General Admission Standing Room Only

**Due to a change in their tour schedule, the LOCAL H show on 9/9/21 has postponed to 5/6/22. Hold onto your tickets as they will be honored for the rescheduled date.**

COVID-19 Policy

Masks are strongly encouraged.

By purchasing tickets to this event, you agree to abide by the State of CT, City of Hamden, Artist, and Space Ballroom’s Health and Safety measures in effect at the time of the event. Check back for updates to your event on our website as guidelines and entry requirements are subject to change.

LOCAL H

Local H, the iconic alt-rock duo known for their blistering live shows and pioneering the two-piece band set-up, is at the top of their game more than two decades after they first burst onto the music scene. Frontman Scott Lucas, who covers both guitar and bass (through an extra pick up in his guitar), and drummer Ryan Harding have enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, buoyed by global touring along with the release of some of their most critically acclaimed work to date.

Local H’s first major release was 1995’s Ham Fisted, but it was their follow up album As Good As Dead that positioned the band as one of the elites in what was a groundbreaking decade for rock music. With multiple radio hits on the album, “Bound For The Floor” emerged as a generational anthem and remains a staple on playlists around the country over two decades later.

Their widely praised 1998 concept album Pack Up the Cats, produced by the legendary Roy Thomas Baker, solidified Local H as a leader in the genre and the albums that followed were reflective of not only the band’s definitive character, but as well their relentless effort to give their audience as much of themselves as possible. While recipients of numerous accolades over the years, Local H has always kept the focus on their fans, which can be seen by the awe inspiring and often times daunting tour schedule the band has kept up year after year.

The last three years have seen a multitude of releases from the band in various forms. In 2015,

Local H celebrated the 25th anniversary of their first show and released a career-spanning coffee table book, “Local H: Twenty-Five Years of Skin In The Game”. That same year they released Hey, Killer, their eighth full length studio album, to near unanimous acclaim. In 2016 the band celebrated the 20th anniversary of the release of As Good As Dead with a successful three month national headline tour (partnered with their first live Blu-Ray DVD, “Straight Outta Zion”, shot at the Metro in Chicago during a weekend of sold out shows).

2017 was perhaps Local H’s busiest year yet, as the band continued to tour extensively not only as headliners, but on hugely successful tours with The Toadies and Helmet and —perhaps most exciting of all— career highlight performances on Metallica's sold out stadium tour. The band also found time to publish another book “The Last Picture Book Outta Zion or: How We Learned To Stop Worrying About Cell Phones And Love The Photos Of John Oakes”, an intimate behind the scenes portrait of the band shot by photographer John Oakes.

2018 shows no sign of slowing down. In February, Local H released their second live record — the ferocious Live In Europe— to coincide with their second European tour in the space of a year. A new single produced by Ken Andrews of Failure, simply titled “Innocents”, is being released to digital platforms to coincide with the band joining the Summerland Tour with Everclear and Marcy Playground this May

Links: Official Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify

ROOKIE

ROOKIE is six matching jumpsuit-clad, shaggy-haired friends from Chicago who play rock-n-roll that’s more at home next to their parents’ battered LPs than on their friends’ streaming playlists. The band’s self-titled debut full-length album deftly reformats the classic rock landscape with blowtorch hooks, enthralling harmonies, evocative touches of cosmic country, and distinctively indie-minded songwriting.

ROOKIE’s modern take on timeless American rock ‘n’ roll pulls from all corners of the sonic map; it’s familiar but fresh, lived-in but blown-out. It’s the ‘70s/’80s pop-rock sheen of recent tour-mates Cheap Trick; 3-minute precision songwriting of Big Star; loose Neil Young Americana; and the hazey, psych-flavored boogie of The Allman Brothers and Thin Lizzy. Though barely able to comfortably fit on most stages, once they’re plugged in and smooshed together, it’s a potent blend of power chords, blistering leads, and performance prowess beyond their years.

Like local peers Twin Peaks, Whitney, and Post Animal, ROOKIE emerged from an idealistic grassroots, Midwestern, youth community-centric, DIY scene. House shows and divey all-ages venues were the preeminent performance spaces and rock-n-roll was once again king. There is an all-inclusive and carefree essence surrounding the band, as well as their audience, reminiscent of the wide-eyed drive and sense of purpose of an underdog sports team or—more appropriately, given their coveralls—a Formula 1 pit crew.

That cooperative vibe is most clear in their balanced attack, each of the six members bringing a signature part of the layered sound from song to song. “Hold On Tight” bashes down the door with a deceptively simple AC-to-the-DC riff, but the three-headed guitar monster attack of Dimitri Panoutsos, Christopher Devlin, and Max Loebman takes the standby arena rock formula to wild new places. In “Sunglasses,” Loebman’s lead vocals evince an ethereally sunny pop disposition, which he later strips down to great effect, just his upper register and acoustic guitar, for the stark “Elementary Blues.” Throughout the album’s 12 tracks, the rhythm section of Joe Bordenaro on drums, Kevin Decker on bass, and Justin Bell on keys establishes a groove-meets-power foundation. On several songs, including “I Can’t Have You But I Want You,” Bordenaro sings lead as well, while the rest of the group piles on with a rowdy gang chorus.

The band of 20-somethings created their broad-yet-intimate sound not long after forming in 2017 from the remnants of under the radar local outfits Joe Bordenaro & the Late Bloomers, Yoko and the Oh Nos, and Max and the Mild Ones. The budding project soon became the subject of excited whispers around town. In 2018, the group released two singles (“One Way Ticket” and “Let’s Get It Right”) and a 7” single (“I Can’t Have You But I Want You” and “The Move”) for nascent Chicago studio/imprint Treehouse Records. These recordings raised the whispers to the level of folklore.

Links: Official Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify