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Duke Arts Presents

Lambchop play Nixon + Mount Moriah + William Tyler

Wednesday, July 23, 2014 | 7:30 pm

Baldwin Auditorium


Lambchop began as a band at once defying and embracing the musical legacy of its hometown of Nashville, TN and has evolved into an accomplished ensemble, adding palpable depth and substance to singer-songwriter-guitarist Kurt Wagner’s songs. Their unclassifiable hybrid of country, soul, jazz, and avant-garde noise seemed at one time or another to drink from every conceivable tributary of contemporary music, its Baroque beauty all held together by the surreal lyrical wit and droll vocal presence of frontman Wagner.

William Tyler is a Nashville guitarist and composer. He spent years woodshedding and touring with Nashville groups like Lambchop and Silver Jews before breaking away to focus on his own version of instrumental guitar music. New York Magazine included Tyler’s 2013 Merge debut Impossible Truth in their year end coverage writing, “[Tyler] sounds less like a musician flaunting his chops than a truth-seeker—a man using his guitar as a divining rod to uncover some hidden truth about life, or nature, or, at least, about guitars.”

Through their artful personal storytelling, Mount Moriah develops a piercing portrait of a “New South” where progressive traditions are still fitfully breaking free from conservative ones. The band’s cathartic vision for their home and themselves is writ large in their lovingly critical negotiation with spiritual, romantic, political, and gender identities; geographical perspective; confrontation and forgiveness. With Heather McEntire, Jenks Miller, and Casey Toll.

**Music in the Gardens presentations are excluded from Pick-4 & Age-30-&-Under discounts.**

Duke Performances’ 2014 Music in the Gardens is made possible, in part, with support from Duke Continuing Studies, Duke Summer Session & Merge Records.