Doors 7PM | Show 8PM | 21 & Over | Public On Sale 6/5

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 To provide a safer environment for the public and significantly expedite fan entry into our venues, Rialto Theatre & 191 Toole have instituted a clear bag policy as of March 1st, 2022. The policy limits the size and type of bags that may be brought into our venues. The following is a list of bags that will be accepted for entry: Bags that are clear plastic or vinyl and do not exceed 12in x 6in x 12in One-gallon clear plastic freezer bags (Ziplok bag or similar) Small clutch bags, approximately 5in x 7in All bags subject to search. Clear bags are available for sale at the box office.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

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Texas blues/rock guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Ally Venable has made her fiery presence known around the world since the release of her debut album at 16. Now, with her fifth solo effort Real Gone! dropping on Ruf Records March 10th, 2023, Venable has come of age. 

At 23, Venable is already an important artist in the roots music world. Her name has grown in stature with each new album and high-energy gig. She’s an absolutely ripping guitar player with style and tone for days, a commanding singer, and a songwriter with the power to make blues music that speaks to contemporary fans. The new record, produced by Grammy winner Tom Hambridge (Buddy Guy, Susan Tedeschi), features guest appearances by Joe Bonamassa and living legend Buddy Guy. 

Venable is that rare musician who can take her old-school influences like Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan and create music that brings their spirits to today’s listeners where they live. Together with Isaac Pulido (drums) EJ Bedford (bass), she gives audiences an entertaining show packed with musical muscle and relatable songs about living, growing, and evolving. When asked where her songs emerge from, Ally replied “I try to write about what goes on in my life, or try to write about something I know others can relate to. We all go through things and it’s okay to have feelings about something going on in your life.” 

The first single from Real Gone! is “Texas Louisiana,” which is a crackling duet with the one-and-only Buddy Guy. Ally and Buddy are an absolute dream team together, intertwining their guitars and voices into one without either losing any identity or impact. The title track “Real Gone” is a straight-up, body-moving rocker that will also be a single. Venable shouts down the microphone like a star while her guitar snarls and sings. 

On the soulful ballad “Next Time I See You,” Ally downshifts her vocals and shows every dynamic degree of her impressive range. Her guitar work here is equally lyrical and emotive, displaying a gift for phrasing that few players ever attain. The grinding slow jam “Blues Is My Best Friend” lays out the ups and downs of the guitar lifestyle in no uncertain terms and features some of Venable’s most intense playing and singing on the entire set. Ally’s deep, cliche-free authenticity is the common thread running through every song on Real Gone!. She speaks her mind without hesitation or apology, turning each track into an honest statement of purpose. 

In 2022, Guitar World Magazine named Ally one of the Top 15 ‘Young Guns’ Making the Gibson Les Paul Cool Again and she also received the Road Warrior Award from the Independent Blues Music Awards. She performed as a featured artist on the Experience Hendrix Show in Austin, TX and appeared alongside Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Zack Wilde, Eric Johnson, Dweezil Zappa, and other luminaries. 

With 2019’s Texas Honey and 2021’s Heart of Fire, Venable found herself topping the Billboard charts. Early releases No Glass Shoes (2016) and Puppet Show (2018) created her fanbase, charted on radio, and won several East Texas Music Awards. Venable’s acclaimed performances on Ruf Records’ European Blues Caravan tour brought her international recognition. She has toured the U.S. with Buddy Guy and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Canada with Colin James.

This year, Ally will be opening for Buddy Guy on his farewell tour, rocking Europe again on the Blues Caravan Tour, and doing her own headline shows domestically and abroad. She’s had a rapid rise to fame but gives off the vibe of someone who loves her life and is ok with it all.

Doors 6:30PM | Show 7:30PM | All Ages | Public On Sale 6/1 10AM

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 To provide a safer environment for the public and significantly expedite fan entry into our venues, Rialto Theatre & 191 Toole have instituted a clear bag policy as of March 1st, 2022. The policy limits the size and type of bags that may be brought into our venues. The following is a list of bags that will be accepted for entry: Bags that are clear plastic or vinyl and do not exceed 12in x 6in x 12in One-gallon clear plastic freezer bags (Ziplok bag or similar) Small clutch bags, approximately 5in x 7in All bags subject to search. Clear bags are available for sale at the box office.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

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The Happy Fits’ third full-length is a massive leap forward for the New Jersey trio, who have already built a serious following with their energetic and electrifying pop-rock style. At once a showcase of rock-solid songcraft and gleeful experimentation, Under the Shade of Green is a deceptively bright opus that also zooms in on the anxieties and catastrophes of daily life while never losing its irresistibly hooky attitude. 
 Under the Shade of Green is the latest chapter in The Happy Fits’ impressive rise, dating back to their bonding in high school in 2012. Cellist Calvin Langman and guitarist Ross Monteith started playing covers together in earnest, and when Langman revealed some original songs he’d been working on, drummer Luke Davis came aboard to join in a creative genesis that would result in the Awfully Apeelin’ EP from 2016. 
 From the punchy “Dance Alone” to the serpentine riffs of “Do Your Worst,” Under the Shade of Green finds The Happy Fits unloading earworm after earworm—even as darkness looms, as suggested by the album’s cover of a pineapple covered in flaming money. “It’s a metaphor for what we are all seeing and not talking about enough,” Langman says, reflecting on the album’s overall arc. If these songs don’t make you feel alive—well, you might just want to check your pulse.

Doors 7PM | Show 8PM | 21 & Over | Public On Sale 5/18

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 To provide a safer environment for the public and significantly expedite fan entry into our venues, Rialto Theatre & 191 Toole have instituted a clear bag policy as of March 1st, 2022. The policy limits the size and type of bags that may be brought into our venues. The following is a list of bags that will be accepted for entry: Bags that are clear plastic or vinyl and do not exceed 12in x 6in x 12in One-gallon clear plastic freezer bags (Ziplok bag or similar) Small clutch bags, approximately 5in x 7in All bags subject to search. Clear bags are available for sale at the box office.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

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No less an authority than Nels Cline, the high priest of art-rock guitarists, has called Knoxville’s Mike Baggetta a “guitar poet.” That poetry, alternately gnarled and flowing, is on fine display in Main Steam Stop Valve, the second album by (and the decompressed namesake of) mssv, an experimental rock trio featuring Baggetta, the legendary punk bassist Mike Watt, and the versatile drummer Stephen Hodges.  

The collaboration began when Watt, of The Minutemen fame, joined Baggetta and seasoned session drummer Jim Keltner to record an improvised jazz-rock album called Wall of Flowers, an eight-track romp from pastoral splendor to urban din and back again. When Keltner declined to tour, they brought in Hodges, whose credits as a player include Mavis Staples, Tom Waits, and David Lynch, not to mention Contemplating the Engine Room with Watt.  

Solidified as mssv—some heretofore unimagined hybrid of a punky power trio and a dreamy experimental rock band—they released Main Steam Stop Valve, which blends industrial vigor and impressionistic languor into a lingering impression of “pressure, combustion, power, and hissing clouds of sonic poetry,” as Premier Guitar said. From the throttled surf guitar of “The Mystery Of” and the glimmering post-rock of “Every Growing Thing” to groovy, songful numbers like “Old Crow,” there’s no telling which way the band will turn at any given moment, a proposition that becomes a promise when they break down and reassemble these songs live, with an instinct for restraint and an openness to anarchy.

Doors 7PM | Show 8PM | All Ages | Public On Sale 5/19 10AM

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 To provide a safer environment for the public and significantly expedite fan entry into our venues, Rialto Theatre & 191 Toole have instituted a clear bag policy as of March 1st, 2022. The policy limits the size and type of bags that may be brought into our venues. The following is a list of bags that will be accepted for entry: Bags that are clear plastic or vinyl and do not exceed 12in x 6in x 12in One-gallon clear plastic freezer bags (Ziplok bag or similar) Small clutch bags, approximately 5in x 7in All bags subject to search. Clear bags are available for sale at the box office.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

