A Friday Night with John Fullbright (Full Band Show)
Tickets:
Standing General Admission: Advance $20, Day of Show $25
Floor Seats: Advance $25, Day of Show $30
Balcony: Advance $50, Day of Show $55
VIP Stage: Advance $100, Day of Show $105
John Fullbright:
By Becky Carman
“If you can’t say it, you don’t have to,” sings John Fullbright on “Bearden 1645,” the opening track to his new record “The Liar".
The song details Fullbright finding refuge in playing the piano, starting as a child and still today. For fans, it may feel like a bit of a rebuttal to “Happy,” the opener from 2014’s “Songs,” one of several in his repertoire that speak explicitly about mining one’s angst in order to make music. Inthat way, “Bearden 1645” is also a firm nod to the fourth wall: Fullbright knows you’re thinking about his songwriting. He is, too…but not quite the way he was before.
The public at-large hasn’t heard much from him since the critically lauded “Songs,” a chasm of eight years that seemed unthinkable for an artist with so much hype surrounding his early career. Why did it take so long?
“Honestly, I don’t know, and that’s been the scariest question to think about and the hardest one to answer,” Fullbright said.
Maybe it was a tacit rejection of mounting industry pressure, mixed with a little fear. Or maybe it was the adjustment to a massive upheaval of his way of life. Whether we bore witness or not, it’s been a critical period of change for Fullbright, now in his 30s. Since his last release, he moved out of rural Oklahoma—the aforementioned Bearden has a population of about 130 people—to Tulsa. Once there, he worked to build a place for himself in the context of an established and vibrant musical coterie, performing often as both a bandleader and, more curiously, a sideman: storied loner John Fullbright lugging a piano from this small stage to that one with an uncharacteristic looseness.
“It’s been a process of learning how to be in a community of musicians and less focusing on the lone, depressed songwriter…just playing something that has a beat and is really fun,” Fullbright said. “That’s not to say there are no songs on this record where I depart from that, because there are, but there's also a band with an opinion. And that part is new to me.”
“The Liar” was recorded at Steve and Charlene Ripley’s farm-to-studio compound in northeastern Oklahoma. After Steve’s passing, Charlene flirted with the idea of selling the studio property, so Fullbright mobilized quickly to ensure he was able to record there before it changed hands. He threw together a band made up of, as Fullbright calls them, “the usual suspects.” Anyone fleetingly familiar with Oklahoma music will recognize the roster, which includes Jesse Aycock, Aaron Boehler, Paul Wilkes, Stephen Lee, and Paddy Ryan, all of whom are in more bands than seems possible. Along with a few more friends stopping in to lay down takes, they finished the songs and tracked the album with engineer Jason Weinheimer in a whirlwind four days.
“It was such a collaborative thing with some really cool voices,” Fullbright said, expressing surprise at the ease of the process. “It's just like playing music in Tulsa. Everybody kind of does whatever they do, and it works.”
The grab-and-go momentum landed Fullbright in the studio with some old songs (“Unlocked Doors” also appeared on 2009’s “Live at the Blue Door”), some new, and some unfinished, making his newfound trust in musical collaboration essential to the arrangements and reflected fully on the final album. “The Liar,” as a result, utilizes emotional and instrumental dynamics in ways Fullbright hasn’t allowed himself to explore fully before. There’s a noticeable slack here,an indulgent instrumental break there, and the general feeling that the tight-lipped John Fullbright who agonized over the writing process and then hesitated to talk about the meanings behind his songs in the past has eased up.
“What rules didn’t I have?” Fullbright says about his former songwriting self. “Even like, how many syllables were in a line, I had arbitrary rules for. So much of that has gone out the door, and I’m so much happier. It’s really just the idea that you don’t have to do this by yourself. It’s so much more fun to collaborate.”
“Paranoid Heart” starts out as a plaintive little folk song and explodes into a memorable, Petty-esque rocker bolstered by drummer Paddy Ryan and Jesse Aycock’s just-unhinged-enough slide guitar solo. The cutesy, resolute instrumentation “Social Skills” pairs deeply funny lyrics with a staccato distress in Fullbright’s vocals that raises a confusion only masterful writers can employ: you can’t tell if you’re supposed to laugh.
