Los Straitjackets with the Jake La Botz Trio – SOLD OUT!

Los Straitjackets are the leading practitioners of the lost art of the guitar instrumental. Using the music of the Ventures, The Shadows, and with Link Wray and Dick Dale as a jumping off point, the band has taken their unique, high energy brand of original rock & roll around the world.

Clad in their trademark Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling masks, the ‘Jackets’ have delivered their trademark guitar licks to 16 albums,  thousands of concerts and dozens of films and TV shows. Viva Los Straitjackets!

Jake La Botz Trio

Jake La Botz was teaching meditation in a northwest Georgia prison when something unexpected caught his ear. He wasn’t sure at first, but he could swear it sounded like a band was playing in the room next door. And not just any band, for that matter, but a genuine, bonafide, soul-shaking gospel band.

“I remember getting really excited because both of my worlds were coming together,” La Botz recalls. “The two sides of my life  converged into this one beautiful moment that just stopped me in my tracks.”

La Botz didn’t realize it at the time, but that marriage of music and meditation would go on to form the bedrock of his captivating new album, Hair On Fire.

The collection balances the wisdom and patience of La Botz’s decades of Buddhist training with the grit and vigor of his Chicago upbringing to create a sound that’s at once unabashedly vintage and decidedly present. The writing is raw and direct here, cutting straight to the heart of things with honesty and urgency, and the performances are similarly spare and unvarnished, fueled by lean, spacious arrangements centered around La Botz’s well-worn vocals. Add it all up and you’ve got a spiritually enlightening dose of neo noir American roots from a writer who’s unafraid to wear his soul on his sleeve, an alternatingly dark and hopeful collection that tips its cap to everyone from Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen to Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello as it ruminates on compassion and vulnerability, strength and surrender, growth and redemption.

“There’s a saying in Buddhism that you should practice as if your hair is on fire,” La Botz explains, “meaning that there should be an urgency to your meditation. Life is short and, if you want to wake up  and see what it’s all about, now is the time.”

And in the end, that’s what Hair On Fire is all about. There is no past or future, no us or them, only the present, only this very moment in which we’re all inextricably intertwined in an impossibly beautiful cosmic convergence. Sometimes all it takes is a gospel band next  door to remind you of your place in this great big universe.

Food & Bar: Our full food and drink menu will be available before and during the show.