VIP TICKETS INCLUDE:
- Soundcheck Pass
- Meet & Greet
- Signed Copy of New Album - Shades
- Does NOT include GA concert ticket (must purchase separately)
What is it about Doyle Bramhall II, and why does everybody want to work with him? Since 2000, the uniquely gifted guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer has been practically joined to Eric Clapton’s hip as both an onstage and studio collaborator. In addition to Slowhand, other music greats have sought Bramhall’s distinctive talents: Roger Waters, T-Bone Burnett, Elton John, Gregg Allman, Allen Toussaint, Sheryl Crow, Billy Preston, Dr. John, Michael McDonald, Erykah Badu, Questlove, Meshell Ndegeocello – as it’s often said, the list goes on and on.
Bramhall grew up in Austin, Texas with music coursing through his blood. His father, the elder Doyle Bramhall, had played drums in a band with his childhood friend, guitarist Jimmie Vaughan (their band The Chessman once opened for Jimi Hendrix), and he would go on to collaborate with other Lone Star greats like Jimmie’s brother, Stevie Ray, as well as Freddie King and Lightnin’ Hopkins. The younger Bramhall picked up the guitar early and would jam with his dad. By the age of 15, he was rubbing shoulders with the Vaughan brothers (“they were like family to me”) while playing in various bands, sometimes making $400 for weekend gigs.
With Bramhall concentrating on his career as a sideman and producer, he had put his solo work on the back burner, but he returned in earnest on his self-produced album from 2016, Rich Man, on which he explored deeply personal themes and feelings in the wake of his father’s 2011 death in a series of songs that mixed white-hot blues rock, grooving Southern soul as well as some of the transfixing Middle Eastern sounds he’d absorbed in his travels to Morocco and India. Reviews for Rich Man were rhapsodic: American Blues Scene raved that the album was “generously filled with a multitude of aural pleasures and sonic landscapes that are full and vibrant.” And AllMusic opined that Bramhall’s “first album in 15 years is also his best… It starts expansive and keeps expanding.”
Summarizing the experience of recording Shades just two years after Rich Man, Bramhall says, “The new record finally feels like I’m comfortable in my own skin, like I don’t have anything to prove other than trying to express myself as honestly as I can. As an artist, writer and producer, I’m in a good place, and I think I can allow this flow of music to come out and form a real body of work that my fans can appreciate. I’m thrilled to have them go on this journey with me.