Skylar Gudasz opens for cosmic country duo Blue Cactus at Black Iris on Friday, Sept. “What makes things exceptional is when both you and the audience forget who you are and just exist somewhere in the middle, in the music.” “I’ve learned that on tour, so many things are out of control, it is best to let what happens happen. At the Black Iris, it will be a stripped-down duo. In online clips she is in front of a big band. She sings with power and emotional clarity. “Words are tools, they have their meaning, but they are also a sound in a soundscape.” Live Streaming Blue Cactus at Cornelia Fort Pickin Party 2022 Nashville, TN, USGo Live Now. “Art should make you feel something,” Gudasz says. She lightly salts her lyrics with erudite references that betray her degrees in theater and English at UNC-Chapel Hill: “lotus-eaters”, “Byzantium,” and “Oleander,” the title of her first release.

And the first single from her upcoming 2020 album has the sugar-razor sensibility of the best from her lauded 2016 debut. She’s toured with the likes of Hiss Golden Messenger, the Mountain Goats, and Big Star Third. She’s been called the South’s Joni Mitchell and “the best singer you never heard.” The cleverness of her lyrics is just the surface layer of a committed poetic intelligence.

Commercial success is pretty random, but she has all the ingredients to deserve it. With a high lonesome twang, an Emmylou-like southern drawl, and blistering guitar techniques, Blue Cactus’ new record Stranger Again exercises the honky-tonk muscles to firmly bear the flag for a new generation of classic country practitioners.Ashland native and NC-based singer/songwriter, Skylar Gudasz’s upcoming performance in the wood-paneled intimacy of the Tiny Bar at the Black Iris may one day be the stuff of legends. Their finest work yet, Blue Cactus resuscitate a fleeting style of honest-to-goodness country music considered valueless to a “new” country music where songwriting is officiated by financial analysts and teams of marketing plutocrats instead of woebegone troubadours. Throughout Stranger Again, they explore loss and longing, self-love and reckoning with personal, political and human struggles.

Find tour dates and live music events for all your favorite bands and artists in your city. Get 2022 tour dates, venue details, concert reviews, photos and more at Bandsintown. The otherworldliness of the music is a perfect contrast to their distinctly grounded, human storytelling lyrics. Blue Cactus, the North Carolina duo of Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez, make Cosmic Americana: a blend of grit, glitz, groove, and twang that evokes a celestial. Buy tickets for Blue Cactus concerts near you.

Stranger Again is a deep dive into Cosmic American music, with the band taking their sound into ambitious new planes, where country-rock meets light psychedelia as the soaring vocals meet twangy slide-guitars and propulsive bass-lines. The album has received enthusiastic attention from tastemakers including No Depression, American Songwriter, FLOOD Magazine, Talkhouse, and INDY Week among others. Blue Cactus, the North Carolina duo of Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez, make Cosmic Americana: a blend of grit, glitz, groove, and twang that evokes a celestial soundscape of mid-century heartbreak.įollowing their critically acclaimed 2017 debut and a string of singles in 2020 their evolution is made plain on their 2021 sophomore LP, Stranger Again, released on Sleepy Cat Records.

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