Coyote Brother w/ special guest John Statz

224 West Bruce Street,Milwaukee WI 53204

30 September, 2021

Description

J. Hardin and Hayward Williams decided to band together and create Coyote Brother. They love sad songs and harmonies. COVID POLICY FOR LIVE SHOWS We want to ensure we are doing everything we can to help keep our community safe, so we are now requiring the following for entry to Live Shows: Proof of Vaccination -OR- Proof of a Negative COVID 19 Test taken within 72 hours of the show. Masks are encouraged but not required. // $10 adv/ $15 at the door (advance sales until 3pm day of show, then available at the door). Doors at 7pm, showtime 8pm COYOTE BROTHER Hardin and Williams’ separated-at-birth story started a dozen years ago, back when they were both signed to small, Wisconsin independent labels. The labels worked together to bring in supporting musicians on various recordings. As a result, Hardin and Williams found themselves sitting across the studio from one another. They became friends, and Williams played and sang on a 2008 Hardin release. Then, around 2011, Hardin’s life became unbuckled, and he retreated from writing and performing to deal with what he describes as “mental maladjustments.” He committed the next four years to making some life — and life-saving — changes. Hardin reemerged in 2015 and poured his mental health recovery experiences into the utterly astonishing album, The Piasa Bird. Prior to recording the music, he asked Williams to produce it. “I told him I’d cut his grass for a summer, and if he didn’t do it, I wasn’t going to make it at all,” says Hardin. Williams took him up on it and, well, fast forward to Coyote Brother. “As I was beginning to prepare for another solo album,” Hardin recalls, “I realized all of the songs I was writing were being written with Hayward in mind, to be performed as a duo.” Williams says Hardin’s storytelling merges with his style. “I tend to graft words to melodies, finding deeper meaning in them as I edit and re-edit,” he says. “John is lyrically driven with a point of view.” He adds, with good-natured envy, Hardin’s “finger picking is always something I’ve been jealous of.” // JOHN STATZ It was somewhere in England while on tour in September of 2019 that Colorado songwriter John Statz – stressed out by rainy days, Brexit anxiety, and a disintegrating relationship back home – began to feel optimistic and plan his new record. Early Riser is a balancing act between the experiences in modern life that cause us worry or pain and those that bring us joy. The album is very much a product of the year 2019 and the cultural scene at the end of a decade, with songs referencing political divisions over Brexit, the destruction of Notre Dame, and the racist dog-whistles of a xenophobic president. John presents those weighty topics alongside more personal songs of reverence for travel and the outdoors, falling in and out of love, and his parents’ relationship. These songs are brought to life by an ace band featuring Billy Conway (Morphine) on drums, Jeremy Moses Curtis (Booker T) on bass, and Denver multi-instrumentalist Kate Hannington on keys, backing vocals, woodwinds, and guitars. One of the more prolific thirty-something songwriters working in the Folk/Americana genre today, John Statz has released nine studio albums and performed all over North America and Europe over the course of his fifteen-year career. The Boston Globe has called John’s music electric, urgent folk; aching, sweet country-rock while American Songwriter has said that he writes the kind of songs that float through your mind and stay nestled in your thoughts long after listening. John has worked with some of the best producers in the genre, including Bo Ramsey (Lucinda Williams, Greg Brown) on his 2012 release Old Fashioned, Jeffrey Foucault (Kris Delmhorst, Caitlin Canty) on a 2015 album TULSA, and Denver songwriting friend Megan Burtt on 2017’s The Fire Sermon. He’s more recently taken a turn towards the production chair, self-producing 2018’s Darkness on the San Juans and co-producing 2020’s Early Riser, along with Kate Hannington, Billy Conway, and Jeremy Moses Curtis. John Statz was given a guitar by his grandmother when he was fifteen, which turned out to be perfectly timed for an easily-distracted Wisconsin teenager who, after ten years of piano lessons, had lost interest in classical music and had taken to learning John Lennon and Elton John tunes. It wasn’t until Statz was nineteen and attending university in Oshkosh that he began writing songs. The spark lit after attending a show at the storied Café Carpe in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin featuring Jeffrey Foucault and Peter Mulvey, who quickly became heroes, and, later on, friends and collaborators. John moved to Denver in 2010 where he escapes to the mountains as much as possible to hike and camp, cooks almost entirely in cast-iron cookware, and reads presidential biographies in chronological order. $10 adv/ $15 at the door (advance sales until 3pm day of show, then available at the door). Doors at 7pm, showtime 8pm