The Exile Follies – with John Doe, Kristin Hersh, & Grant Lee Phillips – Makes a Stop at the Oriental

Three artists that made up the roots to a whole generation of rock ‘n roll across 5 decades are coming back together on a truly special tour, and Denver’s own Oriental Theater gets to host them this Friday night. Kristin Hersh (from Throwing Muses, a tremendous solo career, and so many other projects), John Doe (from X, and an incredibly beautiful and prolific solo career), and Grant Lee Phillips (from Grant Lee Buffalo, and a remarkable career of his own), have rekindled The Exile Follies, and you can still get tickets to see these three legendary songwriters play in one of Denver’s most welcoming venues at The Oriental Theater on Friday, August 16. 

To put their influence in some sort of perspective, Doe, Hersh, and Phillips helped define independent rock in the ’80s and ‘90s, in ways that are still evident in many genres of American rock n’ roll. Songs each of these icons wrote with their bands or on their own are still influential, and being rediscovered all the time by new ears, and for good reason.

You can still get tickets to see these three legendary songwriters at The Oriental Theater, this Friday, August 16.

Kristin Hersh’s first band, Throwing Muses, exploded on the music scene along with bands like Pixies (and in fact the two bands toured together in their young days in a legendary pairing), and spawned her other band 50 Foot Wave, Belly, and The Breeders from their lineup. Which is to say nothing of Hersh’s solo career, spanning at least thirteen albums since 1994, all filled with songwriting that comes across more like epic poetry and heartbreaking life stories, each one.

John Doe, along with Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom, and Dj Bonebrake, make up the band X – one of LA Punk’s most enduring and revered bands. Doe himself has released twelve-plus solo albums since 1990 full of some of the most beautiful songwriting of the past four decades. Despite his advancing years, John Doe shows no signs of slowing down, either – always on tour himself, he’s also hooking up with his old band X for what’s being called their final tour this year as well.

Grant Lee Phillips is an icon himself, coming out of one of the ‘90s unforgettable bands – Grant Lee Buffalo. Phillips has also released 12-plus albums of brilliant, heartfelt songwriting since 2000, music that has influenced an entire generation of songwriters that are hugely popular today.

And here all three are taking the stage – individually and together – in what promises to be an unforgettable experience. The original Exile Follies was a show hatched from all three of these historical figures, at the nascence of their solo careers. In 2002, the three artists thought they’d put together a different kind of tour, after they found themselves exiled (so to speak) from their respective bands.

As Phillips explains in Concerted Efforts Music Booking, “I suppose there was a curiosity about pooling our strengths together in such a way that it allowed for some creative elbow room…. Our show was broken up into individual sets, just one of us on stage until the moment when the next performer would take the mic. As a transition, two of us would perform together. Vaudeville stuff. The running order came down to a coin toss until we settled into a comfortable rhythm. The evening would culminate with all three of us performing together.” The trio revisited the same setup in 2018, and now they’re on the road again.

This show promises to be one of the few that will lay down lifelong memories, and might introduce a few of the younger crowd onto some truly beautiful music. If you’re in Denver – or anywhere reasonably close – don’t miss this chance to see it.