MARGARET GLASPY WITH SPECIAL GUEST OLIVE KLUG
Doors @ 7pmShow @ 8pmFull BarFree On-site ParkingAll Ages In an era of excess and endless distraction, the New York-based singer/songwriter MargaretGlaspy rejects the noise in favor of something far more essential. On the self-possessed titletrack for her new album I Am Both Glaspy offers an ardent refusal of any outside pressure tocompromise her multidimensionality. “I wrote ‘I Am Both’ a while ago; the story is based on afemale character that I look up to deeply—a woman who contains multitudes while seeing realityvery clearly,” says Glaspy. “It can feel safer to try to fit myself into a category, but I find thatembracing my own complexity is much healthier for me.” That embrace of complexity runsthroughout the album’s eleven tracks.In the making of I Am Both Glaspy stepped away from social media and soon discovered aclarity of mind she hadn’t experienced in years, followed by a sustained burst of creativemomentum. As she penned her lyrics in longhand and then polished them up on a typewriter, Glaspy assembled a selection of songs that span from fictional vignettes to unguarded self-revelation to empathetic observation of the troubled world around her. Produced by Joe Henry (the three-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/producer known for his work with luminarieslike Aimee Mann and Joan Baez), I Am Both ultimately stands as a striking new statement fromone of the modern music canon’s most formidable songwriters.“When I started writing for this record I had a goal of getting my practice back—to walk the walkin terms of how I envision myself as a songwriter,” says Glaspy, a Northern California-bred artistwho made her debut with 2016’s lavishly acclaimed Emotions and Math. “At first it was reallyhard to break that addiction to social media, but after a while something shifted. It felt like I’dgotten back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions.It was life-changing.”Her fourth full-length album, I Am Both emerged from three days of sessions at New York City’sReservoir Studios, where Glaspy recorded live with drummer/percussionist Jay Bellerose(Bonnie Raitt, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss), keyboardist Patrick Warren (Tracy Chapman, TomWaits, Bruce Springsteen), and bassist Ross Gallagher (Paula Cole, Grails). “I always think ofmyself as more of a photographer than a sculptor in the studio—it’s about capturing the momentrather than layering and building things up over time, and Joe has a similar mentality when itcomes to recording,” says Glaspy, who first connected with Henry at a T Bone Burnett-curatedtribute to Bob Dylan at New York’s Town Hall in 2022. “There was an incredible chemistry withthe band and the whole process felt electric, so a lot of what you hear on the album is the firsttake.”The follow-up to 2023’s Echo the Diamond (hailed by Uncut as “songs that glint like shards ofglass yet brim with love, grief, courage, existential doubt and all the stuff that makes ushuman”), I Am Both brings Glaspy’s disarmingly direct vocals and eloquent guitar work to acathartic form of folk-leaning indie-rock. In a potent introduction to the LP’s luminous immediacy, the album opens on “Michigan”—a lush and lacerating piece of storytelling that imagines a post-breakup escape to the Midwest. “I was in Michigan a couple years back and had a really beautiful time, and thought about how New Yorkers sometimes fantasize about the countryside as a retreat from the intensity of the city,” Glaspy says. “It turned into a song about someonegoing through a bad breakup, and then deciding to just leave the city behind.”Like “Michigan,” a number of songs on I Am Both unfold as finely detailed story fragments thatprivilege impression over exposition, each one etched with a precise emotional truth. On thewildly romantic “That Rose,” Glaspy spins distanced longing into something gloriously surreal (“Idreamt you looked into the clouds like they were my eyes / You made them blush—the cloudsgot shy”). “It was fun to write a love story where the jealousy is almost sweet.” One of severalsongs featuring Glaspy’s soulful performance on harmonica, “Common Ground” tilts toward aDylan-esque acerbic wit. “That song feels relevant to the culture these days. There’s a tendencyto either put people on a pedestal or dismiss them entirely, instead of perceiving them as humanbeings or using our own reasoning.”Another outward-looking and galvanizing track, “Martin Luther King Jr.” reframes passages froma 1957 sermon by the legendary civil rights leader, recasting his wisdom in light of present-dayemergencies like the U.S. housing crisis. “I’ve been listening to Martin Luther King’s speechesfor a long time, and I find so much inspiration in how transcendent his public speaking is,” saysGlaspy. “His work is obviously very pertinent to what we’re going through right now in Americaand the world over.”Throughout I Am Both, Glaspy reveals one of the more thrilling outcomes of deepening hercreative practice: a commitment to following her own internal logic when structuring songs. Onthe slow-building and softly powerful “Reminder,” she contends with her own smallness againstthe scale of others’ suffering, rendering her inner monologue in a rush of unbroken syntax(“Hope can only get me so far / I also have to be willing to catch a few scars / And I also have tobe willing to apologize / And I also have to be willing to scrutinize / And I also have to be willingto not be right / But I also have to be willing to fight, fight, fight”). “That song’s a message tomyself for when it feels like I’m doing nothing of value, reminding me that it’s important to keepshowing up in lots of little ways instead of giving up altogether,” says Glaspy. “It’s an example ofsomething I never would’ve written if I were still praying to the gods who told me everythingneeds to be neat and tidy and symmetrical.”That sense of self-acceptance extends beyond identity and into Glaspy’s broader philosophy:one that increasingly resists the cultural appetite for hierarchy and ascent. “In any industry,success is measured by climbing as high as you possibly can, but these days I think of music assomething more like a public service,” she says. “You show up in city after city and you bring themusic with you, and hopefully it reaches whoever needs to hear it. I feel really honored to be ofservice in that way.”
