Patrick Dethlefs with special guest Ben Sollee
$8
Advance reservations are closed for this event, but there may be seats available for walk-ups. There will be standing room.
Patrick Dethlefs hails from Colorado, and is doing a brief tour through central Kentucky with special guest Ben Sollee.
More about the artists:
For a stalwart young artist who creates different means to an end, Ben Sollee has enjoyed a whirlwind year replete with remarkable success and warm, exciting music to match.
Sollee hails from Kentucky, yet sounds nothing like the colloquial music one traditionally associates with the state (or anywhere else for that matter). He eschews traditional singer-songwriter and folk boundaries, choosing a cello rather than a guitar as his divining rod, and utilizing unique plucking and percussive bow techniques juxtaposed against his blue-eyed soul meets Antony Hegarty vocal leanings. Ben enjoys collaborating with musicians as disparate as Otis Taylor and Bela Fleck, touring with indie rock royalty, and covering Sam Cooke as an homage to blues. When he ventures out of Louisville, sometimes he'll just strap this cello to his back and ride his bike rather than enjoy the comforts of a van or bus, as he did on his southern trek in the summer of 2009 -- playing intimate shows in every town he hits between his larger headlining performances. Yes, Ben's always done things a bit differently.
Not interested in slowing down, Sollee spends his spare time championing issues close to his heart, such as ending mountaintop removal through his volunteer work, playing benefit concerts for Kentuckians For the Commonwealth and Oxfam, as well as assembling the aforementioned bike tours to encourage greener living. Ben wears his conscience on his sleeve without proselytizing or taking away from what matters most, his imaginative music.
Yes, Ben truly traces his own trajectory. And perhaps that's what will keep him both an engaging artist and person for years to come.
(Pronounced “Det-Lefs”)
Born in Tacoma, Washington, Patrick Dethlefs now makes his home in Kittredge, Colorado. He first picked up the guitar at the age of 12 after some inspiration from his father and a little push from a neighbor. He began to learn styles such as rock, punk, and jam music, and on and on it goes. Then around the age of 15, he began writing his own songs. He remembers people saying, “Let’s learn this song,” but he always loved coming up with his own. That eventually paid off; Patrick was awarded The Best Teen Songwriter Award at Swallow Hill in Denver, Colorado in 2009. He also won Best Song as well as Best Performance. Quickly after, Dethlefs released his debut album, Stays the Same, which displays original songs as well as a few traditional tunes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdoIkM8-Wk0
What the folks are saying
Patrick Dethlefs - Stays the Same
Long Spoon
By Jason Heller Thursday, May 27 2010
It doesn’t get any more literal than writing a song about the moon and titling it “The Moon.” Patrick Dethlefs does exactly that on his debut CD, Stays the Same, and the unswerving earnestness of that track isn’t a fluke. The Kittredge-based teenage singer-songwriter uses his warm, homespun voice and acoustic strumming to communicate unflinchingly about loneliness, the thorniness of romance and the death of his father — but it doesn’t dwell so much as it celebrates. And thanks to the backing of a broad range of harmony vocals and instruments — including banjo and production by local folk explorer Laura Goldhamer — there’s a richness that augments Dethlefs’s elemental, open-as-the-sky songs. When Dethlefs misses his home, he sings, “I miss my home.” That simple. That pure. In that sense, the title of the disc itself is as literal as any of the songs on it: Stays the Same is a reaffirmation of the long tradition of the heart-on-sleeve folk confessional. And as such, it shines.