Fullbright highlights the high-low of “Safe to Say” as a favorite album moment, where what starts as a bluesy love song stretches its crescendo over a full five minutes, ending with everyone in the studio singing as a choir over an increasingly desperate confession of love.
And then there’s the title track. In “The Liar,” we find Fullbright talking to God, again. It’s the soft landing of his lifelong struggle with the concept of God, of accepting tenets of Christianity without believing in its central figure.
“I don’t pray, and I don’t hang my philosophical hat on the idea of God,” Fullbright said. “But I was raised with it and had to get away from it.”
He explored this notably in 2012’s “Gawd Above,” where the vengeful title character exacts terror and salvation in equal measure. “Give ‘em wine and song, fire and lust / When it all goes wrong, I’m the man to trust,” Fullbright sang.
In “The Liar,” the power dynamic has shifted. “God, grant me whiskey,” Fullbright sings, “and I promise I’ll be good.” It’s all done with a wink and a nod, less like a prayer and more like a request of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”
The sentiment is real, but the words are false. He’s still telling essential truths, which was always his gift, but this time they’re a little more slant. Maybe lying to tell the truth was always the songwriting target. Maybe throwing out some of the rules is what got him there. So is Fullbright, as a songwriter, a liar in his own estimation?
“What I love about songwriting is you're the hero in your own story, most of the time, and I think that's very human,” he said. “But short answer: yes.”
JASON SCOTT & THE HIGH HEAT
Caught halfway between amplified Americana and heartland roots-rock, Jason Scott & the High Heat create a sweeping, dynamic sound that reaches far beyond the traditions of their Oklahoma City home.Too loud for folk music and too textured for Red Dirt, this is the sound of a genuine band rooted in groove, grit, and its own singular spirit, led by a songwriter whose past — a Pentecostal upbringing, years logged as a pastor/preacher, and an eventual crisis of faith — has instilled both a storyteller's delivery and a contrasting perspective about life, love, and listlessness in the modern world.
Referring to their brand as High Country, JS+THH debut their upcoming LP American Grin (Out 9/20/2024) with single - Me & The Bottle (Hungover You) Which has spent several months in the top 20 on TX Radio. American Grin - was largely recorded near the Rio Grande at Sonic Ranch Studios, and Lunar Manor in Oklahoma City.
While his bandmates — Gabriel Mor (guitar), Taylor Johnson (guitar, keys), Ryan Magnani (bass), and Garrison Brown (keys/guitar) and new addition Bobby Wade (drums) — grew up listening to popular music, Jason's childhood was shaped by the sounds of a Sunday morning church service. Whenever the opportunity arose, he'd sneak off to his uncle's 79’ Ford Bronco, where he'd listen to Conway Twitty, and Tim McGraw tapes that offered a glimpse into a world so dissimilar from his own. Although Jason would eventually leave the church altogether for a career as a songwriter, his time as a pastor — forging connections with others, using songs and stories to strengthen the bond — helped prepare him for life on a different kind of stage.
JS+THH have recently played Mile 0 Fest 2024, LUCK Reunion 2024, Stagecoach, Braun Brothers Reunion, Born and Raised Fest, Norman Music Festival, and supported a variety of bands at venues in TX, KS, CO, CA, MT, UT, WY, and OK including Pat Green, Eli Young Band, Josh Abbott, Wilder Blue, Wyatt Flores, 49 Winchester, Gin Blossoms, Kaitlin Butts, Band of Heathens, Vandoliers, The Damn Quails, MIPSO, Parker Millsap, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and more.
Their first full length album Castle Rock, independently released in Feb 2022, spent two months in the top 50 reaching all the way to #36 with the help of Angela Backstrom and Rek Room Media. With articles in the following publications NPR, The Boot, Holler, BBC Radio Scotland, BMI, Bluegrass Situation, Out Of The Woods, Wide Open Country, Sound and Soul, Farce The Music, Ditty TV, Outsider, Oklahoma Free Press, Americana Music Show, Gimme Country, KOSU.
