The Bobby Lees
Iggy Pop, Blondie, Henry Rollins…just a few of the Punk icons who have shown support for Woodstock, NY based band THE BOBBY LEES.Their new album BELLEVUE was released on October 7th 2022 on Ipecac Recordings (The Melvins, Mr. Bungle, Faith No More) and was produced by multi-grammy winning producer and mixer Vance Powell (Jack White, Chris Stapleton, Beyonce)Their last album SKIN SUIT was produced by underground punk-legend Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion and was released via Alive Naturalsound Records in 2020. Henry Rollins said “The Bobby Lees Skin Suit album is wild and different. I dug it immediately. Dangerous music is good for you”.Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Bilmuri
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Coco & Clair Clair
Coco & Clair Clair knew from the moment they met that they were meant to make music together. Similarly, listeners are immediately drawn to the Atlanta-bred duo through their clever, infectious, and genre-defying songs. Their devoted fan base is primed to grow with the release of their debut project, SEXY. “It’s impactful, but it’s a really silly word,” Clair Clair says of the title. “And then, none of the songs are actually that sexy.” Coco & Clair Clair are used to being misjudged at first glance, but these 13 songs put forth their most authentic selves, especially dynamic, flair-filled singles “Cherub” and “Love Me,” and put to bed any questions about their artistry.“‘Cherub’ shows people our more hip-hop, rap side and then ‘Love Me’ is more lofi poppy [and] pop star vibes,” Coco says. “It’s showing people, hey, we can do both.”“We both really wanted to show our capabilities,” Clair Clair adds. “Some songs, Coco raps so fast, which she’s never done before. And some of the songs, I actually try to sing or I just talk. It was important to us that we tried new things and showcased what we can do without putting out songs that are like, Well, they just put this out because this is a popular sound right now and that’s why Coco and Claire are jumping on it. It’s still very much us, but it’s new and fresh.”Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Coco and Clair Clair’s respective skill sets were on display from early ages. Coco was an only child, so she turned toward the internet to find her community and ultimately found an outlet for self-expression: “I didn’t have anyone to vibe with at home, so I would just vibe online a lot, and I got into music through MySpace. I would make music videos for friends, and then I started making beats.” Clair Clair adds, “I always wanted to be a singer but I don’t think I ever thought I would actually be one.” Her natural love for music was aided by her father. “I learned a lot about music through my dad driving me to school,” she says. “He would always play me music in the car that I had never heard.”Toward the end of high school in 2014, Coco and Clair Clair met through mutual friends on Twitter and would soon influence and teach each other. Their foundational friendship and intrinsic trust are conduits for making music that is singularly theirs but also universally relatable.“We really rely on the other person,” Clair Clair says. “We’ll both go write our verses, and then we share them with each other and let the other person edit them. Everything is very much both of our brains combined, which we couldn’t do with someone who wasn’t a very good friend because it’s such a vulnerable process.”In 2017, Coco & Clair Clair decided to record, mix, and self-release the seven-track project POSH before Clair Clair left Atlanta for New York City — to at least get their music out into the world because they weren’t sure the next time they’d be together to make more. The confident, eclectic single “Pretty” took off, introducing their tongue-in-cheek lyricism and multi-layered soundscapes, and boasts over 60 million Spotify streams to date. But it wasn’t until May 2019, when they were flown to Santa Ana, Calif., to perform with Cowgirl Clue that they realized they were becoming career musicians.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Donovan Woods and Henry Jamison
Donovan Woods was in on the joke when he named his latest release. Riffing on a lyric from a Martin Simpson song (“Never Any Good”), Big Hurt Boy is a six-song exploration of how our failures — and our fixations on them — not only shape but enlighten us.“I write about them again and again, just hoping people will still be interested,” the acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter says. “So the title is poking fun of myself, that I’m theoretically this big sad guy who keeps getting dumped and writing fucking songs about it.”Or you could think of it this way: Woods’ deep curiosity about the human condition is why we so clearly hear our own stories in his. The details differ, the characters change, but at their core, Donovan Woods songs are for and about everyone.That’s particularly apparent on his new EP, which will be released March 18, 2022. Trying to capture more of an “undone” quality, Woods wanted his latest songs to “get back to the feeling that my early recordings had.” You hear that in the spare, subtle ache of “No Time Soon,” an acoustic monologue Woods describes as “the story of my whole life.”I am a frightened rabbitRunning off a mapOnly loved you out of habitI ain’t proud of thatBut while I do the dishes I hum a little tuneSomeday, no time soonWebsite | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | TikTokHenry Jamison’s upcoming third LP The Years was produced