WHEN: April 23, 2014 @ 8 pm (Doors open at 7 pm)

WHERE: Renaissance Arts Center Theatre COST: $12

Reserved Seat Tickets: Book Now at www.EngageKingsport.com

The City of Kingsport Office of Cultural Arts in partnership with Skyflight Productions presents an evening with Chad Elliott on Wednesday April 23, 2014 at The Renaissance Theater in Kingsport, TN.

Chad Elliott bought his first guitar at an Omaha pawn shop, a dreadnought next to the used guns and knives. He took it home, slowly taught himself to fingerpick and began transposing his poetry writing into original songs.

Elliott always believed hed be an artist. He spent his youthful years drawing, painting and sculpting, but the more he picked on those six-strings, the more he found familiar ground with his words and the imagery he strived to achieve on canvas. Songwriting became painting with his words and performing on stage became his new exhibition.

Averaging over 150 shows per year, Elliott has been on the road for more than a decade performing a blend of Americana, roots and country music. Along the way hes collected more than a few interesting stories, many of which end up crafted into lyrics. Perhaps the most surreal moment in his career happened in 2009 while he was portraying Buddy Holly for the Surf Ballroom on the 50th anniversary of the fateful plane crash which took the rock legends life. He was asked to sing Oh Boy with Buddys widow Maria Elena Holly. She whispered in Elliotts ear after the song faded, Youre my Buddy.

He has also shared the music stage with greats such as: Eric Church, Lonestar, Counting Crows, Brantley Gilbert, R.L. Burnside, Odetta, Tom Paxton and Loudon Wainwright III, among others.

Elliott has released 18 full-length albums since he began his songwriting career. In 2009, he released Redemption Man. Elliott worked with producer and guitarist Bo Ramsey (Lucinda Williams, Greg Brown) on this album to achieve its distinctive electrified roots sound. It also features Pieta Brown on the song, Same, Old Way, which was the 2009 Woody Guthrie Festival song contest winner as well as a 3rd place winner in the 2009 International Songwriting Contest for the Americana category. Two other songs on this album, Redemption Man, and Illinois, won Elliott a new folk finalist spot in the 2008 Grassy Hill Kerrville Folk Festival.

Elliotts latest album, So Sang the Crow was released in March of 2013. Chad visited Basecamp Recording Studio in Montana to lay the tracks. Basecamp Recording is run by Chris Cunningham of the folk-duo Storyhill. Cunningham produced the album, adding his meticulous attention to detail to the well-crafted project. So Sang the Crow speaks to the souls of those fighting the good fight in a life of challenge.

Doors & Box Office open at 7 pm, Show starts at 8 pm Reserved Seat Tickets only $12 Book online, no extra fee www.EngageKingsport.com

 

The Dead Truth out of Asheville, NC will open for Chad Elliott on April 23, 2014 at The Renaissance Theatre in Kingsport, TN. The guitar first came to Max Doyle while he was living in San Francisco for a long, elated summer. He was hit by a car skateboarding down one of the steep hills SF is known for. A true blessing it was. As a friend came to visit, they sat with a guitar across each others lap, him with the neck playing chords and Max, with a background in percussion, had the strings learning to pick. He traded his wheels in for some strings and sat for the rest of the summer with the guitar under his broken wing.

After leaving art school in Philadelphia, he lived in his studio across from the foundry he worked at. Some days would go on for twelve hours and crawling back to his studio at 10 or 11, Max would sit down with a guitar, blink, and hours would pass. Realizing this need to escape from the city, soon enough he found himself on a bus with 5 other musicians and artists heading across the country. And as the classic story goes, he was passing through Asheville and never left.

Since being in Asheville, his music has evolved into a series of stories that weave parallel lives throughout time; ancient mythology reflected through modern metaphor from a place of personal experience. His songs paint the environment and emotions for the music to carry you through. He describes his writing process as an extraction of old stories from the mountains; the truths older than time that were lost and forgotten and without language, yet. The Dead Truth is not only an insistence on the truth but also that which binds us to this life in the ways words know no place.

He just finished putting together an album of one such tale, SATYAGRAHA, under the guise, The Dead Truth, as a proclamation to resurface the light within the cold, dark stones.