The Waiting Room Lounge

William Elliott Whitmore

w/ Triggertown & Lincoln Dickison

With a voice that sounds like the reincarnation of an old gospel preacher from the 1920s and a fascination with sin, death, and redemption to match, William Elliott Whitmore is one of the most unique artists to emerge on the Americana scene in years. The son of a farmer and raised on a horse farm on the banks of the Mississippi River outside of Keokuk, IA, Whitmore’s songs have a stark universality that is sketched out with minimal instrumentation, usually just a banjo or guitar and a smattering of percussion. His voice is the one Tom Waits has been after for years (imagine a cross between Captain Beefheart and Dock Boggs), and his folk- and blues-inflected songs feel like they’ve been left out in the rain for months, weathered and tightened to the snapping point.