The Western Sons return for a homecoming show

It’s a homecoming concert for the Western Sons, even though only one of them is from Bradenton.

The four members of the Nashville-based band first got together at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where they were business students, in 2013. But they played their first gigs in Bradenton.

“Tyler Cohenour, he’s the only member of the band who is a Bradenton native,” said Western Sons singer-guitarist Garrett Carr. “We started playing around Bradenton just because that’s where he’s from and his parents knew some people. We probably played around Bradenton for about a year. We played with Sam Woolf, we played some shows for Del Couch.”

The Sons moved on first to the east coast of Florida. They recorded their first (and so far only) album, “Frontiers,” in the Cocoa Beach area, and then moved to Nashville about 13 months ago.

They’ll return to Bradenton on Saturday for a concert at the Neel Performing Arts Center at the State College of Florida.

“Even though only one of us is from Bradenton, we’re all from Florida, so this is a homecoming,” Carr said. “This will be the first time we’re played in Florida in over a year.”

Besides Carr and Cohenour, the Western Sons are bassist Blake Rigdon and drummer Nik Benik. Benik is unable to make it to Bradenton for this particular gig, so drummer Jeff Hutchins will be filling in.

Local fans will be catching the Western Sons at an exciting time in their career. The band released its latest single, “Penelope,” over the summer.

“It’s been our most-played single,” Carr said. “It’s had more than 100,000 plays.”

The band has been working on new material and has a couple of new songs. Starting early next year, Carr said, the band will start releasing new songs every month or two until they have enough for a new album.

“We’re going to play one of the new songs at the show in Bradenton,” Carr said.

The name of the band comes from a quote from “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac: “I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”

Carr said the band’s sound is rooted in alternative or indie rock, with nods to classic rock. The Western Sons’ official description of their music is “somewhere between pop-rock that your dad would appreciate and dad-rock that your sister would groove to.”

Opening the Bradenton show is Matt Walden, an SCF alumnus. His first single EP, “Life,” came out in July 2015 and on its first day of pre-sales hit No. 7 on the iTunes Singer-Songwriter Top Album chart.

Details: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 18, Neel Performing Arts Center at the State College of Florida, 5840 26th St. W., Bradenton. $20. 941-752-5398, scf.edu.

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 2:37 PM with the headline "The Western Sons return for a homecoming show."