Bill Kirchen’s Honky Tonk Holiday Show with special guests Suzanne Jarvie & Rocky Roberts

ADVANCE TICKETS: $46.25 (tax+fees included) — available from Collective Concerts (CLICK HERE TO BUY)

For a real taste of seasonal cheer, nothing says joy to the world like Bill Kirchen singing “Daddy’s Drinkin’ Up Our Christmas!”

Bill Kirchen and his Silent Knights will make a stop on their annual Honky Tonk Holiday Tour at Hotel Wolfe Island! Featured is a sleigh-full of rarely heard holiday numbers from the blues, rock ‘n’ roll and honky tonk bags: “Silent Surfin’ Night,” “Truckin’ Trees for Christmas,” “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin,” and more. But be ye not afraid, there’ll be so much more than holiday songs of questionable taste; you can count on a truckload of dieselbilly classics, rockers, and country weepers to take the edge off the holiday fuss. So mark your calendars and check ’em twice — Santa Claus is back in town! Kirchen is touring with his all-star Texas guys — Jack Saunders on bass and Rick Richards on drums.

Opening the show are the stellar songwriters we’re calling the Back Porch Troubadours — a.k.a. Rocky Roberts & Suzanne Jarvie.

BILL KIRCHEN

Grammy-nominated guitarist, singer and songwriter Bill Kirchen is one of the fortunate few who can step on any stage, play those trademark licks which drove the seminal Commander Cody classic Hot Rod Lincoln into the Top Ten nationwide, and elicit instant recognition. Named a “Titan of the Telecaster” by Guitar Player Magazine, he celebrates a musical tradition that embraces rock ‘n’ roll, blues and bluegrass, Texas Western swing and California honky-tonk. Nick Lowe describes Bill as “… a devastating culmination of the elegant and funky… a really sensational musician, with enormous depth.”

As a founding father of the proto-Americana group Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, Kirchen wrought a diesel-fueled guitar hook that drove their Hot Rod Lincoln into the Top 10 nationwide. Kirchen went on to the Grammys where he was nominated for Best Country Instrumental in 2001.

He has recorded with Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Dan Hicks, Maria Muldaur, Hoyt Axton, Hazel Dickens, Gene Vincent and Link Wray, and  has toured the world as guitarist with Cody, Nick Lowe, Hoyt Axton and Emmylou Harris.

Bill Kirchen was inducted into the Hall Of Fame of the Washington DC Wammie Music Awards in 2001, alongside Dave Grohl and John Phillip Sousa. He joined a remarkable list of prior inductees including Bo Diddly, Duke Ellington, Ruth Brown, Marvin Gaye, Patsy Cline, Shirley Horn, Emmylou Harris, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady.

His recent disc, Transatlanticana, entered the Americana Radio Chart Top 10 in 2018, joining his extensive catalogue of over 2 dozen albums, from the Commander Cody discs on through his current 12 releases on the Proper and Last Music Company labels. Bill’s latest releases are Back from the Ozone, a Lost Planet Airmen reunion CD out in October 2023 and, from 2021,  the LPs Waxworks and Tombstone Every Mile, along with The Proper Years and Tombstone on CD and in all digital formats, all on the Last Music Company label.

Washington Post:  “Seldom has traveling across the rock and country landscape been this much fun”

Guitar Player magazine: “The Titan of the Telecaster…cuts loose with some of the fattest, gnarliest low-down twang imaginable”

Rolling Stone: “A musical treasure, a fantastic player, and, in these roots-conscious times, very much a pioneer, Bill Kirchen is one of our best.”

https://www.billkirchen.com/official

SUZANNE JARVIE

Suzanne Jarvie’s debut album, Spiral Road was released in 2014 to rave reviews from the US, Canada, and Europe, comparisons to Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, and a 2015 nomination from the Independent Music Awards for “Best Concept Album”. No Depression described Jarvie’s voice as “seraphim-pure, reaching out and lifting your spirit often without permission.” Spiral Road documents the painful journey after her oldest son tripped and fell down a spiral staircase, lapsing into a coma in 2011. “It was a bomb,” Suzanne recalls. “I couldn’t breathe. The doctors said he wouldn’t live, but he did.” The miracle of her son’s survival changed Jarvie’s life. While her son was still at the hospital, she began an intense period of songwriting, never having written anything much prior. “It was powerful and strange.”

Jarvie’s sophomore record In the Clear, released in January 2019, picks up where Spiral Road left off – delving deeper into the aftermath of her son’s brain injury – and going beyond it. The tunes tunnel into feelings and impressions that are the essence of Suzanne’s artistry, luminous rabbit holes that merge mysticism with reflections on life’s ups and downs that fans of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan or Lucinda Williams would appreciate.

ROCKY ROBERTS & FRIENDS

Craig “Rocky” Roberts, touring guitar technician for the likes of Neil Young, Wilco, Patti Smith, CSNY, Paul Simon, Lucinda Williams, Nils Lofgren, and My Morning Jacket, brings his own rootsy sound to the stage with the help of his Wolfe Island musical family.

Rocky’s new EP, Pieces of Time, has just been released, to enthusiastic critical acclaim. The first single, Buck Moon, features Norah Jones & Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket):

“What a sweet and tender bluesy Americana sound for the oncoming summer months. Perfect for swinging in a hammock after a few tequilas. Rocky Robert & Friends EP Pieces of Time is a tranquil beauty… It’s the best of American music, the honorable, gentle, open-hearted kind.”
— Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros, NoHoArtsDistrict.com