Cavalier Theater
118 5th Ave • La Crosse, WI
608-782-2111
Upcoming Events
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Bookings via booking@cavaliertheater.com
Follow us on Facebook • Twitter
Bookings via booking@cavaliertheater.com
Beyond the fog of burning blunts, the sea of whiskey, and forest of empties, you’ll find two sweethearts in a Nashville garage. Just as they were yesterday, the day before that, and years prior. Searching for the perfect combination of string plucking, button pushing, and knob turning to craft the ideal sound to make you forget your world and step into theirs. The aforementioned sweethearts are Jordan Kelley and Jason Huber; known to most as "Cherub". It all began in 2010 at Middle Tennessee State University. The two met as Jason was playing around town with local bands and Jordan was crafting what would become known as their first album, "Man of the Hour". A few years later, it was the song "Doses & Mimosas" that caught the attention of the public and gained the interest of Columbia Records, who signed the duo in 2013. Their 4 year major label run brought their fans two LP’s, "Year of the Caprese" and "Bleed Gold Piss Excellence", while also sending them around the world playing festivals such as Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, Outside Lands, Osheaga, Summer Camp, Summer Sonic, and headlining 4 US tours. Now, a gold record and 130 million Spotify streams later, the bond between them remains "unfuckwithable", as they construct their newest batch of genre-defying anthems. From the streets of Bangkok, to the dive bars of Nashville, Cherub has been drawing inspiration from everything around them. "Each one of these songs was written and recorded at different times, in different places across the world", says Jason. "It seems to make sense, releasing each new song individually, giving us a chance to take you to where we were in our heads when it was created and pair each track with a something visual to tie it together." Straying from the common record label strategy of releasing a single or two followed by an album, Cherub has decided to give each new song it’s own time in the sun. "We don’t want anything to get lost", says Jordan. The new collection of work spans multiple genres while still keeping with the same style of addictively playful melodies Cherub fans have grown to love. It’s a "song first, production later" approach at creating music that may bring some ears back to an earlier time in the duo’s existence. "There’s a certain simplicity in these new songs that remind me of the first few Cherub records", says Jason. There’s no doubt that the latest Cherub efforts will win over their existing audience and draw new listeners to their established brand of debauchery. From your ears to your heart, like searching for room on their bodies for a new tattoo, they’ll find a way. $25 adv/$30 DOS Doors 7:00/Music 8:00 All ages
As part of the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) weekend, we're throwing our annual two night party to welcome all the farmers to town.The People Brothers Band (Madison) are a staple of the Midwest’s vibrant music scene, the PBB have blossomed into a unique brand of Rhythm and Soul dedicated to uplifting the hearts and minds of its friends and fans. The PBB’s core mission is to bring people together by spreading love through music. Coupled with their energetic live shows and infectious stage presence, they are guaranteed to bring the party.The Smokin Bandits (La Crosse) take a unique combination of Rock & Bluegrass to a jam-like frenzy before bringing you back down with their sweet and well-placed country & Midwestern vocals, the Smokin' Bandits have been a staple on a powerful Midwest music scene with their high-energy form of original music dubbed "Grass n' Roll." The band brings a powerhouse performance each time they take the stage sure to make you move, shake, and promising for every show to be one of different form.Doors 7:00/Music 8:00$10All ages
As part of the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) weekend, we're throwing our annual two night party to welcome all the farmers to town.Feed the Dog (Appleton) is an eclectic and action-packed, high-energy, jam-rock-grass band. The Appleton based group features masterfully crafted fiddle, Kottke like finger pickin' acoustic six and twelve string guitar, funky bass lines, and percussive soul.Barbaro (Minneapolis/Winona) music is at once lively and intimate, perfect for twirling around the dance floor or cooking with someone you love, with their captivating songwriting, layered over textures pulled from bluegrass, jazz, pop, and country-western. Andy Hughes and the Mighty Few (La Crosse) is the Americana/folk solo project for the front man of hometown favorites TUGG, with heartfelt lyrics with a country flare inspired by the greats John Prine, Greg Brown and Johnny Cash.Doors 7:00/Music 8:00$10All ages
