Funk Night becomes Phunk Night on October 16 when Wurliday and NYS Music host a Phish After-Party at Parish Public House in Albany, just one block away from the Times Union Center and right after Phish wraps up Night 1 of their Fall Tour.
Phunk Night features Natalie Cressman (Trey Anastasio Band), Chris Bullock (Snarky Puppy), Beau Sasser (Kung Fu), Adrian Tramontano (Kung Fu), Chris DeAngelis (Kung Fu), Justin Henricks (Wurliday), and Ilana Morris (Wurliday). Tickets are on sale now and this event will sell out. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 day of show. More info and tickets can be found here.
For the second week in a row, Troy’s Rockin’ on The River had a rainy start before the sun came out. Saratoga Springs’ North and South Dakotas kicked off the night with a mix of Americana, mountain folk and bluegrass. The Mallett Brothers Band headlined, featuring brothers Luke and Will who formed the band in Maine in 2009, and occasionally have Phish drummer Jon Fishman behind the kit. Their new album Vive I Acadie is out now.
T@NE™, a progressive alternative band out of New York City this summer have released their debut single “Rock Joint.”
T@NE is the name for musician, saxophonist, composer, producer and artist Arnold Tone Kaplan Lee. Along with bandmates Taber Gable (keyboards), Andrew Renfroe (guitar), Dan Pappalardo (bass), and Pete Manheim (drums), T@NE and crew are making music for the future. “Rock Joint” is a fantastic debut single and takes the listener on a progressive journey with segments of intricate jazz and rock that you can easily sink into. Lee says of “Rock Joint”: “I chose this track as the first single because before we release music that is more produced (and more post production), I wanted to release a track that has the vibe of us just rocking out and how we play in concert, so we went in the studio and did a take and this what we got.”
T@NE has been performing in the New York City area, playing at venues such as Pianos, Arlene’s Grocery, and Rockwood Music Hall. Catch them on Sunday Sept. 16 at Arlene’s Grocery. Follow T@NE on Instagram and Twitter.
Karolina Rose finds herself illuminated by the disco ball with her latest single “Going to Berlin.” The track draws its inspiration from one of Karolina’s own personal inspirations – a bright, blossoming friend who dared to follow her dreams across oceans and continents. “Going to Berlin” is a celebration of female empowerment, combining a storytelling approach to a production style inspired by Karolina’s Polish roots.
Off the heels of her most recent track, “Goodnight Mr. Moon,” “Going to Berlin” is the second single from Karolina’s debut EP, which is scheduled for release on August 17, produced by Andros Rodriguez (Florence + the Machine, Shakira). For more information visit karolinarose.com.
Sister Sparrow has released the first single, “Ghost,” a poppy, energetic club number with hints of Blondie throughout, off Gold, due out on October 12th.
Sister Sparrow has released the new single, “Ghost,” ahead of the release of their latest album Gold, a single that Arleigh Kincheloe explains was inspired by “That feeling when someone has rejected you but now suddenly wants you back… that drunken late-night text from an ex out of the blue. Ain’t got time for that. Ghosting someone who really deserves it is what it’s about. Getting even but also ridding your life of the BS that keeps holding you back.” In an unconventional move, Sister Sparrow premiered the unique “lyric” video, which features the lyrics displayed in emojis instead of words, on Snapchat, after leading fans through a social media scavenger hunt to allow them to see the video and hear the single 24 hours before it was officially released.
Gold takes the classic soul-rock sound created by Sister Sparrow and her brass-fueled combo, The Dirty Birds, and turns it into something altogether new, a soul-blasted contemporary pop approach supremely suited for Kincheloe’s immense voice and even greater vision. Produced and co-written in collaboration with Carter Matschullat (Chef’Special, Secret Weapons) at Brooklyn’s DØØM Studio, the new album sees Sister Sparrow expressing herself like never before.
Sister Sparrow will celebrate their new LP with a major U.S. tour, kicking off on Aug. 30 in Athens, New York, and running through December. Check out tourdates here and New york dates below.
Aug 30 Athens Summer concert series, Athens, NY
Sept 21 Westcott Theater, Syracuse, NY
Sept 22 Borderland Music Festival, East Aurora, NY
Nov 10 The Egg, Albany, NY
Dec 1 Irving Plaza, NYC
For a taste of Sister Sparrow’s live sound, check out their NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
New York City-born and raised artist and student of feminist philosophy, Raffaella, has released her second single, “Bruce Willis,” on the heels of her recent signing to Mom+Pop Music. The new single, produced by Larzz Principato, takes inspiration from Mason Currey’s “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work,” Beverly Hills, François Rabelais’ “Gargantua,” Bruce Willis and “Milk and Honey” by John Lennon (The Beatles).
