Laura Cantrell, The Waybacks, The Gourds. Three Horse shows with roots that sprout surprising and original flowers.

Laura Cantrell -Thursday, August 21st 7PM at the Iron Horse

Laura Cantrell is quietly becoming an icon. Consider (just a few of) her accolades: award-winning New York radio DJ, author of three successive 4+ star records, and boasting the support of such luminaries as Calexico, Elvis Costello, and John Peel. Mr. Peel famously referred to her first LP as “my favorite record from the past ten years, and possibly my life.” Her last record, 2005’s top-shelf Humming By the Flowered Vine, saw her mix up the alt-country sound that had defined her first two (also excellent) releases, deepening the textures of her arrangements, and expanding the possibilities of the songs. Three years on, Cantrell returns with Trains and Boats and Planes, a new record of traveling songs. It is an immaculate little collection, an EP offering tight, classy arrangements of characteristically well-chosen covers. From Gordon Lightfoot to Merle Haggard, Cantrell finds ways to push old material into fresh territory. And, on the record’s most exciting moment, she even finds a way to re-invent a synth-pop classic, New Order’s “Love Vigilantes," as an Appalachian folk-ballad. The Low Anthem is a trio from Rhode Island that respect traditional Americana while also using toy piano, cell phones, pump organ, tube harp and marimba.

The Waybacks –Friday, August 29^th 7PM at the Iron Horse

They draw freely from the old school and the old world, but The Waybacks are no throwback. They've been erroneously pigeonholed as a bluegrass band and celebrated as purveyors of "acoustic mayhem." For nearly a decade, their experiments have always proven sharp-witted and musically dazzling. The Waybacks new album Loaded is the boldest, rangiest and most exciting album of their career. The folk and roots underpinnings are still there, but after years of playing a huge range of venues and festivals, touring with Grateful Dead founder Bob Weir, they’re enjoying a refreshed repertoire – one that's touched by Memphis soul, honky-tonk, Parisian swing, classical music, vintage blue pop and much more besides.

The Gourds - Tuesday, September 2^nd at the Iron Horse

Austin’s The Gourds have never been much on sentiment. With Dem's Good Beeble in 1997 and the quirky Stadium Blitzer in 1998, they’ve chugged through America fueled by music and a near-pathological need for a good time. And while songwriters Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith have written the most dense, reference-laden country songs of the last 10 years and almost single-handedly made a place for deep thought in a genre of honky tonk badonkadonks. They shied away from the tear-in-my-beer ballads that made country music a commercial powerhouse over the last 50 years. But on this go-round with Noble Creatures, Russell and company have put the irony and redneck post-modernism on the backburner for a bit and ensured that their musical legend will move past adjectives like witty or ironic and on toward more profound descriptives like classic and timeless, helping them to take their rightful place as some of today's greatest American songwriters.