ALAMOSA — Society Hall is hosting a couple of the finest songwriters anywhere — Adam and Chris Carroll, from Austin, Texas, in concert at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 11.
The doors at 400 Ross Ave. in Alamosa will open at 6:30. Tickets are $20 in advance, or $25 at the door, and are available online at www.societyhall.org, or in Alamosa at the Green Spot at 711 State Ave. The concert will also stream live on the Society Hall Facebook page and You Tube channel.
The art of songwriting is deeply mysterious — how a particular and often simple combination of lyrics and music can yield something that can be so moving, transformative and even life changing. Even the best songwriters don't really know how it works, or why.
Leonard Cohen is quoted as saying, “If I knew where the good songs come from, I'd go there more often.”
Adam and Chris Carroll have gained a reputation as a couple of the highest practitioners of this mystery — crafting songs of everyday life and its challenges and shining a light on them in such a way that their listeners can carry that light forth into their own lives, finding the beauty and glory in even the simplest of things.
Would you like to hear a good story? Listen to any Adam Carroll song. His Texas peers sure have, over and over again, and are quick to heap superlatives on a stoic artist whose compositions provide a solitary glimpse into a verdant imagination.
“His lyrics are like a good book,” says Terri Hendrix. “They take you somewhere and leave you better than they found you.” Slaid Cleaves calls Carroll “the quintessential small-town songwriter,” and Jon Dee Graham says Carroll “may be the best songwriter that Texas ever produced.”
That’s some heady praise for a humble guy from Tyler to live up to — even a guy who’s already been honored with his own tribute album; but if any of that’s ever gone to his head, you sure wouldn’t know it from his down-to-earth, self-effacing stage presence and the way he just keeps on writing the kind of brilliantly crafted songs that leave audiences smiling and even the best of his fellow troubadours stumped as to how he does it.
You’ll find no bigger Adam fan though than the one who leaves him smiling in awe, night after night: his Canadian-born wife, Chris Carroll, a gifted singer and songwriter in her own right that he met a decade ago when playing a festival in her hometown of St. Catharines, Ontario. In 2019, the same year that Adam released his most recent solo album, “I Walked in Them Shoes,” the couple released their first duo album, the excellent “Good Farmer.” It’s the perfect snapshot of how well they complement each other, both in life and onstage.
“As a vocalist, she has the capacity to add just the right mixture of dark and light shades to whatever the canvas of words and music call for in any given song,” Adam says of Chris. “As a writer, she’s sensitive to the story in a song, and she’s not afraid to follow the poetry wherever it is meant to go. I can say that I’m a better musician and writer for having shared the stage with her, and a better person for having married her. She’s a treasure.”
For more information, visit online www.societyhall.org.