Mason Jennings was born on the Island of Hawaii, but at an early age his family moved to the opposite of tropical, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At 13, he started playing guitar and writing songs. Mason later dropped out of high school and decided to move to Minneapolis to pursue his musical career. Jennings made this decision after a friend of his father’s sent him cassette tapes of the Replacements, Jayhawks, and Prince. After non-stop listening he felt like it would be a great home for his music. Jennings produced his self-titled debut album in 1997 on a Tascam analog four-track in the living room of a rented home, playing all instruments himself. In October 1998, he began a weekly gig at Minneapolis' 400 Bar. The two-week gig ended up lasting four months. Birds Flying Away, Mason's second record, revealed his penchant for singing first-person narratives of imaginary rustic characters. In 2002, Jennings released a studio album, Century Spring, and a "fans only" collection of acoustic songs, Simple Life. Mason released all three albums (and re-released his earlier albums) on his own record label, Architect Records. In 2004, Mason released Use Your Voice, which included the songs "Keepin' It Real," ostensibly written at the request of Shrek 2 producers (but not used in the film), and "The Ballad of Paul and Sheila," an acoustic dirge for late Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone. Later that year came a DVD entitled Use Your Van, which chronicled the recording of Use Your Voice and the promotional tour that followed. Andy Grund filmed the DVD. In June of 2005, Jennings signed with Glacial Pace, a subsidiary of Sony's Epic Records headed by Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock. Minnesota's Star Tribune credited Brock with convincing Mason to sign after he opened for several Modest Mouse shows in 2004. Jennings had long avoided the major labels, citing desires to maintain creative control and dodge big-label politics. Mason recorded his sixth album, Boneclouds, at Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, MN with producer Noah Georgeson. Jennings recorded two Bob Dylan songs "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" which Christian Bale lip-synched in the film “I'm Not There”. In early 2008, Mason signed with Jack Johnson's record label, Brushfire Records. Jennings released In the Ever in May 2008. The title was inspired by his son referring to where he was before he was born as, "In the ever". Blood of Man soon followed and received a coveted 4-Star review in Rolling Stone, who also cited, “What makes Mason Jennings one of the best singer songwriters you’ve never heard of is his ragged intimate voice and his simple ruminations on God, war, hope and gratitude.” In 2010, Live at First Ave., his first live album, was released. Later that same year, Jennings released The Flood, an album made up of songs he had recorded in the 1990s on a cassette tape he had lost. A friend sent a copy of the tape to Mason and after rediscovering the songs, he decided to re-record them in a stripped down fashion to stay true to their intent. In 2011, he released Minnesota, his first new album of original songs since 2009's Blood of Man. The single from the record "Raindrops on the Kitchen Floor” Jennings explains is "one of those songs that kind of wrote itself, I felt the only thing it needed was a secret weapon in the chorus. So I asked my friend, Jason Schwartzman from Coconut Records to help me out." On November 12, 2013, he released Always Been. The first single from the album was "Lonely Street", was followed by "Wilderness". He released Wild Dark Metal in 2016. He got divorced and after taking some time off to focus on painting, to recover from depression and to heal from agoraphobia, he began touring again. He remarried in 2018 and released an album of love songs inspired by his new relationship, Songs From When We Met, available now. Doors 7:00/Music 8:00 All Ages $20 adv/$25 DOS
Leo Kottke is an iconic acoustic guitarist widely revered as a master of his instrument. He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. Focusing primarily on instrumental composition and playing, Kottke also sings sporadically, in an unconventional yet expressive baritone described by himself as sounding like "geese farts on a muggy day". In concert, Kottke intersperses humorous and often bizarre monologues with vocal and instrumental selections from throughout his career, played solo on his 6- and 12-string guitars. Doors 7:00/Music 8:00 GA Seating: $35 Adv/$40 DOS Premium Seating: $50 Adv/$55 DOS All ages
Hugely influential alt-country pioneers Son Volt will be stopping by the Cavalier Theater while on tour to promote their heavily anticipated new album "Union" which will be out March 29th. Son Volt's music ranges from quiet folk/country ballads reminiscent of Bob Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" album, to barhouse rockers in the spirit of Neil Young with Crazy Horse. Critically acclaimed and with a ferverant loyal following, Son Volt have been one of the most revered roots rock Americana bands over the past twenty years. Doors 7:00 / Music 8:00 $20 adv / $25 DOS All ages
Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 Todd Snider One morning near the end of August, Todd Snider was relaxing with a visitor on the back porch of his house just outside Nashville, drinking coffee and shooting the breeze while his dog, Cowboy Jim, took a nap nearby. After awhile, Snider said to his guest, “I’ve got an album’s worth of songs, and I think the songs are telling me to make a folk record.” This was a surprising bit of news considering he had spent the last six years making rock albums of one kind or another. But Snider was feeling as if he had “maybe drifted too far from the shore.” He was feeling the pull to startover, to go back to what he was doing when he first began, to return to his roots as a folksinger. If Snider needed any further evidence that was the direction he should pursue, he got it a half hour later. Back inside his home office, he checked his email and had one from his manager informing him he had just received an offer to play the 2019 Newport Folk Festival, an event he had never done. Snider mentioned he had been listening to Woody Guthrie’s Library of Congress Recordings, then crossed the room to the turntable and put the