Coming up:
Kathryn Caine
Holly Allen
Friday, September 3, 2010 Doors at 7:00pm $8
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Kathryn Caine is a North Carolina girl transplanted to Charlottesville VA. She has been singing , writing songs, and performing for forever. Her music combines many influences. Bluegrass, the music she was raised with, soul, she has it, and honky tonk, she loves it. She has opened for Derek Trucks, Marc Chestnutt , Phil Vassar, Indigenous, G-Love and Special Sauce, The Gourds, Asleep at the Wheel , Dryvin n Cryin , Chet Atkins and Marshall Crenshaw and performed with the Lewis Family , and Darren Nicholson of Balsam Range. She has released 4 CD's, WHITEVILLE, THE KATHRYN CAINE BAND, BETTER, and now DOWN HOME GIRL.
Kathryn Caine is a prolific songwriter and fantastic live performer and an amazing singer. You always hear traces of the high and lonesome in her voice as she sings songs that range from a woman scorned ,to the emptiness of rural life, to love and hope and freedom. Her songs are familiar yet new and anyone can relate to the melodies and the words. She is currently backed by Live 365 Women of Substance Radio and receiving radio play across the southeast.
Born to play Americana, Holly Allen grew up at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley emerging from a long line of musicians. Influenced by bluegrass, country, the blues and old time rock and roll, she began singing and making up songs as a child. Her dad taught her a few chords on an old "taterbug" mandolin and when her hands got big enough she reached for his guitar. Holly cut her musical teeth on Virginia stages in dancehalls and roadhouses, clubs and an occasional truck-stop. In the late 80's and early 90's she was a member of an acoustic trio, Travelin' Light. Holly has played throughout the southeast. She had the good fortune to work with legendary producer Johnny Sanlin as well as stellar musicians Bill Stewart, Pete Carr, David Hood, Spooner Oldham and Scott Boyer.
Manorlady
HotChaCha
Night and The City
Saturday, September 4, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $7
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Manorlady are a family band.
Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, Manorlady is comprised of members Aaron Bailey, Melissa Bailey, Donald Wooley, and Dylan Mulshine.
While each pursuing school Aaron, Melissa, and Donald began in early 2009 to make music that reminds them of the wide open spaces and fluorescent sunsets on which they were raised in the Mojave Desert of Eastern California. Early efforts from this trio were characterized by floating male and female vocals, reverberated guitars, crisp synth melodies, and foot-triggered MIDI sequences driving larger-than-life drum machines and samplers. Many performances also have included elaborate MIDI-driven video originating from an affected VHS source.
March 2010 marks the addition of Dylan Mulshine (Rhythm Bandit) on drums. This Charlottesville four-piece dabble in shoegaze, 60's pop revival, trip hop, and post-rock. Manorlady has been likened to bands ranging from The Raveonettes to Beach House to Mogwai to Portishead. Manorlady is currently recording their debut release, a full-length titled 'Home', scheduled for release Summer 2010.
HotChaCha started as a girl band on an early Friday morning (in late March of 2007) at the West Side Market in Cleveland.
Mandy Aramouni and Jovana Batkovic were sipping on coffee and decided that due to Mandys' brilliant guitar sound, and Jovanas' outrageous stage presence, they had something HUGE going on. A few days later a local drummer, Lisa, was txt messaged to come and jam with the above mentioned broads.
For three months the girls consumed large amounts of beer, peed in the garbage can at the practice space, wrote music, and jammed. Finally, one night under the influence of large amounts of alcohol, they agreed to play their first show.
After they rocked, offended a bunch of people, and inspired everyone to masturbate and cry, they realized how HUGE they could be. Another thing became apparent, they needed a bass player! That night Heather Gmucs saw the show and fell in love with the band. The next practice she joined HotChaCha and never left. It is than, that HCC was truly created.
Mandy, Lisa. Heather, and Jovi became one ultimate machine that will make you laugh, and cry, and masturbate all at once. You can't deny the love.
