Carbon Leaf
“It felt so good to get back on the road again in 2021. It was a huge relief, with safety on everyone’s minds, to know that the efforts were paying off,” says Carbon Leaf frontman Barry Privett. “The systems worked very well we were able to connect through live music once again. When we got home in December, we went right to work writing and recording. We wanted this album to have a little bit more fun than our 2021 release, Gathering 2: The Hunting Ground. This new album will be expanding that neighborhood, musing on space and time, and the brief moment we get to experience it as Earthlings, if you will.”The ongoing Gathering series the band has been working on over the last few years is all about building community. “It’s a call to look inwards and find what matters, an invitation to reach out and embrace the gifts of human connection.” Privett says.That’s no mean feat given the deep divisions that have defined much of the past few years of American life, but Carbon Leaf has always punched above their weight, defying the odds at every turn and redefining what’s possible for a modern indie band in the process. The group’s extraordinary new mini-album, Gathering 2: The Hunting Ground, is no exception. Recorded at the band’s own studio in Richmond, VA, the collection marks the second installment of the group’s four-part Gathering series, which finds the long-running quintet stripping their sound back to its organic, acoustic core as they reckon with our ever-conflicting desires for unity and independence. The songs here are gutsy and probing, grappling with grief, loss, anger, and pain, and the arrangements are aggressive and insistent to match, fueled by layers of relentlessly strummed guitars, rolling banjo, and lush fiddle. The result is a moving, cathartic collection that’s unafraid to confront darkness and doubt head on, a poignant, revelatory record all about the power of self-reflection and the ties that bind.“One of the big questions we found ourselves grappling with as a band was, ‘How do you actually make any kind of a difference in society today?’” says Privett. “And I don’t think you can do that without first looking inwards—to yourself, your family, your friends—and figuring out what your values truly are.”Anyone who’s caught a Carbon Leaf show over the past three decades probably has a pretty good idea just what those values are: brotherhood, commitment, empathy, integrity, self-reliance. Founded at Randolph-Macon College in 1992, the group evolved from a houseparty cover band into something far more profound after graduation, when they moved to Richmond and made the shift to original music. The band’s first three albums helped build a devoted cult following, but it was 2001’s Echo Echo that truly brought Carbon Leaf to national attention, with lead single “The Boxer” earning the group a performance slot in front of millions of viewers at the American Music Awards. After nearly ten years of self-releasing and grinding it out on the road (both as headliners and as guests appearing on bills alongside the likes of Dave Matthews Band, O.A.R., Jason Mraz, Blues Traveler, and Guster, among others), the band signed with Vanguard Records in 2004 for their critical and commercial breakthrough, Indian Summer, which yielded a Top 5 hit at AAA radio and garnered rave reviews everywhere from The Washington Post to WXPN.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
Abbey Road LIVE! – Family Matinee
“One of the world’s premier Beatles cover bands” -US News and World Report “unquestionably expert at what they do” -Indyweek You loved Beatles music when you were a kid. Now it’s time for YOUR kids to experience the magic of the Beatles live in concert, as Abbey Road LIVE! plays a special all-ages family matinee show.Abbey Road LIVE! is well known for their energetic concerts at clubs, theaters and festivals. This time, the focus will be on the kids. Expect fun classics such as “Octopus’ Garden”, “Yellow Submarine”, and “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, along with many other Beatles hits.This rare event will be big fun for the whole family! Links: Website | Facebook | YouTube
Abbey Road LIVE!
