The Lone Bellow Trio
Love Songs For Losers Tour
with Ollella
Friday, June 23, 2023
Doors 6:30 p.m. | Show 8 p.m.
Tickets start at $25 (incl. fees)
Upper Balcony $25
Balcony $30
Loge $35
Main Floor $50

This show is not included in 2023-2024 season tickets. No dinner service at this show. Concessions and the bars will be open.

Throughout their lifespan as a band, The Lone Bellow have cast an indelible spell with their finespun songs of hard truth and unexpected beauty, frequently delivered in hypnotic three-part harmony. In a departure from their past work with elite producers like Aaron Dessner of The National and eight-time Grammy-winner Dave Cobb, the Nashville-based trio struck out on their own for their new album Love Songs for Losers, dreaming up a singular sound encompassing everything from arena-ready rock anthems to the gorgeously sprawling Americana tunes the band refers to as “little redneck symphonies.” Recorded at the possibly haunted former home of legendary Roy Orbison, the result is an intimate meditation on the pain and joy and ineffable wonder of being human, at turns heartbreaking, irreverent, and sublimely transcendent.

“One of the reasons we went with Love Songs for Losers as the album title is that I’ve always seen myself as a loser in love—I’ve never been able to get it completely right, so this is my way of standing on top of the mountain and telling everyone, ‘It’s okay,’” says lead vocalist Zach Williams, whose bandmates include guitarist Brian Elmquist and multi-instrumentalist Kanene Donehey Pipkin. “The songs are looking at bad relationships and wonderful relationships and all the in-between, sometimes with a good deal of levity. It’s us just trying to encapsulate the whole gamut of experience that we all go through as human beings.”

The fifth full-length from The Lone Bellow, Love Songs for Losers arrives as the follow-up to 2020’s chart-topping Half Moon Light—a critically acclaimed effort that marked their second outing with Dessner, spawning the Triple A radio hits “Count On Me” and “Dried Up River” (both of which hit #1 on the Americana Singles chart). After sketching the album’s 11 songs in a nearby church, the band holed up for eight weeks at Orbison’s house on Old Hickory Lake, slowly carving out their most expansive and eclectic body of work yet. “I’ve always thought our music was so much bigger than anything we’ve shown on record before, and this time we turned over every stone until we got the songs exactly where they needed to be,” says Elmquist. Co-produced by Elmquist and Jacob Sooter, Love Songs for Losers also finds Pipkin taking the reins as vocal producer, expertly harnessing the rarefied vocal magic they’ve brought to the stage in touring with the likes of Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves. “Singing together night after night for a decade allows you to understand what your bandmates are capable of, in a way that no one else can,” says Pipkin. “There are so many different qualities to our voices that had never been captured before, and producing this album ourselves was a nice opportunity to finally showcase that.”

Recorded with their longtime bassist Jason Pipkin and drummer Julian Dorio, Love Songs for Losers embodies an unvarnished intensity—an element in full effect on its lead single “Gold,” a galvanizing look at the real-life impact of the opioid crisis. “We don’t ever try to write songs with an agenda, so with ‘Gold’ the idea was to tell the story from the perspective of someone in a hard situation—in this case, a guy who’s stuck in the downward spiral of addiction,” says Elmquist. In one of the most exhilarating turns on Love Songs for Losers, the chorus to “Gold” explodes in a wild collision of bright piano tones, potent beats, and massively stacked guitars. “We’ve sung ‘Gold’ as a folk song in the past, but for the album we wanted to really experiment and push our sound as far as it could go,” Elmquist notes.