Night and the City is a band from Washington, D.C. Night and the City is the sum of Christin Durham, Christopher Goett, and Greg Svitil. They have formerly played in The Antiques, Girl Loves Distortion, and Victor Victoria. They played their first show in the spring of 2010. The band is self-managed and operates under the umbrella of Etxe Records, an independent label founded by Christopher Goett and partner Jenn Thomas in 2007. The band maintains a preference to engage in activities that enhance community.
Cocktail Rhetoric
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 Doors at 7:00pm - FREE Event in the Bar
Cocktail Rhetoric is a live talk show hosted by Cris Edwards every Tuesday at The Southern.
This Week:
Guest TBA
Cris invites Charlottesville's movers and shakers to share a a beer with him while topics are pulled from audience suggestions. This isn't your normal talk show. This is fascinating conversation as entertainment. It's eavesdropping as art. It's like "Inside the Actor's Studio" but with more personality, music, and beer.
Cris has an MFA and is an award-winning performer and playwright. Cocktail Rhetoric was originally produced in Austin, Texas and now finds its home in Charlottesville.
Richard Buckner
Peyton Tochterman
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $10
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"There are three kinds of American folk artists: those who sit, contented, on a back porch contemplating America's landscape and ways; those for whom its landscape and ways are something to stand against or move boldly through; and those whose America is a shadowy, impressionistic place that moves inside of them. This [latter] is the area that the sombre-voiced Richard Buckner has been exploring since 1984."
Sylvie Simmons - The Guardian
Meadow was the 8th full-length recording from Richard Buckner and his second for Merge Records. Meadow marked the latest chapter in a story that began in San Francisco, back in the early 90's and has seen Buckner chase his muse across the U.S. and Canada many times. Buckner's body of work has always seemed to be about motion vs. stillness: about the impulse to run away or towards something or about watching something or someone leave or approach. It's about the restless energy of the heart, full speed ahead, or the consequences taken and embraced, those good and those bad. The false starts, roadblocks, and pitfalls along the way only add to the richness of the journey.
"Peyton Tochterman has an old souls gift for writing the ageless, earthy songs that define what is best about American Music. His songs carry the weighty truths that make life less of a burden for those who hear them." - Singer/Songwriter Ellis Paul
Love Canon
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm FREE Show in the Bar
The Southern is pleased to present:
"The Summer of Love Canon"
A weekly series of free shows in the bar with Love Canon.
Come hear all of your favorite hits from the 80's covered bluegrass style by Adam Larrabee, Jessie Harper, Darrell Muller, and Andy Thacker.
A Black Keys After-Party with:
Red Rattles
Thursday, September 9, 2010 Doors at 10:30pm FREE
Red Rattles is Luke & Davey and they work at a bakery together. They started playing music together in January, '10.
They play tunes that aim at joy, sorrow, and ambivalence. Just guitar and drums and a microphone for singing. It's blues and rock, but mostly just a hard kind of gospel.
And sometimes? Well, sometimes you can even dance to it.
Download the Red Rattles EP
Jesse Malin & The St. Marks Social
with Moneybrother
Friday, September 10, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $10/$12
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Over the summer of 2009, in the basement of Avenue A watering hole Hi-Fi, the songs came forth. Jesse Malin, with impresario Don DiLego, drummer Randy Schrager, guitarist Matt Hogan, and bassist/DJ Tommy USA, worked with his newly formed band to bash out an album's worth of gritty anthems, and The St. Marks Social was born. A solid band, but one with an open door to Malin's community of musician friends - longtime partner in crime Ryan Adams, pop singer Mandy Moore, fellow label mate Brian Fallon, and former bandmates from D Generation Howie Pyro and Danny Sage - the Social is a group effort to keep the P.M.A. Says Malin, "To me, rock 'n roll is an exorcism that begins every night when the sun goes down, the music starts playing, and the spirits start flowing. It helps to say things in public over dirty microphones. It's a way to spit out the poison."
