The Center for the Arts presents
Saturday, February 4
8:00PM, $18 members, $20 non-member
“As one of the founding members of the Los Angeles punk band X, John Doe was one of the most influential figures in American alternative rock during the early ’80s…” - All Music Guide
“Doe beautifully balances a rocker’s heart and a poet’s soul.” – LA Times
“Like Clint Eastwood, John Doe is an unusually handsome American pop-culture figure with an unusually hardy career…the songs play Doe’s steely frontiersman reserve against his big tenor…” — The New Yorker
John Doe is a founding member of the seminal L.A. punk rock outfit X and the country spin-off band The Knitters. Doe’s solo career began with 1990’s Meet John Doe. Since then he has garnered worldwide acclaim. Entertainment Weekly calls his work, “rip-roarin’ and warm-hearted,” Q deems it “the tightest, finest and most morally acute music of the last 20 years,” and The Boston Globe praises its “striking emotional territory…”
In 2009, Doe teamed up with The Sadies on the widely praised release, Country Club. Of the collaboration, the Chicago Tribune asserted, “they blaze through country classics, with Doe’s unmistakable low tenor taking center stage. Even though his days as a punk pioneer are decades past, Doe will forever be remembered as punk rock’s golden throat…”
John Doe’s most recent release, Keeper, is his eighth solo record and first since 2007’s acclaimed A Year in the Wilderness, which the Los Angeles Times gave four stars, calling the album’s single “The Golden State,” “…a masterpiece—three minutes of condensed drama, love and longing…” that is “…likely to become Doe’s career signature…” In addition to Doe, the record features vocals by Patty Griffin, Jill Sobule and Cindy Wasserman. Moreover, numerous world-renowned musicians joined Doe in the studio, including Smokey Hormel (Johnny Cash, Tom Waits), Don Was (Rolling Stones), Howe Gelb (Giant Sand), and Steve Berlin (Los Lobos).
Doe produced the new album alongside long-time collaborator Dave Way (Fiona Apple, Macy Gray) at L.A.’s The Way Station and New Monkey studios. Of the process Doe reflects, “As Dave and I began recording we knew it had to be a record featuring a band. We agreed that one of our favorite eras in music was ‘69-‘71, just as hippie music had turned more aggressive and the flower was beginning to die. The songs for Keeper were written with that kind of confidence, conflict and flow.” Doe goes on to comment on the record’s markedly more optimistic material, “Dark and sad are typical places for most people to start writing songs. It’s a location that the last four records came from, eventually I figured out how to write a love song where the people actually get loved. It became easier to write more than the lovelorn songs that made up most of those previous records. And as you grow up you realize that a certain amount of satisfaction and happiness is a very good thing. Pieces of sadness exist in everything but it doesn’t have to be the only thing.”
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