February

As I Lay Dying

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The members of As I Lay Dying are the kind of musicians that refuse to be measured solely by their most recent accomplishments. The new album, An Ocean Between Us, is evidence of this fact, proving once again that these guys are not afraid to push the limits of their sound and always keep things moving. The music grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go until the album’s finish. Building upon the foundation that AILD has laid over the past several years, growing from a small San Diego outfit slowly and deliberately into a priority national act, the band has become Metal Blade Records’ biggest sellers with an extremely devoted following. As I Lay Dying has the goods to take it all the way and stake their claim as the metal band “you need to know about” in 2007 and beyond. A brief history lesson: AILD’s Metal Blade debut, 2003’s Frail Words Collapse, effectively introduced this indie band to the world on the strength of the catchy but brutal songs, “94 Hours” and “Forever.” The album went on to be a label best-seller, surpassing 210,000 units sold. The follow up, Shadows Are Security, further spotlighted AILD as one of most influential bands to break out of the underground metal scene. Their high-profile, marathon tour cycle found the band as one of the featured attractions on the Ozzfest 2005 side stage, then as part of the second annual Taste Of Chaos trek in winter 2006 along with Deftones and Thrice, culminating in the headlining slot on the 2006 Sounds Of The Underground tour in front of 3000-5000 people per night. Shadows has sold nearly 275,000 records to date as word of the album and the band's electrifying live show continues to spread through their ever growing fan base, fans that simply put are in it for the long haul.

Music video for "94 Hours"

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Brett Dennen

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As a young adult, Brett was a Community Studies major at UC Santa Cruz. After graduation he met a visionary woman with an ear for raw talent. Her gift for getting people to listen and share her excitement about his music, were a perfect incubator for his unique voice & insightful songs. Their work together would change his life.

Brett started working with Leslie Merical in December 2002. She encouraged him to pursue music seriously and made sure he wasn't slowed by the challenges most new artists face. Inspired by the good in his lyrics and the reaction to his songs, Merical started by convincing promoters at venues to give him a chance to play, despite his inexperience. She connected with his fans at every show and made them feel like they were part of something wonderful while guiding him along the path most artists have to travel alone.

For fun, she invited him into her studio to record a few of his songs in December of 2002, and as they worked, she became convinced she could turn the songs into an album and help him get his music to a global audience. The result was Brett's self-titled debut, which they released on her Three Angels & A Saint label in late 2003. Although the album was initially meant for less public ears, it became obvious to Merical that people wanted to hear the magical, lo-fi recordings and were moved by the songs. Almost immediately, she found connections to KCRW DJ Chris Douridas, who spun the unknown artist's glorified demo on Valentine's Day 2004. It was a big break for Brett and Merical, and an encouraging sign they were on to something and on the right path!

Music video for "Ain't No Reasons"

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Annuals

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Raleigh, North Carolina-based six-piece Annuals will be releasing their sophomore album, Such Fun, on October 7th, 2008 on Canvasback Music.  The collection was co-produced by Annuals frontman Adam Baker and producer Jacquire King (Modest Mouse, Tom Waits), who also produced the band’s recently released Wet Zoo EP. Recorded throughout North Carolina, Such Fun is an album so varied and exciting, it certainly belies the years of its young creator and his musical cohorts.

Annuals have had an incredible ride since their acclaimed debut album, Be He Me, came out only two short years ago. Released when the band members – Adam Baker (songwriter/vocals), Kenny Florence (lead guitar/backing vocals), Mike Robinson (bass/backing vocals), Anna Spence (keyboard/piano/backing vocals), Zak Oden (drums/guitar) and Donzel Radford (drums/percussion) — were all around the age of nineteen, the album spread like a wildfire around the globe. Critics (everyone from Rolling Stone to the New York Times to the NME) and fans alike fell instantly for the young band's expansive, energetic sound, igniting a frenzy amongst bloggers that has shown no signs of slowing down. Tours with Bloc Party, The Flaming Lips and an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien ensued, but in the pockets of downtime, Annuals secretly began to work on their newest creation, Such Fun. From song fragments that Adam had been carrying around for years in his head to compositions written throughout the recording process, Such Fun only took a more pronounced shape over the last year. Even in its initial stages, the songs were markedly different from their predecessors, revealing the ways in which Adam’s incredible songwriting had grown considerably in a short period of time. His influences – Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Paul Simon – all melted together with his own sharply-honed melodic sensibilities as he wrote, depicting themes of loneliness, loss, and the organic world. The result is a record that is fully, electrifyingly alive, maintaining the breadth of Annuals’ scope while taking their sound in brilliant new directions. To say the record is, of course, “such fun” would be a bit silly, but that is the exact wording for the dynamic compositions on this album: songs this great inspire the desire to hear them over and over again…

