The name Emo’s has belonged to Austin music longer than most of the people who’ll be in the room on June 3rd have been alive. The original room on Red River was a proving ground for punk, hardcore, and whatever fell between the cracks — a sweaty, necessary club that ran for the better part of two decades before the building was gone and the name migrated east to Riverside Drive, where Live Nation built it back up with proper sightlines and a sound system worth the ticket price. The two versions of Emo’s are not the same club, but the name carries weight, and the room on Riverside has spent years earning a reputation of its own: one of Austin’s better mid-capacity venues, the kind of room that books acts on the way up and lets you see them before the theater circuit comes calling.
Joshua Slone is on the way up. He’s twenty years old, from the eastern Kentucky towns of Prestonsburg and Paintsville, and he writes all his own material. His music sits at the intersection of Appalachian roots and contemporary folk-pop craft — closer to Noah Kahan than to anything that gets played on Nashville radio, though the country charts took notice anyway. In April 2025 he went viral via collaborative videos with Zach Bryan on TikTok and Instagram, and by September he was opening for Bryan at Michigan Stadium alongside John Mayer and Ryan Bingham. That’s an unusually steep ascent for a twenty-year-old with a debut record still in the works, but the material earned it.
About Joshua Slone
The debut album, Thinking Too Much, arrived October 29, 2025. Produced by Gabe Wax, Jake Weinberg, and Benny Blanco — who also appears on the track “Shark Attack” — it debuted at #2 on the iTunes country charts and accumulated millions of streams in its first twenty-four hours. CountryCentral rated it 8.5 out of 10, calling it introspective songwriting that “should put the entire Nashville writing community on notice.” Sixty-six minutes of lo-fi acoustic folk with pop-rock underneath, the record explores longing, vulnerability, and the particular insecurity of being young and still working it out — emotional territory that speaks directly to who shows up for acts like this one.
Slone is signed with WME for touring and distributed through Interscope Records. Public endorsements from Noah Kahan, Bailey Zimmerman, Dasha, Conner Smith, and Joe Jonas suggest he’s not a one-platform phenomenon. The Nashville opener on the Thinking Too Much Tour sold out. So did Denver’s Gothic Theatre. So did The Burl in Lexington. The Austin date is the third stop on a North American run that continues through Webster Hall in New York, The Wiltern in Los Angeles, The Fillmore in San Francisco, and the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., closing in Seattle on July 2nd. A Red Rocks headliner is already on the books for November 4, 2026. The room sizes are still mid-capacity now. They will not stay that way long.
Emo’s Austin
Emo’s Austin sits at 2015 E Riverside Drive in Austin’s East Riverside neighborhood, operated by Live Nation. The room offers state-of-the-art lighting and sound with a full outdoor patio. Box office: 512-777-0873. More information at emosaustin.com.
Tickets & Show Details
Joshua Slone plays Emo’s Austin on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. Show time at 6:30 PM. Support from Jake Minch. The Nashville opener sold out; Austin should follow. Tickets via the link below.