undefined - eTown Taping with Ásgeir and Pieta Brown
eTown Taping with Ásgeir and Pieta Brown
Details:
Doors: 6 p.m. Show: 7 p.m. All Ages Welcome No Refunds or Exchanges With every eTown ticket purchase, you're supporting the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. eTown donates $1 per ticket to Conscious Alliance, aiding hunger relief, youth programs and sustainable solutions for the Oglala Lakota Nation. More than just a regular concert, eTown Radio Tapings are a unique live experience! The show includes performances and interviews with both of our visiting artists, and an interview segment with changemakers from our local and national community who are doing their part to make the world a better place. As an attendee, you serve as a vital part of our eTown show, which will be broadcast across the country on our affiliate radio stations and all streaming platforms. Listen for your cheers on the radio, and to hear how it all comes together, in just a few weeks following the night! Cell phone use, photos (from phones and professional cameras), and audio and video recording are all strictly prohibited during the radio taping. Thanks for your understanding, and for your help in allowing the artists and audience to be present for this special evening together! About Ásgeir: As one of Iceland’s most successful exports, singer-songwriter Ásgeir has always pushed the boundaries of his thoughtful brand of folk-pop. His debut album, ‘Dýrð í dauðaþögn’, became the best-selling debut in Icelandic history, leading to the English-language version ‘In The Silence’ in 2014. He continued to refine his sound with ‘Afterglow’ in 2017, ‘Bury The Moon’ in 2020, and ‘Time On My Hands’ in 2022’, earning praise from press and radio worldwide, including the likes of The Independent, MOJO, NME, The Line Of Best Fit, Clash Magazine, BBC 6 Music and Radio X. In recent years, Ásgeir has embraced solo performances, playing nearly 70 intimate shows across Europe, the Nordics, and Iceland, including a UK tour with Icelandic singer GDRN. He also performed with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and recorded a live session for Arte TV in Berlin. His passion for live music has taken him to unique venues, including small churches, deepening his connection with audiences. He wrote a song for a Kafkaesque play that was hosted at The Reykjavik City Theatre called Sýslumaður Dauðans. Currently, Ásgeir is preparing for his next album, focusing on songwriting with a fresh approach; prioritizing melody and personal storytelling, exploring themes of relationships, aging, hope, and nostalgia. His influences range from Leonard Cohen and Daniel Lanois to contemporary artists like Adrianne Lenker and Dina Ögon.
The album’s production was a hands-on process, with Ásgeir playing most of the instruments and collaborating with a select group of musicians, including Nashville cellist Nat Smith.
Recorded both solo and with a band, the songs capture an organic, heartfelt energy. With this new chapter, Ásgeir continues to evolve, offering music that is as introspective and accomplished as ever as well as deeply resonant.
About Pieta Brown:
A true treasure in today’s wide world of indie music, Pieta Brown brings a beautifully singular flair to everything she does. And her new album Dreamin’ Of (August 2026) is sublime sonic proof. Set against the backdrop of painterly arrangements designed to support Pieta’s captivating vocals and razor-love storytelling, each of the record’s ten songs is its own vivid portal.
Addressing timely and timeless topics of Nature, Love, Loss, War and Addiction unapologetically, together the songs function as a kind of cinematic song cycle, stunningly introduced by the opening “Time Of The Night” prelude. “It’s the time of the night when the world is full…” Pieta croons, calling all dreamers in the midst of a real world that has become hard to imagine. “Tell me what you’re dreamin’ of,” she urges a few songs later in the mesmerizing chorus of the title track, “Let me be an outlaw for your love…”
Hailed as a “self-styled poetess, folk goddess and country waif” by the BBC, Pieta first came to international prominence with the release of her self-titled debut in 2002. Since then she has relentlessly expanded her artistic prowess, releasing multiple albums, EPs and singles earning widespread acclaim from The New York Times, NPR Music, Stereogum, Billboard, Bust and beyond, garnering meaningful attention from artists and mentors along the way including such luminaries as John Prine, Mavis Staples, Ani DiFranco, Don Was, Iris DeMent and Justin Vernon, who once called Pieta’s album Paradise Outlaw his “favorite album recorded at our studio.” Vernon generously offered his studio again in recent times as a place for Pieta to finish recording her magnetic new album.
