BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Find Local//findlocal.community//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Indiana/Indianapolis BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:-0400 DTSTART:19700308T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:-0500 DTSTART:19701101T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:8ad4750d-6294-43ad-9dcc-2ae9e2401e3d@findlocal.community DTSTAMP:20261026T224526Z DTSTART;TZID=America/Indiana/Indianapolis:20261031T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/Indiana/Indianapolis:20261031T220000 SUMMARY:American Aquarium DESCRIPTION:For nearly two decades\, American Aquarium have pushed toward that rare form of rock-and-roll that’s revelatory in every sense. “For us the sweet spot is when you’ve got a rock band that makes you scream a long to every word\, and it’s not until you’re coming down at three a.m. that you realize those words are saying something real about your life\ ,” says frontman BJ Barham. “That’s what made us fall in love with music in the first place\, and that’s the goal in everything we do.” On their new album The Fear of Standing Still\, the North Carolina-bred band emb ody that dynamic with more intensity than ever before\, endlessly matchi ng their gritty breed of country-rock with Barham’s bravest and most inc isive songwriting to date. As he reflects on matters both personal and s ociocultural—e.g.\, the complexity of Southern identity\, the intersecti on of generational trauma and the dismantling of reproductive rights—Ame rican Aquarium instill every moment of The Fear of Standing Still with e qual parts unbridled spirit and illuminating empathy. Recorded live at t he legendary Sunset Sound in Los Angeles\, The Fear of Standing Still ma rks American Aquarium’s second outing with producer Shooter Jennings—a t hree-time Grammy winner who also helmed production on 2020’s critically lauded Lamentations\, as well as albums from the likes of Brandi Carlile and Tanya Tucker. In a departure from the stripped-down subtlety of 202 2’s Chicamacomico (a largely acoustic rumination on grief)\, the band’s tenth studio LP piles on plenty of explosive riffs and hard-charging rhy thms\, bringing a visceral energy to the most nuanced and poetic of lyri cs. “In our live show the band’s like a freight train that never lets up \, and for this record I really wanted to showcase how big and anthemic we can be\,” notes Barham\, whose bandmates include guitarist Shane Boek er\, pedal-steel guitarist Neil Jones\, keyboardist Rhett Huffman\, drum mer Ryan Van Fleet\, and bassist Alden Hedges. Mixed by four-time Grammy winner Trina Shoemaker (Queens of the Stone Age\, Emmylou Harris)\, The Fear of Standing Still shares its title with one of the first songs Bar ham wrote for the album—a soul-baring look at how raising a family has r adically altered his priorities and perspective. In the process of creat ing what he refers to as “a record about growing up and growing older\,” Barham also found his songwriting closely informed by his ten years of sobriety\, as well as his ever-deepening connection with American Aquari um’s community of fans. “Whenever someone tells me that one of our songs helped them in some way\, it encourages me to be more and more open—alm ost like peeling a layer off an onion\,” he says. “This album is a write r 18 years into his career\, peeling away the next layer and seeing just how human we can make this thing.” Expanding on the raw vitality of pre vious albums like 2012’s Jason Isbell-produced Burn.Flicker.Die\, The Fe ar of Standing Still kicks offs with “Crier”: a gloriously ferocious tra ck that swiftly obliterates worn-out ideals of masculine behavior. “It’s a song about breaking down what many of us learned from our fathers gro wing up—this idea that boys don’t cry\, or that crying is a form of weak ness\,” says Barham\, who co-wrote “Crier” with singer/songwriter Stephe n Wilson Jr. “I wanted to send the message that it’s not natural to bott le everything up inside\, because all of us are meant to feel.” Fueled b y a savage and soaring vocal performance from Barham\, the result is a p erfect encapsulation of American Aquarium’s multilayered artistry. “I do n’t think anyone’s going to get through that first listen of ‘Crier’ and think\, ‘Wow\, what a great song about disrupting the cycle of toxic ma sculinity!’” Barham points out. “It seems more likely that it’ll make th em want to dance and jump around\, and then when they put the headphones on and listen a little closer to the lyrics\, that’s when they’ll start to understand what we’re talking about.” A resolutely outspoken artist