Tag Archives: ATO Records

Kopecky – Tour Dates + New Video For “Quarterback”

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If you like Fleetwood Mac, try Kopecky…intelligent and edgy.” – The New York Times

Quickly fell in love. Kopecky’s sweet rock songs keep blooming into something irresistible.” –NPR

Melodic three-minute blast with piercing guitar riffs and an adrenaline-pumped chorus.SPIN

On May 19, Kopecky will release their sophomore album Drug for the Modern Age via ATO Records. The band has just released a live video for their lead single “Quarterback.” Watch the video below. Singer Kelsey Kopecky says, “Having a new album on the horizon gives us fresh wind in our sails to play live. The new songs are fun and grooving. Our first single, ‘Quarterback,’ is just that – a song that tells a tale of the underdog getting the girl with a simple white lie. An anthem of sorts with a ‘love conquers all’ vibe.”

Kopecky’s new record, Drug for the Modern Age, takes the many shake-ups the band’s endured over the past few years and turns them into inspiration for groove-driven, melody-heavy alt-pop that’s intensely emotional and strangely exhilarating. The album is now available for pre-order on iTunes, Amazon, and Kopecky’s official store.

Formerly known as the Kopecky Family Band, the Nashville based group has had their music appear on a variety of hit television series including Grey’s Anatomy, Parenthood, The Vampire Diaries, and MTV’s Awkward to name a few. One of their new tracks “Real Life” was just featured on the most recent episode of the hit television show Nashville. They’ve also toured all over the world and have played at some of the largest music festivals including Austin City Limits, Bumbershoot, and Lollapalooza. This year they will be performing at SXSW.

Their upcoming release, Drug for the Modern Age, explores such life-altering events as the sudden loss of a loved one, divorce, and struggles with addiction, along with more joyful happenings like new love and marriage. “The album was written in this weird time of so much pain but also happiness, and that really informed the writing and recording,” says vocalist/guitarist Gabe Simon, who co-founded the group with vocalist/keyboardist Kelsey Kopecky in 2007. “Our goal was to talk about all these very serious things we were dealing with, but in a way that felt nothing like wallowing and more like standing triumphantly, or even dancing our way through it.”

In achieving that dynamic, Kopecky (whose lineup also includes guitarist Steven Holmes, bassist Corey Oxendine, cellist Markus Midkiff, and drummer David Krohn) offer moments of symphonic grandeur alongside edgy, electronic-leaning innovation. Meanwhile, their daringly intimate lyrics both unsettle and engage, asking questions and encouraging reflection on the part of the listener.

As on their 2012 debut Kids Raising Kids, Kopecky teamed up with Konrad Snyder, but this time around the band took a more slowed-down and deliberate approach. This allowed them to bring new level of sophistication and soulfulness to their songcraft.

Drug for the Modern Age serves up its share of intricately layered love songs as well, revealing Kopecky’s endless grace in merging sweetness and melancholy. With the band forever bound by their shared passion for purposeful songwriting, all that revelation and sometimes-painful truth-telling ultimately fulfills something central to Kopecky’s mission: a deeper and stronger connection with each person listening.

Tour Dates
4/2 at Club Café in Pittsburgh, PA
4/3 at Musica in Akron, OH
4/10 at The Loft in Columbus, GA
4/11 at One Spark Festival in Jacksonville, FL
4/12 at Second Sunday in Macon, GA
4/16 at The Frequency in Madison, WI
4/17 at Redstone Room in Davenport, IA
4/18 at Off Broadway in St. Louis, MO
4/28 at Pour House in Charleston, SC
4/29 at Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, VA
5/4 at Mercury Lounge in New York, NY
5/5 at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, NY
5/8 at Artisphere in Greenville, SC
5/14 at Camp House in Chattanooga, TN
5/15 at Vinyl in Atlanta, GA
5/17 at Hangout Festival in Gulf Shores, AL
5/19 at Basement in Nashville, TN
5/22 at Live Oak in Fort Worth, TX
5/25 at The Casbah in San Diego, CA
5/26 at Echo Park in Los Angeles, CA
5/29 at Bottlerock Festival in Napa, CA
5/31 at Sainte Rocke in Hermosa Beach, CA
6/1 at Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix, AZ
6/4 at Wakarusa in Ozark, AR
7/26 at XPoNential Music Festival in Camden, NJ

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Jim James – “Know Til Now”

“I wanted the album to sound like it came from a different place in time,” says Jim James. “Perhaps sounding as if it were the past of the future, if that makes any sense—like a hazy dream that a fully-realized android or humanoid capable of thought might have when it reminisces about the good old days of just being a simple robot.”

“I take walks a lot,” says James, “and as I walk, songs kind of build in my mind, and I start adding and subtracting things. So I had a full vision for a lot of the songs on this album before I even recorded one note.” These visions have now manifested as Regions of Light and Sound of God, the first solo album from the singer, songwriter, and guitarist for My Morning Jacket, which will be released February 5th on ATO Records. Over the course of fifteen years and six studio albums, James has been the focal point of a group that has grown into one of the most acclaimed and successful rock and roll bands in the world. With this project, he reaches into new territory that extends, but doesn’t break from, MMJ’s accomplishments.

Until now, James had never felt the call to create a longer-form album on his own. “I’m very lucky to play in a band with guys that I love, who are great at what they do,” he says, “so on MMJ records, I don’t have a need to play bass or keys or what have you. But as a person and as a musician, I love to play every instrument under the sun, and I wanted to make a record where I played all the instruments and produced/engineered it myself.”

The results are nine songs that resist easy categorization, from the hazy space-funk of the opening “State of the Art (A.E.I.O.U.)” to the chiming, operatic pop of “A New Life.” On Regions of Light and Sound of God, nothing is what it seems—touchstones from old-school R&B or island folk or hip-hop flicker into focus and then disappear; a delicate instrumental is titled “Exploding.” It’s complex but cohesive, intimate and hypnotic where My Morning Jacket might turn more wide-screen and epic.

For Regions of Light and Sound of God, there was one specific source that shaped many of the songs, and even figures into the album title—a pioneering 1929 graphic novel called God’s Man, by Lynd Ward. Told entirely through wordless woodcuts, the book chronicles an artist’s struggle with temptation and corruption, along with finding true love. As work on the album proceeded, James was inspired to write music that could accompany the book. “God’s Man came to me at a very important time,” he says. “Some of the things happening in the book were happening to me in real life, in a very strange and painful, then a very beautiful way.”

Solo albums by members of bands, especially lead singers, can often be scattershot, collections of odds and ends built up over the years with no true sense of purpose. But Regions of Light and Sound of God is precisely the opposite—the clarity with which Jim James came into this album rings from first note to last. “The album knew what it wanted to be,” says James. “The songs would tell me what they wanted to be, and I just had to search around and find those sounds to bring them into this world.”

Stream: Jim James – “Know Til Now”

Download: Jim James – “Know Til Now” (in exchange for an email address)

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