Bryson Tiller and Elle King Added to Atlantic Union Bank After Hours 2024 Lineup

Two new shows have been added to the 2024 Concert Season at Atlantic Union Bank After Hours at the SERVPRO Pavilion in Doswell, Virginia. Bryson Tiller, R&B singer and rapper, is coming on Saturday, June 8, 2024 and country pop singer, Elle King, performs on Sunday, June 23, 2024. Bryson Tiller tickets go on sale Thursday, April 11, 2024 at 10:00 AM and Elle King tickets go on sale Friday, April 12, 2024 at 10:00 AM. A limited number of Early Bird General Admission tickets will be available for both shows, while supplies last.

Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Bryson Tiller began his musical journey in high school, releasing the mixtape Killer Instinct, Vol. 1 in his late teens. He gained wide recognition on SoundCloud with his sparse ballad "Don't," which peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and resulted in a deal with RCA Records. Bryson Tiller became one of the key breakout stars in 2010s, ushering in much of today’s contemporary R&B with a descriptively titled parent album, T R A P S O U L (2015), a moody swaggering set of slow jams that neologized a subgenre the singer/rapper took to the mainstream with multi-platinum certifications and Grammy nominations, along with the album’s peak at #8 on the Billboard 200. The 3x platinum album is supported by additional multi-platinum hits "Exchange" and "Sorry Not Sorry," the latter of which was co-produced by Timbaland. "Exchange," ranked in the top 30 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best R&B Song.

He continued his success with, True to Self (2017) and A N N I V E R S A R Y (2019), his subsequent studio albums, which both either topped the Billboard 200 or reached the chart's Top Ten. Tiller's additional hits as a featured artist and duet partner are highlighted by DJ Khalid's "Wild Thoughts" and H.E.R.'s "Could've Been." A N N I V E R S A R Y went on to land at number five on Billboard 200 and contained "Outta Time," featuring guest vocals by Drake and production from 40, Nineteen85, and Vinylz. A year later, coinciding with both Halloween and the tenth anniversary of his first mixtape, Tiller offered his second tape, Killer Instinct 2: The Nightmare Before. Another holiday-themed recording, A Different Christmas, was out the next month with Justin Bieber, Pentatonix, and Kiana Ledé on the guest list. The EP included mostly original songs and an update of "Winter Wonderland." In 2022, he returned to the music scene with the solo single "Outside." 

At the start of 2024, Tiller launched his weekly music series “Tiller Tuesdays.” Originating from the series and by feverous demand from fans, an updated and finalized version of “Whatever She Wants” was released via his label home, RCA Records. The single found the R&B crooner's way into the hip-hop/rap space as it debuted in the Top 10 of Billboard's ‘Hot Rap Songs’ Chart, as well hitting the Top 10 of Spotify U.S. and Apple Music. In addition to the critical success across Billboard, HYPEBEAST, COMPLEX, Power and more, the track averages around 12K creations across TikTok per day and over 5K creations a day on Instagram. This led to it landing at #1 in use on IG Reels, a result from the use of the single by a number of today’s talents and creatives. Now with audiences at a fever pitch in anticipation of the long hoped for upcoming fourth studio album, aptly self-titled Bryson Tiller, “Whatever She Wants” is just the beginning of what to expect from the star, as he prepares to invite listeners into a world where genre boundaries are not just crossed but completely reimagined.

New York. London. LA. Firebrand. Punk. Renegade. Bold-faced icon. Startling songwriter. Grammy nominee. Pop sensation. Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association Award winner. Record setter. Brash live force. Brazen recording artist. Spider monkey on a tear.

What if the story began with a banjo? With a residency trying to figure out writing songs? Perhaps a high gloss, but busted life and ultimately a secessionist raising in Jackson, Ohio? No wonder Elle King is hotter than a pepper sprout. Even more than ZFG attitude, there’s the forthright attack on a life lived frayed at the edges and pulling at the scenes. Sure, she had famous parents, but when it gets real for King, it all happens with her Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw in a scrappy Southern Ohio town that puts the “just” in getting by.