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The Expendables haven’t proven anything, but in their nearly 25-year career since starting out as a spirited party band in high school performing surf-rock covers for birthdays and family gatherings. A quarter-century later, elementary school buddies Raul Bianchi, Adam Peterson and Geoff Weers, along with bassist Ryan DeMars, who joined in 2000, have forged a unique sound born in the laid-back beach life in their hometown of Santa Cruz, CA. The Expendables’ infectious hybrid of ska, surf-rock, punk, reggae and metal can be heard in their latest streaming track, “Surfman Cometh,” a spaghetti-western meets “Pipeline” twang that could easily form the soundtrack to the latest Quentin Tarantino film. The song is the first release from the group’s new and improved Band Room, their longtime rehearsal space in a 1,100 square foot warehouse and former wine cellar on Coral Street, where Adam Patterson took charge of the final mix to great effect. The band’s previous studio album of original material, 2015’s Sand in the Sky, was followed by The Expendables’ second release featuring acoustic reworkings of past material, Gone Raw, 2019’s follow-up to 2012’s Gone Soft. The Expendables continue woodshedding until they can get back out on the road. Their 2017 Moment EP, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Reggae chart, showed a different musical direction, featuring collaborations with reggae crooner HIRIE, rapper Tech N9ne, Eric Rachmany, and Micah Peuschel.

Doors 7PM | Show 8PM | All Ages | Public On Sale 5/10 10AM

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 To provide a safer environment for the public and significantly expedite fan entry into our venues, Rialto Theatre & 191 Toole have instituted a clear bag policy as of March 1st, 2022. The policy limits the size and type of bags that may be brought into our venues. The following is a list of bags that will be accepted for entry: Bags that are clear plastic or vinyl and do not exceed 12in x 6in x 12in One-gallon clear plastic freezer bags (Ziplok bag or similar) Small clutch bags, approximately 5in x 7in All bags subject to search. Clear bags are available for sale at the box office.

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ABOUT FLORIST

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It’s a portrait of who we are as collaborators, as really long term friends and as extended family as well,” leader Emily Sprague says of her band’s new self-titled album. Florist is also the strongest album of the band’s decade-long career, an immersive work that conveys the magic of the earth and of family, and the whole of the band’s heart. It arrives just after the cap of a winding journey. In 2017, shortly after the release of the band’s sophomore record, If Blue Could Be Happiness, Sprague sequestered herself in Los Angeles, thousands of miles away from friends and family, and from the physical void and spiritual crisis left in the wake of her mother’s death. There, she took up surfing and released Emily Alone, which was essentially a solo album released under the Florist moniker. Only after months of self reflection and therapy did Sprague realize that life in a silo is no way to live. That a life directed by fear is not much of a life. “The trauma response to losing my best friend, my mom, was to feel really afraid to get close to anybody ever again,” she says. “It’s sort of cheesy, but I realized that life is better when you share it. The answer isn’t to isolate yourself and be alone.” So she began writing Emily Alone’s companion, the other side of the binary, a record that rings distinctly of Sprague’s tender and poetic spirit, filled with nature and wonder and tears, but without all the loneliness and seclusion. She also adopted a dog, who, she says, “completely changed my life.” “My mind just started exploding with all these thoughts about what it means to live with others, and live with love and care collaboration.” Then, for all of June of 2019, amid a hot and rainy summer, Sprague (guitar, synth, vocals), Jonnie Baker (guitar, synth, sampling, bass, saxophone, vocals), Rick Spataro (bass, piano, synth, vocals) and Felix Walworth (percussion, synth, guitar, vocals) convened in a rented house in the Hudson Valley, to live and work together. It was the first time the quartet recorded that way, and for that long. “In the past we’d meet up for a couple of days, or one day here and there,” Spague recalls. “Living together for a month is a really big part of why the arrangements are the way they are, and also why the instrumentals are such a huge part of the record.” They set up their gear on the screened-in front porch, which looked out onto a canopy of trees, allowing the sounds of nature to play a leading role through out. Then, they experimented. The production and recording of the album directly reflects the organic ways in which the band worked that month, with whispering voices, crickets, rain and birds accenting the aleatoric quality of the instrumentation, each player drawing from the communal energy of the woods and their interpersonal bonds. Poignant, guitar-centric meditation “Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning)” carries on Sprague’s concern with love, loss and the natural world. “She’s in the birdsong/She won’t be gone,” she sings of her late mother, proffering a merciful sense of resolve. “Feathers” finds her facing her fears over threads of bowed guitar while “Dandelion” meditates on the beauty of our finite existence, pairing synth and fingerpicking with the spirit of Emily Dickinson. “Sci Fi Silence” occupies a liminal space between soul baring confession and contemplative new age, a swirl of analog synth that culminates in a full-band meditation. “You’re not what I have, but what I love,” the band sings over and again until the words grow into a kind of mantra, a thing that at once pierces and heals. The quartet played through muggy days and breezy nights, and often impromptu. “In between working on songs specifically, somebody would be sitting on the porch playing a little instrumental piece, and somebody else would be in the kitchen making dinner and stop, and go to the porch and pick up a random instrument,” Sprague explains. These creative bursts became the album’s ambient instrumental bridges, like “Variation” and “Jonnie on the Porch,” gentle moments that portray their life together in that particular moment. The bells heard throughout the album are from a collection housed in the rental, the animals were their neighbors. The result is 19 tracks that feel like the culmination of a decade-long journey, their fourth full-length album, but the first deserving of a self-titled designation. “We called it Florist because this is not just my songs with a backing band,” Sprague explains. “It’s a practice. It’s a collaboration. It’s our one life. These are my best friends and the music is the way that it is because of that.” After making the record they always knew they could, together, as one, Sprague could no longer live on the west coast without her band and blood. So, she returned home. Last year, she moved back to The Catskills to be closer to her father and her creative collaborators. She misses surfing, but finds peace in the area’s natural landscapes, and through a strengthening sense of physical reconnection. “A goal is to share the band’s connectedness and relationship, but also how we’re all connected,” she says. With Florist, Emily is no longer alone.

