The Glorious Sons Headline at Turf Club 2/27

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If you are like me, you just didn’t get enough of Canadian rockers The Glorious Sons the last few times they dipped south of the border as a supporting act for Welshly Arms (9/26/18 @ 7th St. Entry) and The Struts (5/15/18 @ First Avenue). At that September show Brett Emmons promised me we would see a U.S. headlining tour very soon and he wasn’t kidding. While the band has been playing arena-shows in Canada for years, the U.S. market has been surprisingly tough to crack despite their brand of Southern-rock. That was until “S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun)” went ballistic by blasting its way to #1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs chart and held off contenders for four weeks in a row!  If all you know about TGS is “S.O.S.” from the radio, make sure to make it to the Turf Club on February 27th to hear all of their awesome songs that have made them long-popular in their homeland.  The Turf Club show (7pm doors, 21+) is sold out but it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to check HERE in case more tickets get released. Lilly and JJ Wilde are opening acts. You can find more information about these young acts at the bottom of the page.

Catch a special sneak preview of The Glorious Sons on Saturday when their February 23rd performance during the second intermission of the Flyers-Penguins NHL Stadium Series game will be televised live by NBC.  Or watch the official music video for “S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun)” that follows.  The video was filmed in Toronto at the Scotiabank Arena during the band’s headline tour this past November with nearly 10,000 fans in attendance. “We spent most of the last year on the road, and we really didn’t have much time to make a scripted video. There were a couple of other ideas bouncing around, but I think in the end this video is the best representation of who The Glorious Sons are and what we are about,” singer Brett Emmons said.

The Glorious Sons’ second full-length album, Young Beauties & Fools, is all about honesty. More specifically, it’s about exploring the adventures (and frequent misadventures) of main songwriter Brett Emmons in the truest way. It’s also an album where The Glorious Sons — rounded out by Brett’s older brother Jay Emmons (guitar), Chris Koster (guitar), Adam Paquette (drums) and Chris Huot (bass) — capture all the listlessness and confusion of young adulthood in 10 doses of modern rock.

“It’s basically the story of a 24-year-old kid,” says Brett. “They’re simple songs about alcoholism and the mostly autobiographical story of my life. The whole thing is derived from the thoughts, actions and feelings of a kid who doesn’t really know himself and the consequences of those actions.” Glorious Sons’ hardscrabble tales come naturally. A high-spirited rock band with blue collar roots, they truly found themselves when Brett quit school in 2013 to join them as lead singer. Subsequent years of hard touring and hard partying — sometimes in places so sketchy, as Brett puts it, “There was no electricity in the building” — provided fuel for the songs on Young Beauties & Fools.

“It’s me writing about the things I’ve done, the things that have happened to me and my family, and the things that I think about,” says Brett. Whether it’s the rock ‘n’ roll bender “My Poor Heart,” the not-so-classic boy-meets-girl story of “Josie,” or the deeply embarrassing punch-up at a wedding tale “Everything Is Alright,” Brett’s songwriting deftly explores the imperfect humanity of both himself and the many characters he introduces over the course of the album.

It wasn’t easy to capture that realness. The band wanted to range further, to grow and evolve from the successes of 2014’s The Union album. That record was an immediate hit on the Canadian radio rock landscape. Glorious Sons scored seven consecutive Top 10 rock radio tracks, won two SiriusXM Indie Awards (Group of the Year and Rock Group of the Year) and received a Juno Award nomination in 2015 for Rock Album of the Year. Eighteen months of recording fits and starts led the band to Los Angeles to work with production team Fast Friends (Frederik Thaae, Ryan Spraker, Tom Peyton). It wasn’t until they started exploring a collection of old voice memos on Brett’s phone that they had their eureka moment. The subsequent creative outburst resulted in an album written in 12 days and recorded in 14.

“It was our first time working with these guys in the studio and we were still kinda feeling each other out,” says Brett. “There were times when it almost felt like a blind date. And we had been in the studio with a couple of other producers prior to that and went home empty handed. So after a few lukewarm conversations about ideas, I said to them, ‘Boys, can I show you something?’ I took out my iPhone and played ‘Josie’ and they just went fucking nuts. They wanted us to challenge ourselves as players and songwriters and pushed me to write from personal experience. After that, the hardest part of recording was choosing which songs to keep for the album. I’m forever grateful to them for teaching me to trust myself as a writer and help find that voice.”

