– Tickets are $6 Adv • $8 Door
Supporting his new album, The Edge of America, Thomas Oliver returns to Red Light Café for an evening of traditional country, folk and blues. Atlanta’s own Americana Outlaw The Last Gonzo opens the show.
After a lifetime in Atlanta, Thomas Oliver left his job in the city of his birth and settled on Tybee Island off the coast of Georgia. There, on the edge of America, he let the salt marsh, tidal creeks and ocean breezes do their magic. His first CD in seven years, The Edge of America, is the result. It’s a solid rendering of the best of traditional country music, with its natural blend of folk and blues.
Since moving to Tybee, Thomas has acquired a fan base by playing regularly at most of the live music venues on the island, from Bernie's Oyster House and the Rock House to Doc's Bar, North Beach Grill and Huc-a-poos, as well as Wild Wing's in Savannah and Uncle Bubba's on Wilmington Island. He is a producer of the Savannah Songwriters Series, which hosts two showcases for original music each month on Tybee and in Savannah.
With an odd mix of dark outlaw tales and a twisted wit The Last Gonzo composes western cowboy music with Mark Twain-esque lyricism. Wildly intelligent and strangely humorous the music is filled with whimsy and darkness. From running from the sheriff for sleeping with his wife to searching for a shaman (medicine man) in the hills of Mexico, there's always a unique story with an odd twist. Possibly one of the darkest and most twisted country albums, Pirates, Outlaws, Sheriffs, and Thieves — the new release from The Last Gonzo — is Outlaw Americana at its best.
Where the Beatniks and Hippies look to Kerouac and Ginsberg, The Last Gonzo takes to the road in a much more twisted fashion with the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Chuck Palahnuik and Mark Leyner. With an unapologetic sense of juxtaposition a love song can quickly become a murder ballad or a psychotic attempt at winning a girls heart while on your death bed. The music and melodies are reminiscent of David Allen Coe’s barroom ballads, Robert Earl Keen’s Main street story lines, and Willie Nelson’s cowboy tales with some of Jerry Jeff Walker's laid back humor and the iconic Ray Wylie Hubbard grit. Themes of pistols, trains, bandits and sheriffs run through the landscape of the music but in any song it is obvious that there is definitely a master storyteller behind it.