"The Luyas is the project of Pietro Amato, Mathieu Charbonneau, Stefan Schneider, Jessie Stein and occasionally Sarah Neufeld. The band first came together somewhat haphazardly, the initial result of which was their debut album, Faker Death, which the band released independently, and then on Canadian boutique label, Youve Changed Records. In 2009 the band made a record with old friend and Canadian master, Jeff Mcmurrich, maker of the coolest records north of the border.Ê Many hours of processing live sounds through boxes ensued. Torrid romances played themselves out, families crumbled, the economy weakened, Owen Pallett did orchestral arrangements, everybody cried. Life is life for everyone.The Luyas played with their boxes. Coffee, beer, whiskey, worse; All of this was processed through a space echo. Then it was the end of the summer. So the band went to Europe. They toured extensively supporting Bell Orchestre. Sarah cut Jessie's hair off into the Danube on the last day of the tour. The band will be touring the US in Summer 2010. Look out for a new album." Also, drummer extraordinaire, Stef Schneider will be teaching an early morning yoga class for beginner's and experts on Saturday morning at Wassaic!
"She Keeps Bees are a rock duo currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Formed in 2006, they have released two full-length records made entirely at home. Raw, powerful, and a little bit dirty, She Keeps Bees make the kind of music that resonates straight to your bones. Jessica's slow-burning scold of a voice and visceral guitar hooks blend perfectly with the primal wallop of Andy's drumming. The New Yorker described them as "a soulful duo that fluently burns through rough-hewn and potent blues-rock stompers." Having spent most of the last year touring abroad, you can now see them live this summer on the east coast and deep south. "
"Amil "The Band" Byleckie has been resisting his inevitable fate to be a heartthrob pop-star for over a decade. Strategies utilized to thwart this destiny include: bad haircuts, elaborate pop operas about pirate-snakes, devotion to producing a you-tube sitcom about economics, a stint singing only songs with lyrics lifted straight from adult personal ads, etc. Destiny has its own designs though. Through all the side roads taken he has never forsaken his pop roots and has coalesced finally into a force of unstoppable catchiness with his new band, consisting of JD "Fingers" Fontanella, Lyndon "Licks" Lopez, and Diego "Skins" Perez."
"Open Ocean makes dreamy, surf-pop classics awash in reverb and mystery. The Brooklyn-based all-female quartet (singer-bassist Jill Bradshaw, guitarist Sarah Kuhn, keyboardist Susan Domelsmith, and drummer Eviana Hartman) first got together in early 2009, intertwining elements of psychedelic rock, shoegaze, synth sounds, and even a sprinkling of tropicalia into a dreamy, textured whole. Though it's tricky to pin down, OO's sound has been likened to Young Marble Giants, Spacemen 3, Jesus and Mary Chain, Joy Division, and even Twin Peaks, to name a few. The four are also notable for their successful careers in fashion: two are designers (Hartman of clothing line Bodkin and Domelsmith of jewelry line DLC Brooklyn), while Kuhn is an editor at Teen Vogue and Bradshaw a consultant who owned the late, beloved boutique I Heart."
"Wesley Allen Hartley moved to Portland, ME from Houston/Austin, TX in 2005 and immediately started writing songs. The Traveling Trees are a group of like minded country fans and friends wrangled in from currents of the Portland rock scene. The music is a shuffle of whatever sends it's inspiration to Hartley and scrambled into some loose rust chords and crooned on the floor with a slight Texas slur. "
"Pearl and the Beard is three voices, one cello, one guitar, one glockenspiel, one melodica, several drums, one accordion, ninety-six teeth, and one soul. Former strangers Jocelyn Mackenzie, Emily Hope Price, and Jeremy Styles were united in the great city of New York. Each had migrated there from a far corner of the nation with naught but food in their pockets and money in their bellies. Each had the same true love. Since then, the three have nested, and their unique brand of brightly melodic song craft continues to blossom of its own accord. Pearl and the Beard loves you the way you've always been."
"Boston's The Points North have been creating cold and beautiful northern folk music octave mandolin, Irish flute, drums and two voices since winter 2008. In 2009 they released their first LP 'I Saw Across The Sound,' which the Boston Globe called "somber and joyous, sturdy and delicate...a folk feast fashioned by the campfire and drawn from hearth-warmed living rooms. A tapestry of piano, mandolin, and wintry atmospheres." In 2010 The Points North toured Australia and performed at SXSW in Austin, Texas."
"South China was born in 2002 as a marriage, musically and literally, of Jeremy and Jerusha Robinson. Their individual backgrounds in experimental rock and classical music produce a sound that feels sparse and improvised, evoking a slightly dark and dream-like state, like trying to recall something that is just beyond the edges of memory. They draw listeners into their intimate world of Maine winters, bittersweet moments, subtle humor, and the bizarre dream imagery."
