Win Tickets ($80): Iris DeMent @ Aladdin Theater | w/ Pieta Brown, Country Folk
We are giving away a pair of tickets to Iris DeMent @ Aladdin Theater on August 10. To win, comment below on this post why you’d like to attend. Winner will be drawn and emailed August 7.
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From our sponsors:
Iris DeMent
August 10, 2023
Doors 6:30PM, Show 7:30PM | $40 | All Ages
More info: event.etix.com
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Portland, OR 97202
On her transcendent new record, Workin’ On A World, Iris DeMent faces the modern world — as it is right now — with its climate catastrophe, pandemic illness, and epidemic of violence and social injustice — and not only asks us how we can keep working towards a better world, but implores us to love each other, despite our very different ways of seeing. Her songs are her way of healing our broken inner and outer spaces.
With an inimitable voice as John Prine described, “like you’ve heard, but not really,” and unforgettable melodies rooted in hymns, gospel, and old country music, she’s simply one of the finest singer-songwriters in America as well as one of our fiercest advocates for human rights. Her debut record Infamous Angel, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary, was recently named one of the “greatest country albums of all time” by Rolling Stone, and the two albums that followed, My Life and The Way I Should, were both nominated for GRAMMYs. From there, DeMent released three records on her own label, Flariella Records, the most recent of which, The Trackless Woods (2015), was hailed as “a quietly powerful triumph” by The Guardian. DeMent’s songs have also been featured in film (True Grit) and television (The Leftovers) and recorded by numerous artists. Fittingly, she received the Americana Music Trailblazer Award in 2017.
Workin’ On A World, her seventh album, started with the worry that woke DeMent up after the 2016 elections: how can we survive this? “Every day some new trauma was being added to the old ones that kept repeating themselves, and like everybody else, I was just trying to bear up under it all,” she recalls. She returned to a truth she had known since childhood: music is medicine. “My mom always had a way of finding the song that would prove equal to whatever situation we were facing. Throughout my life, songs have been lending me a hand. Writing songs, singing songs, putting them on records, has been a way for me to extend that hand to others.”
With grace, courage, and soul, Iris shares 13 anthems — love songs, really — to and for our broken inner and outer worlds. DeMent sets the stage for the album with the title track in which she moves from a sense of despair towards a place of promise. “Now I’m workin’ on a world I may never see / Joinin’ forces with the warriors of love / Who came before and will follow you and me.”
The result is a hopeful album — shimmering with brilliant flashes of poignant humor and uplifting tenderness — that speaks the truth, “in the way that truth is always hopeful,” she explains. Reflecting on the lyrics of the song “The Sacred Now” (“see these walls/ let’s bring ‘em on down / it’s not a dream; it’s the sacred now”), DeMent is reminded of Jesus saying the Kingdom of God is within you and the Buddhist activist monk Thich Nhat Hanh saying the rose is in the compost; the compost is in the rose. On Workin’ On A World, Iris DeMent demonstrates that songs are the healing and the healing arises through song.
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I have been a big fan ever since her duet with John Prine
I would absolutely love to win tickets to see Iris DeMent! Her voice is one of a kind and I would love to take my daughter to see her show.
I’ve loved Iris Dement’s music for 25 years and would love to see her live.
My girlfriend is a huge fan and I know she would enjoy this concert! Thank you pdx pipeline!
She is an icon, I would love to go!
I love Iris Dement!
Love this woman and her music. Her music warms my heart.
Would love to attend
She’s one of a kind. I’d love to go and take another music-loving friend.
I love Iris and would love to see this show!
I’ve loved her first album for 30 years, I would love to see her!!!
long time fan of her incredible voice.
What a great opportunity to see her in PDX! I love Iris Dement and have never had the chance to see her live. Please!!
Would love to attend!
Would love to attend!!!
Wonderful talent!
Id love to see Iris as a early birthday treat❤️
My wife and I love Iris! We’d love to go to celebrate our anniversary.
Would love to go and celebrate our last ~ month as a family of 2! Little bean on the way 🙌🏼
It would make me hotter than Mohave in my heart to win these tickets!
What a great concert this will be! I first hears Iris Dement in Madison, WI many years ago.
It would be great to hear songs from her new album and listening to Pita Brown makes this twice as great!
Iris DeMent is amazing!
Me, me, me, me me~ in song, of course.
I’ve been a before anyone else. I’m the one.
Thanks!
Lisa
I LOVE her and her music always makes me cry, but in a good way! I would love to be able to see her perform.
What a lovely evening this would be!
Her voice is unlike any other. I would love to hear her live.
This would be wonderful
Oooh I would so love to see this!
I am a huge fan of singer songwriters who speak to the the heart to everyday people. Also love Pieta Brown a renowned singer songwriter in her own right!