Originally of punkrock fame for his vocals in Monster, in 2003 Anders Wendin took a new direction with his solo project Moneybrother. This is where he creates his custom soul orientated blend of all the music styles he likes to listen to, making moods and details from genres like reggae, rock'n'roll or even disco subliminally swing underneath. The debut "Blood Panic" has yet made success follow him around: From a Swedish Grammy to a sold-out German tour you'll find enough reasons for great expectations concerning the second record. Meanwhile, the musician aims at his very own goals.
106.1 The Corner Presents at The Southern:
A CD Release Show with:
Bess Rogers
Allison Weiss
Lelia Broussard
Sunday, September 12, 2010 Doors at 7:00pm $8/$10
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With confidence, smarts and an ear for a great song, Bess Rogers is poised for a mainstream breakthrough with her upcoming 'Bess Rogers presents Bess Rogers.' Set for a September 7th release, the EP features the single 'Come Home'.
Singer/songwriter Rogers, whose sound at times recalls Regina Spektor on speed, Juliana Hatfield, Wilco's 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot', the GoGos and Patty Griffin, is also multi-instrumentalist and a fearless tinkerer in the studio, evoking Prince at his impish best. She is currently on tour with Ingrid Michaelson, and will headline this fall to coincide with her EP release. Rogers' music threads the line between aggression and tenderness, and those extremes give her memorable writing its firm sense of drama and wit.
On 'Bess Rogers Presents Bess Rogers', listeners will have the pleasure of being steamrolled by 'Favorite Day' and haunted by 'Good Enough'...a steady hand belies Rogers' wistful, appealing fragility in 'All In Good Fun' and 'What We What'...and then there's 'Come Home', the album's winning single.
Allison Weiss (Athens, GA) is a heartfelt singer/songwriter with a quirky charm, sharp pop sensibilities, and an avid online following. The energetic 23-year-old is winning hearts across the country with her entertaining live shows and infectious songs of love and loss. "I'm all about catchy, upbeat, feel-good music, but the one thing I seem to aways write about is heartbreak," she recently told Billboard.com, "I say [my songs] sound like your saddest memories sung to the tune of your happiest."
South Louisiana native Lelia Broussard is releasing her 3rd studio record this fall with Dan Romer producing entitled 'Masquerade'. This record showcases Broussard's solid songwriting, vocals, and catchy melodies, and is gathering quite a buzz already with the early spread of the first single, "Shoot For The Moon," amongst her loyal fan base. Earlier this year, Lelia raised over $15,000 with her fans through Kickstarter.com to fund the upcoming record and is in the top 5 most successful music projects of all time on the popular site.
106.1 The Corner Presents at The Southern:
Civil Twilight
with The Daylights
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $10
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The three lifelong friends - brothers Steven and Andrew McKellar and Richard Wouters - who make up the Wind-up Records recording group Civil Twilight have been playing music together since they were teenagers growing up in South Africa, emulating the rock music they heard coming out of Europe and America, from Oasis, U2 and Nirvana to The Verve, The Police, Muse and Radiohead.
"We were always really influenced by British and American artists," says Wouters.
Which is why you don't necessarily hear a whole lot of the music of Africa on the band's self-titled debut, but you can hear the continent itself in Steve McKellar's ambitious lyrics, their existential questioning and spiritual longing the perfect correlative to the music's expansive atmospheric soundscapes, at once lush, feverish and exotic like a jungle, with the vast, arid spaciousness of a desert.
Peter Bradley Adams
The Michael Clem Trio
Thursday, September 16, 2010 Doors at 7:00pm $10
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Peter Bradley Adams was formerly one half of the duo, Eastmountainsouth, signed by Robbie Robertson (of The Band) to DreamWorks Records in 2002. Peter co-produced their debut album with Mitchell Froom, and the duo toured extensively opening for Lucinda Williams, Tracy Chapman, and performed their final show at the Hollywood Bowl opening for Lyle Lovett and Shelby Lynn.