by Doug Schadt (Maggie Rogers, Claud) plus long-standing collaborators Thomas Bartlett (Florence & The Machine, Sufjan Stevens) and Harris Paseltiner of Darlingside. Featured vocalist Maisie Peters and composer Nico Muhly (Adele, Bjork) round out the cast on what is Jamison’s most dynamic and diverse collection of songs to date. Since his 2017 debut The Wilds, which was humbly produced with two friends at a sugarbush/apiary in his native Vermont, Jamison has branched out to become one of the most interesting collaborators of his generation. His 2019 follow up Gloria Duplex explored identity, class and masculinity over baroque textures and performances from Thomas Bartlett, Rob Moose (Phoebe Bridger, Bon Iver, Taylor Swift) and Shazhad Ismaily (Damien Rice, Nils Frahm, Marketa Irglová). In 2020 Jamison released Tourism, a five-song folk collection, featuring JOSEPH, Ed Droste, Fenne Lily, Darlingside and Lady Lamb.Jamison’s uncanny ability to weave folk lyricism and instruments through a popular veneer has led to over 300M streams and widespread praise, especially from his peers. Adrianne Lenker describes, “Songs that sing me through mazes of my own sensuality and sadness and help me to feel less alone in the journey to understand myself.” Raised by a classical composer father and an English professor mother, Jamison was drawn to music and lyrics from his earliest days and began recording his own homemade cassette tapes while he was still in elementary school. Going further back in Jamison’s lineage, you’ll find George Frederick Root, the most popular songwriter of the Civil War era and the author of the iconic “Battle Cry Of Freedom.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Magic Giant
“The most festive band in the festival circuit,” MAGIC GIANT has amassed over 100M streams, had TV appearances ranging from the Today Show to Good Morning America, and been singled out by Billboard as one of “10 Awesome Bands” playing Coachella and by Rolling Stone as one of “10 Artists You Need to Know.” Their singles “Set on Fire,” “Window,” and “Disaster Party” have all broken the top 40 on the US radio charts.The Die With Zero Tour is inspired by the bestselling book and official tour partner, Die With Zero by Bill Perkins and its theme of living life with no regrets. The nationwide tour kicks off Mar 11 accompanied with the release of a new EP.Carrying forward the hopeful outlook of the alt group’s debut full length record In The Wind and sophomore studio album The Valley, their upcoming EP contains equal parts depth and optimism. Shares lead singer Austin Bisnow: We recorded our first album in between shows on a solar-powered mobile recording studio. Our second studio album we were hunkered down during the pandemic and going through lots of changes like taking our careers completely independent for the first time since we started. This EP is about finding hope even when it seems daunting or impossible. When the pandemic struck they responded by throwing one of the first digital music festivals of its kind with guests including The Lumineers, Woody Harrelson, Edward Norton, Walk the Moon, David Blaine, Jason Maz, LP, The Head & The Heart, Edward Sharpe, Glen Hansard, Walk Off The Earth, Ashe, Allen Stone and Local Natives, raising over $100,000 to deliver PPE to frontline hospital workers.Not only does the group write and produce their records and direct their music videos, they plant a tree through a non-profit partner with every album sold, creating a mini forest with thousands of trees; and have thrown an annual music-festival-meets-summer-camp for their fans called Camp Misfits.Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Sam Burchfield & The Scoundrels
Raised in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains of South Carolina, Sam Burchfield was brought up on Appalachian music: folk, gospel, country and southern soul. The young songwriter draws on these roots with a deep lyrical honesty that carries the tradition of folk music forward. Burchfield’s latest album, ‘Graveyard Flower’, seeks to reconnect to the Appalachian roots that raised him. In a world of cell phones and internet distractions, this body of work beckons the listener to plant their feet firmly in the soil. Reconnect to the land, reconnect to each other; ‘Graveyard Flower’ is honest music.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Jphono1, Jennyanykind, Mayflies USA
7:00pm – Doors8:00pm – Mayflies USA9:00pm – Jphono110:00pm – Jennyanykind
Sam Grisman Project presents the music of Garcia/Grisman
A Note From Sam– The music that my father David Grisman and his close friend, Jerry Garcia, made in the early 90s (in the house that I grew up in) is not only some of the most timeless acoustic music ever recorded, it also triggers my oldest and fondest musical memories. What I find most inspiring about this material is the way their camaraderie and their love and joy for the music, simply oozes out of each recording. It is also impressive how deeply they get beneath their favorite songs—whether they are originals, covers or traditional/old time tunes—and how expertly that material was curated.My goal in starting Sam Grisman Project is to build a platform for my friends and me to showcase our genuine passion and appreciation for the legacy of Dawg and Jerry’s music. By playing some of their beloved repertoire and sharing the original music that our own collective has to offer, we will also show the impact that this music has had on our own individual musical voices. Ultimately, there is nothing that makes me happier than playing great songs with my best friends and my hope is to share that happiness with audiences all over!”Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Bailen
