Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion

Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion

Saturday, July 26

Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion at 9th Ward

Tickets: $12 advance / $15 day of show on sale Monday, June 23 at Tickets.com, Babeville Box Office (M-F 11a-5p), Rust Belt Books, and Terrapin Station, or charge by phone 888-223-6000

7pm Doors 8pm Start

 

Nearly a decade after folk-rock duo Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion put out their first album together, the husband-and-wife pair feel like they’ve finally hit their stride on Wassaic Way,  released on Rte 8 Records.

Produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Patrick Sansone at the Loft in Chicago, Wassaic Way finds Guthrie and Irion pushing further beyond the folky sound they established on 2005’s Exploration, their first studio LP. After Irion’s solo album Ex Tempore in 2007, the live album Folksong in 2009 and the children’s collection Go Waggaloo in 2009, the pair began expanding their sonic horizons on 2011’s Bright Examples, an album that drew praise from American Songwriter magazine for its “lush, dreamy sound.”

“This record is a departure from a folk duo,” Irion says. “I think this is the best example we’ve been able to present that shows the many facets of what we can do. There’s loud guitars, there’s soundscapes, there’s a lushness to it, there’s a popness, an edge. But that can be difficult sometimes to bring it all together and present it.”

Wassaic Way is also the latest entry in an ongoing creative relationship between the Guthrie family and Wilco. Sarah Lee is the daughter of Arlo Guthrie, and the granddaughter of the iconic folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose unfinished songs Wilco recorded with Billy Bragg on a pair of Mermaid Avenue albums in 1998 and 2000. Wilco also invited Sarah Lee and Johnny to perform at the band’s Solid Sound Festival in 2011, and the duo had toured with the Autumn Defense, Sansone’s project with Wilco bassist John Stirratt.

You can hear the influence throughout Wassaic Way, in the buoyant pop of album opener “Chairman Meow,” the wistful melody threading through an enveloping beat on “Not Feeling It” and the moody atmospherics underpinning “Nine Out of Ten Times.” Guthrie and Irion also haven’t abandoned their folky roots, as demonstrated by the harmonica and Dobro on the lilting acoustic number “Hurricane Window.” Tweedy and Sansone played on the album, along with multi-instrumentalist Charlie Rose and drummer Otto Hauser, which they recorded in bursts over a period of a few months.

“It was the first time we’d ever taken our time with a record and really gotten it right,” Irion says. “When I listen to the album, there’s not much I would change, and that’s hard to say with other records we’ve made.”

 

 

 


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Date/Time
Date(s) - 07/26/2014
8:00 pm

Address
341 Delaware Avenue
Buffalo
New York
14202
United States