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Cordovas – the Nashville band you “need to know” — performing at Southgate House on Saturday


With a new album set for an August release, the Nashville-based band Cordovas will be making a stop in Northern Kentucky to perform at Newport’s Southgate House with Chris Knight on Saturday at 9 p.m.

The band – which includes Joe Firstman on bass and vocals, Jon Loyd on keyboard and vocals, Lucca Soria on guitar and vocals, and Graham Spillman on drums and vocals – has earned high praise in reviews from NPR and Rolling Stone Country; the latter declaring the band as a “new country artist you need to know.”

“We’re committed to creating something that’s still traditional American music,” says band member Lucca Soria. “We approach our material in the way that people in America have always approached traditional music since the beginning of stringed instruments on the American front porch: picking a good song and singing it together with a shared feeling.”

An NPR review described the Cordovas as a country-rock group that’s “committed to the sound of brotherhood — a few voices sharing a feeling.”

The Cordovas came about when Firstman formed the band in late 2011 with original members Loyd and Toby Weaver. They made an album and released it in 2012.

“I met Joe, opening for him in Des Moines, then moved to Nashville later that year where he called up Jonny and we had a few jams,” says Soria. “That winter we went down to Joe’s place on the Baja in Mexico and wrote the material for our upcoming release, That Santa Fe Channel, fleshing the songs out in cafes in town alongside Grateful Dead tunes.”

The Cordovas’ second album is produced by Kenneth Pattengale of The Milk Carton Kids. The album initially took shape when the band decamped in Todos Santos, MX for a month of rehearsals and songwriting. The album was recorded live at Electric Kite Studios in Madison, TN.


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