The Current presents

Pert Near Sandstone

with John Stickley Trio and Clare Doyle

Doors: 7:00 p.m. | Performance: 8:00 p.m. | 18+

INFORMATION | TICKETS

Pert Near Sandstone

“Our waiting days are finally over,” the title song decries, echoing the sentiment of a community recently pent up and beyond longing. It’s a strikingly different world than when Pert Near Sandstone first began near the sandstone river bluffs of St Paul. The former latchkey kids who grew up together a few Mississippi miles upstream have been performing and recording this past year in earnest, culminating in their eighth studio album.

Waiting Days has all the merit of maturity and the strengths of its four songwriters, offering responses to each other’s compositions through a long camaraderie. After almost twenty years together, their bond has grown to reflect that of a band of brothers. By contrast to tiktoks, reels, and tweets, this album was formed from the wilderness and carved from the heartwood. The band would say their music and sound come about organically, but under the tall oak trees of the Twin Cities, those wooden instruments may have been antennas drawn to the marrow, like a divination wand used to scratch an itch or soothe a wound, they tapped into this latest collection of songs.

As longtime stewards of the modern stringband revival, Pert Near’s songcraft is informed by the American folk tradition in a delivery of acoustic instrumentation. Their studio efforts have gradually strayed from the reliquary of common string band selections. Instead, Pert Near offers another full album of original songs that meditates on this exact present, rich with context and reference. There are songs that reach into a field that isn't always aglow with sunlight, while finding beauty in the tenderness of relationships. There are traveling songs sung by a band that has hit the pavement hard over their time, simultaneously creating a soundtrack for those all night drives that music festival devotees well know.

This isn’t music reaching for the banality of pop hits - this is fresh air for blades of new grass to grow in. At times there is an almost symphonic string section that lifts the melody, while other times the simplicity of banjo and pedal steel indeed helps us believe the genuine intentions of Pert Near Sandstone’s creative resolve. The interplay of mandolin and fiddle carry much of the music across the songs, but it’s the mixture of guest instrumentalists that gives this album a unique tapestry of sounds and texture, opening a deeper space that has become standard in production for Pert Near Sandstone projects. Trampled By Turtles’ fiddler and original Pert Near member, Ryan Young, recorded and mixed the album, along with his fiddle and other accouterments used to bolster the energy of the songs. The intimacy of collaboration is at the heart of this new project, after all, which spanned several of the harshest weeks of a midwestern winter.

Anyone that knows this band is aware of their humor and levity, and that charm is never far from the surface. It is a central component of their expression and shared experience. The connectedness to community is at the core of Pert Near’s music and philosophy as these songs shine a light upon. We are all here together. As the title track declares, “...I want to take you with me when I go.” Let’s get ready. Now is our time. The waiting days are over.

John Stickley Trio

Jon Stickley Trio is a genre-defying and cinematic instrumental trio whose deep grooves, innovative flatpicking, and sultry-spacy violin moves the listener’s head, heart, and feet.

“It’s not your father’s acoustic-guitar music, Instead Stickley’s Martin churns out a mixture of bluegrass, Chuck Berry, metal, prog, grunge, and assorted other genres—all thoroughly integrated into a personal style,” says Guitar Player Magazine.

Premier Guitar says, “Stickley’s trio… is not a traditional bluegrass group by any means… they are just nimble and ambitious enough to navigate EDM-style breakbeats as effortlessly as the old timey standard ‘Blackberry Blossom.' With inspiration ranging from Green Day to Duran Duran, Tony Rice, Nirvana, The Dead, Grisman and beyond, the Trio is making waves with their unique sound."

“In a time when a lot of instrumental music feels more like math than art, Jon Stickley Trio reminds us of the pure joy that can be created and shared through music,” says Anders Beck (Greensky Bluegrass).

Clare Doyle

‘It was a hell of a year,’ says Americana artist-to-watch Clare Doyle, reflecting on a breakout year in which she was named one of First Avenue’s Best New Bands of 2023, an Emerging Artist of 2024 by Music in Minnesota, and released three debut singles which garnered immediate attention for their infectious blend of soulful country and rootsy rock, and a bold lyricism that’s hailed as “a fresh perspective in emotional storytelling” by Music in Minnesota.

Originally from Saint Paul, Minnesota, Doyle grew up singing along with her mom’s Johnny Cash CDs and her dad’s Gibson acoustic, and dreamt of becoming a musician. She taught herself to play and write on a borrowed guitar in a college dorm room and began planning a move to Nashville, but found herself fighting brutal self-doubt and influences that kept her from embracing her talent.

Doyle had settled in New Orleans until the pandemic forced a move back to her hometown, where she began to write and rediscover the musical identity she’d neglected for years. Armed with a decade of heartache, adventure, addiction, and life on the road, she began to alchemize raw emotions into a collection of songs that run the gamut from clever and rollicking, to gritty and gut-wrenching. 

Initially inspired to write by artists like Loretta Lynn and Merle Haggard, now Doyle incorporates both classic and contemporary sensibilities into her songs - she draws on a range of influences to write candidly about loving, losing, hurting, and making a hot mess of things. “A lot of artists cite Jason Isbell or Ruston Kelly as…inspirations, but rarely do you hear the attention to detail and knack for describing emotions that prove they’ve really learned from those two master storytellers,” writes Carol Roth of Adventures in Americana, “With Doyle, you can tell.”

In a short span, Doyle has established a reputation for a mesmerizing live show that brings audiences along for a ride - from the electrifying heights of a cathartic anthem to pin-drop-quiet intensity in a breakup ballad - and has become a fixture on some of the region’s most legendary stages. She has been tapped to support artists such as The Cactus Blossoms, Turn Turn Turn, Them Coulee Boys, and Dallas Ugly and has toured regionally throughout the Midwest.