Katie & the Honky Tonks / Big Begonias / Alex Dupree

About this event

Hailing from Waterloo, Iowa, Katie and the Honky Tonks are a four-piece original honky tonk band owing its sound to 1960s Nashville. Their songs lean heavy on real stories, catchy hooks, and rhythms built for crowded dance floors. Fronted by Katie Sires on vocals and rhythm guitar, with Jesse Cotton on lead guitar, Johnny Love on bass, and Luke Sires on drums, they were named 2025 Iowa Music Awards Country Artist of the Year, and were considered for a Grammy after releasing their debut album, Ain’t No Shame. Proof that honky tonk is still here and very much alive. Their debut album, Ain’t No Shame, OUT NOW builds on the success of their 2024 EP, Two-Steppin’ in the Shower, which solidified their place in the Midwest country music scene. The EP earned widespread recognition, with Iowa Public Radio saying, “The EP sounds more like Nashville 1964, not Nashville 2024.” Lonesome Highway, in a review of “Ain’t No Shame’ says, “Katie and the Honky Tonks join the ever-growing canon of women like Summer Dean, Emily Nenni, Sarah Gayle Meech and Kimmi Bitter, to name but a few, that are representing genuine honky tonk music.” https://www.katieandthehonkytonks.net/ Big Begonias took root in 2020, creating transcendental folk and honky tonk music, featuring original songs by Gabrielle Kouri. Gabrielle (Awful Purdies) plays guitar, banjo, and sings. George Spielbauer (Cedar County Cobras) plays various guitars. Bass guitarist Dave “Chief” Lumberg (Shoe Money, Mayflies) and drummer Daniel Miller (Lake of Wire, Kleenexgirlwonder) hold down the groove. https://bigbegonias.bandcamp.com/ Alex Dupree is a songwriter based in Austin, TX. He released his first album in 2005, a piece of shambolic bedroom folk made with a group of friends called the Trapdoor Band. NPR called it “both poetic and political.” Over the course of three LPs with this group, and one under the pseudonym Idyl, Alex would root himself firmly but idiosyncratically in the traditions of American songwriting.…

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