“Home isn’t a longitude, latitude or a place,” King begins, explaining what anchors the energetic songwriter. “It’s the f-ing people. My grandfather was a carpenter who had a shed, where he always played country music. PawPaw always had a truck, some kind of Ford Ranger – and he had dogs that are mongrel dogs, typically used for hunting; they lived outside and barked their heads off. 

“My Grandfather’s a hunter; everybody’s a hunter because they’re all poor and they eat everything they kill. Squirrel, deer, snapping turtle, whatever, people ate it all. (Back home) the coal mine shafts and factories closed down. My Grandfather was a railroad conductor for CSX, but it’s tough there but there’s a lot of beauty because it’s also a little untouched. The people have so much to them. My Maw-Maw worked hard to create a beautiful home and make us all feel loved. I say how proud I am about where I come from, because I see how they live, how hard they work, they dream. They party f-ing hard and we laugh; we don’t cry unless we’re laughing. Not just my family, but the next generations of these smart people who know how to get by.”

It all permeates “Ohio,” the opening track on Come Get Your Wife. Banjo-plinking, yearning vocal, the wide-open suggests the pull of where – and how – she grew up. Intoning “Find me singing on a back porch swingin’/ Cur dogs barkin, left my dip in the kitchen/ That’s when it hit me... I’ve been gone to long,” King’s roots run deep and honest in the realm of country music.

With a tumble and King’s power-delivery, there’s no doubt about how things go down. That same fervor informs the “Ex’s & Oh’s” bad match bookend “Try Jesus,” awash in thick gospel choir wail and just enough church organ to witness.

It’s what makes the audacious barnyard guitar shuffle “Tulsa” and the hilarious small-town gossip-eschewing “Out Yonder” so hilarious. Elle co-produced the album with Ross Copperman and the pair kept the songs moving, the humor high and the musical adventure.

That humor is led by the title of the album, Come Get Your Wife, a wry reference to a putdown tossed her partner’s way by an alpha male during a spirited night of fun and games. She can drink, play games and go toe-to-toe with the best of them so if you’re dishin’ it out around Elle, be ready to take it! 

Yes, her parents are superstar comic Rob Schneider and international model London King. He of “Saturday Night Live” and movie fame; she of global catwalks and the universal fit model for the Limited, Abercrombie & Fitch and Express. It sounds glamourous, but it created a central conflict. 

In the Southeast corner where Ohio meets West Virginia and Pennsylvania, it can get pretty rustic. But it’s real – and no one’s impressed by those kinds of things. Even after moving to New York City with her mom and stepdad, King’s ear responded to those more bluegrass and raw country sounds.

Her stepdad got the young girl obsessed with Otis Redding, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Hank Williams. At 13, she was writing songs. By 16, she knew to lie about her age and start a residency at the now closed Spike Hill between North 7th and Bedford Ave. Thinking she was older, they gave her free beer.

A kid named Cranston, showing up with a banjo, put her whole life in order. She remembers, “It felt like home when I played it. I took that banjo with me and kept it for two years and really figured out what MY sound was.” 

Only the business had other ideas. The robust blond with the tattoos and a wide-open spirit was advised to “tone down the country, play up the rock & roll shit.”  Suddenly an alternative icon – scoring Best Rock Vocal Performance and Best Rock Song Grammy nominations for “Ex’s & Oh’s” – she got pinned by the speed of sound to a genre not always welcoming to women. Touring with some of the biggest – male fronted – alternative rock bands, she held her own.

“When I cut America’s Sweetheart, the only instrument I brought was a banjo, because all the studios had guitars. That’s what made me stand out. Everyone wanted me to be this alternative rock princess who played banjo on the side, but that wasn’t the point! But I rode that song for three years.” 

It was fast. It was crazy. It was drugs and men and whatever else. She got married, got divorced, got through it. As important, she recorded “Different for Girls” with roots/country force Dierks Bentley, which won the CMA’s Vocal Event of The Year.

“I didn’t know who he was,” she admits. “But my brother was like, ‘Are you KIDDING? He’s so f-ing cool! You have to do this.’ So, I did... and Dierks changed my life. He and (manager) Mary Hilliard Harrington opened up so many doors, taught me so much about how to do this.” 

Indeed, the Bentley/Harrington vortex proved an on-ramp to country viability. On Come Get Your Wife, Bentley returns for the relationship resuscitating “Worth A Shot,” while her high octane whirling and thumping throwdown “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” with Miranda Lambert has already scored a 2021 ACM Award and CMA Vocal Event nomination and set streaming records.

For all the “hell yeah” and crazy stories in the songs, Come Get Your Wife is as much King steeping in the reality of her life and how she got here. Teaming with 2-time BMI Songwriter of the Year Ross Copperman, the pair worked in two-day blasts to create an album that was bright and aggressive, smart and porous. They enlisted some of Nashville’s best roots players – Fred Eltringham and Nir Z on drums, Kenny Greenberg, Ilya Toshinskiy and Rob McNelley on electric, 2-time CMA Musician of the Year Jenee Fleanor on fiddle and mandolin, Linda Ronstadt veteran Dan Dugmore on steel – and tagged leaned into tracking live musicians.

It lends the dreamy gratitude of “Lucky,” the cowgirl power-strumming self-assessment “Bonafide” and the steamy Etta James-evoking blues soul “Love Go By” an earthiness that’s non-negotiable. There’s the slow boil, electric guitar note-bending irony of “Before You Met Me,” that features John Osborne on guitar, where the wool pulled over the suitor’s eyes is delivered with a wink about the girl she used to be.

King’s made some friends along the way. On the brassy powder keg reckoning “Tulsa,” Osborne’s scalding guitars are joined by Ashley McBryde’s vocals, while industry favorite Charley Worsham provides acoustic guitar and backing vocals on the over it dismissal “Crawling Mood.” 

“It was a dark time during the pandemic,” King says of the transition. “A preacher said, ‘God has a very big plan for you. People want to know both sides of your story.’” 

“I’d done drugs and face tattoos, but I was being reminded that there is something bigger and greater than all of that... I’m a very specific tool for God: proof you don’t have to fit into a mold, go to church or anything else to be deserving of His love. I could see when I made a conscious decision to clear out the negative in my life, it would bring the positive into my world. The whole giving my hopes and dreams and faults to something bigger than me? ‘Try Jesus’ came at a time I was trying to give my life over to something greater – and you can feel it.”

With that came freedom. Freedom to feel, to go deep into the country instruments and bluegrass harmonies. It also let her experiment, create unlikely cocktails like the whirling dance track threaded with fiddle that is “Blacked Out.”

“Disco is my f-ing life,” she confesses. “Disco is pain and heartbreak to an upbeat tempo. You can dance your pain away. I was listening to so much disco, trying to find a bridge between it and country music. I told Martin Johnson, who I co-wrote “Blacked Out” with, that I wanted a song that could reach across the aisle from Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? In the verses to a full-on disco slam on the choruses.”

That kind of vision isn’t visionary as much as it is being real. Real about who she is. Real about where she comes from. For King, who came by banjo honest and isn’t afraid to tell the truth about where she comes from, it’s pretty simple.

Insiders Club memberships and Season Passes for the 2024 concert season are on sale now. The Atlantic Union Bank After Hours Insiders Club gives members exclusive access to buy tickets before they go on sale to the general public. Season passes grant access to every show in the upcoming concert season. Both programs come with an array of other benefits and can be purchased at www.afterhoursconcertseries.com. 

Tickets are on sale now for T-Pain on June 13th, Brantley Gilbert on June 29th, Shinedown on August 2nd, Alabama on August 10th, and Cole Swindell on August 17th. Oliver Anthony’s show on May 17th is sold out. Additional shows are expected to be announced soon for the 2024 concert season.

Tickets for Bryson Tiller on Saturday, June 8, 2024 go on sale Thursday,  April 11 at 10:00 AM and Elle King on Sunday, June 23, 2024 go on sale Friday, April 12 at 10:00 AM at www.afterhoursconcertseries.com or by phone at 1-800-514-ETIX (3849). A limited number of Early Bird General Admission tickets will be available for one week only while supplies last. Gates open at 5:30 PM; shows start at 7:00 PM. These events are rain or shine. No refunds. Atlantic Union Bank After Hours at the SERVPRO Pavilion is located at 39 Meadow Farm Rd., Doswell, VA 23047.

To post a comment, you must register and login.