Since then, Adams has released three solo records: "Gather Up", "Leavetaking", and his most recent, "Traces", in October 2009 on Sarathan Records.
Peter's music has appeared in 40+ films and television shows including recent placements in CBS' "The Mentalist," CW's "One Tree Hill," ABC's "Brothers and Sisters" as well as the Miramax Film, film "Everbody's Fine" starring Robert De Niro.
For almost 20 years, Michael Clem, has been and continues to be a member of nationally touring, Virginia-based, folk-rock act Eddie from Ohio. For the past two years, he's been putting his musical roots down in Charlottesville. This show marks the debut of his newly formed trio, featuring Rusty Speidel (SGGL) on lead guitar and Thomas Gunn (Lost Highway) on upright bass, who will help round out Clem's new batch of originals with harmonies and considerably greater height.
Teddy & The Roosevelts
The Derelicts
Friday, September 17, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $8
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Teddy & The Roosevelts is the new band from Ted Pitney, co-founder and songwriter from King Wilkie. Pitney recently celebrated the release of his new CD, The Genesee EP. Recorded right in here in Central Virginia with some of the area's best musicians.
The Genesee EP draws from a well of Americana while painting with shades more undefined and foreign. It is visceral but arranged. Rock n roll but humble. It's a 1957 D-18 Martin guitar. Dusty and dirty tube amplifiers. It's heartache and it's family and friends.
As the designer Charles Eames said, "The details are not details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections."
Teddy & The Roosevelts features Jake Hopping, Brian Chenault and Brian Caputo.
The Derelicts are modern, alternative singer/songwriters performing original music and their own interpretations of other artists. The Derelicts deliver their music with harmony and unique arrangements.
The Derelicts are Adam Long, guitarist from The Sometime Favorites, Michael Rasbury, keyboardist from Envy and The Chickenheads Blues Band, and Bentley Rhodes, guitarist from Bloodkin and Earl Knox.
Jukebox The ghost
Drink Up Buttercup
Via Audio
Saturday, September 18, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $8/$10
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Jukebox The Ghost are three friends, Ben Thornewill on piano, Tommy Siegel on guitar and Jesse Kristin on rhythm. Bouncing out of Washington D.C. two years ago, Jukebox The Ghost purvey classic ebony and ivory pop, flavoured with their own brand of quirky lyrics and inventive song writing. Since the bands birth they have been writing and touring non stop, determined to bring their music to the masses the good old fashioned way; by doing everything themselves. It seems to have paid off; Jukebox The Ghost can boast 'Let Live and Let Ghosts', various EP's and singles, and a second album well on its way. Plus, over 250 shows world-wide, with the likes of Ben Folds, Tokyo Police Club, Ra Ra Riot, Jenny Owen Youngs and more.
Written in equal parts by band members Ben Thornewill and Tommy Siegel, produced by Ted Comerford, 'Let Live and Let Ghosts' is 40 minutes of rambunctious, exuberant pop rock.
Jukebox the Ghost just finished recording their second record with Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Mates of State) at Tarquin Studios in CT, and will be on the road again this March with tour-mates Tally Hall (Atlantic Records). The next record will be released in 2010.
Drink Up Buttercup may hail from Philadelphia but the geography of their debut album Born & Thrown On A Hook is less easily located on a physical map. It's an occasionally surreal mythology filled with tales of hopelessly flawed characters, star-crossed lovers, drunks, fairy tales & bad trips. It exists in a world touched upon previously by Tom Waits, Hans Christian Anderson and Lloyd Kaufman while musically it follows the direct lineage of classic songwriting: Bowie, The Beatles & The Beach Boys' late 60s lysergia, early Roxy Music, Sabbath's bass heavy pulse & the crescendos of Arcade Fire.
