Soul'd Out Presents

CON BRIO with Double Dash

Sat April 2, 2022
( Doors: 8:00 pm ) SHOW: 9:00 pm PDT
Star Theater
13 NW Sixth Avenue, Portland, OR
Ages 21 and Up
$20.00

Con Brio @ Star Theater!
Doors: 8:00pm  //  Show: 9:00pm  //  Ages 21+.
with Double Dash

“Flat-out one of the best festival bands on the planet. Period." Paste Magazine

Named for an Italian musical direction meaning with spirit, Con Brio with featured singer Sarah Clarke at this show, is a San Francisco Bay Area seven-piece that plays energetic soul, psych-rock and R&B that’s as fresh and freethinking as the place they call home. With a tight, veteran band that “comes across like a party punk version of Sly and the Family Stone” (Consequence of Sound), Con Brio is known to convert anyone who sees their electric live show.

The band’s sophomore LP, Explorer (out July 6th, 2018 on Transistor), represents an impressive leap for the group PopMatters has called “the best new live band in America.” The album is a travelogue of sorts, written over the course of two years and one presidential election — all while the band was touring the globe (Japan, France, Australia, the Netherlands) and fielding questions about our leaders, our choices, our guns.

While Paradise spoke about inequality, turning a mirror on America in 2016, Explorer looks outward, urging hope in the face of cynicism, but ultimately presenting more questions than answers: What does it mean to represent America abroad during a time of unprecedented volatility at home?

Having proved themselves on an international stage (as well as at U.S. festivals like Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands and Austin City Limits), Con Brio also breaks new sonic ground on Explorer, expanding beyond raw energy and retro sounds toward a layered, contemporary production style. It’s a big record, with plenty of joy and more than a few growing pains. It sounds, unsurprisingly, like a band on the verge.

Con Brio

There’s a moment before each Con Brio show — before the backflips, the guitar solos, the buoyant horn lines over bass, drum and synth — when all seven band members come in for a huddle.  It’s a way to say grace; an acknowledgment of live music as a team sport; a moment of stillness before they explode.

“Let’s work,” they say, their heads bowed together. And then they do.

Named for an Italian musical direction meaning ‘with spirit,’ Con Brio is a San Francisco Bay Area band that plays soul, psych-rock and R&B as fresh and freethinking as the place they call home. With charismatic singer Ziek McCarter bringing “the dance moves, splits and all, of James Brown” (KQED) and a band that “comes across like a party punk version of Sly and the Family Stone” (Consequence of Sound), Con Brio is known to convert anyone who sees their electric live show.

Founded in 2013 by veteran players with vastly different musical backgrounds*, the band quickly became a favorite up and down the West Coast, then across the U.S., and then overseas in places like Japan and the Netherlands. In 2016, Con Brio’s debut LP Paradise paired uplifting dance party-starters (and some psychotropic electric guitar work from Benjamin Andrews) with powerful lyrics about inequality and the Black Lives Matter movement, instantly putting the band on the map for their earnest, inspiring, and thoroughly American ethos.