Laura Jane Grace at the Raccoon Motel -- September 4.
Sunday, September 4, 8 p.m.
Raccoon Motel, 315 East Second Street, Davenport IA
Currently touring in support of her solo studio-album debut, and well-known as the founder, lead singer/songwriter, and guitarist of the punk-rock outfits Against Me! and The Devouring Mothers, Laura Jane Grace performs a special solo concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel on September 4, her critically acclaimed Stay Alive lauded by Guitar World as "bold and bright and beautifully bare-bones, packed with delicate acoustic twangs and tongue-in-cheek lyrical whimsy."
With the artist's 2016 album Shape Shift with Me also called “densely packed, vicious, and heartbreaking” by Pitchfork magazine, Grace is notable for being one of the first highly visible punk-rock musicians to publicly identify as transgender. Having founded Against Me! in the late 1990s, the musician – born Thomas James Gabel in 1980 – made one solo album and seven albums with the band, and went public with her planned gender transition in 2012, a story she consequently shared with NPR, Rolling Stone, SPIN, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, and numerous other outlets. With her latest releases, Grace continues to detail her trans journey while staying true to her earlier themes of outspoken political critique, environmentalism, and personal and social liberation expresses in such Against Me! albums as 2005's Searching for a Former Clarity, 2007's New Wave, and 2010's White Crosses.
In 2014, the artist served as music director for MTV's Rebel Music – a series of documentary films about youth, music, and global social change focused on youth-protest movements in some of the most challenging and turbulent parts of the world. Additionally, along with AOL Studios, Grace released her 10-episode docu-series True Trans with Laura Jane Grace, a body of work that earned a News & Documentary Emmy Award nomination in the category of “New Approaches: Arts, Lifestyle, Culture.” Grace rounded out the year by being honored as part of OUT magazine's annual “OUT 100” in December of 2014, and over the years since, her accomplishments have included the release of her memoir Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (which Billboard magazine included among its list of “100 Greatest Music Books of All Time”) and nationwide raves for Shape Shift with Me, an album that NPR called “raging, tender, organic, erotic, and liberating.” Additional recent accomplishments include the release of the 2018 album Bought to Rot with her project The Devouring Mothers, the 2021 EP At War with the Silverfish, and 2020's Stay Alive, which Rolling Stone deemed “a raw, unedited missive from lockdown.”
Laura Jane Grace plays her Davenport engagement on September 4, admission to the 8 p.m. concert is $35, and more information and tickets are available by visiting TheRaccoonMotel.com.
