Leslie Stevens at the Raccoon Motel -- October 9.
Monday, October 9, 8 p.m.
Raccoon Motel, 315 East Second Street, Davenport IA
Renowned for her Americana and alternative-country ensemble Leslie & the Badgers, the group's headliner Leslie Stevens enjoys an October 9 headlining engagement at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the chanteuse and multi-instrumentalist's recording Sinner lauded by The Guardian as "an album that should establish her credentials as a singer/songwriter of skill and passion."
Formerly of the female punk band Zeitgeist Auto Parts, the artist formed Leslie Stevens & the Badgers in 2006, and the group released their first, self-titled album in 2007. Five songs from the album became the EP Greetings from... in 2008, while the band's 2009 release Roomful of Smoke led the Los Angeles Times to say that Stevens' voice and writing evoked Patsy Cline, while No Depression wrote that she called to mind Emmylou Harris. Over the years, Stevens has worked as a session singer and has contributed backing vocals and played various instruments on records by recording artists such as Brian Wilson, Father John Misty, Florence & the Machine, and Jim James of My Morning Jacket. Kenneth Pattengale of the Milk Carton Kids produced, played, and sang on Stevens' 2016 solo release The Donkey and Rose, while Jonathan Wilson produced her 2019 release Sinner. She was named Los Angeles' best Country singer by the LA Weekly in 2019, and her band has toured with Rhett Miller and Laura Veirs, among others, also opening for Loudon Wainwright III.
Beyond her gifts as a singer/songwriter, Stevens is also a gifted instrumentalist, and she told NPR, "The piano was picked for me, the guitar I picked for myself. I come from a fortunate household and I was raised playing the piano and reading Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers and I was to have a coming-out party as a debutante when I was old enough. But I didn’t end up becoming a debutante. When I asked for a guitar, I was eventually given my mother’s old guitar (a useless prop from her hippie days). Once I got strings I couldn’t make it sound right. So I ended up getting my first guitar from a boyfriend years after that. So it took a long time to get to a guitar.
"The guitar itself," Stevens continued, "represents a sort of independence or freedom. It is actually physically freeing, you can take it anywhere you can play it alone, even on the roof and you can’t take the piano on the roof. So the guitar leant itself to private musings and freedom just by virtue of the physicality of it. And then in my mind if you played the guitar you could say whatever you wanted and do whatever you wanted to do. Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt seemed so self possessed- K.D. Lang, these icons were not going to bow down as debutantes to a man wearing a veil."
Leslie Stevens performs her Davenport engagement on October 9 with a set by Brother Galen, admission to the 8 p.m. concert is $12, and tickets are available by visiting TheRaccoonMotel.com.