Recorded meticulously throughout 2009 by Bill Moriarty (Dr Dog / Man Man) and mixed by Rusty Santos (Animal Collective / Final Fantasy) it perfectly balances consistently catchy melodies with the raw energy of their trashcan pounding live show.
Via Audio was formed in 2003 in between classes at the infamous Berklee College of Music in Boston. After releasing a self-titled EP on the small independent Kill Normal Records in 2004, the band first garnered attention when Death Cab for Cutie's guitarist Chris Walla dubbed them his "new favorite band," in his column for Under the Radar Magazine.
They soon after caught the attention of Spoon drummer Jim Eno, who would become their longtime producer, collaborator and comrade. With Eno's help behind the board, Via Audio released their first full-length, Say Something, in 2007 on California-based indie label Sidecho Records. Pitchfork Media described Say Something as having "such a beautiful gloss over everything that it sticks, hurts, and feels delicious" and the album received accolades from Spin, Nylon, Under the Radar, Alternative Press, theTripwire, and Stereogum, among others. The band has since toured the U.S. and Japan alongside the likes of Spoon, White Rabbits, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Ha Ha Tonka, and Modern Skirts, making appearances at the South By Southwest, Monolith, and CMJ festivals.
Brendan James
Thursday, September 23, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $8/$10
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Some artists name an album after themselves because they're stumped for another title. Brendan James grins at this suggestion. "As a fellow musician, I definitely get that," he says, "but I actually had a good reason to do it. The album is self-titled because I feel like it's my first recording that really showcases the different sides of me as a musician. It's got everything from the mellow to the upbeat, to the somber to the unashamedly positive.
A singer-songwriter who accompanies himself on piano, James began writing the songs on his second album after winding up a year and a half on the road in support of his debut album The Day is Brave, which was released by Decca Records in June 2008 and debuted in the Top 10 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart. Several of its songs were featured on various television shows including Private Practice, Bones, So You Think You Can Dance, and Army Wives. After releasing the album, James hit the ground running to support it from coast to coast. "I went to 40 states, ate at 330 restaurants, stayed in 210 hotels, and slept on one boat - John Mayer's Mayercraft Cruise; I know because I wrote it all down," James says with a laugh. The 18-month tour enabled James (whom Entertainment Weekly has called "a songwriter on the rise") to build his fanbase the way many successful musicians have done before him: one room at a time, and he shares the fruits of that journey - renewed vigor, musical maturity, and even a new sound - on his second album.
A Fond Farewell To:
A Cosmonaut's Ruin
with Worn In Red
and Constrictor
Pre-Show and After-Show DJ sets by DJ Thrash
Friday, September 24, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $6/$8
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Join us at 8pm in the bar for a happy hour/Pre-Show Party with the bands, come early and wish the ACR guys a fond farewell before the gig!
With lyrics that read like an Asimov epic and riffs that shake the deepest regions of the cosmos, A Cosmonaut's Ruin spent the last five years blazing a path of destruction through central Virginia and beyond.
Inspired by the likes of Helmet, Swarm of the Lotus, Hella and the Blue Ridge Mountains surrounding them, ACR have established themselves as key players in the central Virginia heavy music community. As their time comes to a close, help wish them farewell with friends Worn in Red and Constrictor.
Worn In Red hail from the long-standing promised land of thick, blistering hardcore - Virginia, former home of the Confederacy and lately a crucible of pluralism. A land where urban uproots rural and tradition trades blows with progress, forging a cultural battleground strewn with ideological rubble. It was here that the gentlemen of Worn In Red came of age, bearing witness to a generation of bands who now live on only in record store lore, all of whom left a lasting impression on the few who were there when it happened. Worn In Red drinks deep from a rich history of since-fallen bands like Sleepytime Trio, Hoover, and Frodus, while also paying tribute to contemporary titans Planes Mistaken For Stars, Glass and Ashes, and Hot Water Music.