Imbued with equal parts brutal honesty and heart-expanding wisdom, Love Songs for Losers opens on “Honey” and its synth-laced reflection on the more delicate aspects of enduring love. “‘Honey’ came from thinking about how my wife doesn’t like being called ‘honey’ or ‘baby’—she thinks it’s lazy, it always rubs her the wrong way,” says Williams. “It turned into a song about sometimes wanting to go back to when we were first in love, when everything was crazy and exciting and we were right on the verge of ruining each other’s lives at any second.” Later, on “Cost of Living,” Pipkin takes the lead vocal and shares a raw and lovely expression of grief, her voice shifting from fragile to soulful with impossible ease. A quietly shattering piano ballad featuring Elmquist on lead vocals, “Dreaming” channels the ache of lost love with exquisite specificity. “It’s a song about two people catching up with each other, and I love how the lyric goes from ‘How’s your mother?’ to ‘How’s that devil in your heart?’—there’s no middle ground, which feels very true to me,” says Williams. And on “Wherever Your Heart Is,” The Lone Bellow present a beautifully slow-building piece exploring a particularly powerful form of devotion. “I love those moments, even in friendships, when someone surprises you or reveals something you never knew about them before,” says Elmquist. “I think it’s so vital to any relationship to keep on chasing the mystery and maintain that curiosity, instead of just making your mind up about who or what the other person is.”

One of the most tender tracks on Love Songs for Losers, “Unicorn” unfolds with a cascade of heavenly melodies as Williams offers up an unabashed outpouring of affection for his wife Stacy (“I was kinda thinkin’ I could tell you my feelings/Sit you down and wreck you with some words that are pretty/I could say ‘I love you’ but I wanna say more/I think God made a unicorn”). “That’s definitely one where the physical location seeped into the song, and Roy Orbison’s ghost maybe led us toward the path we ended up on,” Williams points out.

Even in its most lighthearted moments, Love Songs for Losers bears the same heady depth of emotion that’s guided Williams since his earliest days as a songwriter—a period of time that followed a devastating horse-riding accident that left Stacy temporarily paralyzed. As she recovered, Williams learned to play guitar and began setting his journal entries to song, routinely performing at an open-mic night across the street from the hospital. Soon after Stacy regained her ability to walk, the couple moved to Brooklyn, where (after eight years as a solo artist) Williams joined Elmquist and Pipkin in founding The Lone Bellow. In 2013, the band made their auspicious debut with a self-titled, Charlie Peacock-produced album that quickly landed at No. 64 on the Billboard 200, later turning up on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of Paste and Pop Matters. With over 100 million career streams to date, The Lone Bellow’s past output also includes the Dessner-produced Then Came the Morning (a 2015 effort that earned them an Americana Music Award nomination) and Walk Into a Storm (a 2017 release produced by Cobb and hailed by NPR for its “warmly rousing, gospel-inflected Americana”).

For The Lone Bellow, the triumph of completing their first self-produced album marks the start of a thrilling new chapter in the band’s journey. “At the outset it was scary to take away the safety net of working with a big-name producer and lean on each other instead,” says Pipkin. “It took an incredible amount of trust, but in the end it was so exciting to see each other rise to new heights.” And with the release of Love Songs for Losers, the trio feel newly emboldened to create without limits. “This album confirmed that we still have beauty to create and put out into the world, and that we’re still having fun doing that after ten years together,” says Elmquist. “It reminded us of our passion for pushing ourselves out onto the limb and letting our minds wander into new places, and it sets me on fire to think of what we might make next.”

This show is exclusively sponsored by Annie Murphy and Brian Curtis

The Music of Johnny Cash & The Carter Family
featuring Bucklin Hill Band and Skinny Blue
Saturday, March 4, 2023
Doors 6 p.m. | Show 7:30 p.m.
Tickets start at $19 (incl. fees)
Upper Balcony $19
Balcony $31
Loge $39
Main Floor $44

This show is included in 2022-2023 full season tickets and half season package A. No dinner service at this show. Concessions and the bars will be open.

Join us for a special tribute to the man in black featuring Bucklin Hill Band & Skinny Blue playing the greatest hits of Johnny Cash and the Carter Family.

This show is generously sponsored by Jeri Burgess, and Ron & Patty Wagner

Bucklin Hill Band
Saturday, July 30, 2022
Doors 6 p.m. | Show 7:30 p.m.
Tickets start at $15 (incl. fees)
Upper Balcony $15
Balcony $17
Loge $18
Main Floor $22

This show is not included in season tickets. No dinner service at this show. Concessions and the bars will be open.

An accomplished group of showmen with years of professional musical experience. Members of Bucklin Hill played with legends such as Ray Charles, Rod Stewart & Papa John Creach, just to name a few. They have entertained audiences around the world, and their rich musical talent can be heard on TV and film.

