Tickets: $15-$18
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For a decade, Dixon helmed the critically acclaimed The Gabe Dixon Band; originally formed as a quintet at the University of Miami and last heard on record as a trio on their 2008 self-titled release for Fantasy Records / Concord Music Group. The album earned accolades from Paste, The Village Voice, American Songwriter and Performing Songwriter among many others, and virtually the entire album was licensed for use on primetime television. In addition, one of the songs, “Find My Way” was featured as the main title theme for the smash-hit Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds film The Proposal. But, in the Autumn of 2009, when the band exited Seattle’s Benaroya Hall stage to a standing ovation, it would no longer be “The” and “Band,” but only Gabe Dixon. Says Dixon: “Working together over the last ten years, I think we all felt we had made the creative statement we wanted to make and it was time for me to jump into something unfamiliar and uncomfortable, something that would break me open creatively.” Adding, “If I’m living in the moment and I don’t know what’s next, usually something good will happen.”
Just one month off the road, Dixon’s mind quickly turned from bringing a crowd to its feet to putting a baby to sleep, becoming a father for the first time. The odd waking hours of a young dad were filled with a flood of new musical ideas that would ultimately become One Spark and set the stage for an unexpected call from producer Marshall Altman (Matt Nathanson, Kate Voegele, Marc Broussard). Says Altman: “I’d become more than a little obsessed with Gabe’s voice over the prior year. I’d listened to his last album on almost a daily basis, and his songs became a source of creative inspiration for me. Just a pure emotional current running through them that reached me, as clearly as any of my favorite music ever had. I was mid-sentence, telling my wife how badly I wanted to find an artist ‘like Gabe Dixon’ to produce, when she stopped me, and said ‘why don’t you just find Gabe Dixon?’”
Recorded in Los Angeles with new producer Altman and a stellar new cast of players, One Spark significantly broadens Dixon’s palette. These songs rock and Dixon’s fierce, open-hearted piano playing leads the way: “Unlike previous albums, going in, the arrangements & demos were very loose. That first week, we’d run through the song a few times, record the last pass, and move on to the next song.”
Immediate but lasting, fresh yet familiar, One Spark is the milestone first step in the next chapter of Gabe Dixon’s musical legacy. And as album opener “Strike” promises that “one little spark can make a thousand more degrees,” One Spark promises that Gabe Dixon will be striking a chord with listeners for many years to come.
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