Constrictor plays scathing, furiously-paced rock and roll that combines the hardcore intensity of L.A. punks The Bronx with the tongue-in-cheek ferocity and guitar fireworks of Norwegian rock legends Turbonegro.
Waxing poetic on subjects such as addiction, murder, greed and the general decline of Western civilization while retaining a sense of levity is nothing short of a tall order. However, it is this schizophrenic juxtaposition that is at the very core of Constrictor. Combining blasts of naked aggression with dual guitar fireworks and a knack for bombastic melody, the band's music is a joyous reminder of everything there is to love about rock and roll.
David Bazan + Band
The Mynabirds
Sunday, September 26, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $12
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Known for his work fronting the enigmatic rock band Pedro the Lion, David Bazan's emotionally charged narratives, eye for telling detail, and mournful voice have more in common with J.D. Salinger's 'Nine Stories' or Flannery O'Connor's 'Wise Blood' than with the usual lyrical slant of popular music. Bazan is a gifted storyteller, weaving parables of spiritual conflict, suburban ennui, and personal surrender into magnetic, well-crafted songs.
His debut solo full-length album, Curse Your Branches (out now on Barsuk), is a masterwork by a modern American poet at the height of his powers. Paste Magazine called him one of the '100 Best Living Songwriters'. This record is the deepest and most explicit exploration of his struggles with faith and a meditation on all things passed between the generations.
Before Georgie James, Laura Burhenn (half of the former DC duo) had spent her early years crafting music on her own. So when Georgie James split, she went back to what she knew. In the spring of 2009, Laura gathered her favorite books, records, and people around her and wrote what would become the first album from her new band, The Mynabirds.
What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood was recorded in the rugged hills of Oregon in the summer of 2009 with singer-songwriter/producer Richard Swift at the helm. Laura and Richard took turns at instruments until the record was fully orchestrated. When they finished recording each night, they'd polish off a bottle of whiskey and dance to records -- Dandy Livingstone, Buffy Sainte-Marie, James Brown -- until the sun came up. That energy really shows itself on The Mynabirds' debut album, particularly in 'Let the Record Go' and 'Numbers Don't Lie.' Other songs, like 'What We Gained in the Fire' and 'Right Place,' are more reflective, the lyrics following a Zen trajectory, echoing the sentiment of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass.
Joe Pug
Vandaveer
Thursday, October 7, 2010 Doors at 7:30pm $10
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For the moment, Joe Pug has it figured out, career if not life: Just write the songs that have to be written, play them for anybody who will listen, tour as if you had no home. Oh, and give your music away. Which isn't to say he won't be selling his debut full-length offering, Messenger ( Released 2/16/2010 on Lightning Rod). But free is how he came to make it, more or less.
It worked like this, for Joe Pug anyhow: The day before his senior year as a playwright student at the University of North Carolina, he sat down for a cup of coffee and had the clearest thought of his life: I am profoundly unhappy here. Then came the second clearest.
Pug packed up his belongings and pointed his car towards Chicago. Working as a carpenter by day, the 23 year-old Pug spent nights playing the guitar he hadn't picked up since his teenage years. Using ideas originally slated for a play he was writing called "Austin Fish," Pug began creating the sublime lyrical arrangements that would become the Nation of Heat EP.
The songs were recorded fast and fervently at a Chicago studio where a friend snuck him in to late night slots other musicians had canceled. He was short on money, but his bare-boned sincerity didn't require much more than a microphone and it dripped off of each note he sang.
The early rumblings of critical praise for the EP were confirmed when his first headlining gig sold out Chicago's storied Schubas Tavern in 2008. As word spread, Pug struck upon an idea that would later prove to be one of the most significant in his young career. He offered his existing fans unlimited copies of a free 2-song sampler CD to pass along to their friends. He sent the CDs out at his own expense, even covering the postage. Inside each package was a personal note thanking the fan for helping to spread the word. The response was overwhelming, and to date he has sent out over 15,000 CDs to 50 states and 14 different countries. Without access to radio, Pug managed to turn his fans into his very own broadcast system. The offer still stands, and to this day it's featured prominently on www.joepugmusic.com.
