UT’s own Cactus Cafe brings world class music into your backyard on a weekly basis. Here’s what’s going on this week!
Thursday 2/9 – David Dondero
Doors: 8pm, Show: 8:30pm
General Admission: $10.00 in advance and $12.00 at the door
Special Guest: Lomelda
David Dondero has done all kinds of work in his life. He’s been a carpenter, a cook, a trucker, a bartender in Alaska, a drummer in This Bike is a Pipe Bomb, a solar panel installer, a day laborer, a record store clerk, and a gas pumping attendant in New Jersey, but at the end of the day he’s a songwriter. He’s been releasing solo albums and touring since 1998 and almost immediately was being compared to Townes Van Zandt and Woody Guthrie. These days people are comparing younger songwriters to him and other musicians are inviting him into their studio to record and releasing the results on their label. NPR named him one of the “10 Best Living Songwriters.” “Inside the Cat’s Eye” is Dondero’s 9th studio album and it adds even more nuance and heart to an already impressive body of work. It will be released January 23 on Koschke Records. What others have said: “This is the sound of a man on fire. Smart, funny and honestly out of his mind; but he comes back long enough to sing about it. One of the best singer/songwriters I’ve ever heard.”– Bob Boilen, NPR “Dondero is this generation’s Townes Van Zandt, a peripatetic tumbleweed casting across the country’s highways and dirt roads searching for truth and love. His reedy tenor shuffles through clever verbal forays, over raga-muffin folk, brightened by Dondero’s road-wizened stoicism”– Houston Chronicle
“He has a terrific ear and eye for simple detail, for spinning songs out of the mundane just as deftly as standards like love and loss.”– David Bevan, Pitchfork
Friday 2/10 – Ali Holder with Grace Park- [Huntress Moon EP Release]
Doors: 8pm, Show: 8:30pm
General Admission: $10.00
Ali Holder: With influences ranging from Outlaw Country to Lilith Fair, KUTX, Austin’s NPR station calls Holder an “an individual with a love for words and storytelling.” Based in Austin, Texas Holder plays regularly in town and spends a fews of months of the year touring regionally and nationally. Texas Monthly refers to her music as “whiskey-soaked pieces of sad country-influenced songwriting that recalls Lucinda Williams and Ryan Adams.” No Depression says, “Holder shows a solid grasp of what makes a good song… her songs are personal and intimate but feel like experiences we can all share.”
Grace Park: Grace Rowland Park is founder and frontwoman of Austin alt-folk band The Deer, who won runner-up Austin Music Awards for Best Performing Folk Band the last two years in a row. Grace has performed with Alejandro Escovedo, Abram Shook, Elephant Revival, and more. She is a visual artist as well, and was finalist for the Austin Music Industry Award for Best Album Art for The Deer’s first album, An Argument for Observation. She was born in Lubbock, Texas, and spent her childhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She’s lived in Central Texas most of her life, and resides now in San Marcos.
Saturday 2/11 – Josh Halverson – [CD Release Show]
Doors: 8pm, Show: 8:30pm
General Admission: $10.00 in advance and $12.00 at the door
When singing, the human voice carries much more than just the words it speaks. It carries the land it grew up on, the people it grew up with, and the accent it was born into. A voice can speak to the sound of the land. On his Americana album, One Shot, Texas songwriter Josh Halverson beautifully channels the wide-open vistas of his home roots in the Texas panhandle. His luminous voice rings clear over these audio landscapes, resonating with unusual clarity and honesty. It’s a voice you’ll remember, from a young songwriter poised to move into the national spotlight. “Just give me one shot/to show you who I am” he sings on the title track, and after listening to Josh Halverson’s new album, you will feel like you know him.
Growing up the son of a cattle rancher and a Sioux Indian, Halverson’s a true native son of Texas. Although he had played piano since the age of five, he had no plans to pursue a career in music until he was captivated by a Al Green performance while attending college. Years later, Halverson still clearly remembers the epiphany he experienced that night: “Green was so transparent onstage, as if he put his heart and soul on the table for the audience to see. I thought to myself, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do with my life.’” The day after the concert, Halverson began teaching himself the guitar and started writing his own songs. Now living in the woods outside of Denton, Texas, Halverson’s proved himself to be an uncommonly adept songwriter. Charting the bounds of the human heart, he approaches time-honored topics like heartbreak and devotion with a sense of hard-won innocence. And that’s the seeming paradox at the core of his music: the tension between bitter wisdom and the need to preserve a sense of wonder at the world.
On One Shot, Halverson collaborates with album producer and recording engineer (and fellow Texan) Brian Douglas Phillips. Recorded at his own Rattletrap Studios, Phillips is a multi-instrumentalist who brings a strong Americana touch to the album. There’s a full band sound behind the songs, but it’s still Halverson’s voice that rings out over the band. At times his voice soars above a bed of roots instruments, as in “Comfort Me,” and at times he sings in a hushed croon, as in “Miss Ruth,” a song written for his beloved great aunt. It’s the kind of voice that cuts through the usual noise that surrounds us. Like the open vistas of West Texas, Josh Halverson’s voice invites quiet contemplation. That’s the sound of his Texas roots.
Over the past couple months you have probably seen him on the hit show THE VOICE! He has also had 4 songs on the TOP 10 iTunes Charts, videos with more than a million views, been on multiple nation wide tours, and is The 2013 Songwriter of the Year for the Native American Music Awards. Josh has shared the stage with many great artists such as, Alicia Keys, Miley Cyrus, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Shooter Jennings, Uncle Lucius, and many more. His album “One Shot” was on the Top 20 Songwriter Charts, and has received great reviews from fans and media. His goal with music is to inspire the listener to choose Love as the priority and conscious decision in Life. “May my music forever be the positive counterbalance to all the negativity in the World.” -Josh Halverson
