Slaid Back

Open your ears for a tasty midsummer double-up tonight at Swallow Hill Music Hall: Slaid Cleaves, an Americana keeper currently touring to promote Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away, will offer up a platter of songs from the new Gurf Morlix-produced album on the homegrown DIY label Music Road...

By Susan Froyd

July 23, 2009

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Open your ears for a tasty midsummer double-up tonight at Swallow Hill Music Hall: Slaid Cleaves, an Americana keeper currently touring to promote Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away, will offer up a platter of songs from the new Gurf Morlix-produced album on the homegrown DIY label Music Road Records started by fellow songwriter Jimmy LaFave. It’s the kind of music, darkly written and cleanly sung, that seems to grow on trees in Austin, where Cleaves lives, but he rises to the top on the merit of talent and a perfect ear for authenticity.

And then there are the headliners, Swedish/bluegrass girl group Abalone Dots, named after those fretboard dots on stringed instruments. The Scandinavian Dixie Chicks? That remains to be seen, but their sweet, high harmonies will hit the spot after Cleaves’s melancholy and sometimes wry vocals and exemplary Texas storytelling.

Cleaves and the Dots begin at 8 p.m. at Swallow Hill, 71 East Yale Avenue; for tickets, $15 to $21, go to www.swallowhillmusic.org or call 303-777-1003.
Sat., July 25, 8 p.m., 2009

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Susan Froyd started writing for Westword as the "Thrills" editor in 1992 and never quite left the fold. These days she still freelances for the paper in addition to walking her dogs, enjoying cheap ethnic food and reading voraciously. Sometimes she writes poetry.

Contact: Susan Froyd

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