who’s emerged as one of the most progressive voices in country music\, B arham infuses an element of trenchant social commentary into a number of tracks on The Fear of Standing Still. On “Southern Roots\,” for instanc e\, Georgia-born singer/songwriter Katie Pruitt joins American Aquarium for a spellbinding meditation on pushing against the boundaries of tradi tional Southern identity. “People can complain all they want about how b ackwards the South is\, but the only way we’ll see any change is to take it upon ourselves\,” says Barham. “For me\, that means raising my daugh ter so that she’ll never witness the closed-mindedness and blatant disre spect for certain people that I often saw at her age. Because if you rea lly love something the way I love the South\, then you want to see it gr ow.” Co-written by Barham and Pruitt\, “Southern Roots” starts off as a beautifully understated folk song graced with heavenly harmonies\, then builds to a reverb-drenched frenzy at the bridge—a shift that sharply in tensifies the track’s galvanizing power. Another song anchored in Barham ’s ardent belief in breaking generational patterns\, “Babies Having Babi es” arrives as a finespun piece of storytelling that doubles as an empha tic pro-choice anthem. “It’s a mix of fiction and personal experience\, and felt like an important story to tell at a time when a woman’s right to choose is being taken away\,” says Barham. After opening on a nostalg ic tale of a whirlwind summer romance\, “Babies Having Babies” slowly ta kes on a powerful urgency as the narrative turns to questions of consequ ence and self-preservation (from the second verse: “We packed up a bag a nd drove to the city/Shouldered through the pickets and the hand-painted signs/They called her names while they called themselves Christians/Tha t sort of hate’s got no place in any faith of mine”). “I grew up in a sm all and very conservative town where abortion was not an option\, so I s aw a lot of people trapped in that generational cycle of getting pregnan t at a young age and ending up stuck in the same town forever instead of following whatever dreams they might have had\,” says Barham. “I wanted to write about what could have happened if one of those girls had refus ed to give up her aspirations\, and made that choice to live another way .” While American Aquarium bring a lived-in intimacy to all of The Fear of Standing Still\, songs like “Cherokee Purples” encompass a particular ly tender emotionality. A wistful reminiscence of all the charmed and wi ld summers of Barham’s youth\, the track unfolds in so many gorgeously d etailed images (kudzu vines and fireflies\, menthol cigarettes and Big L eague Chew)\, each rendered with a loving specificity that lingers in th e listener’s heart. “‘Cherokee Purples’ came from me making a tomato san dwich in my kitchen\, and immediately getting taken back to all the summ er days when we’d get dropped off at my grandmother’s so my parents coul d go to work\,” says Barham. “It’s crazy how something as simple as a to mato sandwich with Duke’s Mayonnaise can take me to a whole other world\ , but to me it’s almost like a talisman of where I’m from and how I was raised.” Meanwhile\, on “The Curse of Growing Old\,” American Aquarium l ook to the other end of the life spectrum\, conjuring a life-affirming m ood despite the song’s excruciating honesty. “I wrote that after talking with my grandmother at her 92 nd birthday party and learning what it wa s like for her to grow older and watch so many people in her life pass a way\,” says Barham. “It’s true that getting older is a gift\, but it’s a gift we pay for with an incredible amount of loss.” For Barham\, the sh aring of hard truths is indelibly tied to his sense of devotion to Ameri can Aquarium’s audience—and to his belief in rock-and-roll as a singular ly unifying force. “All I really want to do is put words to the emotions that most people have a difficult time expressing on their own\,” he re veals. “No matter what that emotion is\, when you put it into a song and then get to those moments when a whole bunch of people are singing that song all together\, it makes you see that you’re part of something bigg er than you ever realized. That’s when you can really affect people’s li ves\, and to me this record is another stepping stone to making that a r eality.”\n\nTickets: https://tixr.com/e/194254\n\nhttps://findlocal.comm unity/event/8ad4750d-6294-43ad-9dcc-2ae9e2401e3d LOCATION:LO-FI Lounge\, Indianapolis\, IN URL:https://findlocal.community/event/8ad4750d-6294-43ad-9dcc-2ae9e2401e3 d STATUS:CONFIRMED SEQUENCE:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR