Joe Pug at the Raccoon Motel -- July 27.
Thursday, July 27, 7 p.m.
Raccoon Motel, 315 East Second Street, Davenport IA
Touring in support of his 2022 album Nation of Heat Revisited, a remastered take on his 2009 EP debut with the songs in a different track order and with added instrumentation, Maryland-based folk singer/songwriter Joe Pug headlines a July 27 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the artist's latest inspiring No Depression to rave, "Pug has achieved something impressive: the songs feel fresh yet familiar, speaking to their timelessness."
While working as a carpenter in Chicago after dropping out of the University of North Carolina, Maryland native Pug wrote and recorded what would eventually become his debut EP Nation of Heat. Its literate lyrics received widespread acclaim and Pug's unorthodox promotional strategy of distributing free CDs to anyone interested in sharing his music resulted in the EP selling more than 20,000 copies. After touring with Steve Earle in 2009, Pug being a guitarist, pianist, and harmonica player in addition to a singer/songwriter, the artist was signed by Nashville indie label Lightning Rod Records and released the studio-debut album Messenger in 2010. The recording was met with considerable critical acclaim, with Paste magazine rating it a 9.1 out of 10 and adding: “Unless your surname is Dylan, Waits, Ritter, or Prine, you could face-palm yourself to death trying to pen songs half as inspired as the 10 tracks on Joe Pug’s debut full-length."
The twinned success of Nation of Heat and Messenger led Pug to tours and performances with M. Ward, Josh Ritter, and Levon Helm, as well as invitations to Lollapalooza and the Newport Folk Festival. After years of touring the country, Pug's studio followup The Great Despair landed in 2012, which The A.V. Club described as :an album of literate regret, comparable to the work of John Prine, Josh Ritter, and Richard Buckner." The album's opening track "Hymn #76," meanwhile, was lauded by Paste as "a fable of life and the reoccurring themes attached to growing older and moving on," and was selected by American Songwriter magazine as one of the "Top 50 Songs of 2012." Since then, Pug has released a quartet of additional studio albums (2015's Windfall, 2019's The Flood in Color, 2021's The Driving Sun, and last year's Nation of Heat Revisited), and in 2016, the artist began releasing a podcast titled The Working Songwriter, described as "working songwriters talking to one another about life on the road, life in the studio, and life in the writer’s room"
Joe Pug performs his Davenport engagement on July 27, admission to the 7 p.m. concert is $25, and tickets are available by visiting TheRaccoonMotel.com.