Music video for "Confessor"

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an evening with
Cowboy Junkies

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Despite its title, the new Cowboy Junkies album, At the End of Paths Taken, is as much about new beginnings as it is about endings. It is also about human connections, the struggle to sustain those connections over time, and the complexities that can arise even when those connections are maintained. It is, in other words, a classic Cowboy Junkies album - a suite of smart, richly textured songs that value subtlety over broad, generic strokes, songs that prize insight and casual revelations over easily digestible clichés. Family lies at the heart of the album's eleven songs, and, of course, that is appropriate, too. Three of the band's members - singer Margo Timmins; songwriter, producer and guitarist Michael Timmins; and drummer Peter Timmins - are siblings, and bassist Alan Anton has been a member since the group formed in Toronto in 1985. Few bands have lasted nearly as long with their original line-up intact, and fewer still have created as consistently satisfying a body of work. Albums like The Trinity Session (1988), Black Eyed Man (1992), Miles From Our Home (1988) and Early 21st Century Blues (2005), to isolate just a few high points, chronicle a creative journey that is impervious to trends. Each of those albums sounds as fresh and current today as when it was made. You don't stay together and produce work of that quality and depth without learning something about family and permanence - what lasts, what doesn't, perhaps even what shouldn't. But if their history is an important part of what led the band to At the End of Paths Taken, other factors entered in as well. "My idea was to write an album about families, about how generations affect generations, how there's a continuum," Michael says. "I'm the father of three young kids, and I've got aging parents, so that's obviously a big part of my life. But I found that what was going on in the outside world was affecting my writing. These times are extremely trying. What sort of world is being set up for my kids? All of that began to brew together." The result is an album that takes family as a starting point, but goes on to look at the vast range of people's responsibilities to and for each other. "Songs like "Still Lost" and "Blue Eyed Saviour" are ultimately about any parent and their kids, about sending them out into the world and having no clue where that journey will take them," Michael says. On "Mountain," Margo's vocal interweaves with a recording of their father, a successful aviation salesman, reading a passage about their family from a book he recently completed about his life.

Music video for "I'm So Open"

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State Radio

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Few bands are as outspoken and thought-provoking as State Radio, the musically inventive, socially and politically charged trio fronted by Chad Stokes. With its sophomore album, Year Of The Crow, the group–rounded out by bassist Chuck Fay and drummer Mad Dog–matches its conscience-raising messages with an inspiring amalgam of rock, punk and reggae that is as distinctive as it is sublime.

For U.S. concert-goers, Stokes was first known as the voice behind agit-prop outfit Dispatch, a band that sold a whopping 600,000 albums by word of mouth. Although the outfit’s six-year tenure ended in 2002, its members have reunited for noble causes, including 2007’s epic three-night sold-out stand at Madison Square Garden to benefit the plight in Zimbabwe. In lieu of college, Stokes lived in Zimbabwe during his eighteenth year, and the experience not only galvanized his songs, but it also shaped his life with a commitment that is as strong as ever.

Simply stated, it is impossible not to be moved by the sounds emanating from State Radio, whether it’s the genocide in Darfur, which is told through the eyes of a young boy on the alluring, rhythmic “Sudan,” the explosive, edgy, reggae-laden “C.I.A.” or the steamrolling rallying cry for justice known as “Unfortunates.”

Music video for "Camilo"

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an evening with
Dark Star Orchestra

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Using entire shows from the Grateful Dead's 30 years of extensive touring as a launching pad, Dark Star Orchestra recreates the original song for song performance set list for an entirely new generation of, as well as old school, Deadheads. Dark Star Orchestra presents its critically acclaimed live show at esteemed venues from coast to coast and internationally.

