Larkin Poe at First Ave (05-16-2025)

Tour Dates

• 05/17 – Chicago, IL – The Vic Theatre
• 05/22-05/26 – Cumberland, MD – DelFest
• 05/29 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
• 05/30 – Atlanta, GA – The Eastern
• 05/31-06/01 – Lexington, KY – Railbird Music Festival
• 06/01 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel
• 06/22 – Asbury Park, NJ – Asbury Lanes
• 07/23-07/27 – Floyd, VA – FloydFest
• 09/04-09/07 – Las Vegas, NV – Big Blues Bender
• 10/03 – Miramar Beach, FL – Moon Crush Avett Moon
• 10/09-10/12 – Nashville, TN – Tommy Emmanuel’s Guitar Camp
• 10/17 – Manchester, UK – Manchester Academy
• 10/18 – Glasgow, UK – O2 Academy
• 10/19 – Bristol, UK – Bristol Beacon
• 10/21 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo
• 10/22 – Birmingham, UK – O2 Institute
• 10/24 – Paris, France – Salle Pleyel
• 10/25 – Tilburg, Netherlands – 013 Poppodium
• 10/26 – Cologne, Germany – E-Werk
• 10/28 – Oslo, Norway – Sentrum Scene
• 10/29 – Stockholm, Sweden – Circus
• 10/30 – Frederiksberg, Denmark – Falkoner Center
• 11/01 – Berlin, Germany – Tempodrom
• 11/02 – Warsaw, Poland – Klub Stodola
• 11/04 – Vienna, Austria – Gasometer
• 11/05 – Munich, Germany – Tonhalle
• 11/08 – Geneva, Switzerland – Salle De L’Alhambra
• 11/09 – Nimes, France – La Paloma
• 11/12 – Lisbon, Portugal – Coliseu Dos Recreios
• 11/14 – Madrid, Spain – Sala Riviera
• 11/15 – Barcelona, Spain – Razzmatazz 1
• 11/16 – Bordeaux, France – Le Rocher de Palmer
• 11/18 – Clermont-Ferrand, France – Le Cooperative de Mai
• 11/19 – La Rochelle, France – La Sirene
• 11/21 – Antwerp, Belgium – De Roma

“It’s crowded everywhere!” So said the couple behind me at the back of the venue. It was crowded and the people that arrived on time should have come an hour early if they wanted to see some hot Southern blues on a rather cold, rainy night.

Amythyst Kiah opened up the evening with a solo set. Born in Chattanooga, TN, she now lives in the college town of Johnson City, TN.

We last saw Kiah at the Parkway Theater in Nov, 2024, stating that she: “…sprinkled her set with similar hilarious (self-proclaimed) nerdy rants and pop culture references. The music, which was a combination of blues, folk, rock, country, Americana, was so lovely that I didn’t catch the name of the movie she started describing…”

Kiah describes her music as Southern Gothic, which gives her ample room to explore the musical genres above. A self-proclaimed nerd, her songs from her latest album, Still + Bright, ranged from an ode to the television show The Haunting of Bly Manor, “Silk and Petals” to one dedicated to her favorite literary genre, cosmic horror, “Gods Under the Mountain.”

Kiah then shifted gears and said that there was a pop song that would not leave her head. So she wondered how it would translate on banjo. For the record, Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” does play in a folk setting.

By far her best songs were “Wild Turkey” which addresses a family tragedy and “Black Myself”, a song she wrote for as part of a collaboration with Allison Russell, Rhiannon Giddens and Leyla McCalla called Our Native Daughters. She said she was given the task to encapsulate 400 years of the Black experience in a three-minute song.

What was full at the onset of Kiah’s set was downright packed by the time Larkin Poe took the stage. And those who had come early had a front row seat to the powerful start to what would be an electric evening.

We last saw Larkin Poe at Knuckleheads in Jan, 2024, stating: “Originally from Atlanta and currently Nashville-based, they are descendants of celebrated author Edgar Allan Poe, named for their four-times removed grandfather, who was Poe’s cousin, and came roaring out of the gate with the rousing ‘Strike Gold’.”

Rousing is a perfect description, as sisters, Rebecca and Megan Lovell, put their spin on roots music with a gritty, soulful sound with their own southern heritage. If the blues is a drug, the Lovell sisters were mainlining the crowd with “Nowhere Fast” and “Kick the Blues.”

When we saw them in 2024 Larkin Poe was supporting their Grammy Award-winning album Blood Harmony. They are back on the road with Bloom, their eighth studio album, which Rebecca describes as “… finding oneself amidst the noise of the world, about wholeheartedly embracing the flaws and idiosyncrasies that make us real.”

Rebecca said that they were going to play her favorite song on the new album. She said the song was about not knowing what’s coming down the pipeline, and that she was going to have a baby later this summer. “So, this is for all the ‘Mockingbirds’ in the tree.”

Then they went right back to the nasty with “Bad Spell” before moving onto an acoustic set with a dobro and mandolin, harkening back to the time when they started out as the Lovell Sisters, winning a contest on A Prairie Home Companion with their older sister, Jessica.

Then back to “If God is a Woman”, the highlight of the evening that had Meghan and her steel guitar roaming the stage with an extended solo and Kiah coming out midway to take a verse. And if that wasn’t enough, they played “Bolt Cutters & The Family Name”, a song infused with female empowerment.

Even though the Lovell sisters are in their mid-thirties, the crowd was filled with a lot of gray hair and creaky knees. One person in the audience was an elderly lady in a reserved seat. She was comfortably seated, but rocking, and it was a personal highlight to see her sing: