Poor Bishop Hooper, the husband-and-wife duo of Jesse Braswell Roberts and Leah Brace Roberts, celebrates the release their fourth album Gold at the Tank Room on Friday.
3 reasons we're listening to Poor Bishop Hooper this week:
1. The duo performs a Christian-informed variation of the energetic folk music associated with bands like the Old Crow Medicine Show and the Lumineers.
2. Jesse Braswell Roberts was the lead singer of Quiet Corral, a Lawrence-based Americana band on the cusp of establishing a national reputation when it broke up in 2013. Roberts has made Poor Bishop Hooper his primary musical endeavor while other members of Quiet Corral have found success as the indie-rock band Hembree.
3. Poor Bishop Hooper's new record balances secular concerns with spiritual musings. The title track's lyrics invoke Jesus in a parable about the temporal value of material wealth and the abundant permanence of holy salvation.
Poor Bishop Hooper with Barnaby Bright, 7 p.m. Friday, March 3 at the Tank Room, 1813 Grand Boulevard, Kansas City, Missouri, 64108.
Bill Brownlee’s writing appears weekly in The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine. He blogs about Kansas City’s jazz scene at Plastic Sax.