Doors @ 7pmShow @ 8pmFull BarFree On-site ParkingAll Ages In an era of excess and endless distraction, the New York-based singer/songwriter MargaretGlaspy rejects the noise in favor of something far more essential. On the self-possessed titletrack for her new album I Am Both Glaspy offers an ardent refusal of any outside pressure tocompromise her multidimensionality. “I wrote ‘I Am Both’ a while ago; the story is based on afemale character that I look up to deeply—a woman who contains multitudes while seeing realityvery clearly,” says Glaspy. “It can feel safer to try to fit myself into a category, but I find thatembracing my own complexity is much healthier for me.” That embrace of complexity runsthroughout the album’s eleven tracks.In the making of I Am Both Glaspy stepped away from social media and soon discovered aclarity of mind she hadn’t experienced in years, followed by a sustained burst of creativemomentum. As she penned her lyrics in longhand and then polished them up on a typewriter, Glaspy assembled a selection of songs that span from fictional vignettes to unguarded self-revelation to empathetic observation of the troubled world around her. Produced by Joe Henry (the three-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/producer known for his work with luminarieslike Aimee Mann and Joan Baez), I Am Both ultimately stands as a striking new statement fromone of the modern music canon’s most formidable songwriters.“When I started writing for this record I had a goal of getting my practice back—to walk the walkin terms of how I envision myself as a songwriter,” says Glaspy, a Northern California-bred artistwho made her debut with 2016’s lavishly acclaimed Emotions and Math. “At first it was reallyhard to break that addiction to social media, but after a while something shifted. It felt like I’dgotten back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions.It was life-changing.”Her fourth full-length album, I Am Both emerged from three days of sessions at New York City’sReservoir Studios, where Glaspy recorded live with drummer/percussionist Jay Bellerose(Bonnie Raitt, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss), keyboardist Patrick Warren (Tracy Chapman, TomWaits, Bruce Springsteen), and bassist Ross Gallagher (Paula Cole, Grails). “I always think ofmyself as more of a photographer than a sculptor in the studio—it’s about capturing the momentrather than layering and building things up over time, and Joe has a similar mentality when itcomes to recording,” says Glaspy, who first connected with Henry at a T Bone Burnett-curatedtribute to Bob Dylan at New York’s Town Hall in 2022. “There was an incredible chemistry withthe band and the whole process felt electric, so a lot of what you hear on the album is the firsttake.”The follow-up to 2023’s Echo the Diamond (hailed by Uncut as “songs that glint like shards ofglass yet brim with love, grief, courage, existential doubt and all the stuff that makes ushuman”), I Am Both brings Glaspy’s disarmingly direct vocals and eloquent guitar work to acathartic form of folk-leaning indie-rock. In a potent introduction to the LP’s luminous immediacy, the album opens on “Michigan”—a lush and lacerating piece of storytelling that imagines a post-breakup escape to the Midwest. “I was in Michigan a couple years back and had a really beautiful time, and thought about how New Yorkers sometimes fantasize about the countryside as a retreat from the intensity of the city,” Glaspy says. “It turned into a song about someonegoing through a bad breakup, and then deciding to just leave the city behind.”Like “Michigan,” a number of songs on I Am Both unfold as finely detailed story fragments thatprivilege impression over exposition, each one etched with a precise emotional truth. On thewildly romantic “That Rose,” Glaspy spins distanced longing into something gloriously surreal (“Idreamt you looked into the clouds like they were my eyes / You made them blush—the cloudsgot shy”). “It was fun to write a love story where the jealousy is almost sweet.” One of severalsongs featuring Glaspy’s soulful performance on harmonica, “Common Ground” tilts toward aDylan-esque acerbic wit. “That song feels relevant to the culture these days. There’s