Wednesday, March 6, 7 p.m.
The Rust Belt, 1201 Seventh Street, East Moline IL
With Glide magazine calling him “a classic folk artist that somehow manages to never remain too predictable,” Nashville's folk and alt-country musician Rayland Baxter performs a Moeller Nights concert at East Moline venue The Rust Belt on March 6, his 2018 album Wide Awake described by Rolling Stone as “Baxter’s sharpest batch of social commentary” and “a 10-song rumination on the state of the country – or, as he puts it on the opening track, life in this 'Strange American Dream.'”
After a youth spent in his native Bon Aqua, Tennessee, Baxter's professional career began following a move to Creede, Colorado, where he played open-mic nights, busked for change, and eventually landed a job as a roadie with the band Moonshine Sessions, whose tour of Europe led to an extended stay in Paris. He then traveled to Israel, where Baxter immersed himself in classic albums by artists including Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Townes Van Zandt and committed himself to the art of songwriting. By the summer of 2010, he had settled in Nashville, releasing his first EP The Miscalculation of Song a few months after his arrival.
Released in 2012 through ATO Records, Baxter's first full-length album Feathers & Fishhooks featured extensive instrumental work from the artist's dad, and was an immediate hit with reviewers. According to NoDepression.com, Baxter's “deeply personal songs, often featuring fierce pedal steel courtesy of his multi-instrumentalist father Bucky Baxter, puts one in mind of the dusty country songs recorded by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and even Steve Earle.” Numerous touring engagements opening for acts such as The Civil Wars and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals followed the album's success, as did the 2013 EP Ashkelon, and in 2015, Baxter released his second full-length studio album Imaginary Man, praised by RedLineRoots.com for the “vibrant and lucid way in which he paints the characters of his stories.” The artist's Moeller Nights set will find him performing from his past repertoire as well as last year's Wide Awake, a Baxter release that Americana Highways deemed “a superb album – his best.”
Rayland Baxter plays The Rust Belt at 7 p.m. on March 6, admission is $15, and more information is available by visiting MoellerNights.com.
