The Revivalists

Frog Alley Brewing Company Presents The Revivalists!

This is a 21+ show.

Doors: 5:30

Show Time Schedule: TBA

The Revivalists have partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 per ticket goes to Rev Causes, a fund that supports the essential work of organizations dedicated to reviving and investing in our communities, our health, and our environment. By allocating a portion of our ticket sales, and through fan donations and a variety of fundraising efforts, we aim to assist these exciting organizations in building a better future.

For a long time, The Revivalists have been embraced as a good-times band, their swirl of indie

rock, soul, folk, and even a dash of hip-hop serving a soundtrack to many summer nights. Their

story, after all, has been one of youthful triumph, with a chance encounter between singer David

Shaw and guitarist Zack Feinberg steadily leading to an octet that rose from the dingiest dives to

the grandest American concert halls and amphitheaters. With PJ Howard and Andrew

Campanelli, they are a two-drummer powerhouse anchored by bassist George Gekas and buoyed

by horn man Rob Ingraham, keyboardist Michael Girardot, and pedal steel guitarist Ed Williams.

But all eight members are now firmly into adulthood, with seven of them fathers. Enter Get It

Honest, their sixth and most affecting album, a true grown-folks record built on songs about

cutting yourself clear of a past that only drags you down and embracing the parts of your present

that make you grateful to be here at all, like love and grace and salvation.

Let’s rewind, then, to the title track, the moment when Get It Honest truly began: When Shaw

finally woke up for real one morning in early 2023, he barely remembered the words he’d jotted

down sometime around 3 a.m. For more than a dozen years, The Revivalists singer had brought a

workmanlike tenacity to songwriting, trying to do a little every day so as to keep his proverbial

line in the creative waters. But the band was still three months away from releasing its fifth

album, Pour It Out Into the Night, while he and his wife, Sam, were still six months away from

becoming first-time parents. He was anxious, he admits, and maybe a little depressed.

Though nearly 20 years have now passed since Shaw last had a drink, the thick thread of

alcoholism that winds through his family still sometimes tugs on him in moments like these.

He’d been thinking about how a dram or a draft might make him feel better, at least temporarily,

when he stirred in the middle of the night to write down some lines: “Well, I’m so bored, so

bored of being sober/Maybe I’ll go downtown, to some bar down on Decatur.” He finished the

song the next day, its verses drawing the battle lines between what he has been and can still

become. It was the first time he’d ever had such a pre-dawn epiphany, the first time a song had

ever arrived so urgently and simply. That song—“Get It Honest,” of course—became the

record’s emotional and musical centerpiece, the point from which everything else on the mature

and magnetic Get It Honest radiates.

In the past, lots of songs from The Revivalists began only with an acoustic guitar and voice. But

as the band worked those old numbers up, that original germ would often recede or even

disappear completely, supplanted by saxophone and percussion, steel guitar and keys. This time,

though, The Revivalists quickly understood that the songs Shaw was writing—alone or with

friends like Andriu “Yàno” Yanovski and Eric Krasno or with bandmates including Campanelli,

Howard, and Feinberg—should retain that core, that the realizations within these words deserved

to sit in the spotlight. Even colossal opener “Heart Stop,” about persevering in the face of things

you love so much they threaten to tear you apart, keeps its center of tangled guitars, powerful

drums, and belt-your-heart-out vocals intact. “I’m not afraid of the future comin’ my way,” Shaw

howls en route to the climax, squaring up to whatever is to come. “I’m over wasting my time.”

"This one might hit a little different for everyone, and I love that. But for me, I’d say sometimes

you are caught between two loves—one that’s tearing you apart and one that you know is right,”

Shaw explains. “This song is the sleepless nights, the wreckage and the moment you finally

surrender to what you know is there for you.”

Some songs demanded that these skilled musicians do very little, perhaps only adding a trace of

percussion; others required players to try new things altogether, like when Feinberg shifted to

drums for the arcing and gorgeous acoustic closer, “Lay It on Me.” Only a few years ago,

squeezing eight egos into such patient and subtle songs likely wouldn’t have been possible, but

experience and solidarity have at last enabled it for The Revivalists. Being alone together again

with producer Rich Costey at Guilford Sound—the stunning studio in the verdant woods of

Vermont, where they also recorded Pour It Out Into the Night—helped. Where The Revivalists

have embraced multiple musical personalities on previous records, this one has a blessed

cohesion, as if the band has finally found how it wants to sound, at least for right now.

“We let the acoustic guitar be the heart of it all the way through, pretty much with every song. So

they just ring true to how they were written,” Shaw says. “It goes to the theme and the title—we

just let the skeletons dance.”

“Take a deep breath and remember,” Shaw sings late into “Lost and Found,” a folk-pop headrush

about reaching escape velocity with your past. “You don’t have to be who you are forever.” He

delivers that mantra like a newfound bit of gospel, announcing it as an axiom of collective

liberation. Get It Honest follows that lead. “Razorblades And Runways” views the past with

bittersweet introspection, Shaw lamenting the days he wasted chasing a thrill or his ego but

celebrating the way his family now keeps him moving forward. It is a twinkling bit of soft soul,

Ingraham’s flute lighting the way. And “Love’s the Only Thing” is a heartland rock wonder,

equal parts plea from an emotional abyss and a paean to the power of love to pull us out of it.

Get It Honest isn’t, though, blithely optimistic about the state of the world. The title track stares

directly into the dark and acknowledges what it would mean to give in. Shaw wrote “As of Now”

on New Year’s Day 2025, hours after a driver killed 14 people on Bourbon Street. “I want people

to know, with our music in general, we’re here with them, down in the trenches,” Shaw says. “I

don’t ever want to feel like an artist on a pedestal.” To wit, The Revivalists have long run Rev

Causes, a philanthropic fund that funnels portions of ticket sales to crucial causes like mental

health care, gun-violence reform, and environmental sustainability. With their words and their

actions, The Revivalists simply take the time and energy to remember to look up and look ahead,

to keep going.

Now that Get It Honest is done, Shaw is still grappling with what the title phrase means to him.

It is, on the surface, about the inheritance we get from our family, the way our genes and our

upbringing inevitably shape who we become, for better and worse. Now that he is a father who

sees fresh traces of himself in his daughter each day, it’s constantly on his mind. But maybe, he

admits, it’s about something more—perhaps the way we move through an increasingly wobbly

world, with little control over anything apart from our responses to it? These songs are about

those responses, then, about coming out on the other side of self-flagellation and doubt and

getting on with the living, as honestly as you can. The Revivalists have found their own

unexpected way toward whatever is up ahead. “This album,” Shaw says, “is about understanding

this point and learning to work with it like a potter works the clay. Our flaws and imperfections

are what ultimately make us human and beautiful.”