a tendencyto either put people on a pedestal or dismiss them entirely, instead of perceiving them as humanbeings or using our own reasoning.”Another outward-looking and galvanizing track, “Martin Luther King Jr.” reframes passages froma 1957 sermon by the legendary civil rights leader, recasting his wisdom in light of present-dayemergencies like the U.S. housing crisis. “I’ve been listening to Martin Luther King’s speechesfor a long time, and I find so much inspiration in how transcendent his public speaking is,” saysGlaspy. “His work is obviously very pertinent to what we’re going through right now in Americaand the world over.”Throughout I Am Both, Glaspy reveals one of the more thrilling outcomes of deepening hercreative practice: a commitment to following her own internal logic when structuring songs. Onthe slow-building and softly powerful “Reminder,” she contends with her own smallness againstthe scale of others’ suffering, rendering her inner monologue in a rush of unbroken syntax(“Hope can only get me so far / I also have to be willing to catch a few scars / And I also have tobe willing to apologize / And I also have to be willing to scrutinize / And I also have to be willingto not be right / But I also have to be willing to fight, fight, fight”). “That song’s a message tomyself for when it feels like I’m doing nothing of value, reminding me that it’s important to keepshowing up in lots of little ways instead of giving up altogether,” says Glaspy. “It’s an example ofsomething I never would’ve written if I were still praying to the gods who told me everythingneeds to be neat and tidy and symmetrical.”That sense of self-acceptance extends beyond identity and into Glaspy’s broader philosophy:one that increasingly resists the cultural appetite for hierarchy and ascent. “In any industry,success is measured by climbing as high as you possibly can, but these days I think of music assomething more like a public service,” she says. “You show up in city after city and you bring themusic with you, and hopefully it reaches whoever needs to hear it. I feel really honored to be ofservice in that way.”
Doors @ 7pmShow @ 8pmFull BarFree On-site ParkingAll Ages In an era of excess and endless distraction, the New York-based singer/songwriter MargaretGlaspy rejects the noise in favor of something far more essential. On the self-possessed titletrack for her new album I Am Both Glaspy offers an ardent refusal of any outside pressure tocompromise her multidimensionality. “I wrote ‘I Am Both’ a while ago; the story is based on afemale character that I look up to deeply—a woman who contains multitudes while seeing realityvery clearly,” says Glaspy. “It can feel safer to try to fit myself into a category, but I find thatembracing my own complexity is much healthier for me.” That embrace of complexity runsthroughout the album’s eleven tracks.In the making of I Am Both Glaspy stepped away from social media and soon discovered aclarity of mind she hadn’t experienced in years, followed by a sustained burst of creativemomentum. As she penned her lyrics in longhand and then polished them up on a typewriter, Glaspy assembled a selection of songs that span from fictional vignettes to unguarded self-revelation to empathetic observation of the troubled world around her. Produced by Joe Henry (the three-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/producer known for his work with luminarieslike Aimee Mann and Joan Baez), I Am Both ultimately stands as a striking new statement fromone of the modern music canon’s most formidable songwriters.“When I started writing for this record I had a goal of getting my practice back—to walk the walkin terms of how I envision myself as a songwriter,” says Glaspy, a Northern California-bred artistwho made her debut with 2016’s lavishly acclaimed Emotions and Math. “At first it was reallyhard to break that addiction to social media, but after a while something shifted. It felt like I’dgotten back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions.It was life-changing.”Her fourth full-length album, I Am Both emerged from three days of sessions at New York City’sReservoir Studios, where Glaspy recorded live with drummer/percussionist Jay Bellerose(Bonnie