Slowdown and T-Presents Present
Chris Renzema
Jess Ray
Wed Nov 08
Doors: 7:00 PM /
Show: 8:00 PM
All Ages*
Main Room
$22 ADV / $27 DOS
Presales, VIP, and Early Entry begin 4/25 at 10am. General onsale with Reserved Sections begins 4/28 at 10am.
Doors at 7:00pm
Main Room
$22 Advance/$27 Day of Show
$32 Balcony Reserved
$37 Pitside West Reserved
$37 Pitside East Reserved
$62 VIP Experience
$42 Early Entry
All ages show. Check entry requirements at http://theslowdown.com/All-Ages and https://www.theslowdown.com/covid-19/
Pitside and Balcony are seated with first come, first pick within the section. See the seating map here.
VIP Experience includes
-One (1) general admission ticket
-Early entry into the venue
-Access to an intimate pre-show acoustic performance
-Special Q&A conversation with Chris Renzema
-Official VIP Laminate
-Crowd Free Merchandise Shopping + 15% discount at the merch table
-Limited Availability
-*VIP experience begins one (1) hour before doors*
Early Entry includes-One (1) general admission ticket
-Early entry into the venue
-Crowd Free Merchandise Shopping + 15% discount at the merch table
-Limited availability
About Chris Renzema
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | Spotify
Connection. It’s a word the world was forced to grapple with when we lost our ability to convene in 2020. How do we stay together when we have to be apart? What defines meaningful connection? And can we really find it screen to screen? With these questions swirling in his head, uncertainty hovered over Chris Renzema like an ominous cloud. Thanks to a canceled tour and a global pandemic, he had ample time to reflect, so the singer/songwriter did the thing that comes most naturally to him. He set words to melody. He soon realized, however, that there was a self-imposed obstacle standing between the isolation he felt and the empathy he desired to express. And it was in the tension of that moment that Get Out of the Way of Your Own Heart was born.
Since independently releasing I’ll Be The Branches in 2018, Renzema has built a loyal following, literally one fan at a time. Two years later, his Centricity Music debut, Let The Ground Rest, garnered the Michigan native 90 million streams, a spot on Pandora’s “Artist to Watch” list and a GMA Dove Award nomination for “New Artist of the Year.” All of this with little to no radio airplay. Renzema’s secret sauce? His live show—an emotional connection point for the transparent artist and his fans.
It was the strength and uniqueness of the live experience that Renzema was thinking about when he started to craft the semi-autobiographical Get Out of the Way of Your Own Heart at the beginning of what would be a long, unexpected year. Let The Ground Rest—a project ironically themed around Sabbath—had just dropped, and Renzema called on kindred spirit and former collaborator Hank Bentley (Crowder, Zach Williams) to help him plant new musical seeds. Together, they formed their own quarantine pod and hunkered down to co-write and co-produce what would become Renzema’s third full-length album.
“I think I pretty much celebrated the release of Let The Ground Rest by starting to write these songs,” Renzema shares. “When I started writing, it was just a creative outlet, a distraction. I definitely was not thinking of it in terms of an album or necessarily even songs that I was going to put out. I was just attempting to process the internal, mental and spiritual insanity of 2020.”
While Get Out of the Way of Your Own Heart doesn’t always provide painless resolution or black and white answers to gray areas, it does emphasize the fact that we never have to wrestle with life’s hardest questions alone. “Every single person walks into a room at a concert with all of this stuff, just baggage and garbage that they kind of hold over themselves personally,” Renzema acknowledges. “So there is something exciting about getting to tell people, ‘Hey, you don’t really have to hold onto this if you don’t want to.’ That ‘stronger love,’ that hope, is the thing that actually lets us extend grace to ourselves.”
About Jess Ray
Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify
Jess Ray is a singer-songwriter-producer from Raleigh, North Carolina. Her particular musical brand, affectionately dubbed “friendly folk,” is an enchanting blend of indie pop vibes and lyric-driven sensibility. Jess’ decade-long musical journey has weaved in and out of Christian spaces, mainstream circles, from house concerts to historic venues like the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and from solo shows to sharing the stage with her heroes. Her music, much like herself, occupies two worlds effortlessly. Intensely spiritual yet deeply real, her songs soar with joy and hope without ignoring the reality of our human struggle.