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UID:f25b544d-6244-4f43-ac8f-c6ab7a098375@360exp.net
SEQUENCE:29843120
DTSTAMP:20260928T180805Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260928T092000Z
DTSTART:20261114T020000Z
DTEND:20261114T050000Z
SUMMARY:Big Richard
LOCATION:Club Congress
DESCRIPTION:Doors 7pm | Show 7:30pm | Advance $22 / Day of Show $25 + Dice 
 Fees | 16+\n\nWith Birds & Arrows\n\nBluegrass band Big Richard makes musi
 c for the 21st century’s twisted cultural unease. Their latest album Pet
 \, is a fierce\, provocative\, rejoinder to what troubles them and the wor
 ld right now\, which was recorded live to tape in order to capture the fer
 vor of their live shows.\n\n“Big Richard is so much about our energetic 
 delivery\, and so I think it's been really important for us as a group to 
 figure out how to do that for a record\,” says mandolin and guitar playe
 r Bonnie Sims.\n\n“We made the album all on tape and did it all in these
  single-shot performances\,” cellist Joy Adams adds. “The collection o
 f songs\, we wanted to take our most hard driving\, heavy hitting songs\, 
 we wanted to craft a banger set list. Like\, if we had a 30-minute set\, w
 hat would we put on there that says the most\, and makes people feel the b
 roadest bunch of feelings? And it was all these songs.”\n\nAdams and Sim
 s both studied music and toured and played extensively before (and outside
  of) joining Big Richard\, as did the other members of the band: Adams has
  three degrees in cello\, toured with Darol Anger and Nathaniel Rateliff\,
  and has recorded for television and film (including the Queen’s Gambit)
 \; Sims\, who grew up playing music with her family\, has a degree in comm
 ercial music\, with a vocal specialization in yodeling\, toured and record
 ed extensively with her husband\, Taylor Sims (including a platinum-certif
 ied record)\; fiddler Eve Panning\, who also grew up playing with her fami
 ly\, studied violin performance and music education\, taught orchestra\, a
 nd played in bluegrass bands\, including touring widely with classical gro
 up Barrage\; and bassist Hazel Royer started out playing music with her da
 d Eric Royer in the Boston\, MA folk and rock music scene\, and studied at
  the Berklee College of Music.\n\nPet\, the band’s sophomore studio albu
 m\, was engineered by Mark Anderson and produced by the Big Richard member
 s\, will be released February 5\, 2026 on Signature Sounds. Anchored by st
 aples from the band’s live sets\, the album includes their urgent\, voci
 ferous version of Dave Olney’s anti-capitalist anthem\, “Millionaire\,
 ” and an equally-vehement rendition of the anti-gun violence treatise\, 
 “Red Fox Run\,” written by Cecelia and Andy Thorn (of Leftover Salmon)
 . Both songs are emotionally potent at shows\, and the audience’s anger 
 often palpable\; feeling it together as they play is cathartic\, Sims says
 .\n\nBig Richard opens Pet full force\, with a blistering medley of Sims
 ’ song\, “It’s Gonna Fall” and the Bill Monroe fiddle tune\, “Ol
 d Daingerfield”: “Our air has turned to poison and our water catches f
 lame / You know we’re blowing out the ground under our beds in which we 
 lay / And we’re digging holes we’ll never fill\, the ground shakes to 
 protest / But we just close our minds and eyes and ears\, there ain’t no
  stopping progress\,” Sims sings about her despair at the destruction of
  the natural world through fire and flood\, and the fracking wells she see
 s springing up in Colorado. (At shows\, the band also jibs at Monroe’s i
 nfamous habit of claiming credit for all songs written by his band members
 \, by joking that Sims wrote both tunes.)\n\n“A lot of the time in our s
 ets\, we like to follow a heavy-hitting song with an instrumental that mee
 ts that energy\,” Panning says of tacking “Old Daingerfield” onto th
 e end of “It’s Gonna Fall.” “It feels good to reflect on something
  for a moment\, or keep going with it\, and keep that energy somewhere.”
 \n\nThe band applied the same pressure release system on Pet\, which featu
 res two entirely instrumental tracks written by Panning. Comparatively gen
 tle\, “K’s March\,” inspired by a musical phrase Panning’s roommat
 e used to sing around the house\, follows “Millionaire” with a wholeso
 me old-time jam track that lets audiences blow off steam after being wound
  tight\; and later in the album\, “Circus Jerk” (double entendre inten
 ded)\, hints at the band’s raunchy stage banter and bluegrass music’s 
 reputation for showoff solos (by giving each band member her moment to rip
 ).\n\n“We're in the most musically locked spot we've been in thus far\, 
 since I've been in the band\, and this album feels like a really good refl
 ection of that\,” says Royer\, who joined in 2023.\n\nUnapologetically o
 utrageous and provocative\, the band’s name is a wink to the ‘big dick
 ’ energy Big Richard is reclaiming from male bluegrass bands. They’re 
 intent on making audiences laugh and feel a little uncomfortable\, for the
  sake of making them think\, as well. To that end\, the album’s cover po
 rtrays the band dressed in deranged clown outfits and crouching on railroa
 d tracks in front of an oil refinery. And its title track “Pet\,” deli
 vered like a slightly demented circus sound track and written by Adams\, i
 s a rich paean for the people society too often lets fall through the crac
 ks.\n\n“I wrote it thinking about people who are stuck in circumstances 
 outside of their control\, whether they were born into it or not. That mig
 ht be childhood trauma or poverty or a chronic health problem\, or somethi
 ng that they didn't choose\, and they're just hauling it around with them
 \,” Adams says. “I think in a deeper sense\, the song is reflective of
  how many people get lost in the big turning of the world right now.” It
 ’s a sentiment and a sound she doubles down on later on the album with t
 he spooky music box track\, “Holy Holy\,” about religious/childhood tr
 auma and growing up with an addict in the house.\n\nBig Richard’s power 
 to deliver emotionally evocative music derives in part from their rare mak
 e up. Though the album also employs toy piano\, banjo\, and octave mandoli
 n\, the band primarily performs on bass\, mandolin and guitar\, fiddle\, a
 nd with Adams on cello\, which adds an extra sonic dimension for bluegrass
  (though Adams\, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the history of cel
 lo in fiddle music\, says the cello actually predates the bass in string b
 ands).\n\nStill\, among the strife and intensity\, Pet leaves room for a l
 ittle sweetness. First with “Alaska\,” a yearning love-song Royer wrot
 e about a crush when she was 16\, and then with a cover of Hank Cochran’
 s “Make the World Go Away\,” which concludes the album\, and often the
 ir live show\, too. At concerts\, the band’s four members descend from t
 he stage\, and play the song clustered together in a clearing in the crowd
 \, a final act of gathering after an intense show.\n\n“Our live performa
 nces are so raw and so gritty\, and I think that our sound never really fl
 ourished in that digital landscape.” Adams says. “\\[Recording live to
  tape\\] we were all in the same room together\, very close together\, wit
 h a lot of mic bleed\, etc. And the energy was insane. It felt so good to 
 record this way. Even on the first day\, we were like ‘wow\, this sounds
  like our band.’ And to do something that's very real and gritty and has
  little mistakes in it just feels alive and human.”\n\nBoletos: https://
 dice.fm/event/pyw8nl-big-richard-13th-nov-club-congress-tucson-tickets
URL;VALUE=URI:https://360exp.net/events/f25b544d-6244-4f43-ac8f-c6ab7a09837
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STATUS:CONFIRMED
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