Raffaella’s music is complex, both beautiful and culturally relevant. It explores hypocrisy within the feminist movement and the ways women can empower (or disempower) each other. Raffaella recently debuted her first official music video for hit single “Sororicide” via Paper Magazine, with the video edited by Jarrett Fijal (David Bowie, Beyonce), prior to “Bruce Willis.”
Raffaella is a recent graduate from Barnard College at Columbia University, where she studied French Literature and Philosophy and “prefers Salinger to sororities (Cools).” Over the past year, she has been busy collaborating with the band Bråves and will be releasing new music over the coming months. Raffaella has worked with Marius de Vries on the title song for Francesco Carrozzini’s documentary, Chaos and Creation, and has most recently opened up for the artist Years & Years, playing to a sold out crowd at Brooklyn Steel.
Acclaimed guitarist Marc Ribot has released “The Militant Ecologist” featuring Meshell Ndegeocello, the latest track off his upcoming Sept. 14 release, Songs of Resistance 1942-2018 on ANTI-Records. Ribot set out to assemble a set of songs that spoke to this political moment with appropriate ambition, passion, and fury, starting at the end of 2016, not just in response to the American elections but to the political trends he was seeing around the world.
“I am alarmed by Trump and the movement he’s part of,” he says. “I’ve spent a good chunk of my life running around the world on tour—I’m kind of an accidental internationalist—and I see that he’s not an isolated phenomenon. And if we don’t deal with what is going on, it is going to deal with us.” In releasing “The Militant Ecologist featuringMeshell Ndegeocello, Ribot repurposes the popular Italian resistance song “Fischia il Vento” (Whistling in the Wind). Renowned punk rock filmmaker Jem Cohen has also directed a video for the song featuring a green-tinged New York City skyline with a flag whipping in the wind.
For their new take, Ribot and Ndegeocello change the male partisan fighter in the original song to a woman fighting to stop global warming. “We changed the gender in our version and the flag at the end is green,” Ribot explained of his and Ndegeocello’s take on the song and visuals. “But Meshell projects the persona of a resistance fighter going on a mission perfectly: ‘strong her heart, and swift her arm to strike.”
The eleven songs on the record include a few original compositions as well as traditional songs that are drawn from World War II anti-Fascist Italian partisans, the U.S. civil rights movement and Mexican protest ballads. It also features a wide range of guest vocalists, including Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Meshell Ndegeocello, Justin Vivian Bond, Fay Victor, Ohene Cornelius and Sam Amidon.
Over a forty-year career, Ribot has released twenty-five albums under his own name and been a beacon of New York’s downtown/experimental music scene, leading a series of bands including Los Cubanos Postizos and Ceramic Dog. Since his work with Tom Waits on 1985’s Rain Dogs album, though, he is best known to the world as a sideman, playing on countless albums by the likes of Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp, Norah Jones, the Black Keys, and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Grammy-winning collaboration Raising Sand.
Along with his musical efforts, Ribot has also been an outspoken activist/community organizer in a number of causes, from affordable housing to musicians’ rights in the digital age. Portions of the album’s proceeds will be donated to The Indivisible Project, an organization that helps individuals resist the Trump agenda via grassroots movements in their local communities.
Turkuaz drummer and Buffalo native, Michelangelo Carubba joins host Andy Hogan at Cobblestone Live to discuss growing up in Buffalo, time spent at Berklee School of Music, life on the road with Turkuaz, and the experiences that shaped his career in music. Tune in on Simplecast.
Going to a festival means making decisions on what music to see, and what you might miss out on as a result. If you are headed to Kind Mind Campout in Minot, ME this weekend, you’ll have plenty of EDM and electronic-infused jambands to choose from, but two of these artists, CIA and Let’s Danza!, offer a unique pairing, back to back on the Maine Stage this Saturday, August 4, and should not be missed.