Castle Rock (2022) marks Jason Scott & the High Heat's first full-length debut. Like the band itself, the album represents a melting pot of influences: the heartland sweep of Tom Petty, the story-driven Americana of Jason Isbell, the nostalgic hooks of '90s country music, the sharp songwriting of James Taylor, and John Prine's lyrical mix of cutting insight and laugh-out-loud humor. Co-produced by Jason Scott and Taylor Johnson, the album mixes classic song structures with left-field arrangements, creating a sound that soothes one minute and subverts the next. "Quttin Time" makes room for a dual-guitar attack, a barroom piano solo, and a storyline about a hardworking man's fruitless attempts to escape his limited horizons, while "Cleveland County Line" flips the script, delivering a narrative about a prodigal son bound for home after a dark spiral of Kerouac-worthy travels. "The Stone" highlights the swaggering grooves that run beneath much of the High Heat's work, while lyrically the song tackles a soldier’s PTSD after returning from war. Lead single "Suffering Eyes" — with its twinkling keyboards, chugging power chords, and cascading guitar arpeggios — is heartland rock at its modern-day peak, as panoramic as the Oklahoma plains themselves.
A multi-instrumentalist, producer, and session musician, Scott launched his solo career with 2017's Living Rooms. The 5-song debut EP introduced him as a folksinger with a knack for "fun little earworms" (NPR), and he spent the following year balancing his time between the road and the studio, where he produced albums for Americana artists like Carter Sampson, Ken Pomeroy, and Nellie Clay. Things began to expand as he assembled the High Heat, a band of multi-faceted musicians and roots-rock Renaissance men who, like their frontman, juggled multiple artistic pursuits. Together, Jason Scott & The High Heat have since become a self-contained creative collective whose talents include songwriting, music production, photography, video production, and more. Scott earned critical acclaim as a songwriter in 2018 when the second track of his DIY EP LIVING ROOMS (2017) -- a breezy tribute to his wife called "She Good To Me" -- landed on NPR World Cafe’s Heavy Rotation: 10 Songs Public Radio Can’t Stop Playing alongside songs by MGMT, Moby, and Jade Bird.
GIAKOB LEE
Giakob Lee (it’s pronounced Jacob) writes music that sounds like someone telling secrets to a friend. The singer-songwriter from Cushing, Okla., by way of Oklahoma City, never intended to share his music publicly, but after experiencing a series of traumas—a horrific episode of workplace violence, the loss of his beloved dog, a devastating earthquake, and a divorce—the songs emerged as a way to motivate, encourage, lament and grieve through the struggles that followed.
“My songs are my journal” he says. “My grandmother has told me my entire life, ‘Giakob, you have to keep going, no matter what; you just have to keep going.’ The music has helped me find my way through the darkest time in my life; it’s my response. It’s what I needed to hear in those moments or say out loud, even if it was just to the walls in my empty house.”
Themes of redemption, time and the importance of others run throughout Giakob Lee’s music, and because of his experiences, the music cuts directly to the big points. As one lyric asks, “Is it okay we have to learn this way?” The sense of uncertainty and coming back to life are prominent, and the lyrics struggle honestly to grasp the chaos of life unmoored. While the music can often be melancholy, as in the beautiful break-up lyric, “I miss the way you talk to me when I’m wrong,” the overall thrust of his music is hopeful and reverent, a voice of gratitude from someone who has found the strength to “just keep going.”
Currently, Giakob Lee is playing venues around his native Oklahoma, and in the studio working on his first album, Too Often, which is due in fall 2022. As for the composition of the new album, it will follow from the same sense of self-rescue that animates his writing and his shows. As he puts it: “It’s time for me to share this; it’s something that I have always known was in me. It is my art. It makes me feel creative, and I find so much of my voice in my music, not just my words. I hope it isn’t just heard, but that it is felt by those who listen.”
THE DUNKIN THEATRE
The Dunkin Theatre has been under renovation since July of 2017 and is finally ready to debut its many new features. The Dunkin now boasts a state-of-the-art sound and lighting system, new balcony seating, and a full liquor license.
Guests who sit in the VIP balcony seats will have dedicated wait staff with full bar service for this event. Floor seats have an in-theatre bar with easy access so you don't miss any of the music.
We'll see you at the show!
Please visit our generous sponsors:
Drumright Dental Center
https://www.drumrightdentalcenter.com/
Cimarron Casino
Precision Flooring
Stillwater Medical Center