Her most intimate “Pieta” sounding and biggest feeling record yet, Dreamin’ Of fully illuminates the alluring edges inherent in Pieta’s songs and stylings. Lush harmonies, potent ambience and incandescent grooves interlace throughout the album. Pieta’s command of nuance shines and through a fiercely tenderhearted and imaginative lens resilience surfaces repeatedly. The results are powerful and poetic. And as with all great songwriters her songs immediately feel like they belong, suddenly you’re humming along.
Recorded in two Midwestern outposts (Good Harbor / April Base), Dreamin’ Of was produced by Pieta with Bon Iver cohorts Sean Carey and Mike Lewis. Both known for their supreme musicianship, their combined list of credits is expansive: Peter Gabriel, Bonny Light Horseman, Andrew Bird, Gordi, Tallest Man On Earth, Bruce Hornsby and Bizhiki included. And while Carey and Lewis have their own abiding musical synergy, the evidence of their unique chemistry with Pieta is audible and moving.
Shimmering throughout the album are masterful contributions by musicians connected to Pieta’s world in some way, all artists in their own right: Jeremy Ylvisaker, Bertand Belin, Amos Lee and Bo Ramsey offer brilliance. Barbara Jean Meyers, Bryan Vanderpool and Romain Collin add vivid inside layers. “There is so much charged communal chemistry on this album,” Pieta says. “Everyone gave so much.”
Pieta wrote the song “Dreamin’ Of” in a “dream-like-fever-state” after reading a story in the news of a father who was “somehow urging love and tenderness right after losing his children to war.” Days later she drove 12 hours straight to Mike Lewis’ basement in the woods of Northern Minnesota to try recording with Mike, Sean and engineer Brett Bullion. In just a couple of experimental days and nights the heart of the album had come into being with a final recording session out in the country near Eau Claire, WI.
The worlds Pieta and her illustrious crew have conjured on Dreamin’ Of are layered and wide-ranging. While there is a slow-burn element to the album, it is the “serious firepower” groove-heavy kind built into Pieta’s touch. Like dreams, the songs twist and turn and surprise, from the wondrously intimate frontiers of “Nothin’ But Trouble” and “Someday Someday” to the enigmatic harmony-drenched “Laura” and “Was The One,” in which Pieta artfully plays with time, distance and mood. From the majestic poetry of “Love Letters” and “So This May I” to the pop-tinged pent-up anthemic glimmers of the album’s luminous closer “Glitter Town” emitting such remarkably relatable insight as “I’m running with the hunted / Trying to break free / From all these things / That tattoo me.”
A true album standout is Pieta’s “Drinkin’ Side” duet with Amos Lee. “Something freeing happens when we sing together,” Pieta says. Pieta and Amos’ first duet "Do You Know?" (from Paradise Outlaw) is a beloved, entrenched part of her catalog. "Drinkin’ Side" is destined to connect in that same earnest way. “River, river of tears…Ain’t got nothin’ on me…” they sing, momentarily soaring together, “Bottled up and gone, lost at sea…A broken melody…” A spellbinding ode to the heartache of the times, Pieta’s words ring true.
The daughter of two preacher’s kids and multiple parental divorces, Pieta’s early years were rooted in distinctly unconventional and musical worlds, colored by rural Iowa landscapes and the creative lifestyle of her father, folk-singer Greg Brown. But during formative years in Birmingham, Alabama, she lived with her hard-working single mother and spent “universes alone” writing obsessively and composing instrumental songs on piano. By the time Pieta left home at 17 she had lived in at least 18 different apartments and houses across multiple states. All that early music and commotion now embedded in her artistry permeate the new album.
Throughout Dreamin’ Of Pieta’s songs and delivery take the ethereal spotlight. Unfaltering and reassuring, hers is the voice of an artist unafraid to get close to the source. “As far as I can tell all songs are offerings in some way,” she says. With these new ones, Pieta masterfully leaves room for what any listener brings to them. But the overriding success of her gorgeous new album is its disarming incantation to believe in the power of our dreams.
