Jeff Slate & Jake Thistle and Friends Tom Petty Tribute
Fellow musicians Jeff Slate and Jake Thistle will celebrate Tom Petty's 74th birthday, playing Petty’s classic album Wildflowers in full (and more). Special guests are expected.
In a career full of remarkable peaks, Wildflowers still stands as an astonishing creative achievement. One of Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time, it features some of Tom Petty’s best and most enduring songs and performances, including “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” “You Wreck Me,” “It’s Good to Be King,” “Crawling Back to You” and, of course, the elegiac title track.
Slate and Thistle have collaborated often in recent years, celebrating Petty’s birthday each year, most notably as part of an all-star show at the El Rey Theater in 2019 which featured former-Heartbreakers Ron Blair and Steve Ferrone.
For over a decade, Jeff Slate & Friends have played to sold out crowds paying tribute to artists like John Lennon, David Bowie and more, played by musicians who have worked with artists as diverse as Pete Townshend, Ozzy Osbourne and Mott the Hoople. The band’s Weekend Wilburys show – honoring the music of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne’s ELO and Roy Orbison – has wowed crowds across the country. Bandleader Jeff Slate, who came up in the 1980s post-punk scene, and made his name working with his band The Badge and The Who’s Pete Townshend in the 1990s and 00s, is a world-class frontman and songwriter. He has appeared on stage and worked with music legends like Townshend, Roger McGuinn, Jeff Tweedy and Sheryl Crow, and his music has appeared in advertising and films, and on television, including in the hit show Gossip Girl.
Jeff’s writing can be found in The New Yorker, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, where last year he interviewed Bob Dylan, and Rolling Stone, among others. Jeff is also a regular guest host on SiriusXM, is the co-author of the 2017 book The Authorized Roy Orbison, with the late-legend’s sons, and has written liner notes for albums by Orbison, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, among many others. Jeff’s fourth solo album, The Last Day of Summer, featuring Dave Stewart, Duff McKagan, Earl Slick and members of Paul Weller’s band and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, is due out later this year.
Opening Act: Kelly Swindall
Though Georgia born NYC/Nashville based Americana Artist Kelley Swindall has been touring the US and Europe for the better part of the decade, it was her 2020 debut studio album “You Can Call Me Darlin’ If You Want” on NYC label Velvet Elk Records ,that first put her brand of self taught idiosyncratic country folk blues on the map, with American Songwriter declaring “Swindall affirms herself with You Can Call Me Darlin’ If You Want”, as the title track enjoyed the #1 position on Europe's Hot Disc Top 40 charts for 6 consecutive weeks.
Equally, at home in a biker bar or under a proscenium arch, armed w/ her moxie and acoustic guitar, she takes the stage solo in true troubadour fashion, adeptly walking the line between humor and pathos, all filtered through a sassy, southern perspective.
Her follow up LP “The Memento Mori Demos” , out later this year, shepherds us through the darker waters of Americana, on an alchemical journey of reconciliation between life and death, where these seemingly opposing forces dance in infinite harmony, as two sides of the same coin.