"Based in Brooklyn, the Flanks have been playing in venues all over the New York City area and beyond since 2002. Mainstays of the Brooklyn Country Music scene, they've shared the bill with roots music favorites such as the Hackensaw Boys and held residencies at Pete's Candy Store and Galapagos Arts Space. They have performed live in-studio on New York Public Radio's Soundcheck, and their music has been heard on numerous radio stations. Their barroom-friendly, original, lyric-driven music draws on old-time, jug band, pre-war blues, bluegrass, honky-tonk, and outlaw styles. Propelled by full harmonies and rough around every edge, the thoroughly live sound of the Flanks has won over audiences far and wide. "
"Tom Thumb is the musical project of Andy Arch. The last two critically acclaimed albums are one-man-band collections of deconstructed pop songs and scaffolded folk music. With the digital and the traditional, he weaves dense, atmospheric arrangements, while live the songs are stripped to a guitar and a haunting, heart-warm voice. Over the course of multiple national tours, from living rooms to theaters, he has played shows with Jens Lekman, Deer Tick, Dr. Dog, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and many more. Songs from Òthe TaxidermistÓ have appeared in a number of films and a National Geographic TV series. "
"As a teenager in Kansas, local media dubbed Patrick Cleandenim (né Clendenin) a 'golden boy' and a 'pop-wunderkind'. After his early self releases garnered local critical acclaim Patrick moved to New York City. While studying at Cooper Union School of Art Patrick released his debut full-length album, Baby Comes Home (2007). The album is a nod to Brill Building glory-days and is influenced by Motown, Elvis, Spector and other orchestral pop music. The album was released by Broken Horse Records (Europe), Rallye (Japan), and in the US on Ba Da Bing Records. After graduating from Cooper Union, Patrick wrote and recorded the material for his second full-length, Orange Moonbeam Floorshow. In lieu of an orchestra he opted for a collaboration with producer/arranger Jay Israelson in a home-studio of sythesizers, sequencers, and drum machines. The resulting album contains pop depictions of a glittering and dark nightlife through programmed electronic music. Patrick released Orange Moonbeam Floorshow in 2009 under his Sphinx Groop music label. Currently Patrick lives and works in New York City where he is performing with a live backing band. Jay Israelson joins Diego Duenas, Max Tucker and Dmitry Samochine to form a searing rhythm section behind numbers of upbeat soul and rock 'n' roll. "
"The dystopian frontier is near, but never fear. In the new era of endlessness where we hide ourselves as humans among androids, there is hope. On Endless Bummer, the second album from Pink Skull, the producer duo of Julian Grefe and Justin Geller rip out the tracking chip and jump the grid on a quest for purity among putridity. "
"New York-based Red Rooster is the folk collective led by dynamic duo Jay Erickson (lead vocals) and Nat Zilkha (lead guitar) - lifelong friends who fashion plainly honest and self-reflective songs from fragments of their diverse musical influences and sensibilities. On their third release, WALK, Jay and Nat pull together a seamless album fashioned from country, bluegrass, folk, gospel, blues and hip-hop. A lot has happened in the years since their critically acclaimed second album, DOSE, was released and it shows in their new tunes. After a successful tour in 2008 (including a breakout appearance at the Newport Folk Festival), the band went to work on WALK. Musically and lyrically their most mature work yet, the album is infused with Red Rooster's signature musical tension between the traditional and the modern. On WALK, Nat and Jay expose deeply personal meditations on a few of life's big defining and transitional events like the birth of a child (Five Tiny Fingers), following and losing the one great love (Time to Go) and failed relationships (Raining in Los Angeles). Jay and Nat pulled Red Rooster together in New York city 10 years ago and have brought a wide array of musicians in to help create their urban country orchestra including electric guitars, drums, horns, fiddle, mandolin, banjo and DJs. The core group currently includes Susannah Hornsby (vocals and accordion), Andrew Green (banjo), Dave Gould (saxophone), Brandon Doyle (french horn), Lucas Ives (drums), Daniel Engelman (bass) and Pete Nilsson (keys)."
"Joshua Burkett is one of the rock’s of the New England rock underground. He got his start in the Bimbo Shrineheads at just 16 years old, playing bass and saxophone. Burkett later played sax and served as cover artist for Vermonster, Wayne Rogers and Kate Biggar’s outlet before Major Stars. Beginning in the mid 1990s, he released solo material on his own Feather One’s Nest label, including the masterpiece Gold Cosmos, which featured both Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and Pat Gubler of P.G. Six. Today, Burkett runs the Mystery Train record store in Amherst, Mass., with Cynthia Meadows. Spirit of Orr Records recently reissued Owls Leaves Rustling, Burkett’s 1995 solo debut, along with testimonies from Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano and Wolf Eyes’ John Olson."
"Annie Lynch is the lead singer and songwriter for Annie and The Beekeepers. Annie and The Beekeepers formed in Boston’s winter of 2006 as an acoustic roots quartet, and has since move to Brooklyn, NY as a trio with an expanding sound and instrumentation. The band includes Annie Lynch (voice, guitar, banjo) Alexandra Spalding (cello, voice, guitar), and Ken Woodward (bass, voice). In their few years as a band Annie and The Beekeepers have recorded a full-length album with Grammy-Nominated engineer, Jack Gauthier, and an EP at Squid Hell Studios in Boston. The trio has had the honor of performing in a sold out Berklee Performance Center, sold out NYC Town Hall, at SXSW, CMJ, Boston Folk Festival, Philly Folk Festival, and at countless notable venues throughout the Northeast, Midwest, and South. They have shared concert bills with such notable acts as Josh Ritter, Scott McMicken of Dr Dog, Justin Townes Earl, Surprise Me Mr Davis, The Low Anthem, and more. Future plans include a tour of the UK with a performance at End of the Road Festival in England in September 2010."
"The most authentic slice of America IÕve had in forever. Shunning the stage for the dance floor, SPIRIT FAMILY REUNION stomps the ground, hoots at the moon and makes amazing hoedown music reminiscent of the way-old days"
"TMusic In Space was founded in 2009 by Andrew Russell Thomas as a class, at the formation of the Bruce High Quality Foundation University. MIS is now a solid ensemble that seeks to cultivate wonder and a drive for involvement in the performance experience, as well as provide a common vocabulary of musical interaction that will facilitate the success of public performance experiments that seek to investigate interactive dynamic between venue, audience, performer and performance. Above all, MIS aims to achieve aural and psychological impacts not possible in the 1/8" between your white earbuds, and your eardrums. MIS' most recent project involves outfitting a fifteen passenger van to function as a mobile performance venue. Completer with instruments, PA, and video projector. "