$30.00
Wed, October 9, 2024
Doors: 7:00 pm
9:30 Club
Washington, DC
Tickets are non-transferable until 72 hours prior to the show time. Any tickets suspected of being purchased for the sole purpose of reselling can be cancelled at the discretion of 9:30 Club / Ticketmaster, and buyers may be denied future ticket purchases for I.M.P. shows. Opening acts, door times, and set times are always subject to change.
“I’m movin’ on,” Daniel Womack sings during the first minute of Easy Company, an album that finds Futurebirds — once the best-kept secret of Athens, GA’s music scene, now a beloved act on a national scale — back in the driver’s seat, speeding together toward some new horizon.
Momentum. Evolution. Expansion. Those are important traits for a critically-acclaimed group that recently celebrated its 15-year anniversary. “When you’ve been a band for as long as we have, there’s a lot of moving on,” says Thomas Johnson. “We just keep going, because that’s how you keep things fresh. That’s how you keep the spark.” By matching the sharply-written songs of three distinct frontmen with a progressive mix of rock & roll, electrified folk, and cosmic American roots music, Futurebirds have built an audience that’s as wide as the band’s own sound. With Easy Company, Futurebirds’ fifth studio album, that sound reaches a new peak.
Featuring four songs apiece from singer/songwriters Womack, Johnson, and Carter King, Easy Company feels like a celebration of the tight-knit bonds that have held Futurebirds aloft since 2008. Back then, the guys were college students at the University of Georgia, building a buzz around town with shows at fraternity houses and local bars. Years later, they’ve become headliners at bucket-list venues like The Ryman and The Fillmore, collaborating with fellow genre benders like My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel along the way. They team up with new partners on Easy Company, which was recorded with producer Brad Cook in the border town of Tornillo, TX. The guest list includes Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, who trades verses with King on the album’s title track, and Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson, who delivers a spoken-word monologue during “Soft Drugs.” A brass section even makes a brief appearance. The result is a bold blend of old and new, delivered by a band of brothers who’ve never sounded so invigorated. Easy company, indeed.
“We’ve made a concerted effort to challenge ourselves, always finding new angles to look at this thing we’ve been doing for more than 15 years,” says King. “What hasn’t changed is the core of this band. We still have three songwriters. We still have our original bass player, Brannen Miles. When you come this far together, your walls come down and you realize that these friends know exactly who you are, and you know exactly who they are, and it’s such a relief when everyone can just be themselves. It’s great company to be in, and it’s so much better for the art.”
Futurebirds kickstarted Easy Company’s creation with a week’s worth of live-in-the-studio performances. For a group of road warriors who’d already logged thousands of hours onstage, this was an opportunity to capture the sheer energy of a Futurebirds show — the same show that prompted Rolling Stone to dub the band “the most captivating rock act touring today” — on tape. “People sometimes see us live and say, ‘It sounds so energetic, big, and full onstage, but some of your earlier records don’t really capture that,'” King explains. “That was something we talked to Brad Cook about. We wanted to find that live magic in the recording studio. We wanted to move fast and stay in the moment.”
The results speak for themselves. Praised by USA Today for “mixing Neil & Crazy Horse with My Morning Jacket” on their previous records, Futurebirds defy comparisons
altogether with Easy Company. “Colorados” pays tribute to the Centennial State with sunny vocal harmonies and Kiffy Myers’s searing pedal steel. “Bloom” begins with a solitary acoustic guitar, then gives way to thick, reverb-soaked soundscapes. Drummer Tom Myers take a bow during “Solitaires,” a song driven forward by deep, Deadhead-worthy grooves, while keyboardist Spencer Thomas adds gauzy atmosphere to tracks like “Feel Less Bad.” It’s easy to imagine those songs becoming highlights of the band’s concerts, joining audience favorites like “Trippin'” as setlist staples, but Easy Company wears its studio-album status proudly. It also marks the first time Futurebirds have handed over the reins to an outside producer. Free to focus exclusively on the music itself, they’ve never sounded so dynamic. The loudest moments reach a new peak of big-budget crescendo. The softer moments evoke cozy campfires and front-porch guitar pulls. Brad Cook captures the full range of those performances, but it’s the bandmates themselves who make Easy Company sound, well, easy.
“We’ve never thought of ourselves as one particular kind of band,” says Womack. “That’s important for longevity, because we’re always recreating ourselves and finding ourselves all over again. I don’t think we’re done with that process. We’re always ready for more.”
For Futurebirds, the road goes on forever. Easy Company is the latest stop on a journey that’s still unfolding, winding its own path through American rock & roll, giving Futurebirds and the grassroots community they’ve created — the Birdfam — a new place to land.