Bucklin Hill is much more than just a country band. It’s a rich diversity of talent and musical backgrounds. The show feels like a country review, with a mix of styles from traditional to rock to bluegrass and much, much more!

This show is generously sponsored by Michael Huey, DMD

*Venue presale begins Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 2 p.m. PST for full and half season ticket holders, sponsors, and club members at the Captain level and above. Contact Box Office Manager Deb Johnson at boxoffice@admiraltheatre.org today to reserve your seats. Tickets go on sale to the public on Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 2 p.m. PST.

The Brothers Four
Friday, April 22, 2022
Doors 6 p.m. | Show 7:30 p.m.
Tickets start at $19 (incl. fees)
Upper Balcony $19
Balcony $30
Loge $39
Main Floor $54

This show is not included in season tickets. No dinner service at this show. Concessions and the bars will be open.

Now in their 60th year of performing and recording, The Brothers Four continue to delight millions of fans worldwide with their smooth, musical sounds. Since the early 1960s The Brothers Four have played thousands of college concerts, sung for U.S. presidents at the White House, appeared at countless Community Concerts, performed with symphony orchestras and jazz stars and toured dozens of foreign countries. They are truly "America's Musical Ambassadors to the World."

Musical million-sellers for The Brothers Four include such releases as "Greenfields", "Seven Daffodils", "Try to Remember," and "Across the Wide Missouri." Their hit recording of "The Green Leaves of Summer" from the motion picture "The Alamo" was nominated for an Academy Award and they performed the song at the awards presentation for the network telecast.

This year they are celebrating their 60th anniversary, and are doing so with a new CD, "The Brothers Four Renewal," which showcases newly conceived versions of some of their old classics. These new recordings combine the strengths of the original emotional folk tunes with the advantages of modern, more electronic production.

This show is generously sponsored by Dr. Gordon & Caron Cromwell, Brad & Rosie Downey, and Jim & Gail Smalley

*Presale begins Tues., Aug. 17 @ 10 a.m. for full and half season ticket holders, sponsors, and club members at the Captain level and above. Single tickets on sale to the public on Tues., Aug. 24 @ 10 a.m.

Judy Collins
Saturday, February 26, 2022
Doors 6 p.m. | Show 7 p.m.
Tickets start at $23 (incl. fees)
Upper Balcony $23
Balcony $44
Loge $54
Main Floor $69

This show is included in full season tickets, half season package B, and the Spotlight Series. No dinner service at this show. Concessions and the bars will be open.

Judy Collins has long inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. In the 1960s, she evoked both the idealism and steely determination of a generation united against social and environmental injustices. Five decades later, her luminescent presence shines brightly as new generations bask in the glow of her iconic 55-album body of work, and heed inspiration from her spiritual discipline to thrive in the music industry for half a century.

The award-winning singer-songwriter is esteemed for her imaginative interpretations of traditional and contemporary folk standards and her own poetically poignant original compositions. Her stunning rendition of Joni Mitchell's “Both Sides Now” from her landmark 1967 album, Wildflowers, has been entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Judy’s dreamy and sweetly intimate version of “Send in the Clowns,” a ballad written by Stephen Sondheim for the Broadway musical A Little Night Music, won "Song of the Year” at the 1975 Grammy Awards. She’s garnered several top-ten hits gold- and platinum-selling albums. Recently, contemporary and classic artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Shawn Colvin, Dolly Parton, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen honored her legacy with the album Born to the Breed: A Tribute to Judy Collins.

Judy’s most recent collaboration with her as a singer-songwriter is the 2020 television special and album Winter Stories, including critically-acclaimed Norwegian folk artist Jonas Fjeld, and masterful Americana band Chatham County Line. Winter Stories is a collection of classics, new tunes, and a few surprises, featuring spirited lead vocal turns, breathtaking duets, and Judy’s stunning harmony singing.

Judy is as creatively vigorous as ever, writing, touring worldwide, and nurturing fresh talent. She is a modern-day Renaissance woman who is also an accomplished painter, filmmaker, record label head, musical mentor, and an in-demand keynote speaker for mental health and suicide prevention. She continues to create music of hope and healing that lights up the world and speaks to the heart.

Exclusively Sponsored by Richard & Stephanie "Taffy" Satter