Dark Star Orchestra performs Grateful Dead classics in the same way that an orchestra interprets music of classical composers. The composer spirit is derived and channeled as the players capture the excitement and innovation of the original performances and compositions. Touring nationwide for nine years to the tune of nearly 1500 shows since forming, the band's determined commitment to "raising the Dead" has drawn national media attention.

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Son Volt

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Jay Farrar has amassed a sizable and distinctive body of work since coming on the radar with Uncle Tupelo in 1989. The Search, the fifth album by the St. Louis-based artist under the Son Volt nameplate, takes Farrar’s signature juxtapositions of the arcane and the modern to provocative extremes, contrasting the blue highways of a disappearing cultural landscape with a perilous world in which the center no longer holds – a world of information overload, of clueless leaders carrying out sinister agendas, of “Hurricanes in December – earthquakes in the heartland/Bad air index on a flashing warning sign,” as the artist sings ruefully on “The Picture.”

The Search’s 14 songs locate and vividly portray the prevailing modes of the human condition in the first decade of the 21st century: cynicism (“Beacon Soul”), reflection (“The Search”), restlessness (“L Train,” “Highways and Cigarettes”), yearning (“Adrenaline and Heresy”), paranoia (“Automatic Society”), despair (“Methamphetamine”) and conditional hopefulness (“Underground Dream,” “Phosphate Skin”). By turns melancholy and exhilarating, the album further cements Farrar’s status as one of rock’s most eloquent chroniclers of contemporary existence.

Live on Late Show with David Letterman

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Yonder Mountain String Band

Thursday, February 19th
9:00 PM (8:00 PM doors)
$25.00
Ages 18+

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Friday, February 20th
9:00 PM (8:00 PM doors)
$25.00
Ages 18+

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2-Night Passes are SOLD OUT

Colarado's Yonder Mountain String Band, known for its high-energy, improvisational live shows has just released (April 15, 2008) a new live album on the band's own Frog Pad Records. This marks the 5th volume in their lauded series of live albums, Mountain Tracks. Blending bluegrass and rock with traditional instrumentation (guitar, bass, mandolin and banjo), Yonder has pioneered a sound that is their own over the past ten years as a band. Emphasizing song craft and unafraid to push its boundaries, things began snowballing quickly. In 1999, the band debuted with Elevation, produced by Grammy-winning dobro player Sally Van Meter and released (like each of its ensuing studio discs) on their own Frog Pad Records. Yonder Mountain returned in 2001 with Town by Town, helmed by Grammy Award winning songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Tim O'Brien. Van Meter was back behind the boards for the 2003 set Old Hands, a concept album of sorts that featured the songwriting of Benny “Burle” Galloway. Featured on the evocative tunes about cowboys, miners and all sorts of hard-livin’ Western folk were O’Brien, lauded fiddleman Darol Anger (Bela Fleck, David Grisman Quintet, Vassar Clements) and dobro player Jerry Douglas (Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris). In between those studio discs, the band released Mountain Tracks Volume I-IV, issued on Frog Pad Records, and each capturing the energy of its increasingly popular live shows. Their last studio release, "Yonder Mountain String Band" was produced by rock producer Tom Rothrock (Foo Fighters, Elliott Smith, Beck) creating a sound for the band that continues to close the gap between bluegrass and rock. It's an album that “represents us more than any other record we’ve done,” states Aijala, “because it incorporates more of our musical influences than ever before. It's a really cool thing to be a part of and I'll never take for granted just how lucky we are to do what we do. It makes me more excited for the future.”

Music video for "Classic Situation"

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an evening with
Umphrey's McGee

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The ascension continues for Chicago’s Umphrey’s McGee, not only in terms of their commercial success but in creative accomplishment and instrumental achievement as well. Their performance on Live at the Murat (SCI Fidelity), their first official live release, is as impressive as anything they've recorded to date, with the power and finesse, the yin and the yang, that have come to characterize their by-now classic material.

Recorded in Indianapolis in April 2007 and produced by longtime “sound caresser” / honorary seventh member Kevin Browning, the two-disc set features fan favorites like “Push the Pig,” “The Triple Wide,” “In the Kitchen,” and “Nothing Too Fancy” along with rare tunes like the set-ending “Padgett's Profile” and the brief but torrid “Angular Momentum,” centered on the combo of drummer Kris Myers and guitarist Jake Cinninger. The band also dusts off tunes like “Hajimemashite” from ’98s Songs for Older Women, and the Yes meets Little Feat-influenced “40's Theme,” a live favorite for the band and its fans.

