We are sold out of advance tickets for this show. There may be some limited standing room only tickets available once the show starts at 8:00 pm for $34.50.

You can’t mistake her voice. Only Iris DeMent sounds like Iris DeMent. Once you listen to a few of her songs, you feel like you know her. She’s serious, but she has a playful sense of humor – and she is absolutely committed to telling the truth. No affectation, no sugar-coating, just life as she sees it and feels it – and she feels it more than most. Merle Haggard has called her “the best singer I ever heard.”

Iris was born in Paragould, Arkansas, the youngest of 14 children. Her devoutly religious family later moved to California, where she grew up singing gospel. She first began composing songs at the age of 25, and made her recording debut in the early 1990s with Infamous Angel. Her second release won a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and her duo work with John Prine on In Spite of Ourselves won her another Grammy nod. She has collaborated with many artists, including Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris, and is a frequent guest on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Her song “Our Town” played over the final scene of the TV series Northern Exposure, and her version of the gospel song “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” played over the closing credits of the Coen Brothers’ True Grit.

Now, after a 16-year wait, she has a new album of originals, Sing the Delta. Barry Mazor, who writes for the Wall Street Journal and Engine 145, received an advance copy: “it strikes me as a major event, one of most moving releases of this decade,” he writes. “The music spans the American roots spectrum, with a few unquestionably hard country ballads and much of it in the gospel-influenced zone. The remarkably honest, at times heartbreaking songs . . . seem destined to be seen as classics.”

Iris herself is a classic. Catch her show if you can.

Visit Iris's website

Listen to a track from Iris Dement: