Anderson East at the Codfish Hollow Barn -- September 18.

Tuesday, September 18, 8 p.m.

Codfish Hollow Barn, 5013 288th Avenue, Maquoketa IA

Touring in support of his 2018 recording Encore – an album the New York Times called a “lustrous revisiting of raucous Southern soul, rousingly delivered and pinpoint precise” – the chart-topping roots rocker Anderson East plays a September 18 concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn, displaying the musical gifts that led NPR to deem him “a perceptive record-maker and proven captivator of live crowds.”

Inspired by the musician Ben Folds, the Alabama native tuaght himself piano and wrote his first song in seventh grade, eventually working as a session musician and recording engineer after a post-college move to Nashville. In 2009, East self-released an album titled Closing Credits for a Fire under his birth name Mike Anderson, but began recording under the stage name Anderson East with the release of his subsequent EP Fire Demos. His first full-length album under his Anderson East moniker, 2012's Flowers of the Broken Hearted, was made up of two records: one that he recorded in Los Angeles with session players Charlie Gillingham, Don Heffington and Rob Wasserman, and a second recorded in Nashville with Tim Brennan and Daniel Scobey. A combined 15 songs long, Flowers of the Broken Hearted finds one CD made up of progressive-soul and Americana numbers, while the other boasts a darker rock sound. It also led to East's first critical accolades, with ConsequenceOfSound.net calling the artist's voice “an instrument with the ability to recall Ruyan Adams, develop of country twang, and even bring to mind a raspier, more immediate Michael Bublé.”

East followed that release with his major-label studio debut Delilah, which rose to the number-two spot on Billboard's U.S. Heatseekers Chart and number-seven of the U.S. Folk chart, with two of its singles – “Satisfy Me” and “Devil in Me” – landing on the Billboard Top 30. The artist's “What Would It Take” appeared on the soundtrack for 2017's Fifty Shades Darker, and the same year, East scored his first chart-topping song with “All on My Mind,” a single released ahead of the Encore album's debut this past January. Another of the album's singles, “Girlfriend,” also became a top-five hit, and East is currently nominated for an Americana Music Honors & Awards citation for Emerging Artist of the Year, with Paste magazine stating that “he's more interested in bringing back the groove and sweat of the region's soul/R&B legacy than additing to the bro country ranks.”

Anderson East performs his 8 p.m. Maquoketa engagement with an opening set by The Shacks, admission to the September 18 concert is $25-30, and more information and tickets are available by visiting CodfishHollowBarnstormers.com.

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