Apr
19

Matthew Sweet and his band

White Eagle Hall

Jersey City, NJ

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Event Details

Matthew Sweet moved to Athens, GA at the urging of his pen pal, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe in theearly 1980s. Sweet honed his craft in the flourishing alternative rock scene playing with Oh-OK,Lloyd Cole, the Golden Palominos, Buzz of Delight, and recording two critically-acclaimed solo records before emerging in 1991 as the leading figure of the American power pop revival withthe release of his watershed album, Girlfriend.

Like his British counterparts Teenage Fanclub, Sweet adhered to traditional songcraft, yet
subverted the form by adding noisy post-punk guitar and flourishes of country-rock, resulting inan amalgam of the Beatles, Big Star, R.E.M., and Neil Young. Recorded with guitarists RichardLloyd and Robert Quine, Girlfriend became a word-of-mouth critical and commercial hit over the course of 1992, with its title track reaching the Top Five on the Modern Rock charts. For the next five years, as alternative rock was the dominant commercial force in rock & roll, Sweetbecame a very popular concert attraction and solidified his reputation as the premiere alternative
pop singer/songwriter. His next two records, Altered Beast (1993) and 100% Fun (1995) were
both critically acclaimed and successful albums, with the latter reaching platinum status and making many year-end best-of lists.

Sweet continued to evolve over a string of well-received albums in the early 2000s. In 2006, he
joined forces with Bangles frontwoman Susanna Hoffs to record a series of covers from the ’60s,’70s, and ’80s, Under the Covers, Vol. 1–3. Sweet’s music has appeared in numerous films,television shows, and games, including Austin Powers, Guitar Hero II, Buffy the VampireSlayer, The Simpsons, and Scooby-Doo, among many others. Sweet was a lead consultant onTim Burton’s Margaret Keane biopic Big Eyes in 2014. His 15th studio album, 2021’s Catspaw(Omnivore Recordings) is guitar-driven: 12 songs, lean and consistent, direct, and notably darkerthan Sweet’s recent song-cycles. Apparent in tracks like “Best of Me” and album-opener “Blown Away,” the inner-turmoil harkens back to the angst of 1993’s Altered Beast. But where Beast was the self-interrogation of an artist in his mid-20s, Catspaw is the confessions of a career artist,
mature and assured in his craft and achingly transparent in his confrontations of aging and the search for meaning. “I’m trying to get my head around getting older, I want to let go, I want totell the ugly truth ... I want to do all kinds of different things in my head and they really popped out in these songs.”

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Abe Partridge is a heralded musician, singer/songwriter, visual artist, and podcaster based in Mobile, Alabama. His 2018 debut, Cotton Fields and Blood For Days earned him rave reviews, with Tony Paris saying in The Bitter Southerner: "He plays guitar the same way he writes lyrics, bashing the strings with abandon until they are just about to come loose, then beautifully picking the notes until every last word falls into place. More to the point, Partridge writes to make you sit up and think. He wants to jar your reality. Sometimes, his lyrics are sly and subtle. Sometimes they come at you with a roar and thunder, as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were approaching, and the heavens were opening up to herald a warning."

Since the release of his debut, Partridge has toured relentlessly, including several tours of the Netherlands and the U.K. developing a reputation for moving, passionate, and sometimes comedic, performances at prestigious songwriter festivals such as 30A Songwriters Festival, Frank Brown Songwriters Festival, and Americanafest. He is a regular at the Bluebird Café in Nashville and Eddie’s Attic in Decatur. He has performed on the syndicated radio programs, Mountain Stage and Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour. He has shared the stage with Morgan Wade, Paul Thorn, Steve Poltz, Dan Bern, Jerry Joseph, Glen Phillips (Toad The Wet Sprocket), Tommy Stinson, Shawn Mullins, John Fullbright, and more.

Most recently, Partridge and co-producer Ferrill Gibbs released the Alabama Astronaut podcast, where they explore songs previously undocumented at churches in Appalachia. The podcast finds Partridge chatting with Holiness preachers and looking into the practice of snake handling. It was in the Top Ten documentary podcasts on Apple Podcasts within days of its release and now has over 40k downloads and a 4.9-star rating.

When Partridge is not writing or touring, he is also a highly acclaimed visual artist. His paintings, primarily acrylic on tarred board and watercolors, now hang in art galleries around the southeast and in the private collections of Tyler Childers, Mike Wolfe (American Pickers), Rick Hirsch (Wet Willie), and Tommy Prine. His artwork was featured in Stephen King’s 2019 sequel to The Shining - Dr. Sleep. He painted the cover art for Charlie Parr’s, Last Of The Better Days Ahead (Smithsonian Folkways). He also created art for Tyler Childers’ 2022 release, Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?

American Songwriter Magazine said, “Abe Partridge has established himself as one of the most respected songwriters and visual folk artists in the southeast.”

In November of 2022, Partridge released the EP Alabama Skies on Baldwin Co. Public Records label which includes "Abe Partridge’s 403d Freakout". Partridge told Songfacts the story behind the song: " 'Abe Partridge's 403d Freakout' was a song I wrote in about 20 minutes. It took me two weeks to make it rhyme, and then it took me about six months to learn it. I just sat and wrote a couple of pages of thoughts as they came to me. It was my attempt at describing my thoughts chronologically as they sometimes occur in my head before I filter them. It is those thoughts that I often have if I allow myself to mentally wander."

Partridge's exhibit With Signs Following was on exhibition at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center in Mobile, AL from January 13 - May 20 of 2023 and is expected to travel to other city contemporary art centers in the next few years. His full-length studio album, Love In The Dark, on BCPR label, was released on May 12, 2023.