Good Looks write kindhearted and cathartic rock songs about the persistence required to make it through hard times. In April 2022, the Austin, Texas quartet released their critically acclaimed debut Bummer Year, which channeled post-2016 frustrations into lyrically generous and biting tracks. Immediately after their triumphant hometown record release show, tragedy struck. Walking outside the venue, lead guitarist Jake Ames was hit by a car crossing the street, fracturing his skull and tailbone. Following a necessary period of healing and processing which found him in the ICU and dealing with short-term memory issues, Ames recovered. The traumatic accident strengthened their bond, which is evident on their electric new album Lived Here For A While. Out June 7 via Keeled Scales, it’s fearlessly direct music that captures the full-throated intensity of their galvanizing live show.
Though frontman Tyler Jordan had already written the 10 urgent songs on this album before the accident, they weren’t recorded yet. Following the excitement of the release show, Ames’ horrific injury was a devastating blow and made the band’s future uncertain. They canceled the next few months of touring and were mainly concerned about whether or not their bandmate would be OK. “We were in the hospital with him every day,” says Jordan. “It wasn’t clear how bad it was gonna be for Jake. We had no idea how this traumatic brain injury would affect him until the swelling went down. We even wondered if we’d ever play music together again.” Ames was initially hospitalized for nearly a week. While he had difficulty speaking conversationally upon his release, he quickly realized he could still play guitar and sing almost perfectly.
The one date Good Looks tentatively kept on their calendar was a June stop at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Central Texas, where Jordan and Ames had first met. Their friendship is inseparable from this place as they’d bond over music and trade songs alongside writers like Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek. Ames, now on a strict rest schedule, wasn’t even allowed to play amplified electric guitar due to his doctors’ concerns that loud noises would negatively affect his healing. However, each day marked a new milestone in his recovery. Soon, he was cleared to play that gig. It went splendidly. “That festival is so important to Jake and I,” says Jordan. “We’ve spent a lot of years and time out there so being back after everything felt surreal. I don’t know if we’ve ever played a show that was more joyful than that one.”
The following month, Good Looks tracked Lived Here For A While at Texas’ Dandy Sounds with producer/engineer Dan Duszynski (of Loma and Cross Record). “It felt wild to be in there and recording after everything,” says Jordan. “Jake’s accident made us all more grateful to be there.” Though Ames had to relearn some of his parts, his palpably energetic performances elevated the entire record. On the LP, the band trades the Americana sound that colored in the lines of Bummer Year for clanging post-punk guitars and expansive indie rock. “Self-Destructor” boasts a screeching yet danceable lead from Ames, the physicality and fervency of the full band’s performance is palpable. On the single “Can You See Me Tonight?,” Ames’ riff is just as infectious as Jordan’s searching chorus.
Lyrically, the songs on this album are healing meditations on family dysfunction, new relationships, and how a home can become unrecognizable. “I went through a breakup in early 2020,” says Jordan. “Writing felt really free. This is the most open that I’ve ever been.” However, the single “If It’s Gone” is the only track explicitly about heartbreak, which boasts a tangible grace that softens any bitterness. On the soaring track, Jordan sings, “I hope you find true love, and money, many orgasms and fame / And if you’re somehow still unhappy find somebody else to blame.” It subverts the angrier tropes of the genre.
Jordan’s primary focus on Lived Here For A While is dissecting relationships of all kinds:
familial, platonic, creative, and romantic. His songs explore how they can crumble irrevocably but also how those partnerships can be centering, hopeful, and exciting. Songs like “Vaughn” explore the possibility of Jordan’s new romance with an ebullient groove and an ecstatic chorus where he sings, “Not every single lover has gotta be a sad song / In a year when everything was going wrong / I’m so glad that I met you, Vaughn.” The newfound stability in Jordan’s life colors the songs throughout. “I’ve been going to therapy for 10 years,” says Jordan. “I used to think that I was destined to be in hard relationships because of the trauma that I had as a kid. I was working through all this stuff and realized I was ready to finally be in a healthy relationship.”
These songs exude the many charms of this Texas band and they debuted several of these cuts on tours with the full band, which includes original drummer Phil Dunne and new bassist Harrison Anderson. However, Ames’ accident wasn’t the only horrific event that plagued the band. In July 2023, on the first day of a south and Midwestern run, their tour van was rear-ended by a speeding car, causing an accident on the highway that culminated with their van, alongside their instruments, merch, and records, becoming engulfed in flames. Thankfully, none of the band members suffered serious injuries. Two days later, Jordan continued out the tour solo with the band joining him a few days later to finish the run. This resilience is essential to Good Looks and why the songs on Lived Here For A While resonate so profoundly.
“Driving to those shows immediately after the crash, I had a lot of time to think and process everything,” says Jordan. “And honestly, what better way to heal than to see people that you love, play music and do what you were put on this earth to do.”
Venue Information:
9:30 Club
815 V Street N.W.
Washington, DC, 20001
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