“One of the world’s premier Beatles cover bands” -US News and World Report “unquestionably expert at what they do” -Indyweek Since 2002, Abbey Road LIVE! has been rocking the music of the Beatles at clubs, theatres, festivals, and private events. Initially a tribute to the monumental “Abbey Road” album, the band has expanded its scope to include more than 100 Beatles tunes, from all eras of the Fab Four’s career. The band specializes in complete, start-to-finish album performances of masterpieces such as “Abbey Road”, “Magical Mystery Tour”, “Rubber Soul”, “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band”. Abbey Road LIVE! is not your typical Beatle look-alike tribute act; don’t expect mop-top haircuts and vintage Rickenbacker guitars. Rather, this show is about bringing to life some of the more mature and complex Beatles material in a raw & spirited fashion, while remaining true to the original recordings. Combining attention to detail with a creative exuberance, the band always delights its audiences with its diverse repertoire of hits and more obscure favorites. A splendid time is guaranteed for all! Links: Website | Facebook | YouTube
Napalm Death
Art reflects life. Extreme times demand extreme responses. Silence sucks. Noise is always the answer. And yes, NAPALM DEATH continue to be one of the few bands on this planet that adhere to all these principles and more. For the last three decades, their name as been synonymous with heavy music taken to the extreme – music that confronts, confounds and eviscerates in equal measure.NAPALM DEATH’s enduring impact on the world of sonic savagery began in earnest in the late 80s, when the band’s first two albums – 1987’s Scum and its 1988 follow-up From Enslavement To Obliteration – refined and redefined the notion of brutality and velocity in the worlds of punk, hardcore and metal. Endorsed by legendary and much-missed DJ John Peel, the Brummie grindcore pioneers were such an exhilarating and yet alien dose of jolting adrenaline that even the mainstream media were forced to prick up their ears and take note. Throw in the fact that NAPALM DEATH were – and still are – driven by a ferocious intelligence and a genuine desire to make the world a better place through the promotion of rational thought and respect for all fellow humans, they stood apart from the often nihilistic and intellectually bankrupt underground metal scene and have re- mained unique and unerring ever since. While grind purists may point to those earliest records as evidence of the band’s signifi- cance, it is the tireless and terrorising exploits of the now classic line-up of vocalist Mark ‘Barney’ Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera that have cemented NAPALM DEATH’s status as extreme music leg- ends. Over the last 20 years, the band have released a relentless slew of groundbreaking and fearless albums and other releases that have consistently punched holes in the heavy music world’s perimeter fence, espousing an indestructible credo of creativity and lyrical fire along the way.However, unlike the vast majority of so-called veteran bands, NAPALM DEATH seem to be gaining momentum and focus as their story continues into its fourth decade. Albums like Smear Campaign (2006), Time Waits For No Slave (2009) and Utilitarian (2012) have proved beyond doubt that while their creators remain firmly at the forefront of the grindcore scene, they are also increasingly capable of expanding the boundaries of their own sound while exhibiting an undying passion for incorporating the most unimaginably intense and perverse fresh elements into their otherwise remorselessly fast and furious blueprint. And now, with the release of their fifteenth studio album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, the undisputed Gods of Grind are poised to shatter preconceptions and redefine what it means to be truly extreme all over again.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
Dar Williams
Recognized as an author, educator and urban-planning expert, Williams is also penning a new book, Writing a Song That Matters, based on her popular songwriting retreats.When Dar Williams starts discussing her latest album, I’ll Meet You Here, she’s not yet sure she can identify its through line; a thread that might connect its 10 songs together. But as she delves into the collection, releasing Oct. 1 on BMG’s recently launched Renew label, she mentions her attempt to turn her yard into a meadow. Unfortunately, the wildflower seeds she scattered on the grass around her home, in New York’s Hudson Valley, didn’t take. Now she just has an unruly lawn.“It kind of has a crazy-lady look,” Williams says, laughing. “I’m on a corner in a village, so everybody sees it. I do all this remedial stuff; it’s not really working. But I know why I did it, and I know what I was going for. Generally, people are saying ‘I see what you’re trying to do.’ And I’m sure some people are shaking their heads. And I’m OK either way.”“At some point,” she adds, “you have to meet life where it meets you … I think what the songs all have in common is the willingness to meet life as it arrives.”We might even simplify it as “acceptance,” that concept Buddhists and behavioral therapists try so hard to teach. But that’s far from passivity; on the contrary (and unlike her lawn), Williams’ lyrics contain bouquets of optimism, delivered on melodies alternating between beguiling lightness and understated gravity. In “Today and Every Day,” for example, she sings, There’s no time for this smug frustration, I say everyone, EVERYONE’S a power station. And we’ll light the way, but we got to say we can save the world a little every day.But she also writes from the viewpoint of a woman who has weathered plenty of storms (as vividly described in “Let the Wind Blow”), and is no longer willing to delude herself into believing someone else’s definition of love (as noted in “I Never Knew”).Comparing “Magical Thinking,” one of several relationship songs, with “Time Be My Friend,” from which the album takes its title, Williams remarks, “There’s a piece of your brain that you have to calm in order to meet time, and to not sit there saying, ‘If I keep on following these rituals, maybe I’ll influence what’s going to happen.’ It’s like, ‘Why not just be OK with what’s happening now?’“I’ve been very interested in how to control my future,” she adds, “and this album has to do with the fact that at some point, you just can’t.”Like everyone else, Williams spent 2020 in that state of non-control. She and longtime producer Stewart Lerman tracked most of the album, her 12th studio recording, in November of 2019. In late February of 2020, she cut the title tune in Woodstock with bassist Gail Ann Dorsey and Larry Campbell, who produced the track and played guitars, pedal steel and twangy baritone guitar. When told they had to postpone a mid-March mixing date, Campbell said he wasn’t feeling well anyway. Turns out he’d contracted a serious case of COVID-19. By the time he recovered, they knew a 2020 release was not in the cards — tarot or otherwise.Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify
Jonathan Richman with Tommy Larkins
Dear ArtsCenter Patrons, Mask and Proof of Vaccination and or a negative Covid-19 test taken by a licensed health professional within the previous 72 hours before the event are required for entry. “Richman is one of America’s most unique and dynamic songwriters…” – Nashville Scene “Richman didn’t need much else besides a beat to work his magic.” – New York Daily News“Buy tickets early. Buy tickets often. This is just good general life advice, but even more so when you’re talking about Jonathan Richman. Don’t get denied at the door, don’t leave things up to chance: You will regret it.” – Nashville Scene“Rhymes worthy of Ogden Nash.” – The New York Times“Richman has spent decades removing barriers between himself and his audience, cultivating an intimacy that is almost extinct in modern music.”- Nashville Scene“The music we’re doing now works well in quiet places like theaters and performing art centers. We still don’t use a program or a set list so we don’t know what we’ll do until we do it. Please do not expect old songs. Many singers my age do a retrospective; this show is not like that. It’s mostly stuff made up in the last 3 and 4 years. Some of the songs presented might be in different languages; this is not to be esoteric or clever, it’s because the different languages help me express different feelings sometimes. One last thing, my idea of a good show has nothing to do with applause. It’s about if all the songs I sang that night were ones that I felt.” – JonathanLinks: Bandcamp | Blue Arrow Records
Illiterate Light
Illiterate Light has been stretching boundaries and upending expectations with a captivating blend of soaring indie rock, swirling psychedelia, and atmospheric folk that calls to mind everything from Neil Young and My Morning Jacket to Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses. Recorded with producers Adrian Olsen (Foxygen, Natalie Prass) and Vance Powell (Jack White, Kings Of Leon, Chris Stapleton), the record is blissful and ecstatic, with a mix of raw electric guitars, propulsive drums, and shimmering harmonies that showcases the band’s remarkable live setup—Gorman plays guitar with his hands and synth bass with his feet, while his musical partner, Jake Cochran, plays a standup drum kit, which captures the scintillating energy that’s fueled their journey.Gorman and Cochran first met while attending college in Harrisonburg, VA, where they discovered a shared passion for sustainable living and community building. After