Raitt, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss), keyboardist Patrick Warren (Tracy Chapman, TomWaits, Bruce Springsteen), and bassist Ross Gallagher (Paula Cole, Grails). “I always think ofmyself as more of a photographer than a sculptor in the studio—it’s about capturing the momentrather than layering and building things up over time, and Joe has a similar mentality when itcomes to recording,” says Glaspy, who first connected with Henry at a T Bone Burnett-curatedtribute to Bob Dylan at New York’s Town Hall in 2022. “There was an incredible chemistry withthe band and the whole process felt electric, so a lot of what you hear on the album is the firsttake.”The follow-up to 2023’s Echo the Diamond (hailed by Uncut as “songs that glint like shards ofglass yet brim with love, grief, courage, existential doubt and all the stuff that makes ushuman”), I Am Both brings Glaspy’s disarmingly direct vocals and eloquent guitar work to acathartic form of folk-leaning indie-rock. In a potent introduction to the LP’s luminous immediacy, the album opens on “Michigan”—a lush and lacerating piece of storytelling that imagines a post-breakup escape to the Midwest. “I was in Michigan a couple years back and had a really beautiful time, and thought about how New Yorkers sometimes fantasize about the countryside as a retreat from the intensity of the city,” Glaspy says. “It turned into a song about someonegoing through a bad breakup, and then deciding to just leave the city behind.”Like “Michigan,” a number of songs on I Am Both unfold as finely detailed story fragments thatprivilege impression over exposition, each one etched with a precise emotional truth. On thewildly romantic “That Rose,” Glaspy spins distanced longing into something gloriously surreal (“Idreamt you looked into the clouds like they were my eyes / You made them blush—the cloudsgot shy”). “It was fun to write a love story where the jealousy is almost sweet.” One of severalsongs featuring Glaspy’s soulful performance on harmonica, “Common Ground” tilts toward aDylan-esque acerbic wit. “That song feels relevant to the culture these days. There’s a tendencyto either put people on a pedestal or dismiss them entirely, instead of perceiving them as humanbeings or using our own reasoning.”Another outward-looking and galvanizing track, “Martin Luther King Jr.” reframes passages froma 1957 sermon by the legendary civil rights leader, recasting his wisdom in light of present-dayemergencies like the U.S. housing crisis. “I’ve been listening to Martin Luther King’s speechesfor a long time, and I find so much inspiration in how transcendent his public speaking is,” saysGlaspy. “His work is obviously very pertinent to what we’re going through right now in Americaand the world over.”Throughout I Am Both, Glaspy reveals one of the more thrilling outcomes of deepening hercreative practice: a commitment to following her own internal logic when structuring songs. Onthe slow-building and softly powerful “Reminder,” she contends with her own smallness againstthe scale of others’ suffering, rendering her inner monologue in a rush of unbroken syntax(“Hope can only get me so far / I also have to be willing to catch a few scars / And I also have tobe willing to apologize / And I also have to be willing to scrutinize / And I also have to be willingto not be right / But I also have to be willing to fight, fight, fight”). “That song’s a message tomyself for when it feels like I’m doing nothing of value, reminding me that it’s important to keepshowing up in lots of little ways instead of giving up altogether,” says Glaspy. “It’s an example ofsomething I never would’ve written if I were still praying to the gods who told me everythingneeds to be neat and tidy and symmetrical.”That sense of self-acceptance extends beyond identity and into Glaspy’s broader philosophy:one that increasingly resists the cultural appetite for hierarchy and ascent. “In any industry,success is measured by climbing as high as you possibly can, but these days I think of music assomething more like a public service,” she says. “You show up in city after city and you bring themusic with you, and hopefully it reaches whoever needs to hear it. I feel really honored to be ofservice in that way.”
