GARRETT OWEN & SOPHIE GAULT
THE OLD QUARTER IS A LISTENING ROOM. LOUD CONVERSATION DURING ARTIST'S PERFORMANCE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. PLEASE CONSIDER THIS WHEN PURCHASING TICKETS TO SHOWS.
Garrett Owen’s music has the raw, rustic twang of a Texan, but his origin story is not that of your typical cowboy troubadour. The son of career missionaries, Owen spent his childhood in Tanzania and Kenya, his adolescence in South Louisiana, before coming of age in Ecuador. Asked about the most palpable effect of such eclectic settings, he cites not the musical, but the psychological. “I think it made me a really open person,” Owen shares. “I’ve seen a lot. And I have a really hard time with rules.” On Owen’s upcoming third album ‘Memoriam,’ this much is obvious—and celebrated.
Owen’s song structures dip, twist, and burst with a twister-like thrill. He can shift from tender, taletelling balladeering into a wholly rock and roll torrent and back, without losing the emotional plot. “Growing up, I was very opposed to learning—I broke a lot of toys.” But what once might have once been considered a behavioral hindrance is now a benefit to listeners. Owen’s dynamic song structures and the indisputable technical capacity required to pull them off make for an unabashed adventure of an album.
Sophie Gault has always been a little unhinged. A Nashville-based Americana rocker with a midnight voice and an eye and ear for last call rock and roll, she writes songs that swagger, stumble, wink, and bleed. With her third full-length album, Unhinged, Gault triples down on the risk-taking drive that has revved her from dive bars to the big tents, crafting a record that feels at once deeply personal and side-eye defiant.
Unhinged is a dare. A fast, reckless, one-eye-open ride through cow-punk Buck Owens, punked-up Robert Johnson, outlaw cruise mischief, shipwreck coins, blackjack tables, and backroom heartbreak. It’s the sound of someone doubling down on 17 when everyone screams “No!”—and winning. It’s the smell of whiskey and Monte Cristos at 2 AM; the taste of cheap red wine mixed with heat lightning, then you cross a forbidden line while laughing to the stars.