graduation, they took over a local organic farm, spending their days tending crops and working farmer’s markets and their nights performing anywhere they could land (or make) a gig. Dubbing themselves the Petrol Free Jubilee Carnival Tour, the pair would often tour the region on their bikes, sometimes joined by as many as two-dozen other cyclists and artists, performing at coffee houses, street corners, rock clubs, and off-the-grid communities.Hailed as “a perfect addition to your summertime playlist” by NPR, the band honed in on their distinctive sound and identity over years of relentless touring, earning dates along the way with the likes of Shakey Graves, Rayland Baxter, Mt. Joy, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Futurebirds, and The Head and The Heart in addition to high-profile festival slots at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Newport Folk, and more.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Cory Branan
“I pulled these songs from a batch of fifty that mostly predate the pandemic, and all of these felt kin. They’re about doubt, loss, depression, general stir-craziness.“But I knew I didn’t want to make a record that pondered itself, I wanted it to have motion, so I gave this record an overarching rule: The sadder the song, the more it had to move and groove. That’s how the country weeper ‘That Look I Lost’ got the Motown treatment. I wanted you to nod along, then after listening ask, Wait, what am I shaking my ass to?”When I Go I Ghost is Cory Branan’s sixth full length release. His first was 20 years ago: He ain’t banging out pulp here. A writer’s writer, Cory’s lines grip like a page-turner, giddy with interior rhyming and wordplay:I took a shower but the shower didn’t take– “O’ Charlene”the kinda wreck I recognize– “C’Mon If You Wanna Come”You post a picture, notice the mixtureThe camera capturesThat ‘before and after’ look in your eye– “C’Mon If You Wanna Come”When she’s staring down the bad end of the barrelOf yet another long and loaded night– “That Look I Lost”One propulsive song that jangles with hope is “Come On If You Wanna Come,” with lyrics about being too depressed – maybe too hungover – to venture out, accompanied by music that catches the buoyancy one feels after recovering. “’Come On’ is about as optimistic as I can get. We did all the fun Simmons 1980’s drum samples on there, and added concert toms, putting reverse gated reverb on the drums – an old ‘80s Cars-era trick. There’s Rickenbacker and a 12 string guitar. It’s a respite in the record. It evokes the Traveling Wilbury’s, though maybe a meth-y Wilburys.”Cory’s stories don’t resolve neatly. “I embrace my fluctuating doubt. The way I write, I feel my way through these dark halls and then realize, Oh, this is how the house is shaped.”Like a novelist, he inhabits the minds and hearts of his creations, much as they inhabit him. “I’m interested in characters at a crossroads, getting in the flux and staying there. In ‘Of Two Minds,’ I got this feel for the lead character and I asked myself, Who else is in the room with her? Then I realized – she’s the other character too! And by the end, I found myself so wholly identifying that I realized she’s also me.” First she says, “I’m gonna quit while I’m behind,” but in a later verse it’s: “I double down when I’m behind.” Flux indeed, just like real life. That song also features this stinger: “Set the pistol on the dresser and the bed on fire.”On “Pocket of God,” he’s created a noir movie. “I tried to get as much of a story as I could in there, with someone in the hot seat. You don’t know who he’s singing to until the end, and it’s a s story of what happened to someone he cared deeply about. That song began as a sweet line about somebody thinking he picked the pocket of God to have met someone, and I thought, That’s too Hallmark, so I tried to balance it with a Raymond Carver sensibility, where definitions aren’t the same for everyone, where the narrator is untrustworthy. I’m a big fan of Randy Newman, the songwriter king of untrustworthy narrators.Links: Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Dead Horses
