clarity, and it’s the gift of that clarity that brings on surprising tears.

Rose shares, “Love feels great and makes us ridiculous. It's tiring and intense, joyful and devastating. Falling in love, being in love and staying in love are all such different things. Being human is emotionally complicated enough without attempting to relate to another who is just as complex, and in the most vulnerable of arenas: romance. Love is wondrous and absurd (and very hard). Humour helps.”

Co-produced with trusted friend and longtime bandmate Joshua Van Tassel, Conditions of Love, Vol. 1 sees Rose return to her first love, the piano. “Piano is where I feel the most connected. It’s the best partner in expressing the emotion I’m mining,” she shares. She first introduced the upcoming body of work with the gorgeous, piano-driven ballad “Forget Me Not,” followed by the slow-burning, nostalgic “Borrowed Light.”

Please correct the information below.

Select ticket quantity.

Select Sections

AVAILABILITY: HIGH - LOW

Select Tickets

All Ages
limit 10 per person
Table 11
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 12
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 14
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 15
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 34
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 35
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 41
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 42
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 43
Table Seat
$30.00
Table 44
Table Seat
$30.00
GA Seated
$25.00
Standing Room Only
SRO
$20.00
ADA Seat
ADA
$20.00

Delivery Method

ticketFast