Country Westerns + Nato Coles & The Blue Diamond Band at Icehouse

A Nashville institution in the making, Country Westerns infuse punk rock chutzpah with a classic rock sheen, yielding a sound that’s simultaneously fresh and reminiscent of all the LPs you used to “borrow” from your cool uncle. Their debut album came out in May 2020, beautifully coinciding with… a worldwide pandemic. Despite everything that cursed year threw at it, the self-titled LP survived and thrived on its many merits, receiving glowing reviews from Pitchfork (7.5), Magnet, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence of Sound, PASTE, Glide, No Depression, Popmatters.

Nato Coles & the Blue Diamond Band formed in 2010 on the west side of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Best described as a high energy rock’n’roll band, Nato and the Blue Diamond Band all come from a background of playing in various punk rock bands down over the years, and that mentality is present in the more straight-ahead driving style of music they play, with songs running the stylistic gamut from power-pop through garagey punk through Americana and rootsier material. Nato and the Blue Diamond Band have toured across the continent several times, and might be doing so at this very moment, depending on when one is reading this sentence. The current members of the band are Matt Engelstad (bass), Luke Lecheler (keyboards), Sam Beer (lead guitar), Mike Cranberry (drums), and Nato. The band has recorded and released a plethora of songs and records, most notably and recently the album Flyover, available on Don Giovanni Records (vinyl and digital) and Rum Bar Records (compact disc).