When:December 17, 2019
Time:7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Cost: $38.50 (Plus Applicable Service Fees)
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More than just a regular concert, eTown is a unique live experience! Audience members will watch the eTown Broadcast recorded before their eyes, complete with performances and interviews with both of our visiting artists, as well as the eChievement Award segment, eTown's opportunity to honor everyday heroes who are doing their part to make the world a better place.
Doors: 6:00pm
Show Start: 7:00pm
Presented by
The Milk Carton Kids
Listening to The Milk Carton Kids -- Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale -- talk about their creative process, it’s easy to imagine them running in opposite directions even while yoked together. “Joey and I famously have an adversarial relationship,” Pattengale says. They dig at each other in interviews and on stage, where Ryan plays his own straight man, while Pattengale tunes his guitar. The songs emerge somewhere in the silences and the struggle between their sensibilities. They have been known to argue over song choices. They have been known to argue about everything from wardrobe to geography to grammar. But their singing is the place where they make room for each other and the shared identity that rises out of their combined voices. Defying the conventions of melody and harmony is a strategy The Milk Carton Kids have consciously embraced. “Sometimes we’ll switch parts for a beat or a bar or a note,” Ryan says. “And that starts to obfuscate what is the melody and what is the supporting part because we think of both of them being strong enough to stand alone.”
“There are only so many things you can do alone in life that allow you to transcend your sense of self for even a short period,” Pattengale continues. “I’m the lucky recipient of a life in which for hundreds of times, day after day, I get to spend an hour that is like speaking a language only two people know and doing it in a space with others who want to hear it.
The Only Ones, the group’s new record (out now on the band’s own Milk Carton Records imprint in partnership with Thirty Tigers), finds Ryan and Pattengale performing a stripped-down acoustic set without a backing band. On The Only Ones, the pair returns to the core of what they are about musically: the duo.
Ryan and Pattengale also recently hosted the 18th annual Americana Honors & Awards for the second year in a row, while the group has been nominated for three Grammy Awards: Best Folk Album in 2013 (The Ash & Clay); Best American Roots Performance in 2015 (“The City of Our Lady”); and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, in 2018 (All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do).
Over the past few years, life has changed dramatically for The Milk Carton Kids. Pattengale has moved to Nashville, where he is also producing records; Ryan is now the father of two children and works as a producer on Live from Here with Chris Thile. A break from years of non-stop touring, Ryan says, has yielded “space outside of the band that gives us perspective on what the band is.”
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Rose Cousins
Originally from Prince Edward Island, Rose Cousins lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia and tours internationally. Fueled by collaboration, she deeply values being a part of multiple music communities.
In live performance, it has been said: “her voice draws you in until you realize you are at the heart of the storm.” (Guardian) Rose Cousins does not shy away from the more difficult feelings of the human condition. She invites audiences on a journey in raw emotion – embracing sadness, pain, and longing, counterbalanced by her dry wit and insightful observations that add levity and reassurance that there a triumph for every challenge.
To make her new record Natural Conclusion, she enlisted GRAMMY award-winning producer Joe Henry and a cast of brilliant musicians and singers from Los Angeles, Nashville, Toronto, Halifax, Boston, Vancouver and Prince Edward Island. The result is what Cousins calls “the most honest and vulnerable thing” she has made to date.
So far, Natural Conclusion’s journey has brought a JUNO nomination for Songwriter of the Year, a GRAMMY nomination for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, eight ECMA nominations / three wins (Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Folk Recording of the Year), and two Music Nova Scotia Awards (Americana Album of The Year and Solo Album of the Year). The album was featured on 2017 year-end lists including the LA Times claiming, “…Cousins delivered an exquisite album that’s easily one of the most distinguished Americana releases of 2017.” NPR Music said, “Cousins has a disarmingly fluid vocal tone and an ability to convey the most internalized emotions — disappointment, grief, resolve, forbearance — without an ounce of fuss.”
Her 2012 album We Have Made A Spark won a JUNO, 3 ECMAs, a CFMA, was long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize, and made featured/best-of lists in USA Today, NPR and Oprah Magazine. With it was released a short film “If I Should Fall Behind” documenting the Boston music community where the album was made.
Her music has appeared in several TV shows including Grey’s Anatomy and Nashville. Most recently her voice can be heard singing Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” for a Dairy Farmers of Canada national ad campaign, and Corey Hart’s “Never Surrender” for a CBC celebration of songs that have won JUNO Single of the Year.