SIOUX CITY, Iowa (April 10, 2017) – Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City announced today that 11-time Grammy-nominated artist, Jamey Johnson, will perform in Anthem on June 23. Also making an appearance on the Anthem stage this June is country band Whitey Morgan and the 78’s.

• Friday, June 9 – Whitey Morgan and the 78’s
• Friday, June 23 – Jamey Johnson

Tickets go on sale Friday, April 14 at 10 a.m. and can be purchased at the Rock Shop or online at https://tickets.hardrockcasinosiouxcity.com. Events in Anthem are for guests 21 and older.

WHITEY MORGAN AND THE 78’s

FRIDAY, JUNE 9 | 8 P.M. | ANTHEM

The history of country music has no shortage of characters hit by hard luck: the hard-working man who can’t seem to make ends meet, the heart-of-gold drunk who just can’t seem to put down the bottle, the woman who wants to do right but ends up, time and again, doing wrong. No matter the tragedies at the center of the songs, in most cases those characters come off like just that — characters; inventions of either a particularly gifted songwriter looking to spin a tall tale or a lazy one looking to pad out an album. But in the case of Whitey Morgan, those characters — the drinker, the troublemaker, the struggling, hard-working man — all seem arrestingly real.

That’s largely because the stories on Sonic Ranch — a big, nasty, whiskey-slugging, bare-knuckle bruiser of a country record — are pulled from Morgan’s own back pages.

A native of the economically depressed city of Flint, Michigan, Morgan practically bleeds straight into each of the album’s 10 songs, making for a kind of rough-and-tumble honky-tonk noir record that can pack the dance floor while doing Bukowski proud. Morgan opens the record at a loss — “I gave up on Jesus/ When momma gave up on me/ So much for the family life/ It’s just me and the whiskey,” he growls in the album’s opening moments — and spends the rest of it fighting to keep the rest from being wrenched away, bottle by his side, fists clenched. “If I’m going down tonight,” he defiantly sings, “I’m going down drinkin.'”

On the grizzled, smoky cover of Waylon Jennings’ “Goin’ Down Rocking,” he digs his heels in against anyone who would dare try to steamroll him. On “Low Down on the Backstreets,” over staggering piano and glistening apostrophes of pedal steel, he’s pushing back against a broken heart with country songs and dancing girls. And on the harrowing cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Waitin’ ‘Round to Die,” he’s staring down mortality with his jaw set and his eyes narrowed. “I have loved that song since the first time I heard it,” Morgan says. “It’s a dark masterpiece that looks in on a not-so-perfect, but not uncommon, life story. I did my best to put my own heart, soul and experiences into my version. I had a vision of making it sound as if it could be the score for the next Sergio Leone classic.” Morgan achieved his vision; with its ominous, shadowy guitars and spectral lap steel, the song serves as the album’s grim, potent centerpiece.

Even in its lighter moments — the holler-along revelry of “Ain’t Gonna Take It Anymore”; the tender ‘Good Timin’ Man,” which tackles the pressures of love and persona — Sonic Ranch embraces the grit while maintaining a determinedly unvarnished sound. Much of that has to do with the relaxed atmosphere in the studio that gives the record its name. “My manager told me about this place he had been to outside of El Paso called Sonic Ranch,” Morgan says. “That was a real departure from the usual studio vibe. My manager knows how much I do not like the ‘studio’ thing — I never feel comfortable. This was exactly what I needed: a laid-back place with great gear where we could make a great record.”
 

JAMEY JOHNSHON
FRIDAY, JUNE 23 | 8 P.M. | ANTHEM

Eleven-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Jamey Johnson is “one of the greatest country singers of our time,” according to the Washington Post. He is one of only a few people in the history of country music to win two Song of the Year Awards from both the CMA and ACMs.

His 2008 album, That Lonesome Song, was certified platinum for 1 million in sales, and his 2010 ambitious double album, The Guitar Song, received a gold certification.

In addition, he won two Song of the Year Trophies, for “Give It Away” and “In Color,” both from the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. He has received tremendous praise from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal and other publications, many of which have hailed his albums as masterpieces.

In 2012, the Alabama native released his fifth studio album, a tribute project to late songwriter Hank Cochran. The Grammy-nominated Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran paired him with Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Ray Price, Elvis Costello, George Strait, Vince Gill and Merle Haggard.

In 2013, the Nashville Scene’s 13th annual Country Music Critics’ Poll named it the year’s best album. (Two years earlier, the same poll named Johnson’s The Guitar Song as the year’s best album, and Johnson himself as best male vocalist, best songwriter and artist of the year.)