The Southern Café and Music Hall - Live Music Lives on the Downtown Mall

Sunday June 3, 2012 Doors at 7:00pm/Show at 8:00pm
$10 in advance/$12 day of show
Seated Show
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It's been 4 years since Joe Pug quit his day job as a carpenter, but his remarkable rise in the music world has been driven by the same hard-worn work ethic. His path has been an unusual one, which has often challenged the traditional rulebook of the music industry, but even now as he prepares to release his second album "The Great Despiser", it has always been characterized by one prevailing idea: Find a way.

After dropping out of college the day before he was to start his senior year, he moved to Chicago and picked up the guitar he hadn't played since his teenage years. The songs that he wrote would eventually become the "Nation of Heat EP," a self-released gem that has gone on to sell over 20,000 copies. It was in those heady early days that the idea was born for a unique promotional strategy that would launch Pug into the national consciousness. In an increasingly fragmented and disorganized music industry, it was harder and harder for a new artist to break through the white noise. With no publicist and no access to radio, Pug decided to recruit his fans to help spread the word. He took his most popular songs, printed up CDs, and offered to send them free of charge to anyone who wanted to share his music with their friends. And share they did. "People requested 2 copies, 5 copies, 10 copies, 20 copies. We'd send them all. We even covered the postage," he remembers. The impact was immediate and undeniable. "Suddenly we'd be rolling into towns that we'd never been before and there would be crowds there who knew the songs. Our fans essentially became like a radio station for us, and they still are. " While skyrocketing demand eventually forced a switch over to a digital version, the offer remains to this day at joepugmusic.com, and has been downloaded over 30,000 times.

Why do we need museums? They show us something familiar and traditional, while at the same time documenting our innovation, showing us possible directions for the future. This is the same reason we need David Wax Museum � to give us music that is somehow familiar, as if it has always existed somewhere in our cultural ether, but is at the same time undeniably fresh.

The Museum is closely associated with many of the most innovative Americana bands active today, having toured nationally with The Avett Brothers and the Old 97's and having shared bills with such acts as Carolina Chocolate Drops, Langhorne Slim, Ben Kweller, The Low Anthem, and Nathaniel Rateliff. Though the band is now packing clubs and theatres across the country and touring with national acts, David Wax Museum cut their teeth playing in living rooms and backyards throughout the country. In these unique settings, the band's fiery and heart-wrenching shows created an undeniable buzz and a devoted following.