BEGIN:VCALENDAR METHOD:PUBLISH VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:-//NONSGML Sandhills Development\, LLC//NONSGML Sugar Calendar Fe eds v3.4.0//EN X-WR-CALNAME:Larry Campbell &\; Teresa Williams X-WR-CALDESC:Portland Downtown X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 DTSTART:20221106T060000 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 DTSTART:20221106T060000 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Larry Campbell &\; Teresa Williams DESCRIPTION:ADVANCE PURCHASE: $25\nAT THE DOOR: $35\n10% MEMBER DISCOUNT \n\nMulti-instrumentalist-singer-songwriter Larry Campbell and singer-gu itarist Teresa Williams’ acclaimed eponymous 2015 debut\, released aft er seven years of playing in Levon Helm’s band – and frequent guesti ng with Phil Lesh\, Little Feat\, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady\, broug ht to the stage the crackling creative energy of a decades-long offstage union. A whirlwind of touring and promo followed\, and when the dust cl eared\, the duo was ready to do it all again. Which brings us to Contrab and Love\, a riskier slice of Americana.\n\nLarry\, who produced Contrab and Love\, says\, “I wanted this record to be a progression\, bigger t han the first one. That’s all I knew. I wanted the songwriting to be d eeper\, the arrangements more interesting\, the performances more dynami c. Specifically how to get there\, I didn’t know. I did know the songs were different. The subject matter was darker than anything else I’ve written.”\n\n“More painful!” Teresa says\, and laughs.\n\n“Yeah \,” Larry says with a smile. “I’m proud of our debut\, but I felt like the songs were lighter than what I’m capable of doing. As a songw riter\, I aspire to a sense of uniqueness: this is a great song and it c ould only have been written by me. I want to get there. It’s a journey \, a goal\, a pursuit. The mechanics of that pursuit are figuring out wh at you need to do to surpass your last body of work.”\n\nAlthough it w as not his conscious intent\, three of the eight tunes Campbell penned f or Contraband Love deal either obliquely or directly with various emotio ns surrounding addiction. For the blues rocking “Three Days in A Row\, ” he authoritatively delves into the crucial first seventy-two hours d irectly following an addict going cold turkey in an effort to get clean. “I was thinking about the things I’ve quit in my life\,” he says. “The last time was cigarettes. I remembered the dreams I had in withd rawal.” Vintage-sounding country nugget “Save Me from Myself” (fea turing Little Feat’s Bill Payne on piano) explores a troubled soul’s heartrending knowledge that they are hard to love. “I’ve certainly felt both sides of that situation\,” Larry says\, “and observed it m any times.” Delicate waltz “Contraband Love\,” a captivating vocal showcase for Teresa\, takes on the other side of the story\, when a par ent (or spouse\, or friend\, etc.) realizes their only recourse for deal ing with an addict is merely to stand “with arms wide open.” Of this remarkable piece\, Larry says\, “That melody would not leave me alone . It’s one of the more unique songs I’ve ever written.”\n\n“Larr y’s writing this stuff\,” Teresa says\, “and we’re naming off al l the people in our lives who are currently going through this (addictio n and loss) with a loved one\, not to mention the family members and fri ends we’ve lost in the past from this affliction. That may have driven him. One of my oldest\, most intimate friends – a functioning substan ce abuser since he was a teenager – died on the street in New York whi le we were in the studio. We dedicated the album to him.”\n\n“The st uff of loss resonates\,” Larry says.\n\nMusically\, Contraband Love re visits the Americana textures of the duo’s debut\, deftly channeling M emphis\, Chicago\, the Delta\, and Appalachia with equal assurance. Larr y’s world-famous guitar work – scorching here\, funky there\, stella r always – punctuates the proceedings with riveting emotion\, often li ke a third voice weighing in on a myriad of emotional states.\n\nThe bar nburner leadoff single\, “Hit and Run Driver\,” is a harrowing-but-r ocking survivor’s tale\, showcasing longtime drummer and engineer/mixe r Justin Guip.\n\nTo leaven out the darker tunes\, Larry and Teresa adde d a recording of the reassuring Carl Perkins country classic “Turn Aro und\,” with old friend and mentor Levon Helm\, captured on drums short ly before his passing. Jaunty folk blues “My Sweetie Went Away\,” fe atures new bass player Jesse Murphy doubling on tuba for a distinctly Ne w Orleans feel\; traditional gutbucket country blues “Delta Slide\,” is spiced with irresistible\, harmonized yodeling.\n\n“Stylistically\ , there’s a lot of different things going on\,” Larry says. “So th e sequencing was difficult. But I think I got it right.”\n\nIndeed. Co ntraband Love stands as a new\, bolder chapter in a story that arose tri umphantly joyous from loss. “When Levon died\,” Teresa says\, “tha t put Larry into high gear. He’d already had his head set about making a record\, but then it felt like a train took off! We just said\, ‘li fe is short.’”\n\nAnother motivator for creating Contraband Love was the experience of taking the Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams show ou t on the road\, as a duo\, with a band\, and opening for Jackson Browne (who loaned them his band). “It felt fabulous and fantastic\,” Larry says. “After I met Teresa (in the mid 80s)\, I’d be out with Bob Dy lan [Larry toured with the Nobel laureate for eight years] and something was missing. I gotta gig\, and it’s what I always wanted\, but it’s not my stuff\, and it’s not with the person I want to be with. And th en\, when we got a taste of being a performing duo at the Rambles with L evon\, the idea that we could expand on that was completely alluring.\n\ n“So virtually everything we’ve done musically since I left Dylan’ s band\, we’ve been asked to do together: Levon\, Phil and Friends\, J orma and Jack\, Little Feat\; we’ve done it all as a unit\, a duo\, an d it’s great. It’s rewarding on a lot of levels. The way I see it\, when Teresa and I are together\, doing our material for people who come to see us\, then everything I ever wanted out of life is pretty well com plete.” URL;VALUE=URI:https://portlandmaine.com/events/larry-campbell-teresa-wil liams/ UID:urn:uuid:7100fb80-bc3a-465a-a306-bd8944c36677 STATUS:CONFIRMED ORGANIZER: DTSTAMP:20260501T200707Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221113T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221113T220000 LOCATION:181 State St.\, Portland\, Maine 04101\, US END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR