Sunday, June 3, 7 p.m.
Triple Crown Whiskey Bar & Raccoon Motel, 304 East Third Street, Davenport IA
Well-known by his stage name JBM, Canadian folk- and pop-rock singer/songwriter Jesse Marchant headlines a Moeller Nights concert on June 3, the artist having been praised by Filter magazine for his “heartfelt compositions” and “meticulous and carefully crafted sound,” and by ClubDistrict.com for creating a signature style “as weathered and wise as an old home.”
Marchant was born in Montreal, Quebec, and classically trained in guitar from the age of seven. Although he spent numerous years writing songs in Los Angeles and at his family's home in the Adirondack Mountains of northeastern New York, Marchant didn't make his debut on vinyl until 2008, when he began recording songs in a Hudson-based church studio for the album that would eventually be titled Not Even in July. With his sound compared to that of Jim James, Justin Vernon, Nick Drake, and Neil Young, the album was re-released by Partisan Records in 2010, and led to Marchant touring with the likes of Nathaniel Rateliff, Rogue Wave, Avi Buffalo, and Sondre Lerche. Since moving to Brooklyn in 2011, the singer/songwriter has also released three additional albums in 2012's Stray Ashes, 2014's Jesse Marchant, and 2018's Illusion of Love, and has shared stages with musicians including Elvis Perkins, St. Vincent, and The Tallest Man on Earth.
Nick Gunther, in Glide magazine, described Marchant's music as instilling a “unique depth of emotion and feeling,” while American Songwriter's Brittney McKenna wrote that there was a “level of peace and of stillness unique to a church” in Not Even in July – a sound, she said, that “feels like one man's soft, musical prayer for hope in a world that too often has too little.” Marchant's most recent album, meanwhile, was praised by NoDepression.com for the artist's “hauntingly beautiful vocals” and “powerful voice,” with Illusion of Love itself deemed “dazzling … because after you're heard it, you simply cannot forget it.”
Jesse Marchant's June 3 concert at the Triple Crown Whiskey Bar & Raccoon Motel starts at 7 p.m., tickets are $10-15, and more information on the night is available by visiting MoellerNights.com.