Throughout the show, UM's invention brings the progressive instrumental chops of Zappa and the stylistic savvy of Steely Dan. It is innovative without being indulgent, exhilarating without losing control, and there are plenty of improv passages that keep the band and their fans off-balance. As David Fricke notes in his four-star review of Live at the Murat in Rolling Stone, Umphrey's McGee “always have destination on their minds, even when they fly free.”

With Huey Lewis on Jimmy Kimmel Live

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Cradle Of Filth

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These are heady days for those of us who wear our devotion to metal like a badge of honour. The deafening beast of the dark depths has lived to roar and rampage again and the scene has never been in a happier or healthier state. But don't be deceived. Metal never really went away. In fact, its current fortitude stems entirely from the bands that never surrendered those brave, liquor-soaked men whose total disregard for the vagaries of fashion and finance kept them glued to the grindstone through metal's mainstream wilderness years. Now, as seems wholly fitting, the greatest of these are finally reaping their rewards and hitting new creative peaks as they surge unstoppably onwards and upwards. And, as it was in the beginning, so shall it be in 2008.

Just as the gravel-lined, turd-stained streets of urban England gave heavy metal to the world back in the late '60s, so that small country with the big voice continues to be the place where the world's finest dark metal band rest their weary, alcohol-ravaged heads after another sonic killing spree.

And so to 2007, where Cradle Of Filth find themselves in the enviable position of being in a league and class of their own. Having long since outstripped the achievements of their one-time contemporaries, the band is now firmly entrenched in a rich vein of form. The current line-up of Dani Filth, guitarists Paul Allender and Charles Hedger, bassist Dave Pybus, Rosie Smith, female vocals Sarah Jezebel Deva and drummer Martin Skaroupka is the most solid and powerful in the band's career and Thornography is the resounding, conclusive proof. With songs as brutish, bombastic and diverse as "Libertina Grimm," "Tonight In Flames," "Cemetery & Sundown," "I Am The Thorn," "The Byronic Man" (featuring HIM's Ville Valo on guest vocals) and a deranged cover of Heaven 17's '80s pop gem "Temptation," the world's biggest and best extreme metal band have never sounded so exhilarating, so vital, so venomous.

Louder, harder, faster, heavier, darker, catchier - the unstoppable force that is Cradle Of Filth slithers menacingly forward, crushing the opposition and striking warped, blackened glee into the hearts of misanthropes and malevolents the world over.

Music video for "Temptation"

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Michael Franti & Spearhead

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“Music is the thread that’s gone through my life and given it so much meaning” - Michael Franti

Michael Franti is a very big man who has always dared to say very big things through his joyous and passionate music during an unusually diverse and highly impressive career.

Yet for all the wide-ranging, yet consistent excellence of his body of work, what’s most impressive about Michael Franti as a recording artist and live performer is his ability to inspire. Ultimately, the heartfelt music that Franti makes and his dedication to greater understanding on a global level, are not two aspects of his life, but very much one and the same.

Music video for "Say Hey"

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Citizen Cope

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"Something is great about this one." The phrase buzzed around in my head, mixing with the endorphins that cracked and snapped about their different relays, telling me that I liked this music. This music is good. The beer in your hand is good. You are loving this, aren't you? Aren't you?

Singer/Songwriter, Citizen Cope recently headlined in Towson's Recher Theatre, a large dimly lit room washed in blood red drapes. Two bars, bouncers at the door who think they're funny, an entrance covered in music posters: enough ambiance to make you dream of owning rooms filled with nothing but silk pillows and feathery boas. Brilliance -- all of it.

His music is simple to the point of being stripped down, as if bearing it all was the only way to get our attention. The Spartan band behind him was made up of a drummer, a bassist, two keyboardists, and Cope on guitar. A mix of hip-hop, folk, and blues his songs are mostly beats - mix bass drum, high hat, snare, clap track and repeat - buffed smooth by a haggard, road-weary voice. Uncommon chords for texture and keyboards for lift.

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