Let’s Danza!, the Philly-based reincarnation of Brothers Past, includes Clay Parnell and Tom McKee (both of BP), Ian McGuire (MJ Project, Sonic Spank) and a rotating drummer, while CIA is Clay Parnell, Ian McGuire and Allen Aucoin (Disco Biscuits, Dr. Fameus). Aucoin will fill in on drums for Let’s Danza! at Kind Mind, something he has done on occasion in the past. The Danza! drummer changes from show-to-show, with other regulars behind the kit including Mike Greenfield (Lotus), Scotty Zwang (Ghost Light) and Kito Bovenschulte who plays with Parnell in Particle. CIA and Let’s Danza have overlapping lineups, but their sounds are starkly different.
CIA is 100% pure, live improvisation, a trait rarely found among bands in the jam or EDM scenes. As bassist and founding member of Brother’s Past, Let’s Danza! and CIA, Clay Parnell stresses that they don’t have any songs to work from, and it’s all improv in the moment. “We’ve had guests over the years and fucked around with ‘material,’ but we just get on stage and we jam – the whole thing we are improvising. There‘s a couple of styles we like and we can read each other as we play, but we don’t have a computer with us on stage, so it’s open and free and we have zero clue how the set will flow or be composed.”
Parnell isn’t kidding when he says that this is unique to freely jam for an entire set. “There’s not a whole lot of bands out there that just get out there and jam. We try not to stop over the course of a set. Ian teases and leads the melody and he takes us many places, but we just don’t stop jamming.” The lack of material helps CIA to push forth into the unknown with each set. “When you don’t have any material to go into, you don’t have any choice but to get in there and improvise with your fellow musicians and make it better. It’s a whole thing and that’s what I love about us and it keeps me coming back. That’s what CIA is about.”
Then there’s Let’s Danza!, which features the same lineup as CIA, but includes Tom McKee (keys) from Brothers Past. Parnell describes how the latest incarnation of Brothers Past came about: “The group is a project that was designed to have myself, Tom McKee from Brothers Past and Ian McGuire both on keys, where Tom would do the keyboard parts and Ian would play guitar on his synth rig, and that would allow us to delve back into the Brothers Past catalog. We approach our sound together and the two keyboard styles are complimented.” Whereas CIA will take an entirely improv set, Let’s Danza has songs, vocals, sequences and compositions and although three-fourths of the players are the same, there will be decidedly different things to expect from each set. Parnell continued, “I’m looking forward to differentiating something between the two sets, and doing them with an overlap of personnel and back to back. We haven’t played Maine since Great North in 2016 and I remember the crowd energy from that set, so we are looking forward to following that up this weekend.”
When asked who the boss was of Let’s Danza!, Parnell replied “It’s myself and Tom McKee, it’s one way that we are expressing ourselves, but it’s really the three of us. McKee and I are collaborating together, we live three blocks away from each other and he has a studio he owns and operates, so we hang out a lot having done Brothers Past stuff together. Let’s Danza! is one way that we can keep playing electronic music together.”
And that Philly scene where Brother’s Past, CIA and Let’s Danza! arose from? Well it’s as vibrant as any other big city scene. “The jazz scene has been thriving and has always been huge, especially the pop and rock scene. It’s as bedroom community for New York musicians. Most people that comprise the bands of the big NYC based acts are Philly based musicians. A ton of people are working out of NYC but they are Philly based. The Disco Biscuits are the pillar of the Philly jamband scene, and Lotus, Brothers Past and all collaborations stem from that.”
Kind Mind Campout kicks off on Friday, August 3 in Minot, ME. Catch Let’s Danza! From 6pm-7pm on the Maine Stage, with CIA following from 8:30pm – 9:30pm also on the Maine Stage.
Oliver Kennan, a New York City-based indie-soul artist and bandleader, has become known in the NY music scene for his infectious energy onstage and his remarkably tight seven-piece contemporary soul band. Oliver is a retro-soul performer with one foot planted firmly in the 21st century, with influences ranging from Otis Redding to Arcade Fire, Betty Davis to Radiohead, and Wilson Pickett to Amy Winehouse. Give a listen to his first single, “Waiting,” just released via Hornblow Recordings.
“Waiting” is a modern take on the rock and soul of the past and a classic story of a young man searching for love in the loneliest big city in the world, NYC. It’s one part Tower of Power’s up-tempo funk with a contemporary swagger where Oliver plays the lonely loverboy with conviction and good humor. The band channeled the vintage sounds of their favorite records while recording live to tape at The Bunker Studios and Thump Studios in Brooklyn. “Waiting” was written by Oliver Kennan, is published by Easy Coast Music (BMI) and was produced by Graham Stone and mastered by Bob Ludwig.
