Tab Benoit w/ Vandaveer, New Blues Revolution

Description: 9PM (5PM doors)

Tab Benoit: Guitarist-singer Tab Benoit is the real deal. Born and raised on the Louisiana bayou, this self-proclaimed “new kid from the old school” has been the standard bearer for a new generation of Cajun blues musicians – a traditionalist and an innovator at the same time, grafting elements of rock and soul to the indigenous sounds of the bayou. And if dedicating his life to his musical roots weren’t enough, Benoit has also been a tireless crusader in recent years – prior to the devastation of hurricane Katrina but even more so since – for the preservation of the rapidly vanishing wetlands of his native region.

Vandaveer : VANDAVEER is the song-singing, record-making, globetrotting project penned and put forth by alt-folk tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. Born in Ohio, raised in Kentucky, and currently camped out in the nation’s capital, Vandaveer offers up melodic Americana that is both haunting and easy, forlorn and welcoming, with stories as universal as the songs they inhabit. Vandaveer shapeshifts from studio to stage and back with a revolving cast of characters, most prominent among them Rose Guerin, offering up the loveliest harmonies heard this side of Eden. What started as a solo side project for Heidinger in 2007 blossomed into something more dimensional a year later, with Guerin adding new color to Vandaveer’s sound. The two were integral members of DC’s Federal Reserve collective, a ramshackle group of folk and not-so-folk types alike curating monthly musical happenings throughout the DC area. Informal collaborations in that environment soon galvanized, with Guerin’s voice becoming a reliable fixture in Vandaveer. The band has toured regularly on both sides of the Atlantic since, playing nearly 500 shows, steadily building a dedicated fan base from the ground up. Vandaveer’s third full length, Dig Down Deep, offers a collage of churning rhythms, steady guitar and ringing piano beneath tales of war and impermanence, loss and love. The music serves as both mirror and platform for Vandaveer’s stories—booming bass drum during moments of turmoil and conquest, throaty cello in moments of peace and predation, trembling keys in moments of uncertainty and hope. Out of the mosaic rise two voices in perfect harmony narrating and navigating the lives of Vandaveer’s characters with confidence and grace. With rich lyrical imagery and lush, spectral production courtesy of long-time collaborator Duane Lundy, Dig Down Deep is Vandaveer’s finest effort to date—a record both dense and direct, for and from the heart.