Indiana trio The Cold Stares have announced a run of shows in the UK this June and July to play songs from their new album Heavy Shoes. Beginning in in Manchester on 20 June, they will be playing further shows in Bradford, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Chester, Sittingbourne and London. You can purchase tickets HERE. Chris Tapp (vocals/guitar) and Brian Mullins (drums) are now joined by bassist Bryce Klueh making The Cold Stares a trio, with this being his first tour with the band. Talking about the tour Tapp says. “We’re looking forward to finally playing for our fans in the UK after two cancelled tours due to Covid. The UK is the second home to blues and rock and truly has the best fans in the world. I know our fans are ready, and we are as excited as they are!” Heavy Shoes was released in August last year via their new home at Mascot Records (Black Stone Cherry, Kris Barras Band, Crobot, Monster Truck). The album was met with a wave of critical acclaim. From being featured on BBC Radio 2 to the high-praise reviews that came flooding in; “Southern Gothic meets fuzzed-up guitar and authentic grit” hailed the Daily Mirror, “darkness pervades the Indiana-based duo’s fifth album” said Uncut, with The Guitar Magazine revelling in their “fuzzed-up garage licks and dark richness throughout” and Classic Rock toasting “a gloriously heavy album that carries as much weight sonically as it does lyrically.” The band’s story alone would be enough for a drama series – cancer, suicide, betrayal, divorce, loss, self-identity crisis, survival, and ancestral skeletons. Write about what you know, they say. There’s a richness running through the songs with dark, multi-layered narratives that course through every twist and turn. Dirty fuzzed-up rock and roll meet blues, garage, desert rock and a Southern Gothic sensibility. Sombre storytelling is etched into their songs with unflinching honesty. For The Cold Stares, authenticity is their hallmark. “I’m writing from the point of Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner. It needs to have weight to it,” Tapp explains. “I tend to try to write like you’re reading a book. It’s descriptive, but also visual,” he continues. He solemnly wails about bad luck on “Hard Times,” the first single from the album. They then run a gamut of themes; addiction (“Save You From You”), emotional torture (“Prosecution Blues”), destructive relationships (“Heavy Shoes”) and manipulation (“Election Blues”). The doom-laden, desert-rock “40 Dead Men” centres around an unnamed soldier who destroys his surroundings just to get home whereas the Nuggets-era psychedelic garage-rock “In The Night Time” is the band striving for something more unique and is inspired by the southern gothic city of St Augustine, Florida. You want authenticity? The Cold Stares are a rock ‘n’ roll band, but they take a sledgehammer to their foundation’s to reveal the cracks that are suppressed within it. With that, allowing themselves to be raw and open to show that, we are not alone. | 
