Var Gallery Presents: Madeleine Kelson & Eliza Hanson w. Alaina Stacey

Doors - 6:30pm Show - 7:30pm

Tickets on sale now! 

 $12 presale (plus service charge)  $15 at the door

Madeleine Kelson has been writing and performing  music since childhood, developing a unique, country-leaning style of  Americana laced with elements of rock and blues. She spent her early  career performing with her twin sister in Chicago band, The Kelson  Twins, at iconic venues across Chicago, including the House of Blues,  and the Athenaeum Theater, and landed a 2016 Top Daytrotter Session with  Paste Magazine. After graduating high school, Kelson began her solo  career in Nashville. Shortly after moving, she won the 2017  International Bluegrass Music Association’s (IBMA) Songwriter Showcase.  After the April 2022 release of her debut album on Olivia Records,  Kelson was named by NPR as one of 10 rising artists in Nashville, and  was chosen as a finalist in Kerrville Folk Festival’s NewFolk  competition.

Eliza Hanson knows  how to smooth out life’s ups and downs by covering them with melody and  charm. Her vulnerability in processing her life through song has  attracted those listeners who crave authenticity. A celebration of  everything we love, about the singer songwriter genre, with a voice and  style reminiscent of Chris Pureka and Janis Ian but pleasantly set to a  landscape of modern trials and tribulations. Eliza combines the honesty  of a traditional singer/songwriter, mixed with an indie folk country  flare to project a style all her own.

Alaina Stacey  grew up with three brothers in a musical family in Chicago. She wrote  her first “song” about her best friend at the age of three, and from  that moment on, the toddler was hooked. One year after founding the  Nashville based Americana group, Maybe April, Alaina appeared onstage  with her group in Los Angeles, alongside Bonnie Raitt and Kris  Kristofferson as part of a GRAMMY week performance called A Song Is  Born. Their Audiotree video went viral, and they remain one of  Audiotree’s top twenty most popular videos. With Maybe April, she opened  for Brandy Clark and Sarah Jarosz, and performed at Pilgrimage Music  Festival, Merlefest, SXSW, and CMA Fest. The group released an EP and  record, The Other Side, which was produced by Alaina’s brother Julian.  The band won “Americana Group of the Year'' two years in a row at the  Arkansas Country Music Awards. In her first release, DAWN, this  whimsical young woman offers a peek into the old soul within her, where  heartbreak, worldliness and a romantic spirit reside.