The Mallet Brothers Band and Adam Ezra Group

The Mallett Brothers Band style is a musical melting pot that’s influenced equally by the singer/songwriter tradition as by harder rock, classic country and psychedelic sounds.  The Adam Ezra Group was named Band Of The Year at the 2013 New England Music Awards. The roots-steeped, road-trippin’ essence of this band is difficult to describe and easy to love.

About the Adam Ezra Group

The Adam Ezra Group (AEG) is not just a band; they are a force to be reckoned with musically, personally and socially. Selling records and tickets is important to AEG, but they are committed to changing the world with their songs and their actions along the way.

Ezra and his band are activists and community leaders as much as they are musicians and songwriters. Ezra has spent time living out of a van, farming in Canada, volunteering for the relief effort in Kosovo, and practicing environmental geography in South Africa.

Whether as a kitchen hand or carpenter, teacher, athlete, or traveler, Ezra crams it all into the music, always challenging our perspective and often teetering somewhere between the ballsy rocker and sensitive poet. Through their non profit organization, RallySound, AEG currently contributes 25% of their touring to benefit causes in communities across the country and worldwide.

The group's live performances, sweaty, passionate affairs that have been compared to those of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, attracted the attention of Royal Avenue Records in 2010. Ezra immediately signed with Royal Avenue and began working on the album that eventually became Ragtop Angel. Royal Avenue paired the group with multiplatinum producer Aaron Johnson (best known for his work with The Fray) who has helped hone Adam's ramblings into finely tuned songs that still retain the power and conviction developed from Ezra's years of "do it yourself," grassroots work ethic.

About the Mallett Brothers Band

The Mallett Brothers Band's busy tour schedule over the past seven years has helped them to build a dedicated fan base across the U.S. and beyond while still calling the state of Maine their home. With a style that can ranges from alt-country to Americana, country, jam and roots rock, theirs is a musical melting pot that's influenced equally by the singer/songwriter tradition as by harder rock, classic country and psychedelic sounds. Texas Hill Country Explore Magazine calls them "New England's wildly eclectic crew of genre rebels." Bill Copeland Music News says "Combining their authentic roots rock sound with a reflective lyrical style that perceives stories on the level of epic myth, it's like William Faulkner has been resurrected with an electric guitar in hand.."

While remaining fully independent, The Mallett Brothers Band has performed at some of the country's top venues and festivals, including Austin Texas's famed Continental Club; Alexandria, Virginia's Birchmere (sharing the stage with Oklahoma red-dirt rockers The Turnpike Troubadors), New Hampshire's Meadowbrook Pavilion (opening for The Allman Brothers Band, and again opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd); Nashville's Bluebird; and Little Rock's The Rev Room, to name a few. Festival appearances include FloydFest (Virginia), Hop Jam (Vermont), Nateva (Maine), The New England Country Music Festival (New Hampshire), Eastbound Throwdown (New York), and many more.

The Falling of the Pine, the band's most recent release, re-imagines a group of 19^th-century Maine folk songs collected in the 1927 book Minstrelsy of Maine.

About Tonight's Performance

Doors open at 7:00; the concert starts at 8:00.

Tickets: General Admission Seating, $15 In Advance, $20 At Door. Prices do not include per ticket handling fees.

Location: Waterville Opera House, 1 Common Street, Waterville, 873-7000, www.operahouse.org.