A bustling boulevard in the heart of Milwaukee provides a colorful backdrop for the latest album by folk duo Dead Horses. Brady Street, which is due out on August 12, 2022, is Dead Horses’ first full-length release since their arresting 2018 record, My Mother the Moon. The last album charted on the Americana Top 50 radio charts for three consecutive months. The single “Turntable” accrued more than 35 million spins on Spotify and was also featured on the Amazon and Apple Americana playlists. The pair’s select media highlights include a Rolling Stone “Artist You Should Know” mention as well as profiles in Billboard, Noisey, and even independent global news publication Democracy Now!For their fourth full-length press, the pair decided to stick to their roots and record at Honeytone Studios in Neenah. “We wanted to produce something that seemed true to us, so we opted for a closer-to-home approach,” explains Daniel Wolff. “The experience allowed us to dive in and out of the studio and really work with the individual songs and the overall feel of Brady Street. Because of this, I believe we created a set of songs that contain a wider variety of sounds and textures that we knew were possible for us but didn’t have the chance to accomplish yet based on our previous recording strategies.”The new record kicks off with its title track, “Brady Street,” a song that took many months to finish, but one that Sarah Vos says she “never lost faith in because it seemed to really capture a mood I’ve never been able to through song.” The second and third tracks open to reveal Dead Horses’ evolution into more intricate places rhythmically and sonically, only to pull away to the live recorded, sparsely beautiful, intimate “Bird Over the Train.” Track 8, titled “You Are Who You Need to Be,” is a ballad meant to empower those who don’t fit into society’s gender and sexuality norms. The final tracks, “Under Grey Skies” and “Days Grow Longer,” leave the listener with an unexpected sound from the band. “The sound is more fun and lighthearted than what we usually create, unless you’re looking too hard,” Vos observes. “I feel that Brady Street is a coming-of-age record for us – both musically and thematically,” Vos shares. “In some ways, Brady Street is an answer to My Mother the Moon. The latter was written and recorded in the midst of working through childhood traumas and first venturing out on my own. Brady Street is less naive, more gritty, more focused.” Brady Street takes the intimacy of nature and brings it into the oftentimes reckless city life. Instead of walks through the forest, the songs take the audience on walks through the city, past all the old churches and bars with rich histories. Both records are filled with songs of hope and the search for beauty, as well as compassion for others, especially strangers. Written primarily throughout the COVID lockdown, Brady Street turns inward and reflects the introspection many of us encountered over the course of the often-melancholy pandemic.Since the band’s early days, Dead Horses has been something of a fluid project centered around Sarah and Dan but has also welcomed other like minded musicians for recording and touring. The band’s seemingly dark name is a loving tribute to a former friend of the band who passed away due to struggles with opioid abuse.Links: Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Snapchat
Alesana
Positive Mental Attitude. This is the mantra that is not only a driving force for Raleigh, North Carolina based Alesana, but also a way of life. Celebrating eleven years as a band, the pop-metal sextet is always in high spirits and accustomed to playing their hearts out every night when on the road. Countless US tours, several trips around the world, and seven major releases later, Alesana is living proof that hard work and dedication to dreams can go a long, long way. Calling Revival Recordings their home, the band released the conclusion to their Annabel Trilogy in April 2015 with Confessions. Released in December of 2013, the stand-alone single Fatima Rusalka progressed the band’s conceptual trilogy en route to its conclusion with Confessions. The song does what has come to be expected of the storytelling rock machine which is to draw from past influences while incorporating new possibilities, dynamics, and sonic exploration. Having spent time on Tragic Hero Records, Fearless Records, and Epitaph Records, Alesana’s entire catalogue, consisting of Try This With Your Eyes Closed, On Frail Wings of Vanity and Wax, Where Myth Fades To Legend, The Emptiness, A Place Where The Sun Is Silent, and Confessions, has charted on the Billboard Top 200. In summer 2016, Alesana released a special edition of Confessions including two new tracks along with a novella, entitled Annabel, which inspired The Annabel Triology. The album is available on all digital outlets now and the novella is available for purchase on Amazon Kindle now. In 2017, Alesana began working on the ulitmate fan project which they called Origins. Filled with hours worth of behind the scenes and never before seen footage, demos, and a brand new EP The Lost Chapters, Origins was born as a visual history of the past thirteen years of the band. In early 2018, Alesana released The Lost Chapters EP digitally. Origins bundles are currently available on the Revival Recordings shop page. The Lost Chapters EP is available to stream on all digital platforms and to purchase on iTunes now! Links: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Apple Music
