Aubrey Entertainment presents...

Kevn Kinney with special guest Bobby Bare Jr.
@ Hotel Indigo's Rialto Club

Join us for the third Kevn Kinney residency concert at the Rialto Club @ Hotel Indigo in downtown Athens, Georgia!

Thursday April 25, 2024

• Doors open @ 7pm, Show @ 8pm
• All ages are welcome!
• Tickets are $15 adv (+tax/fees), $20 day of show or at the door

Kevn Kinney is the lead singer / songwriter of the Atlanta rock band, Drivin N Cryin, who recently celebrated the release of their 9th studio album, ‘Live the Love Beautiful’, on Drivin N Cryin Records. Since the band's 1985 inception, he's released some spare acoustic records on his own, often collaborating with R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck.

MacDougal Blues, released on Island Records in 1990, announced the rocker's arrival on the folk scene, with the engaging title cut and nine more acoustic tracks, produced by Buck, and mostly played by his bandmates from Drivin N Cryin.
Though often cited as a working-class lyricist, Kinney cannot easily be thrown into the same bag as Springsteen, Mellencamp, or Dave Alvin. Instead, his is a unique spin on class, not urban yet not completely rural.

Kinney still continues to tour as a solo artist in-between dates with Drivin N Cryin, and is known to help host the annual Christmas Jam in Asheville with Warren Haynes. Darius Rucker cut Kinney’s song, Straight To Hell, on his album When Was The Last Time. The Drivin N Cryin song was a major hit on their album, Mystery Road, originally released in 1989.

Bobby Bare, Jr. could've phoned in a career. He could've exploited the fact that he's the son of iconic Country Music Hall of Famer Bobby Bare, was born into Nashville's Music Row elite, and counted artists like Shel Silverstein as close family friends and George Jones and Tammy Wynette as next door neighbors. Instead, Bobby blazed a path of unique songwriting craftsmanship with a voice that blows through you like an unyielding wind on the desolate prairie.

Undefeated is BBJ's first release since 2010 and what he calls his "break-up record," but the whole of it is much more involved: this isn't escapism; it's an emotional survival guide. Undefeated is ten songs of reality checks, clever wordplay, and daring arrangements, the aural companion to that buddy who pulls up a bar stool next to yours to help soak away your sorrows. Like a bespectacled, curly haired prizefighter whose opponent is on the ropes, Bobby goes at each release as if it might be his last round, focused, and full of energy and purpose. Undefeated is no different. The song list is a war chest of formidable uppercuts (e.g. distorted pop rock gems "North of Alabama By Mornin'" and "Don't Stand At the Stove"), eye-splitting right jabs (open and orchestral "Don't Wanna Know" and "The Elegant Imposter"), and sneaky left hooks (the crescendoing "As Forever Became Never Again").

Undefeated is an album of distinct balance, but with raw and varied textures. "North of Alabama By Mornin'" leads with a murky, palm-muted electric guitar and striding, crunchy organ backbeat; a combination that is undeniably kinetic à la Humble Pie's '70s boogie grooves and sinister and sexy, like a Southern doppelganger to Greg Dulli/The Twilight Singers. Bare Jr.'s ghostly high/low vocal layers echo the bleak picture of a metaphorical road trip, when his confidence slips, "Am I holding the steering wheel or is it holding me?/ The transmission is slipping like a pigeon through a tiger's teeth." By the song's finale, though, jubilant yelps ("Oh! Ho! Ho! We're goin' home!") and the electric guitar's pinch-harmonic wailing, indicate that things are headed in the right direction.

What's most striking about BBJ is his proficiency with a broad sonic palette that fluently conjures uncommon impressions of life's soul-arresting experiences. "The Big Time" is rock 'n' roll reinterpreted through the lens of soulful pedaled bass, celebratory and punchy brass, and the facade of big-city talk ("You're gonna miss me after I hit the big time/ Gonna get brand new famous friends."). In "Blame Everybody (But Yourself)" the band -- Young Criminals' Starvation League -- taps into a piano-inflected British invasion/Herman's Hermits sort of vibe, blended with the melancholic echo chamber aesthetic of My Morning Jacket.

At other moments, Bobby channels his country DNA (like in the Hayes Carll co-penned "My Baby Took My Baby Away"), mirror-ball gazing '70s R&B/soul ("Undefeated"), and bright ballads from the hills and hollers of Venice Beach ("If She Cared"). From anyone else, this refusal to play it on the straight and narrow would sound cluttered and disjointed, but Bobby never breaks a sweat.