Vlad Holiday at the Raccoon Motel -- October 15.
Wednesday, October 15, 6 p.m.
Raccoon Motel, 315 East Second Street, Davenport IA
Hailed by the SA Examiner as an artist who "has made a career of romanticizing the past, the human condition, and looking at love and relationships through dark-tinted lenses," Romanian American singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Vlad Holiday headlines an October 15 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, his 2024 debut album My Favorite Drug praised by Atwood magazine as "an intimate and all-consuming 'indie noir' record full of raw reflection and inner reckoning."
Now based in Nashville, Holiday was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1989, and moved to America in September of 1999. He started as a self-taught guitar player at age 12, and began writing songs shortly after. Holiday had always considered himself strictly a guitar player in his early bands until finding his own voice years later with his own artist project. He eventually moved to New York City, and channeling a downtown NYC lo-fi sound while writing and recording everything by himself at his studio in Greenwich Village, Holiday started releasing songs as they were being written. Deliberately avoiding the pressures of full-length albums, EPs, and other music-industry constructs at the time, he began releasing singles independently, one by one. In July of 2017, Nylon premiered his debut track, "Quit Playing Cool," while his song "So Damn Into You", released in July of 2019, has gathered more than 18 million streams to date.
On March 27, 2020, Holiday released his debut EP Fall Apart with Me, which featured songs including "Phonograph" and "Addiction." After a few more single-only releases, on November 5, 2021, Holiday released the Write Me Off the Show EP, on which he toured a number of times across America, as well as small sold-out shows in Paris, London, and Istanbul. Last November, Holiday released his debut album My Favorite Drug, which features collaborations with Kacey Musgraves (on "I Don't Wanna Party Anymore") and Matt Shultz of Cage The Elephant (on "Closer"). My Favorite Drug peaked at number nine on the Sub-Modern Albums Radio Chart, while "Closer" peaked at number 14 at Alternative Specialty Radio. Holiday supported the album on tours with Cage The Elephant on the Neon Pill tour, Declan McKenna, a US/Canada headline tour as well as a performance at Austin City Limits in 2024.
While finishing his debut album, Holiday was also co-writing a number of songs for Cage The Elephant's album Neon Pill at Electric Lady Studios and Flux Studios in New York City. The title track was nominated for Best Alternative Music Performance at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, and the band also landed their 11th and 13th number-one songs on Billboard's Alternative Airplay radio chart with "Neon Pill" and "Metaverse," both of which Holiday co-wrote.
Vlad Holiday headlines his Davenport engagement on October 15 with an additional set by The Soods, admission to the 6 p.m. concert is $19.84, and more information and tickets are available by visiting TheRaccoonMotel.com.
