The Milk Carton Kids Feel ‘Touched and Honored’ To Play the Opry at the Ryman

The Milk Carton Kids, Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale have been Grammy nominated, and taken home top honors from the Americana Music Association, even being asked to host the organization’s awards show the last two years running. They consider Americana Fest to be an annual homecoming of sorts. They have no shortage of love for Nashville and it’s history, particularly the storied Ryman Auditorium and the Grand Ole Opry. 

On the tail end of their Very Small Venues, Very Low Ticket Prices Tour, the band, talked with Sounds Like Nashville about playing the Opry and their new album The Only Ones. 

“It leads to a sense of flattery for me and feeling really touched and honored to be accepted into places like that, that are so special,” says Joey of playing the famed show. “And once we get in there and we realize all these things that we knew about or some of the things that we loved for all this time… actually really originated there in that building, on the Opry, or just at the Ryman or generally, and it feels so good.”

While performing on the Ryman stage is always an enchanting moment, the band’s new album The Only Ones sees them on comfortable ground, featuring only the interplay between two voices, after their last outing saw them with a full backing band. On The Very Small Venues, Very Low Ticket Prices Tour, they got to run some of these songs in front of a live audience for the first time and are starting to see the songs crystallize into something beyond the album versions.

Shares Joey, “There’s two different processes. There’s writing it and then learning to play it and getting it up to performance level for the recording. And then there’s…a curing process. Where, then the song becomes, it gets like really under our fingers and in our heads where we know the lyrics like second nature and we know the changes and the feel and the dynamics like second nature and can really start to get deeper on expressiveness and improvisation and stuff like that.”

In the coming months the band will work on curing their songs across the pond with several dates in the UK already sold out. Get tickets here for any remaining shows.