Destination By Design presents
Mipso
With special guest Shay Martin Lovette
Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. / Doors open at 7 p.m.
Regular Adult - $26/each* Student/Children - $15/each* (in-person purchase at lobby box office with valid student ID)
All Ages (children under 17 admitted with parent/legal guardian)
All Seating is Reserved.
*AppTheatre inclusive pricing combines fees, tax, and ticket value.
Mipso formed in 2012 as an excuse to play together between classes in Chapel Hill. Joseph Terrell came from a family of banjo-playing uncles and a guitarist grandma, and he’d gotten curious again about the string band music he’d heard as a kid. Jacob Sharp was raised on equal parts Doc Watson and Avett Brothers in the mountains of North Carolina and he was hunting for a chance to sing some harmonies. Wood Robinson added a Charlie Haden-esque interest in bridging jazz and grass sensibilities on the double bass, and Libby Rodenbough soon joined on fiddle, unsatisfied by her classical violin training but drawn like a moth toward the glow of old, weird Americana.
Their first album, “Dark Holler Pop,” produced by Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse), included Terrell-penned fan favorites “Louise” and “Couple Acres Greener” and turned recent-grads Mipso (“let’s try this for a year,” etc.) into a full-blown touring band. Although it hung out on the Billboard Bluegrass top 10, its sonic mission statement was in the name: “Dark Holler Pop” was groovier and catchier than its string band contemporaries; its unabashed poppiness belied the songs’ durability and depth.
2015’s “Old Time Reverie” earned them an invitation to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade wherein they rolled down 5th Avenue on a 12 foot bucket of fried chicken. They got to have breakfast on the green room bus with Pat Benatar and Questlove, but in hindsight the whole experience was a little beside the point. They doubled down on touring, playing upwards of 175 shows a year, honing a telepathic, sibling-esque connection onstage.
2017’s “Coming Down The Mountain,” produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee) added drums and pedal steel and put the band on bigger stages with an expanded Americana sound, including the Rodenbough-fronted title track, another streaming hit and live staple.
Mipso considered hanging up their hats in 2018 while recording “Edges Run” with Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Anais Mitchell). After five years of near-constant touring, they had started to wake up in hotel rooms wondering what state they were in; they’d never had pets. The album took off. Sharp’s intimate vocal on “People Change” floated into dorm rooms and coffee shops across America, cementing Mipso as a bona fide streaming success across four albums and placing them in that rarefied strata of bands with three distinct lead singers: The Band, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, Sonic Youth, The Wailers, The B-52’s, Phish, Mipso. 2020’s self-titled start-fresh album on Rounder Records brought experimental Canadian producer Sandro Perri into the mix and minted a collection with moodier landscapes and unexpected textures such as “Hey, Coyote” and “Big Star”.
Post-pandemic Mipso is starting fresh again with “Book of Fools”. The songs might be their best yet: “Carolina Rolling By” shows Terrell at his most relaxed and confident while the band turns a story of a pill-popping truck driver into a meditative cosmic country-tinged head bopper. “The Numbers” flirts with 60s surf rock while Rodenbough winks and wags a finger at our market-obsessed culture, and “Broken Heart/Open Heart” features Sharp at his most heart-wrenching and earnest. Other standouts “East” and “Radio Hell” will infect you with earworms made of guitar riffs, Robinson’s pretzel-twisted upright bass lines, and saturated “ooohs” drifting in as if on AM radio waves.
Rock, country, indie-Americana: genre descriptors try but miss the point, which is that these four people and only these four people could’ve made this album. Only a decade in the van could’ve made this album. Only four personalities held in sustained, frictional balance could’ve made this album with its sizzling energy and unlikely cohesion. Mipso did it again. These are searching, driving songs from a band that’s still trying to say something different, still going somewhere new.
Visit MIPSOMUSIC.COM to learn more.
Event Note: Libby is taking the summer off of shows. She needs some time away from the road and we’re happy she can take some space. In the meantime we’ll have some of our favorite friends joining our sets making them special.
Special Guests: Shay Martin Lovette - The tale of wayfaring songwriter Shay Martin Lovette is shaped by an enduring creative pursuit, an inseparable connection with the natural world, and a deep appreciation of the nonpareil musical voices of the past. Like the winding rivers and tributaries of his Appalachian homeland, Lovette's music flows with emotional depth, poetically exploring the beautiful melodies of the land and the human soul.
Know Before You Go
THIRD PARTY SELLERS / SECONDARY MARKET
Tickets for events at the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country are sold exclusively through the theatre box office and online at AppTheatre.org . We DO NOT partner with third party sellers. We DO NOT accept tickets sold on the secondary market. We reserve the right to decline entry if you are not the original ticket buyer.
Tickets purchased from alternative sources may be any or all of the following:
· Not authentic
· Over-priced
· Invalid (cannot be used to enter the event)
The Appalachian Theatre of the High Country (ATHC) is not responsible for tickets purchased from third party vendors and is not able to honor, replace or refund invalid tickets. Please purchase your tickets from approved sources.
PARKING INFORMATION
Please carefully read the information and instructions below to ensure the best experience when you visit the theatre.
Metered street parking and pay lots are monitored and parking is enforced Monday – Saturday from 8 a.m. until 5 pm except on town observed holidays.
Parking is $1.00/hour at all metered parking spaces.
Metered & lot parking is free all day on Sundays and every day after 5 p.m.
Parking in Appalachian State parking lots (e.g. the Peacock Lot accessed off of Howard Street) is available for free on week nights after 7 p.m. and on non-gameday/event weekends on Saturday and Sunday.
Accessible Parking:
Parking in metered parking areas is free, as long as the correct placard/license plate is displayed and up to date.
ATHC does not own or operate any parking lots or meters and cannot accept responsibility for any parking mishaps or fees.
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