Gates: 6:30PM / Doors: 7:30PM / Show: 8:00PM

JESS WILLIAMSON

Endless prairies and ocean waves; long drives and highway expanse; dancing, smoke, sex, and
physical desire – the core images of Jess Williamson’s new album Time Ain’t Accidental revel in
the earthly and the carnal. After a protracted breakup with a romantic partner and longtime
musical collaborator who left Williamson and their home in Los Angeles at the start of the
pandemic, the album’s reckoning with loss, isolation, romance, and personal reclamation
signals a tectonic shift for Williamson as a person and as an artist: from someone who once
accommodated and made herself small to a woman emboldened by her power as an individual.

A daringly personal but inevitable evolution for the Texas-born, Los Angeles-based singer,
songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Time Ain’t Accidental is evocative of iconic Western
landscapes, tear-in-beer anthems, and a wholly modern take on country music that is
completely her own. Above everything, sonically and thematically, this album is about
Williamson’s voice, crystalline and acrobatic in its range, standing front and center. Think Linda
Rondstadt turned minimalist, The Chicks gone indie or even Emmylou Harris’ work with Daniel
Lanois. Ringing boldly and unobscured, it’s the sound of a woman running into her life and art
head-on, unambiguously, and on her own terms for the first time.

Last year, Williamson and Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee released I Walked With You A
Ways under the name Plains; a critically acclaimed record filled to the whiskey-barreled brim
with feminine confidence, camaraderie, and straight-up country bangers and ballads. After past
records Cosmic Wink (2018) and Sorceress (2020), both released on Mexican Summer,
Williamson felt primed to shift in a new direction. Revisiting what she loved growing up,
simplifying her process, and making music with a friend proved to be the best step forward for
Williamson.

In early 2020, while getting used to the new estrangement and in quarantine with her thoughts,
Williamson wrote and recorded the stripped-back standalone single “Pictures of Flowers” by
herself at home. This experience became the foundation on which Time Ain’t Accidental was
built. The song's lyrical themes were terrestrial and plain-spoken, with Williamson’s voice set
against a drum machine and paired with textural guitar by her friend Meg Duffy (Hand Habits).
Soon, Williamson realized that musically she was just as good—better, even—on her own.
Tours with Weyes Blood, Kevin Morby and Hamilton Leithauser, and José González bolstered
this newfound self-assurance, letting her voice ring out in rooms the size of which she hadn’t
played before. 

Amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, Williamson began dating in Los Angeles and tracking
demos centered on the realness of those experiences, filled with excitement, anxiety, and
disappointment. The drum machine stuck around (this time in the form of an iPhone app), as did
her determination to forge a new path as a truly solo singer and songwriter; as a woman finding
the sound of herself without anyone else’s input. It was a lonely, but revelatory, period.

The core essence of that time is summed up in the opening line of “Hunter.” “I’ve been thrown to
the wolves and they ate me raw,” Williamson sings, clear-eyed and with resolve, having come
out the other side. Though tumultuous, the process of dating in LA revealed the album’s North
Star, which anchors the song’s chorus and the album’s underlying sentiment more broadly: “I’m
a hunter for the real thing.”

This theme comes up on the vivid torch song “Chasing Spirits,” when she sings, over whispers
of steel guitar, that “the difference between us is when I sing it I really mean it.” The same
energy resurfaces on “God in Everything”, with Williamson turning to the supernatural as a way of rising above the earthly realities of dating and rejection. “Being in lockdown alone, fresh out of
a breakup, was a real hard time for me,” she remembers. “What I’m grateful for is having a
period of stillness and desperation that forced me to turn inward and find comfort in a power
greater than myself”.

In the album liner notes, Williamson too included a quote from Carl Jung that was sent to her by
a close friend during this era of uncertainty and upheaval. It reads: “To this day God is the name
by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things
which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions, and change the course of my life for
better or worse.”

After many months spent alone and searching, Williamson finally found the realness she’d been
longing for. First came the idea of Plains and the subsequent writing and recording sessions.
Then, on one of her regular drives between her adopted home in southern California and her
native Texas, Williamson found and rescued her dog, Nana, who had been abandoned and was
running alongside a desert highway in New Mexico. 

But all good things come in threes, and she soon found new love with an old acquaintance in
Marfa, Texas, addressed straightforwardly in the title track “Time Ain’t Accidental.” “We fell for
each other when I was out in West Texas visiting a friend, but then I left to go back to LA,”
Williamson explains. “I wasn’t sure if or when we’d see each other again, but I felt so full of love
and I hadn’t felt that way in a very long time. I wrote this song the day I got back home. It’s really
the story of a day together—we flirted by a hotel pool bar and went on a drive, we had a sweet
night—and then I had to go, neither of us really knowing what, if anything, would come next.”