Vandaveer is the alt-folk song-singing/record making/globetrotting project penned and put forth by DC-by-way-of-Kentucky tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. Vandaveer's debut album, Grace & Speed, a mostly live, stripped down affair, swiftly entered this great big dusty world in the spring of 2007. The press responded heartily, with The Washington Post saying Vandaveer "revives the earnestness of the pre-psychedelic 60's," and XM Cafe calling him "this generation's Nick Drake."
Touring continually on both sides of the Atlantic ever since, Vandaveer has played 250+ shows, sharing stages with a host of humbling artists including Bon Iver, Vetiver, Alela Diane, Alejandro Escovedo, Vashti Bunyan, Bill Callahan, Fleet Foxes, and the like. In addition to said Vandaveering, Heidinger has been known to fraternize and conspire with other music-making hooligans, primarily as a bassist for fellow DCers These United States.
Starr Hill Presents:
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
Screamings Females
Saturday, October 16, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $13/$15
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Anyone who was lucky enough to see Ted Leo and the Pharmacists live over the last year or so got an advance
preview of some of the songs that make up THE BRUTALIST BRICKS. I was at more than a few of those
shows, and let me just say that as someone who has witnessed some of the most important rock shows in the
last twenty-plus years, I could not believe what my eyes were seeing and my ears were hearing.
So many times bands play 'the new stuff' and it's time to pull out the old iPhone and check your fantasy
basketball stats. But these songs sent a shock of genuine excitement through the crowd, as if the band was
cranking out an old favorite like "Me and Mia" or "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?". I was even a little
suspicious - you know how when you see a band and they play something so good that it just has to be a
cover? That's how I felt about hearing "Where Was My Brain?" and "Bottled In Cork" for the first time. Surely
these were not new songs!
But when Ted Leo himself told me post-show that they were among the new stuff, I knew what I had to do. I sat
the band down, looked them in the eye and said with songs like that on deck, the new Ted Leo and the
Pharmacists record was theirs to lose and they better not mess it up.
I am happy to say that they most certainly Brought It. From the opening facepunch of "The Mighty Sparrow" to
the thank-you-goodnight stomp of "Last Days" THE BRUTALIST BRICKS is a ripper that distills all that TL/Rx
have been working towards over the last decade into thirteen monster tracks.
I know what you're saying - what makes it so great, loudmouth? Well, jerk, it starts with the songs. While I love
all the preceding TL/Rx records like they were related to me, this baker's dozen is inarguably the strongest
batch that Ted has ever assembled. There are straight up HITS on this thing. From "One Polaroid A Day" to
"Bottled In Cork" To "Even Heroes Have To Die" and beyond, this album is stuffed with straight-up capital C
Classics.
But enough about Ted - how about the Pharmacists? Could they be more in the pocket? Chris Wilson's
drumming has never sounded better. Marty Key holds down the Thud Stick - it owes him money. And James
Canty is Mr. Everything, taking the songs to another level with his whipsmart guitar and keyboardings. Ted is the
anchor, but the Pharmacists are the reason the whole thing crushes like it does.
As a fan of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, THE BRUTALIST BRICKS is everything I hoped they would bring to
their Matador debut. It's the intersection of songs and performance from a band that embodies the perfect
synthesis of head and heart. Music is generally a case of individual taste, but if you don't like this record the only
thing I can think is that you're wrong and kinda stupid and I don't want anything to do with you.
--Tom Scharpling (Famous Television Writer and Radio Host)
WNRN 91.9 FM Presents at The Southern:
Horse Feathers
and Anais Mitchell
Monday, November 15, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $10/$12
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Justin Ringle has turned out to be a songwriter strongly influenced by the seasons. His Portland, Oregon-based band's last record, the critically acclaimed House With No Home, was a winter album par excellence, from its chilly cover art to its frostbitten songs of loneliness and loss.