There should be lots of opportunities to see Glorious Sons play the songs from Young Beauties & Fools. By their count the band has driven across Canada “at least 10 times” and played upwards of 300 shows to support their last album. “You don’t know what you’re going to get night to night from us,” says Jay. “It’s something you have to see and it’s interesting and powerful.”
“It’s also an inch from either side of falling off the tracks every single night,” adds Brett. Which is perfectly fitting for a band living young and foolish.

The band just released their video for an unplugged acoustic version of “S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun)” you can watch here:

The Glorious Sons 2019 U.S. Tour Dates
2/12/19 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
2/14/19 – Brooklyn, NY @ Rough Trade
2/15/19 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s *SOLD OUT*
2/16/19 – Harrisburg, PA @ Club XL Live
2/17/19 – Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom *SOLD OUT*
2/20/19 – Atlanta, GA @ Vinyl
2/21/19 – Nashville, TN @ Basement East
2/24/19 – Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew’s Hall *SOLD OUT*
2/25/19 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
2/27/19 – St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club *SOLD OUT*
2/28/19 – Chicago, IL @ Schubas Tavern *SOLD OUT*
3/2/19 – Kansas City, MO @ The Record Bar
3/4/19 – Colorado Springs, CO @ The Black Sheep
3/5/19 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall
3/7/19 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
3/8/19 – San Diego, CA @ Voodoo Room at House of Blues
3/9/19 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy Theatre
3/10/19 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
3/11/19 – Sacramento, CA @ Holy Diver
3/13/19 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern *SOLD OUT*
3/14/19 – Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory
4/13/19 – Orlando, FL @ WJJR Earthday Birthday
4/14/19 – Tampa, FL @ 98 RockFest
5/5/19 – Jacksonville, FL@ Welcome to Rockville Festival
5/12/19 – Charlotte, NC @ Epicenter Festival
5/18/19 – Camden, NJ @ MMRBQ
5/19/19 – Columbus, OH @ Sonic Temple Festival
5/24/19 – Pryor, OK @ Rocklahoma Festival

LIILY

Liily are five Los Angeles teenagers hailing from deep in the San Fernando Valley to the edges of the Inland Empire. Emerging from a new and burgeoning culture of youths in the city, their wildly frenetic shows point to a new vision for alternative and hard rock music in 2018 where such things aren’t supposed to exist anymore: one that is actually a hell of a lot of fun.  Inhabiting a diverse, sprawling city where both Odd Future and Jane’s Addiction somehow seem to have crossed their paths, as well as having been raised on a wild internet culture where music lovers can seemingly digest the entire history of western music in a matter of months, Liily makes music that draws on all the jagged stimuli of their upbringings to make something distinctly Los Angeles in 2018. It’s suburban valley music from the future, even as it calls back to 1991. Liily‘s debut song “Toro,” released August 17, 2018 is a classic early-days single with a massive shouting chorus “about fake-ass people,” according to vocalist Dylan Nash. More than any one lyric, it’s a statement of intent to go along with their live shows. “We like our music to make people crazy,” says guitar player Sam De La Torre. “It has a lot of energy. We want to make people move. When we write something, we want it to hit really hard. If we knock people out, we’ve done our job.”  Watch for their new EP I can Fool Anybody In This Town to be released on March 8th.

JJ WILDE

Canadian rock newcomer JJ Wilde, shrouded in mystery and brandishing a new take on lovelorn rock music with her debut single “Wired,” is touring with high-spirited rockers The Glorious Sons. Wilde’s music—an electrifying combination of Liz Phair, Bikini Kill, and Jesse Jo Stark—showcases the kind of powerful brashness coming out of the Canadian rock scene right now.
“Wired” has appeared on a variety of playlists on Spotify including widely-streamed “New Noise,” “New Music Friday Canada,” and “Fierce Femmes.”

 

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