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Moe's Alley Presents: Ally Venable w/ Preacher Boy Trio
Thu, 26 Sep, 8:00 PM PDT
Doors open
7:00 PM PDT
Moe's Alley
1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz, CA 95065
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Tickets are currently unavailable on TicketWeb
Description
Moe's Alley presents Texas-born, acclaimed and award-winning guitarist and songwriter Ally Venable with special guests the Preacher Boy Trio!
Thursday, September 26th
Doors: 7pm / Show: 8pm
$20 in advance / $25 day of the show
21+
ALLY VENABLE
Texas blues-rock singer/songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire, Ally Venable, entertains wherever she goes. With her signature glitter dresses and black knee-high boots, Venable comes off of the ropes swinging dazzling crowds on tour or throughout the festival circuit. "Venable pulls off a stunner of gritty and/or sultry blues rock tunes embellished with lots of tasty guitar solos." - Guitar Player Magazine. A Kilgore, Texas native, Ally began singing at church at four and picked up the guitar at age 12. By 13, she started her own band and through her early influence of Stevie Ray Vaughan captured the passion and yearning for more in the blues genre. Early releases No Glass Shoes (2016) and Puppet Show (2018) started her fanbase, charting radio play, and several East Texas Music Awards. It was 2019’s #2 Billboard Blues charting Texas Honey and rocking sets on Ruf’s European Blues Caravan tour that propelled her internationally. “Ally is the future of blues and the crossover music of American roots-rock.” - Mike Zito. In what silenced many musicians during the pandemic, Venable now in her 20’s, released another Blues Billboard charting album, Heart of Fire (2021), which challenged her to write not only about love but the unguarded honesty of feeling pain.”On this album,I really wanted to create a tone of overcoming your struggles and persevering through them,” she explains. Mentor and featured artist on this album, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, lends his guitar skills on XM Bluesville’s charted song, “Bring on the Pain.” In 2022, Guitar World Magazine named Ally #2 on the top 15 Young Guns Making the Gibson Les Paul Cool Again, and she received the Road Warrior award from the Independent Blues Music Awards.
PREACHER BOY TRIO
Preacher Boy mines the dark edges of Contemporary Blues and Americana with his signature raspy voice, virtuoso National slide guitar playing, and darkly poetic lyrics.
From his genre-bending debut on Blind Pig Records to his latest album on Coast Road Records—his 13th overall—this relentlessly pioneering artist continues to both honor and extend the country blues traditions that inspire him, while infusing his sound with influences ranging from punk rock to political folk. Preacher Boy helped create, define, and advance “alternative blues” as a genre that also spawned artists ranging from Chris Whitley and Alvin Youngblood Hart to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and G. Love. Faster and Louder has called him “the godfather of alt. blues.”
Event Information
Age Limit
21+
Texas Blues
Ally Venable
Ally Venable
Texas Blues
Texas blues-rock singer/songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire, Ally Venable, entertains wherever she goes. With her signature glitter dresses and black knee-high boots, Venable comes off of the ropes swinging dazzling crowds on tour or throughout the festival circuit. "Venable pulls off a stunner of gritty and/or sultry blues rock tunes embellished with lots of tasty guitar solos." - Guitar Player Magazine. A Kilgore, Texas native, Ally began singing at church at four and picked up the guitar at age 12. By 13, she started her own band and through her early influence of Stevie Ray Vaughan captured the passion and yearning for more in the blues genre. Early releases No Glass Shoes (2016) and Puppet Show (2018) started her fanbase, charting radio play, and several East Texas Music Awards. It was 2019’s #2 Billboard Blues charting Texas Honey and rocking sets on Ruf’s European Blues Caravan tour that propelled her internationally. “Ally is the future of blues and the crossover music of American roots-rock.” - Mike Zito. In what silenced many musicians during the pandemic, Venable now in her 20’s, released another Blues Billboard charting album, Heart of Fire (2021), which challenged her to write not only about love but the unguarded honesty of feeling pain.”On this album,I really wanted to create a tone of overcoming your struggles and persevering through them,” she explains. Mentor and featured artist on this album, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, lends his guitar skills on XM Bluesville’s charted song, “Bring on the Pain.” In 2022, Guitar World Magazine named Ally #2 on the top 15 Young Guns Making the Gibson Les Paul Cool Again, and she received the Road Warrior award from the Independent Blues Music Awards. Along with Ally’s own tour domestically and in Europe, her band has supported Buddy Guy and Kenny Wayne Shepherd throughout the US, as well as Colin James in Canada. She has performed as a featured artist on the Experience Hendrix Show at the ACL Live at Moody Theater in Austin, Texas. Fans are anticipating Venable’s upcoming spring 2023 release produced by Grammy award winning producer, Tom Hambridge, which includes a duet with the iconic Buddy Guy and a song featuring powerhouse guitarists Joe Bonamassa.
Dirty Blues
The Preacher Boy Trio
The Preacher Boy Trio
Dirty Blues
Ghost Notes, the new album from Preacher Boy, is a milestone release from a relentlessly pioneering artist who continues to both honor and extend the Americana and country blues traditions that inspire him.
Known for his rough-edged voice, vividly poetic storytelling lyrics, and masterful fingerpicking and slide guitar work, Preacher Boy conjures up a sound that has earned him comparisons to everyone from Howlin' Wolf and Bob Dylan to Tom Waits and Dr. John.
That Devil Music bestowed an early A+ on the release, declaring that "Preacher Boy has never been more compelling or intriguing than he is on Ghost Notes."
Preacher Boy’s career began with his debut on Blind Pig Records, an album that helped give birth to "alternative blues" as a genre that also included artists ranging from Chris Whitley and Alvin Youngblood Hart to The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and G. Love. Faster and Louder has called him "the godfather of alt blues," while The San Francisco Guardian tagged him as the “Charlie Musselwhite for the Lollapalooza Generation.”
After Gutters and Pews, his second Blind Pig title, Preacher Boy relocated to Europe, where his subsequent three releases were written, recorded, and released. His music during this period was described by Melody Maker as "Country blues that marry Nick Cave, Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, and Tom Waits," while MOJO declared that "Preacher Boy is a songwriter of startling originality."
Preacher Boy moved to Brooklyn on the heels of co-writing and recording with Eagle-Eye Cherry and Rick Rubin at New York's fabled Magic Shop. While in New York, he recorded his first solo acoustic album, Demanding to be Next, of which Sing Out said: "Accompanied solely by his keening, propulsive National and Martin guitar playing, Preacher Boy compulsively unwinds a series of often startling, narcotic tales, that prove image-rich and packed with an aura of sweeping drama."
After a break to focus on writing poetry (courtesy of a grant to live and write in Jack Kerouac's former house), Preacher Boy returned to music with a vengeance, releasing three new albums of original material in as many years. Sputnik Music wrote that his new songs “abound with musical tales of desperation and loneliness that would do a Springsteen or a Neil Young proud. The man knows how to write a song and deliver it with gut-punch impact.”
Now, with Ghost Notes, Preacher Boy has delivered a musical summary statement, bringing decades of experience and maturity to bear upon an album of 18 original songs that should rightly be considered his masterpiece.