Simon Joyner has released 23 albums in his nearly 30-year music career, but it was his third one that landed him international headlines.
BBC DJ John Peel, once one of the most prominent voices in music in the UK and the longest-serving among the BBC’s storied Radio 1 DJs, famously played Joyner’s 1994 lo-fi, indie-rcok album “The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll†cover to cover. The incident made headlines and should have, by all accounts, catapulted the Omaha, Nebraska, singer-songwriter into a league of his own alongside his contemporaries.
Instead, it served as an inspiration that influenced the music of the next generation including Bright Eyes, Kevin Morby and Gillian Welch.
And it likely inspired the two artists who will share the Exo Bar stage with Joyner on Sunday, Sept. 29: Austin, Texas, songwriter Adam Ostrar, who fronted bands in Chicago and is now a member of Aussie indie legend Richard Davies’s band The Moles; and Lonna Kelley from Phoenix, who earned a place in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s heart as part of Howe Gelb’s Giant Sand.
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Sunday’s concert begins at 8 p.m. at Exo, 403 N. Sixth Ave. downtown. Admission is $10 at the door.