Tired Hearts, the new album from rising indie-pop power trio, BAILEN, delivers a dazzling set of songs that navigates the space between the heart’s expectation and the head’s sober reality. New York based siblings, Daniel, David, and Julia’s second full-length album for Fantasy beats with empathy, vulnerability, and resolve.At times intricate and playful, measured and elaborate, the 12 original songs on Tired Hearts wrestle with an uncertain future where ethics and morality—both communal and personal—seem to be constantly shifting. Locating one’s compass amidst the chaos—a world-wide pandemic, toxic social media culture, economic insecurity and political turbulence—is at the LP’s core.Producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, Snail Mail) who, along with the band, co-produced Tired Hearts, helped to expand BAILEN’s ambition beyond what they initially envisioned. “We’d played the last record live a hundred times before recording it, so we tracked a lot of it live,” Daniel explains. “With Brad, we took a collagist’s approach. It freed us up to explore and be sonically adventurous.”In contrast to the road-tested songs on their accomplished debut LP, 2019’s Thrilled to Be Here produced by John Congleton, many of the songs on Tired Hearts were honed in the studio as opposed to live on tour – “the songs changed so much over the course of recording process,” Julia remarks.Most noticeably, Cook encouraged the trio to experiment with how they sing. “We deliberately used the more vulnerable parts of our voices,” Julia says. “After not being in the studio for years, we were in vulnerable places, and this record reflects the frustration and tenderness of that time.” “We pushed ourselves lyrically, it’s the most exposed, intimate music we’ve written as a result,” David affirms.Indeed, BAILEN’s radiant harmonies, spare, synth-driven tracks, and futuristic, ear-catching arrangements usher in Tired Heart’s exhilarating avant-pop evolution. “Shadows,” affectingly captures “the moment you see someone and realize you can spend the rest of your life with them.” “Nothing Left to Give” echoes of HAIM’s sparkling pop, while “These Bones,” contains a hint of Phoebe Bridgers’ hushed intimacy.Perhaps no two songs embody that fresh ethos (and the band’s incredible range) more than the high-gloss, New Wave dance track “Call It Like It Is,” and the stunning “BRCA (Nothing Takes Me Down),” which takes its name from the hereditary breast cancer gene that Julia and her mother (who is a breast cancer survivor) share. Over the track’s slow building rhythmic pulse, Julia sings of hospital gowns and uncertainty, untying a complex knot of familial anxiety, guilt, and acceptance, while embracing the determination to move forward: I’ll still live like I’m dying/ But I won’t let it take me down, she insists. “It’s about finding ways to not be defined by these circumstances, and to move past them with resilience.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Wednesday
A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter/vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, the Asheville quintet’s new and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic. Across the album’s ten tracks Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis build a shrine to minutiae. Half-funny, half-tragic dispatches from North Carolina unfurling somewhere between the wailing skuzz of Nineties shoegaze and classic country twang, that distorted lap steel and Hartzman’s voice slicing through the din.Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It’s not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void – somehow – you see everything.Rat Saw God was written in the months immediately following Twin Plagues’ completion, and recorded in a week at Asheville’s Drop of Sun studio. While Twin Plagues was a breakthrough release critically for Wednesday, it was also a creative and personal breakthrough for Hartzman. The lauded record charts feeling really fucked up, trauma, dropping acid. It had Hartzman thinking about the listener, about her mom hearing those songs, about how it feels to really spill your guts. And in the end, it felt okay. “I really jumped that hurdle with Twin Plagues where I was not worrying at all really about being vulnerable – I was finally comfortable with it, and I really wanna stay in that zone.”The album opener, “Hot Rotten Grass Smell,” happens in a flash: an explosive and wailing wall-of-sound dissonance that’d sound at home on any ‘90s shoegaze album, then peters out into a chirping chorus of peepers, a nighttime sound. And then into the previously-released eight-and-half-minute sprawling, heavy single, “Bull Believer.” Other tracks, like the creeping “What’s So Funny” or “Turkey Vultures,” interrogate Hartzman’s interiority – intimate portraits of coping, of helplessness. “Chosen to Deserve” is a true-blue love song complete with ripping guitar riffs, skewing classic country. “Bath County” recounts a trip Hartzman and her partner took to Dollywood, and time spent in the actual Bath County, Virginia, where she wrote the song while visiting, sitting on a front porch. And Rat Saw God closer “TV in the Gas Pump” is a proper traveling road song, written from one long ongoing iPhone note Hartzman kept while in the van, its final moments of audio a wink toward Twin Plagues.Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