Doors @ 7pmShow @ 8pmFull BarFree On-site ParkingAll Ages In an era of excess and endless distraction, the New York-based singer/songwriter MargaretGlaspy rejects the noise in favor of something far more essential. On the self-possessed titletrack for her new album I Am Both Glaspy offers an ardent refusal of any outside pressure tocompromise her multidimensionality. “I wrote ‘I Am Both’ a while ago; the story is based on afemale character that I look up to deeply—a woman who contains multitudes while seeing realityvery clearly,” says Glaspy. “It can feel safer to try to fit myself into a category, but I find thatembracing my own complexity is much healthier for me.” That embrace of complexity runsthroughout the album’s eleven tracks.In the making of I Am Both Glaspy stepped away from social media and soon discovered aclarity of mind she hadn’t experienced in years, followed by a sustained burst of creativemomentum. As she penned her lyrics in longhand and then polished them up on a typewriter, Glaspy assembled a selection of songs that span from fictional vignettes to unguarded self-revelation to empathetic observation of the troubled world around her. Produced by Joe Henry (the three-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/producer known for his work with luminarieslike Aimee Mann and Joan Baez), I Am Both ultimately stands as a striking new statement fromone of the modern music canon’s most formidable songwriters.“When I started writing for this record I had a goal of getting my practice back—to walk the walkin terms of how I envision myself as a songwriter,” says Glaspy, a Northern California-bred artistwho made her debut with 2016’s lavishly acclaimed Emotions and Math. “At first it was reallyhard to break that addiction to social media, but after a while something shifted. It felt like I’dgotten back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions.It was life-changing.”Her fourth full-length album, I Am Both emerged from three days of sessions at New York City’sReservoir Studios, where Glaspy recorded live with drummer/percussionist Jay Bellerose(Bonnie Raitt, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss), keyboardist Patrick Warren (Tracy Chapman, TomWaits, Bruce Springsteen), and bassist Ross Gallagher (Paula Cole, Grails). “I always think ofmyself as more of a photographer than a sculptor in the studio—it’s about capturing the momentrather than layering and building things up over time, and Joe has a similar mentality when itcomes to recording,” says Glaspy, who first connected with Henry at a T Bone Burnett-curatedtribute to Bob Dylan at New York’s Town Hall in 2022. “There was an incredible chemistry withthe band and the whole process felt electric, so a lot of what you hear on the album is the firsttake.”The follow-up to 2023’s Echo the Diamond (hailed by Uncut as “songs that glint like shards ofglass yet brim with love, grief, courage, existential doubt and all the stuff that makes ushuman”), I Am Both brings Glaspy’s disarmingly direct vocals and eloquent guitar work to acathartic form of folk-leaning indie-rock. In a potent introduction to the LP’s luminous immediacy, the album opens on “Michigan”—a lush and lacerating piece of storytelling that imagines a post-breakup escape to the Midwest. “I was in Michigan a couple years back and had a really beautiful time, and thought about how New Yorkers sometimes fantasize about the countryside as a retreat from the intensity of the city,” Glaspy says. “It turned into a song about someonegoing through a bad breakup, and then deciding to just leave the city behind.”Like “Michigan,” a number of songs on I Am Both unfold as finely detailed story fragments thatprivilege impression over exposition, each one etched with a precise emotional truth. On thewildly romantic “That Rose,” Glaspy spins distanced longing into something gloriously surreal (“Idreamt you looked into the clouds like they were my eyes / You made them blush—the cloudsgot shy”). “It was fun to write a love story where the jealousy is almost sweet.” One of severalsongs featuring Glaspy’s soulful performance on harmonica, “Common Ground” tilts toward aDylan-esque acerbic wit. “That song feels relevant to the culture these days. There’s a tendencyto either put people on a pedestal or dismiss them entirely, instead of perceiving them as humanbeings or using our own reasoning.”Another outward-looking and galvanizing track, “Martin Luther King Jr.” reframes passages froma 1957 sermon by the legendary civil rights leader, recasting his wisdom in light of present-dayemergencies like the U.S. housing crisis. “I’ve been listening to Martin Luther King’s speechesfor a long time, and I find so much inspiration in how transcendent his public speaking is,” saysGlaspy. “His work is obviously very pertinent to what we’re going through right now in Americaand the world over.”Throughout I Am Both, Glaspy reveals one of the more thrilling outcomes of deepening hercreative practice: a commitment to following her own internal logic when structuring songs. Onthe slow-building and softly powerful “Reminder,” she contends with her own smallness againstthe scale of others’ suffering, rendering her inner monologue in a rush of unbroken syntax(“Hope can only get me so far / I also have to be willing to catch a few scars / And I also have tobe willing to apologize / And I also have to be willing to scrutinize / And I also have to be willingto not be right / But I also have to be willing to fight, fight, fight”). “That song’s a message tomyself for when it feels like I’m doing nothing of value, reminding me that it’s important to keepshowing up in lots of little ways instead of giving up altogether,” says Glaspy. “It’s an example ofsomething I never would’ve written if I were still praying to the gods who told me everythingneeds to be neat and tidy and symmetrical.”That sense of self-acceptance extends beyond identity and into Glaspy’s broader philosophy:one that increasingly resists the cultural appetite for hierarchy and ascent. “In any industry,success is measured by climbing as high as you possibly can, but these days I think of music assomething more like a public service,” she says. “You show up in city after city and you bring themusic with you, and hopefully it reaches whoever needs to hear it. I feel really honored to be ofservice in that way.”