“You can’t play a sad song on the banjo,” Steve Martin once keenly observed, and his maxim holds true in the music of Riverwest’s perky, ramshackle seven-piece The Candeliers. With a folky, symphonic sound that nods to Dixieland, old-time jazz and the pomp-laden compositions of the Elephant 6 collective, they write bittersweet odes to times long past, then cheerfully play the hell out of them. After gigging regularly for years, the group finally releases its debut, self-titled full-length tonight at a CD release show they’ll share with The Goodnight Loving and Heidi Spencer and her latest ensemble, The Rare Birds.
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