Traditionalist folk duo The Milk Carton Kids – Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale – have today announced their first Australian tour since 2015 and will play dates in Melbourne, Meeniyan, Castlemaine, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbaneand Mullumbimby this August. The amazing musical performances of these two fine musicians, coupled with their ample wit, make for a thoroughly entertaining evening of song and banter as previous tour reviews testify. Opening on all shows will be poet, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Vera Sola.
Tickets on sale Tuesday, February 11 at 10am AEDT. For all ticket and full pre-sale details please visit http://lovepolice.com.au/milk-carton-kids-2020/
“Joey and I famously have an adversarial relationship,” Pattengale says. They dig at each other in interviews and on stage, where Ryan plays his own straight man, while Pattengale tunes his guitar. The songs emerge somewhere in the silences and the struggle between their sensibilities. They have been known to argue over song choices. They have been known to argue about everything from wardrobe to geography to grammar. But their singing is the place where they make room for each other and the shared identity that rises out of their combined voices.
Defying the conventions of melody and harmony is a strategy The Milk Carton Kids have consciously embraced. “Sometimes we’ll switch parts for a beat or a bar or a note,” Ryan says. “And that starts to obfuscate what is the melody and what is the supporting part because we think of both of them being strong enough to stand alone.”
The Only Ones, the group’s new record (out now on the band’s own Milk Carton Records imprint in partnership with Thirty Tigers), finds Ryan and Pattengale performing a stripped-down acoustic set without a backing band. On The Only Ones, the pair returns to the core of what they are about musically: the duo.
Over the past few years, life has changed dramatically for The Milk Carton Kids. Pattengale has moved to Nashville, where he is also producing records; Ryan is now the father of two children and works as a producer on Live from Here with Chris Thile. A break from years of non-stop touring, Ryan says, has yielded “space outside of the band that gives us perspective on what the band is.”
Opening on all shows will be poet, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Vera Sola. Attempts to define her music have had her cast as the ‘lost love child of Leonard Cohen and Nancy Sinatra,’ ‘Nick Cave in the role of Staggolee,’ ‘a mordant Patsy Cline,’ ‘PJ Harvey at her most irate, teeth-bared.’ But its near impossible to find a truly fitting comparison. Described as ‘a living anachronism’, Vera Sola makes timeless, time-bending sound. In the words of the London Sunday Times, she’s a creature all her own, ‘an utterly singular talent’.
The Milk Carton Kids touring with Vera Sola in August 2020.
| THE MILK CARTON KIDS Australian Tour August 2020 All info at: http://lovepolice.com.au/milk-carton-kids-2020/ August 7 – Festival Theatre, Adelaide, SA Tickets: http://bit.ly/2Opn0Zc August 8 – Meeniyan Town Hall, Meeniyan, VIC Tickets: http://bit.ly/2Fx5YnY August 9 – Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, VIC Tickets: http://bit.ly/393SZ9e August 10 – Melbourne Recital Centre. Melbourne, VIC Tickets: http://bit.ly/31lNS1z August 12 – Freo Social, Perth, WA Tickets: http://bit.ly/2vLJjSC August 15 – City Recital Hall, Sydney, NSW Tickets: http://bit.ly/36VauXO August 16 – Mullum Town Hall. Mullumbimby, NSW Tickets: http://bit.ly/2mGH3Dx August 17 – Queensland Performing Arts Centre – Concert Hall, Brisbane, QLD Tickets: http://bit.ly/37VhJ3h |