Shinyribs

Shinyribs

w/ Magnolia Boulevard

Friday, 9.6.24

Charleston Pour House

Main Stage

730pm doors / 845pm show

$20 advance /$25 day of show

support tba

Shinyribs

Shinyribs defies genres as a sonic melting pot of Texas Blues, New Orleans R&B funk, horn-driven Memphis Soul, country twang, border music, big band swing, and roots-rock. The Austin-based nine-piece (sometimes 10-piece) supergroup is led by Kevin Russell, the charismatic frontman with colorful suits and extravagant shoes who continuously swaps out an electric guitar for a ukulele and never falls short of creating a cinematic experience with on-stage antics that often include him donning a light-up cloak or leading a conga line through the crowd.

Shinyribs’ new record – Transit Damage (July 2023 on Blue Elan / Hardcharger Records) is, in Russell’s words, “the record I’ve been trying to make for most of my career. This is a collection of songs that relate to each other in a myriad of ways: musically, lyrically, emotionally. It’s a real throwback to the era of complete albums, and draws from songs I’ve written throughout my life. I hope listeners can take the time to fully immerse themselves in the whole thing.”

To help him flesh this collection out, Russell picked producer and longtime friend Steve Berlin (from Los Lobos) to help him arrange and record Transit Damage. Together they chose to work at another auspicious location, The Finishing School studios in Austin. The Finishing School is housed in the former home of Austin legend George Reiff (The Chicks, Bruce Robison, Ray Wylie Hubbard) who engineered and produced Shinyribs’ debut Well After Awhile back in 2010. Reiff, a close personal friend of Russell’s, tragically passed away from. cancer in 2017, yet his legacy lives on. His home studio was refurbished by Band of Heathens’ Gordy Quist, and reopened a couple years ago with acclaimed engineer Jim Vollentine.

Berlin helped source a number of auxiliary players around town to help expand the Shinyribs sound, and realize Russell’s bigger vision. Shinyribs’ bassist Mason Hankamer also lent some producing skills, helping arrange many of the songs. Shinyribs was named Best Austin Band at the Austin Chronicle’s Austin Music Awards

(2017, 2018), awarded Album of the Year for I Got Your Medicine (2017), and Best 2020- Themed Song for “Stay Home” (2020). Russell’s Shinyribs have recorded seven previous albums: 2010’s Well After Awhile; Gulf Coast Museum (2013); Okra Candy (2015); 2017’s award-winning I Got Your Medicine; a compilation of holiday standards and new compositions The Kringle Tingle (2018); and the group’s latest soulful release, Fog & Bling (2019); and Late Night TV Gold, (2021).

Magnolia Boulevard

Like a caterpillar going through metamorphosis and becoming a butterfly, Magnolia Boulevard experiences a transformational process of growth on its latest EP, Things Are Gonna Change. The five song project out July 7 sees the Lexington, Kentucky based band embrace the change in their lives, both good and bad, from pandemic related isolation to motherhood and the sudden passing of founding drummer Todd Copeland in 2021, in the process proving how through all life’s hurdles you can still endure.

The EP is written mostly by guitarist & keys player Ryan Allen and lead vocalist Maggie Noelle. Over the course of Things Are Gonna Change’s five songs the band lays out the story of their lives over the past few years and how they’re collectively grown from it beginning with the frenetic, anxiety ridden “Grip”. Slowly the paranoia present in the lyrics of the song evolve, eventually yielding the happy, loving and nurturing “More” that concludes with Maggie Noelle triumphantly belting out how becoming a mother has given her a new perspective on life, singing “And I’ll break down the walls that I built once before, ‘Cause you build me up and you make me more.” 

In many ways, the band has thrived in part of how they’ve built and lifted each other up since forming in 2017. At the time Maggie Noelle was playing in a bluegrass band, although she’d been yearning for a creative outlet where she could let loose like her idols Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi.

In the six years since Magnolia Boulevard has gone on to develop a close relationship with PRS Guitars Founder and CEO Paul Reed Smith (who helped to mix and master Things Are Gonna Change) in addition to sharing stages with the likes of Blues Traveler, George Porter Jr., Marcus King, Neal Francis, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band. The group has also been recognized for their excellence, winning the award for “Best Rock Band” at the Lexington Music Awards in 2018 and 2019 along with taking home first prize in the “On The Rise” band competition at Floydfest, one of the east coast’s biggest music festivals, in 2018.

Much like the band members of Magnolia Boulevard have endured over the highs and lows of the past few years, so has their music. The band’s emphatic and empowering anthems of love, self discovery, grief and uncertainty serve as a lesson to us all about life’s unpredictable nature and how to better live in the moment so we can appreciate everything and everyone around us before they’re gone. 

“All I can hope is that folks can relate to each song in their own way & can feel every ounce of love that we put into them. There’s nothing more that I’d personally like to accomplish with our music than to share space for people to bask in.” – Mag

* Show is 21+. Attendees under the age of 21 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Attendees under 21 will be subject to a $5 surcharge. The surcharge must be paid in cash at the door on the day of the event.