ABOUT SKULL CRUSHER

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Helen Ballentine’s spellbinding first full-length album Quiet the Room is the sound of a window opening, a barrier dissolving. Across these fourteen tracks, the outside world seeps in and the inside world crawls out. The result is a stunning and quietly moving work that reflects the journeys we take through the physical and spiritual realms of ourselves in order to show up for the world.

While writing the album in the summer of 2021, Ballentine drew inspiration from her childhood home in Mount Vernon, NY. What she set out to capture on Quiet the Room was not the innocence of childhood, as it is so often portrayed, but the intense complexity of it. Past and present merge Escher-like in this dreamlike space laced with elements of fantasy, magic, and mystery. Musically, this translates into a sound that feels somehow weighty and ephemeral all at once, like a time lapse of copper corroding.

To capture the effortless blend of electronic, ambient, folk, and rock, Ballentine and her collaborator Noah Weinman brought in producer Andrew Sarlo to record at Chicken Shack studio in Upstate New York, close to where Ballentine grew up. “We wanted every song to have that little twinkle, but also a sense of crumbling,” she says. These songs thrum with moments of anxiety that boil over into moments of peace, as on lead single “Whatever Fits Together,” which chugs to a ragged start before the gears catch and ease. On “It’s Like a Secret,” Ballentine struggles to connect and let people in, recognizing that no one can ever fully know our inner worlds and that to understand each other is to cross a barrier and leave a part of ourselves behind. And yet, on closing track “You are my House,” she finds a way to reach out. “You are the walls and floors of my room,” she sings in perfect, hopeful harmony.

As the album cover invites, these are dollhouse songs to which we bend a giant eye, peering into the laminate, luminous world that Ballentine has created. Like a kid constructing a shelter in a patch of sharp brambles, she reminds us that beauty and terror can exist in the same place. The complexities of childhood are so often overlooked, but through these private yet generous songs, she gives new weight to our earliest memories, widening the frame for us—even opening a window.

Doors 7PM | Show 8PM | 21 & Over | Public On Sale 4/25 10AM

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 To provide a safer environment for the public and significantly expedite fan entry into our venues, Rialto Theatre & 191 Toole have instituted a clear bag policy as of March 1st, 2022. The policy limits the size and type of bags that may be brought into our venues. The following is a list of bags that will be accepted for entry: Bags that are clear plastic or vinyl and do not exceed 12in x 6in x 12in One-gallon clear plastic freezer bags (Ziplok bag or similar) Small clutch bags, approximately 5in x 7in All bags subject to search. Clear bags are available for sale at the box office.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK  | INSTAGRAM | TWITTER | LISTEN