Ryan Montbleau Band
Thursday, November 13
Doors 7pm / Show 8pm
$27 Member / $30 General Admission Advance / $35 GA Day of Show (plus fees)
All ages / Standing

A relentless road warrior and masterful wordsmith, Ryan Montbleau has spent the better part of thirty years cultivating a devoted audience on the strength of his ecstatic live shows and exhilarating sonic versatility. He’s collaborated with artists as diverse as Trombone Shorty, Galactic, Steel Pulse, Tall Heights, Martin Sexton, Anders Osborne, and George Porter, Jr; shared bills with the likes of Tedeschi Trucks Band, Ani DiFranco, Todd Snider, The Wood Brothers, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Mavis Staples; and racked up more than 150 million streams on Spotify alone. NPR’s Mountain Stage compared his “eloquent, soulful songwriting” to Bill Withers and James Taylor, while Relix celebrated his “poetic Americana,” and The Boston Herald raved that “he’s made a career of confident, danceable positivity.”

Montbleau’s freewheeling new album finds him exploring the full spectrum of his influences like never before, touching on folk, rock, funk, soul, hip-hop, and reggae, all with a preternatural ease that belies the intensely focused craftsmanship behind it. The songs are sprawling and unpredictable, grappling with a modern world perpetually teetering on the edge of chaos, but the performances are relentlessly optimistic, insisting on hope and joy in the face of it all. The result is Montbleau’s most vulnerable and cathartic work yet, an album that acknowledges the inevitability of doubt and pain while at the same time celebrating our limitless capacity for growth and love.

---3S Artspace is supported in part by grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts; the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and NHCF's Geoffrey E. Clark and Martha Fuller Clark Fund; and Little Bay Fund.

Thank you to our lead sponsors: AC Hotel Portsmouth, The Brook, The Kane Company/Tidemark, Katzman Contemporary Projects, MacEdge, Raka, Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel and Stirling Brandworks.