Fox Theater

Orville Peck is country music’s newest outlaw. His handmade, fringed masks, which obscure his features except for a pair of ice blue eyes, belie his deeply personal lyrics, while his ornate Nudie suits recall the golden age of country. Peck’s masks and theatric stage presence immediately grab audience attention, similar to the way Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash’s larger-than-life images captured him as a young man. However, it’s his voice and his songwriting, influenced by Parton, Loretta Lynn, Townes Van Zandt, and Gram Parsons, that have captivated a fan base as extensive and diverse as his musical tastes. Citing artists from Ernest Tubb (the first country artist to use an electric guitar at the Grand Ole Opry) to Kacey Musgraves, Peck says, ”Every decade or so, there comes a new batch of artists that shake up the question of ‘what is country?’ “I’m in the middle of that more often than not these days. I kind of like it, because I think I’m in good company.” Orville Peck is taking his new “Bronco Tour” to cities across the U.S. in 2022.

Formed in a North Carolina dormitory in 2012, The Nude Party celebrates the clanging frat rock of the ’60s. Working with early mentor and producer Oakley Munson of Black Lips, they debuted with the Hot Tub EP in 2016. The band’s eponymous full-length debut arrived on New West Records in 2018, and their critically-acclaimed follow up album Midnight Manor was released in October 2020.

Originating as an extended group of childhood friends and step-siblings who decided to start a band and then began learning to play instruments, The Nude Party took root at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. The band is comprised of lead vocalist/guitarist Patton Magee, vocalist/lead guitarist Shaun Couture, organist/pianist Don Merrill, bass player Alec Castillo, percussionist Austin Brose, and drummer Connor Mikita. Most members also sing backup. Soon after coming together, the sextet soon moved into a lake house and started a nightly ritual of jamming in the basement. It was at a regular gig as the house band at a certain Boone party locale that the group’s practice of performing in the buff earned them a local reputation as “the naked party band.” They adopted the moniker The Nude Party just in time to move onto bookings at local clubs and bars, where they had to perform clothed.

In 2014, the band met Black Lips’ drummer Oakley Munson at a show in Charlotte. He took an interest in the group and recorded their first collection, Hot Tub EP, which they released in early 2016. As word of the EP’s rawness and good-times spirit spread, the band relocated to Munson’s base in the New York Catskills and began to perform regularly in Brooklyn and the surrounding region. New West signed the group for their Munson-produced full-length debut. The Nude Party was released in July of 2018 and was heralded by Rolling Stone as “equal parts ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ Velvet Underground and Exile on Main Street Stones.” In the year following it’s release, the band opened for the likes of The Arctic Monkeys and Jack White.

Munson returned to produce their follow up full-length Midnight Manor, released in 2020. The album was met with critical acclaim, with The Line of Best Fit saying “It’s an addictive and deeply satisfying exploration of the beauty and the pain, the agony and the ecstasy, and the rave up and the come down; all baked into the very grooves of every track on the album.” They are currently making plans to tour both in the US and internationally.