needle down on side one of the record. “Woody Guthrie sometimes gets me reset on why you do a song, instead of how, ”Snider explains of the man who has long been a touchstone for him. “When I was young, there was something about him that made me want to do it. So once or twice a year, I’ll go back to him, I’ll go back to the source.” Guthrie famously had the words “This machine kills fascists” printed on his guitar, and on several of the songs on Snider’s new album, Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3, he squarely aims his guitar at the creeping fascism he sees in America. He had been wanting to make a political record since 2016, and although only half the songs lean in that direction, there is one constant throughout the album: a man, his guitar, and the truth. Snider has long been recognized as one of his generation’s most gifted and engaging songwriters, so it’s no surprise he has returned with a brilliant set of songs — and make no mistake, Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 contains some of his best work as a writer. But what really jumps out on the album is Snider’s growth as a musician and vocalist. He plays all the instruments on the record, and his guitar work and harmonica playing are nothing short of exceptional; not only full of feeling, but highly skilled. In regards to his guitar playing on the record, Snider says he wanted to take everything he’s learned over the past 30 years and play the way he used to play really well. As far as his vocals on the album are concerned, Snider is singing with more confidence than ever, a confidence born in part from his time with Hard Working Americans doing nothing but sing. His stirring vocal performances range from slurring blues mumble to Dylanesque talking blues to gravely, honest ache. Of the five songs on which Snider serves up his humorous brand of socio-political commentary, three are performed in the talking blues style: “Talking Reality Television Blues,” a hilariously accurate short history of television; “The Blues on Banjo,” a bad case of the blues caused by the sorry state of everything from the crooked international monetary-military-industrial complex to the spineless politicians who serve it and which references “Blue Suede Shoes,” Richard Lewis, and Townes Van Zandt; and “A Timeless Response to Current Events,” a brilliant bit of wordplay on which he calls bullshit on faux patriotism, crooked capitalism, and lying politicians. Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires contributed backing vocals on the latter two songs. There are two other songs on the album featuring Snider’s socio-political points of view: “Just Like Overnight,” about the surprising inevitability of change, and “Framed,” written from the point of view of the framed "first dollar bill" in a bar, a point of view that shows doing the right thing doesn't pay. There also are three songs with a music theme. If not for the events that led to the writing of one of those songs, “The Ghost of Johnny Cash,” there almost certainly would be no Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3. After a visit to Cash Cabin Studio for a Loretta Lynn session in 2015 where she recorded a song they cowrote, Snider began having a recurring dream about the studio that featured the Man in Black himself. The dream led him to book time at the studio and ultimately inspired him to write “The Ghost of Johnny Cash,” which tells the story of Loretta Lynn dancing with Cash’s ghost outside the studio in the middle of the night. As he did on much of the record, Snider played the century-old Martin that had long been Johnny Cash’s favorite instrument on that song. Snider paid tribute to Cash’s longtime friend and confidante in another of the music-themed songs, “Cowboy Jack Clement’s Waltz. ”Inspired by the iconic recordman’s oft-quoted maxims regarding the art of recording, the song achingly laments Clement’s passing, while touchingly celebrating his legacy. The album opens with the other song with a music theme, “Working on a Song.” It’s an existential exercise, a song Snider wrote about writing a song called “Where Do I Go Now That I’m Gone,” an idea he actually has been working on for thirty years, but which remains unfinished. There are also two songs that are personal in nature: “Watering Flowers in the Rain,” which was inspired by a former associate of Snider’s whose nickname was “Elvis,” and “Like a Force of Nature,” a philosophical reflection on the orbital nature of friendships. Isbell also added harmony vocals to “Like a Force of Nature.” If Snider is anything, he is a true artist, and he reminds us of that on Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3. At a point in time when the world has never been more complicated and confusing, with people getting louder and louder, Snider did a 180, went back to his roots as a folksinger, to a simpler, quieter form of expression; and it might be what the world is waiting to hear: just a man, his guitar, and the truth. Doors 7:00/Music 8:00 $25 adv/$30 DOS All ages
The Mersey Beatles are a Beatles tribute band who are from the same British city of Liverpool where the Beatles are from. For over 15 years, they have had a weekly residency performing at the infamous Cavern Club which was made famous as the place the Beatles got their start. For their US tour, they will be performing Beatles songs from all eras, complete with dressing up like the Fab Four, during the first set, with the second set performing the album Abbey Road in it's entirety celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest albums of all time. Doors 6:00/Music 7:00 $32 adv/$35 DOS/$50 VIP All ages