Israel Nash returns to the Netherlands in January with "Ozarker"

Israel Nash releases "Ozarker" and will return to the Netherlands with it in January. 

Nash may live in the Texas Hill Country, but he’ll always be an Ozarker at heart. “I was born and raised in small-town Missouri,” Nash reflects. “All the people and the stories and the music that shaped me come from that part of the country, and I could feel it calling back to me on this album.”  

Recorded with producer Kevin Ratterman (My Morning Jacket, Ray LaMontagne), Nash’s rousing new collection, Ozarker, is indeed an ode to his roots, but more than that, it’s a meditation on love and family, on the beauty and the pain we pass down through generations, on the ties that bind us through good times and bad. The music here harkens back to the heartland rock that Nash grew up on Petty, Springsteen, Seger with larger-than-life guitars and anthemic melodies, and the lyrics are similarly cinematic, painting captivating portraits of everyday men and women doing their best to get by with dignity and self-respect.

Some of the characters come directly from Nash’s own family history, others from second-hand accounts, but all share a distinctly Midwestern resilience, their hopes and dreams and triumphs and failures rendered with great tenderness and empathy. It would be easy for Nash to mythologize the place he comes from, to render judgment on the landscape and its people with the benefit of distance and hindsight, but Ozarker instead presents honest, intimate snapshots of its subjects, resisting the urge to romanticize the past and never losing sight of the humanity at the heart of it all.

“I think the reason so much of that classic heartland rock and roll endures is because it touches on themes we all feel so deeply,” says Nash. “Desire, struggle, commitment, escape. As an artist, I’m always aspiring to touch as many people as possible, and that’s what this music has always represented for me.”

The son of a Baptist preacher and an artist, Nash first rose to fame in Europe, where he built a loyal following with a series of critically acclaimed albums that earned him a deal with the renowned Loose Music label. As American audiences began to catch on, Nash left his adopted home of New York City for Dripping Springs, Texas, where he built his own studio on a ranch and began embracing a more spacious, psychedelic sound that landed somewhere between Neil Young and Pink Floyd. Rolling Stone hailed him as a “master of sonic textures,” while MOJO dubbed him a “folk-rock visionary,” and Uncut simply asked, “Who can get enough of music as good as this?”

In January Israel Nash is playing four shows in the Netherlands:

23/01: Amsterdam - Tolhuistuin
24/01: Nijmegen - Doornroosje
25/01: Groningen - Huize Maas
26/01: Maastricht - Muziekgieterij