Ally Venable formed her first band at thirteen, self-taught from Stevie Ray Vaughan recordings and the hard-won experience of sitting in with players across East Texas. By twenty-six, she has six studio albums and a UK headline tour behind her. Her latest record, Money & Power, is the one where she stops building a case and starts assuming it’s been made. She plays Empire Underground on Halloween night.
About the Show
Money & Power, released April 18 on Ruf Records, is Venable’s most deliberate record yet. Produced by Grammy-winner Tom Hambridge at Soundstage Studios in Nashville, the twelve-track collection opens with Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram on the title track (critic Hal Horowitz called it “biting and brutal”) and moves through soul, reggae, and ballad territory before closing with a cover of Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat.” Shemekia Copeland duets on “Unbreakable.” Venable has described the album as “a sonic embodiment of a woman’s unstoppable ambition” and said she intends it to “wake people up.”
The album follows Real Gone (2023), which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Blues Charts and featured Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa, artists who tend not to appear on a record unless they mean it. Before that, Texas Honey (2019) hit #2 on the same chart, and Puppet Show (2018) reached #7 on the Billboard Blues Albums Chart. Guitar World ranked Venable #2 among young players reviving the Les Paul; Classic Rock named her “one of Ruf Records’ most head-turning young artists”; Total Guitar placed her in the Top 100 Blues Guitarists. The Road Warrior Award from the Independent Blues Music Awards (2022) reflects a touring pace that her discography alone doesn’t capture. She wrapped a ten-date UK headline run in September 2026, with Canadian blues-rock artist Garret T. Willie, a month before this stop in Albany.
Venue & Logistics
Empire Underground is at 93 North Pearl Street in downtown Albany — a 500-capacity club in the Capital Region. The show starts at 8:00 p.m. Venable’s playing is known for its dynamic range, moving from near-whisper passages on slow blues to “aggressive, sustained lead lines,” per one profile; that dynamic registers differently in a room of this scale. No support act has been confirmed. The date is Saturday, October 31, Halloween night.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from official sources at the time of publication. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster. Buy tickets