She’s opening for Lucinda Williams, Drive-By Truckers before performing here in a church
Erika Wennerstrom
5 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Barrel Room of West Sixth Brewing, 501 W. 6th. $10-$20.
7 p.m. Feb. 15 at First Presbyterian Church, 171 Market St. $15-$25 (concert only), $35 (both events). thesoulfulspace.com.
When Erika Wennerstrom played Lexington in December 2017, her focus was on renewal.
Heartless Bastards, the whimsically named but aggressively musical band she had led for the previous 15 years and had taken from its Dayton/Cincinnati origins to a fruitful new home base of Austin, Texas, had been placed on indefinite hold. That provided the songstress a means to reflect and exhale with music created under her own name. The process was so new at the 2017 performance that the bulk of the repertoire Wennerstrom performed (specifically, eight of the set’s 12 songs) were newly recorded but wouldn’t be released for another three months in the form of her solo debut album, “Sweet Unknown.”
The record — thematically, and to a degree, sentimentally — was a departure for Wennerstrom. Unlike the more turbulent music she made with Heartless Bastards, the more inward thinking tunes from “Sweet Unknown” were inspired in part by hikes and travels through Big Bend National Park in Southwest Texas.
“On this album, it’s sort of about self-love,” Wennerstrom told me in an interview prior to the 2017 show. “I always feel writing is, for me, like trying to grow internally. It’s sort of an album of mantras to be kinder to myself.”
Like the 2017 performance at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, this weekend’s return outing at First Presbyterian Church is part of the ongoing Soulful Space series of independently produced concerts presented in prime listening environments. The company will be different this time, though.
The Good Shepherd show had Wennerstrom performing in a solo acoustic setting. The First Presbyterian concert will be a trio venture aided by harmony vocalist/percussionist Beth Harris (from the serenely roots-savvy Cincinnati band The Hiders) and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Lauren Gurgiolo (a mainstray of the Austin collective The Dialtones as well as an alumnus of Okkervil River).
Wennerstrom will preface the Feb. 15 show with a songwriter’s clinic at the Barrel Room of West Sixth Brewing. The session will include a Q&A session with the artist discussing songwriting inspirations and techniques.
Those fearing Wennerstrom has left behind the songs she fashioned for the five fine studio albums made with Heartless Bastards can rest easy. She still includes a few of them in her current solo career shows. The 2017 concert, in fact, concluded with “Sway” (the finale track to the 2009 album “The Mountain”), which added a hint of desperation and darkness to the upward glances offered by her newer compositions.
Leading up to Wennerstrom’s Lexington return this weekend will be opening sets for shows by Lucinda Williams and Drive-By Truckers throughout the Southeast. Already booked for the summer is a July date at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado opening for the Avett Brothers.
Tyler Ramsey and Carl Broemel
8 p.m. Feb. 19 at The Burl, 375 Thompson Rd. $15. theburlky.com.
Here is an intriguing winter diversion — a pair of proven song stylists familiar to regional audiences through music made with their highly visible bands playing in a duo setting. That’s the premise for a week-long string of performances featuring guitarist Tyler Ramsey, formerly of the acclaimed North Carolina troupe Band of Horses, and fellow fret-man Carl Broemel of top Louisville rock export My Morning Jacket. Both artists have new but very different recordings to promote.
Ramsey will be previewing music from “For the Morning,” his first solo album since departing Band of Horses in 2017 and his fourth album overall. It’s a hushed, neo-country colored set of songs that sound summon early ‘70s Southern California introspection with a heavy Neil Young-meets-Eagles accent. It was recorded during sessions in a home studio constructed outside of Band of Horses’ Asheville, N.C., home base.
Curiously, Ramset echoes some of the sounds Broemel designed on past records. But on “Wished Out,” the latter’s fourth and newest album, the mood shifts. While Broemel has said Southern California, especially a series of drives and hikes through Malibu, inspired one of the record’s highlight tunes, “Starting from Scratch,” much of the new music accelerates into a huge, bright and pop-worshiping electric drive that might catch fans of his previous solo albums (especially 2016’s fine “4th of July”) off guard. Broemel cut “Wished Out” with help from two of his MMJ bandmates, bassist Tom Blankenship and keyboardist Bo Koster.
Though essentially a co-headlining bill, Ramsey and Broemel will be very much a team when they play The Burl on Feb. 19. The two will collaborate on each other’s songs and serve up, as indicated on Ramsey’s website, “some special covers.”