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Rayland Baxter and Langhorne Slim

  • Rio Theatre for the Performing 1205 Soquel Ave Santa Cruz, CA, 95062 United States (map)

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Rayland Baxter

For the making of his fourth album If I Were a Butterfly, Rayland Baxter holed up for over a year at a former rubber-band factory turned studio in the Kentucky countryside—a seemingly humble environment that proved to be something of a wonderland. “I spent that year living in a barn with the squirrels and the birds, on my own most of the time, and I discovered so much about music and how to create it,” says the Tennessee-bred singer/songwriter. “Instead of going into a studio with a producer for two weeks, I just waited for the record to build itself. I’d get up and go outside, see a butterfly and connect that with some impulsive thought I’d had three months ago, and suddenly a song I’d been working on would make sense. That’s how the whole album came to be.”

The follow-up to 2018’s critically acclaimed Wide Awake, If I Were a Butterfly finds Baxter co-producing alongside Tim O’Sullivan (Grace Potter, The Head and the Heart) and Kai Welch (Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull), slowly piecing together the album’s patchwork of lush psychedelia and Beatlesesque pop. In addition to working at Thunder Sound (the Kentucky studio he called home for months on end), Baxter recorded in California, Texas, Tennessee, and Washington, enlisting a remarkable lineup of musicians: Shakey Graves, Lennon Stella, several members of Cage the Elephant, Zac Cockrell of Alabama Shakes, Morning Teleportation’s Travis Goodwin, and legendary Motown drummer Miss Bobbye Hall, among many others. In an especially meaningful turn, two of the album’s tracks feature the elegant pedal steel work of his father, Bucky Baxter (a musician who performed with Bob Dylan and who passed away in May 2020). Thanks to the extraordinary care and ingenuity behind its creation, If I Were a Butterfly arrives as a work of rarefied magic, capable of stirring up immense feeling while leaving the listener happily wonderstruck.

Langhorne Slim, a beloved and acclaimed American singer, songwriter and performer. Over the last 2 decades he has merged a stew of styles to create a sound that is unique, powerful and raw. From campfires to dive bars, and theatres to arenas, Slim brings an intimacy and edge through his innate ability to connect with his audiences. Though he’s been at this for the better part of his days, it somehow feels like he’s just getting started.


Show time: 8:00 PM, doors 7:00 PM
Tickets: $36.75 gen, $52.25 Gold Circle
Advance tickets: www.eventbrite.com
Event website: www.raylandbaxter.com
Event website: www.langhorneslimmusic.com