A.J. Croce
Lobero Theatre A.J. Croce will grace the stage of the historic Lobero Theatre to play songs from his own repertoire and new album Heart Of The Eternal along with the greatest hits of his father Jim Croce.
Like only the most enduring of artists, A.J. Croce embodies a joyful love of music that’s fully matched by his phenomenal talent. A piano virtuoso who started playing as a small child and toured with B.B. King at just 18-years-old, the Nashville-based singer/songwriter has since collaborated and performed with legends and luminaries across a wide expanse of genres (Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, Ry Cooder, Allen Toussaint, to name a few), all while building up an acclaimed catalog that blurs the boundaries between blues, soul, rock & roll, Americana, and much more. When it came time to create his new album Heart of the Eternal, Croce joined forces with in-demand producer Shooter Jennings (Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker) and once again pushed the limits of his artistry, arriving at a transcendent selection of songs that journey from psychedelia to Philadelphia soul to Latin-infused jazz-pop with both unbridled imagination and sophisticated grace.
Recorded at the famed Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, Heart of the Eternal came to life during his downtime from the ongoing Croce Plays Croce tour—a widely celebrated run in which he performs classic songs from his late father Jim Croce, along with his own material and a number of specially curated covers. For help in shaping the freewheeling but exquisitely composed sound of his eleventh studio LP, Croce enlisted the first-rate musicians who make up his longtime live band, including bassist David Barard (a Grammy-winner who performed with Dr. John for nearly four decades), drummer Gary Mallaber (whose credits include iconic albums like Van Morrison’s Moondance and Tupelo Honey), and guitarist James Pennebaker (Delbert McClinton, Jimmie Dale Gilmore). The follow-up to his critically lauded cover album By Request—and first original body of work since 2017’s Just Like Medicine, hailed as “brilliant” by No Depression and a “fluid expression of sorrow and gratitude” by Pop Matters—the result is the latest evidence of Croce’s profound gift for imbuing his songwriting with equal parts hard-won wisdom and heart-on-sleeve emotion.
Kicking off with a glorious bang, Heart of the Eternal opens on the exuberant grooves of “I Got A Feeling”: a swaggering piece of psychedelic soul threaded with so much lovingly delivered insight (e.g., “There’s a message in the tension on the road to inner peace/When you lose the thing you want, you find the thing you need”). Co-written with Tommy Sims (Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt), the gritty yet radiant track finds Croce taking the helm on lead guitar. “From having done all the Croce Plays Croce shows over the past few years, I’m starting to feel a lot more confident as a guitar player,” he notes. Another song featuring his exhilarating performance on lead guitar, “Hey Margarita” brings fiery riffs to a fuzzed-out and high-spirited blues-funk anthem. “With that song in particular I felt inspired by Link Wray and [Chicago blues visionary] Hubert Sumlin, and I wanted it to sound like I was playing through an old radio,” Croce reveals.
