TOC presents an Evening with Jesse Terry & Tyler Stenson
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Show 8pm – Doors 7pm
$12 ADV // $15 DOS
🎟@ BrownPaperTickets.com
Tyler Stenson at The Old Church
Jesse and Tyler played their first show together in Portland almost 4 years ago. Since then, each artist has been busy releasing new music and playing A LOT of shows. They’re finally pairing up again at the most intimate venue in town, join us at The Old Church on Sunday, March 18, at 8 pm.
Jesse Terry
http://www.jesseterrymusic.com/
Jesse Terry is an award-winning singer-songwriter whose transcendent life and music make him one of the most prolific indie artists today. This salt of the earth musicians lyrical mastery, emotional depth, and soothing voice have been compared to the likes of Ryan Adams, Jackson Browne, Ray LaMontagne, and James Taylor.
On the eponymous title track of Stargazer, the lushly orchestrated and existentially optimistic fourth LP from singer/songwriter Jesse Terry, the notion of personal unhappiness is framed in terms of a cosmic choice: Go on stargazer, I know how much it hurts / But you are free now to pick your universe. Infused with the warmth of a beautifully arranged string quartet and the otherworldly tremor of a lap steel guitar, Stargazer unfurls as a melodic Zen koan, a deep intuition all of us have at one point or another that the extent of our suffering no matter its apparent source or point of origin is largely up to us. The worlds frequent brutality and indifference are undeniable facts of life, facts that can feel oppressive and impenetrable. True freedom inheres in our ability to choose hope to pick resilience over recrimination, optimism over oblivion. Taking that timeless and hard-won kernel of wisdom as his starting point the recognition that hopelessness is the worst kind of human prison Terrys lustrous, earnest Stargazer is precisely the kind of record we need in these seemingly hopeless times.
Stargazer is very much an album representing the arc of that journey. Forged in the crucible of the artist’s earnest engagement with a chaotic, confusing world, the record is wonderfully difficult to classify. Drawing inspiration from a diverse pool of influences from vintage Jeff Lynne-produced pop to the Roy Orbison of In Dreams to The Man Who-era Travis Stargazer is an album commensurate with its moment, imbued with an unconquerably hopeful perspective. I will always go back to hope and lean on that, because that’s what has gotten me here in the first place, Terry says. Produced with multi-instrumentalist collaborator Josh Kaler in Nashville’s sumptuous EastSide Manor Studios, every aspect of the album went through an intentionally rigorous evaluative process. Josh and I worked in the studio for months, making sure that we were bringing something fresh to every track, some kind of new sound or new harmony line or new string line, Terry says. I wanted Stargazer to be arranged and produced like the records I first fell in love with. A significant part of that production process involved strings and renowned arranger Danny Mitchell. Ive worked with great string players in the past, but this is the first album where I’ve had the strings professionally arranged for a quartet, Terry says. The inherent magic, power, and emotion in Mitchells arrangements are palpable throughout the record. I wrote many of these songs with the strings in mind, knowing that they’d be taking my songs to new places.
“Jesse Terry is a gentle soul with a formidable songwriting talent and a clear artistic vision. – John Platt – WFUV – NYC
Tyler Stenson
http://tylerstenson.com
Tyler Stenson is singer/songwriter in Portland whose music is elegant at its core. Twice-named Portland’s “Songwriter of the Year” by the Portland Songwriters Association and recently named “Best Male Artist” at the Portland Music Awards, Stenson’s music is refreshingly reminiscent of classic singer-songwriter greats such as James Taylor and Cat Stevens.
Soon after this seismic shift, Stenson was twice named the Songwriter of the Year by the Portland Songwriters Association (2007 and 2008) and Best Male Artist at the Portland Music Awards, blazing the trail for his authentic sound to claim its stake on the national stage. Already considered one of the premiere singer/songwriters in the Northwest, Stenson was eventually named a Top 10 Finalist in Guitar Centers Search for the Next Great American Songwriter contest with Don Was (out of 10,000) and, out of nearly 4,000 bands, he was hand-selected by Adam Duritz (Counting Crows) and Ryan Spaulding (RSLblog) to perform at The Outlaw Roadshow showcase at SxSW in Austin, TX.
With his national name growing, Stenson was named Reverb Nations Breaking Artist in 2013 and has been invited to open for LeAnn Rimes, Chris Isaak, John Popper, Marc Cohn, Matisyahu, Fuel, Guster (and many others). He has placed original songs on multiple national Chevrolet commercials, as well as, a handful of others placed in Internationally televised shows.
In an age where thoughtful lyric has taken a backseat to hyper production, Stenson has learned one thing through his decade-plus of experiences and performances at notable venues such as the legendary Bluebird Cafe in Nashville and The Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles: Lyric is King. Stensons music is just that simple words paired with humble notes that all at once sum up the human experience, endlessly inspiring the train of followers that find a piece of themselves in the sincerity of his words.
“The last time I witnessed someone with his kind of presence and voice, one that leaped out beyond the speakers and pulled me in, was when I worked with Garth Brooks. Tyler has it man.” Don Was