Photo by Shervin Lainez
South Philadelphia-based rock ‘n’ roll artist Low Cut Connie announced his new album Art Dealers will be released on September 8 via Contender Records. “This record is all kink and no shame,” explains Adam Weiner. “With Low Cut Connie, I try to create a safe space for you to just absolutely get your freak on.”
Art Dealers is a love letter to Lou Reed and Patti Smith’s New York, and the reckless abandon of "the art life" laid against a gritty, decaying American backdrop. Arriving at the intersection of sleazy and soulful, the eighth album from Adam Weiner is a 13-song collection of risky, romantic, life-affirming anthems dedicated to a total liberation of body, spirit, gender and sexuality in the face of an increasingly tense political age.
With his incredibly loose and passionate band behind him, Weiner moves through explorations of gender fluid writing, indictments of modern neo-fascism and anti-semitism, and street sketches of those living on the edge. The album’s first single “Are You Gonna Run?” is out today and Art Dealers is now available for pre-order. Low Cut Connie will hit the road this summer for a nationwide tour that will include a three night stand at the Blue Note in New York City. Tickets are on sale now.
"I was thinking of Ronnie Spector with that one. She had a sweet kinda sad voice, but she was tough as hell. A real rock n roller. I admire tough female artists like Tina Turner, Madonna, and Patti Smith. I feel like they all informed this tune in some way,” explains Low Cut Connie about “Are You Gonna Run?”
Where it took Weiner over three years to record his 2020 breakthrough album Private Lives, Art Dealers was tracked in just over a week outside of Philadelphia. As with his previous album, Weiner produced Art Dealers, further establishing his own brand of raw, analog rock ‘n’ roll.
The record depicts a grimy modern urban landscape, a soulful but damaged place that Weiner and his band (including guitarist Will Donnelly, in his 9th year with Low Cut Connie) has gravitated towards throughout the band's history. Weiner grew up amidst the lawns and strip malls of suburban New Jersey, and his teen dreams were lit up by the beacon of the Big City, where he could shed his skin like so many artists before. “If you think about it, so many great artists who we associate with the city were actually bridge and tunnel people. Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, Debbie Harry, Robert Mapplethorpe. People who came from the burbs had this vision of what they could achieve in the city, what attracted them to this art life, who they could turn into and what impressions they could make - if they could just get there.”
Art Dealers follows the band’s critically-acclaimed 2020 album Private Lives and 2021’s Tough Cookies: Best of the Quarantine Broadcasts that was born out of their twice-weekly live-streaming rock and soul variety shows that led The New Yorker to call Weiner the “Pandemic Person of the Year.”
Further exploring new media, Weiner co-directed (with filmmaker Roy Power) an 80 minute feature film that will premiere late this year as a companion piece to Art Dealers. The film is a hybrid-genre documentary that combines a stellar run of NYC concerts from 2022 shot at Sony Hall and the Blue Note, as well as 15 years of performance footage and musical and personal misadventures that led up to Art Dealers. There will be limited festival screenings of the Art Dealers film late in 2023 in tandem with this fall's US tour, with a wider release to follow in 2024.
"I just want to turn people on with what I do," says Weiner. "The world is a dirty and broken place… we might as well live it the fuck up while we’re here.”
ART DEALERS tracklist:
1) TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW
2) SLEAZE ME ON
3) BIG BOY
4) ARE YOU GONNA RUN?
5) DON’T GET FRESH WITH ME
6) WONDERFUL BOY
7) WHIPS AND CHAINS
8) TAKE ME TO THE PLACE
9) CALL OUT MY NAME
10) KING OF THE JEWS
11) I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU
12) ART DEALERS
13) THE PARTY’S OVER
Tour Dates:
4/27 – New York, NY – Bowery Electric
5/5 – Memphis, TN – Beale Street Music Festival
5/6 – New Orleans, LA – Gasa Gasa
5/7 – New Orleans, LA – New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
6/9 – Amagansett, NY – The Stephen Talkhouse
6/10 – Atlantic City, NJ – Anchor Rock Club
6/29 – Philadelphia, PA – The Mann Center – Downstage with Chill Moody
9/7 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair
9/8 – Uncasville, CT – The Wolf Den at Mohegan Sun
9/9 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
9/10 – Portland, ME – Portland House of Music
9/12 – Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom
9/14 – Pawtucket, RI – The Met
9/15 – Medford, NJ – Medford Oktoberfest & Music Festival
9/16 – Elkton, MD – Elkton Music Hall Monday
9/18 – New York, NY – Blue Note Jazz Club
9/19 – New York, NY – Blue Note Jazz Club
9/20 – New York, NY – Blue Note Jazz Club
9/23 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
9/24 – Camden, NJ – XPoNential Music Festival
10/5 – Louisville, KY – Headliners Music Hall
10/6 – Madison, WI – Majestic Theatre
10/7 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
10/9 – Ann Arbor, MI – The Ark
10/11 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop
10/13 – Milwaukee, WI – Shank Hall
10/14 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall
10/15 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Smalls Theatre