But from the first piano notes of the title track, plinking like spring rain on a windowpane, Thistled Spring shows itself to be an album of rebirth, renewal, and fragile hope. The sun is out in the world evoked by this music, and in the first couple of songs it feels like the sun of early spring, glinting on a frosty river where the ice is just breaking up.
Thistled Spring as a whole displays a rich progression - more textured and lush than the band's previous two albums, it also captures the skillful interplay of the band's current touring lineup of Ringle, violinist Nathan Crockett, cellist Catherine Odell, and multi-instrumentalist Sam Cooper. Lyrically Ringle continues to explore broken relationships, longing, and pain, but this album has an undercurrent of heat that translates to a thawing of frozen hearts, and music which rushes like spring torrents, all of which points to a resurgence of life after a hard winter.
From her current home base in a 200-year-old farmhouse in rural Vermont, Anais ("uh-NAY-iss") Mitchell writes songs that are as intimate as conversations and as rich in detail as short stories. The daughter of "hippie back-to-the-landers" whose father was a novelist and English professor, she remembers her family's home (another farmhouse in the same state) containing "a library full of novels, and lots of old folk and psychedelic rock albums. The books and the records all lived in the same room, which I am sure led to me thinking of songwriting as a kind of literature, a noble poetic enterprise." No surprise, then, that the reference points of her music may seem to come from all over the map while still interconnected: the country ballads of the Carter Family, the hard-edged cabaret of Brecht and Weill, the story-songs of Randy Newman, the vast narrative scope of Pink Floyd's The Wall, and the intricately crafted tales of her namesake, bohemian feminist Ana•s Nin, to name afew.
Bear In Heaven
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 Doors at 8:00pm $8/$10
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Bear in Heaven have trapped echos, tremors, winds, and fading light. Theyve redefined time, and folded it. Theyve unbuttoned sound, and realigned it. Within four walls in Brooklyn, Jon Philpot, Adam Wills, Sadek Bazaara, and Joe Stickney mined the democracy of their collaboration, plus the endless hours of stream of consciousness recorded documentation of rehearsals over the past years, to conceive the crystalline form of Beast Rest Forth Mouth, their second album, their exaltation.
A seed planted in the Southern US years ago (all members hail from Georgia or Alabama), Bear In Heaven began as the musical arm of Jon Philpot in 1998. Time eventually brought in a slew of players, like rickety scaffolding, that grew the sound and guided the group to morph from a 6to5to4piece. As a fourheaded organism, Bear In Heaven has now found a sonic stride unlike any in their history. Freely acknowledging the importance of the number four, the album Beast Rest Forth Mouth (think 'East West North South') was a conscious product of the four compass points, of the four makers, and of the inevitable confusion that manifests from that crossroad mentality: four directions could lead you anywhere and everywhere. Its the acknowledgement of what can go down at that convergence, at that dusty center, that drives Bear In Heaven and imbues the songs of Beast Rest Forth Mouth with something akin to both eternal peace and nervous urgency.
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Just Announced:
Thursday October 7, 2010
Joe Pug
Vandaveer
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Monday November 15, 2010
WNRN 91.9 FM Presents:
Horse Feathers
Anais Mitchell
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Coming Up:
Tuesday September 7, 2010
Richard Buckner
Peyton Tochterman
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Sunday September 12, 2010
106.1 The Corner Presents:
Bess Rogers
Allison Weiss
Lelia Broussard
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Saturday September 18, 2010
Jukebox The Ghost
Drink Up Buttercup
Via Audio
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Thursday September 23, 2010
Brendan James
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Sunday September 26, 2010
David Bazan + Band
The Mynabirds
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Saturday October 16, 2010
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
Screaming Females
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Tuesday November 16, 2010
Bear In Heaven
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Coming Soon:
Wednesday September 15, 2010
Doors at 8:00pm
Civil Twilight
The Daylights
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