Williamson brought the suite of demos and her newfound assurance to Brad Cook (who’d
produced Plains) in Durham, North Carolina. The familiar setting fostered a safe environment for
the deeply personal material, and Williamson unleashed her voice with total
unselfconsciousness. They tracked her vocals in just a couple of takes for each song. “I kept
thinking, ‘my voice feels different now – it’s been liberated,’” Williamson reflects. Cook
encouraged Williamson to keep the iPhone app drum machine beats she’d programmed for
some of the demos, then married it with banjos and steel guitars for an evident sense of old-
meets-new.

Williamson now splits her time between Marfa, Texas and Los Angeles. Time Ain’t Accidental,
with its synthesis of traditional country instrumentation with digital effects and modern sounds,
unequivocally embodies the energy of the two very different places that she calls home. The
album’s artwork, subtly menacing and neon in awareness and strength, displays, in
Williamson’s words, “that supernatural forces are acting all around us, that we can trust that we
will be in the right place at the right time.”

While Time Ain’t Accidental is remarkable for its bare confidence born of searching and longing
for something real, Williamson also recognizes the mysterious whims of time that bricked her
path (and she memorialized them on the title track). Ultimately, these unseen forces lured the
singer back into her own. The timing was, indeed, no accident.

AL OLENDER

There’s nothing scarier than being honest with yourself. For singer/songwriter Al Olender, facing her fear of the truth has been a cleansing, often cathartic process that’s led to the kind of revelations she had previously thought unobtainable. On her debut full-length album Easy Crier, the Upstate New York based artist asks: what happens if we vow to never tell a lie, ever again? Charting the daunting territories of staring your demons right in the face and prodding at the ugly parts of your reflection, Olender pieces together her most vulnerable moments to produce a celebratory and beautiful rumination on grief, and reminds us of the power that comes in really getting to know yourself.

The catalyst for this renewed outlook stems from the sudden loss of her older brother. As a huge supporter of Olender’s musical talents from the very beginning, he would often invite his friends over and encourage a then-teenage Olender to play her “angsty love songs” for them. “Everything that I do musically revolves around my brother,” she says. “It's like every single thing I do in my life – my brother is so much in the front of my mind.”

The introduction for Easy Crier comes with “All I Do Is Watch TV,” a darkly humorous comment on the unmoored early stages of losing a loved one, way too soon. “I read a book on grief, it told me to lay in bed,” she laments over a chromatic, repetitive melody – the kind that perfectly mimics an untethered, sped-up montage-like existence, as she watches true crime and buys a Big Gulp just to spill it on her bedroom floor. Here, she jabs at the numbness protecting her heart. “Nothing fixes grief,” she explains. “It transforms. Sometimes it's like a giant glooming thunder cloud and sometimes it's like a tiny little raindrop.”

On the folky, pop-infused banger “Keith,” Olender confronts her sorrow, as fond memories are abruptly interrupted by a crashing cymbal and animated percussion: an ever-increasing heart rate capturing Olender’s inner-chaos as she witnesses a well-meaning funeral guest showing off a new tattoo. Later, on the devastatingly gorgeous closer “Mean,” a sparse, acoustic arrangement offers a platform for a rousing vocal performance, each note a grief-stricken consolation. “I’m older than my older brother, but I’m not old enough,” she shares softly, searching for someone to keep her safe. Olender strives to use her voice for connection and healing, for herself and for anyone else who’s listening.

Olender recorded at The Church in Harlemville, NY, entrusting the skills of producer and engineer James Felice (Felice Brothers). Felice also lent his skills on keyboard, accordion and piano, with Jesske Hume (bass/synths), William Lawrence (drums/guitar), Ian Felice (guitar), and Alejandro Leon (bass) also contributing. The album’s sonic universe sees delicate keys dance alongside acoustic plucks, later welcoming brooding strings and lush, expansive harmonies. It’s these kinds of arrangements that perfectly capture the sonic personality of Easy Crier: it’s both tender and invigorating, soothing yet anthemic. Describing the arrangements as a “conversation with friends,” it’s a testament to what can happen when you surround yourself with those who totally, and willingly, understand your artistic vision.

Easy Crier isn’t an album about death. It’s an album about unending love. It wipes away the mask we put on for others and instead, embraces the exhale that comes from spilling your guts. It’s the moment in your favorite rom-com when they finally admit their feelings for one another, and kiss in a way that only seems to happen in movies; on Easy Crier, Olender plays both parts. There are moments of ease, and exploring the often fine line between funny and sad that makes Easy Crier a portal for relief, whether that’s through tears of joy or pain. It’s an album that takes each shattered, heartbroken piece and puts them back together to form a strangely beautiful mosaic. “It’s a love letter to everything I’ve lost,” she says. “And forms a real insight into how telling the truth has truly changed my life.” Here, Olender is finally letting herself feel everything all at once, no matter how uncomfortable or scary it can be.