Founded in 2006, CAPITAL Zen is known for their innovative riffs and challenging compositions. Having a wide array of inspiration, the band has always provided soul rocking, thought provoking and body grooving jams for their fans. The new album, Grandpa Don’t Disco is no different.
Recording of the Grandpa Don’t Disco album began in 2014 with members Terry Scoville (Guitar & Vox),
Tony Leonbruno (Bass & Vox), and Ryemachine Richard Wylie (Drums). The tracks were later completed and recorded with Max Garrett (Trombone & Guitar) and Scott Hannay (Keyboard). The brand new, previously-unreleased CAPITAL Zen album is available now on Apple Music, Spotify, and CDBaby. Previous albums to revisit by the Zen crew include the debut self-titled album CAPITAL Zen (2009), Fancy Balloon Animals (2011) and Party Booby Trap (2013).
About three quarters through the Fall/Winter 2018 tour, power-rock trio lespecial brought their unique style of genre bending jams to Putnam Place and joined me for a conversation about who they are, where they’ve been, and what’s coming up next.
The show at Putnam Place was a much-anticipated stop for the region since their set at Adirondack Independence Festival this past summer where lespecial played a high energy set that enraptured the audience and grew the regional fan base significantly. The heavy grooving trio is composed of Luke Bemand (Bass/Synth/Percussion/Vocals), Jonathan Grusauskas (Guitar/Synth/Sampler/Percussion/Vocals), and Rory Dolan (Drums/Sampler/Percussion/Vocals.) The three childhood friends, who grew up in Connecticut and are now based in New York and Boston, have a lifetime of experiences to draw on in their creative process. Individually they are musical powerhouses, and together they won’t be stopped.
Emily VanderWiel: This fall/winter tour has been quite extensive so far and you’ve covered a lot of ground since September. What have been some highlights of the tour so far?
Luke Bemand: The Lespectacle show we do every year is usually a highlight for us, it’s our Halloween show, we collaborate with our friends at The Reliquarium and do an interactive art space. This year we did it at their space in Rhode Island where we had two stages. Some of our favorite producers and bands were there; Freddy Todd, Bella’s Bartok, we collaborated with our friends Supersillyus and that for us is our big yearly event. It’s the eighth year we’ve done it… so that’s always fun. It’s stressful and insane but it’s fun and we’ve done it in Brooklyn the last five years so being closer to Boston, Rhode Island and Connecticut is cool for us.
EV: I saw some video from Lespectacle, there were a lot of nice pro shot videos.
LB: Yeah! That was all this guy!! (pointing to his brother and lespecial road warrior Sean Bemand)
LB: Another fun one was Jacksonville with Moon Hooch, and we just announced a show in Burlington, VT with them on December 29 at Higher Ground. Looking forward to that, those guys are really cool, with our friend Honeycomb too.
LB: Honeycomb is a beatboxer from Northampton and we’ve collaborated with him for a couple years, playing festivals in the Northeast but we hope to collab a lot more.
EV: There’s been a lot of new material popping up at shows, do you guys have a new album in the works?
LB: We have a ton of new material, we have enough for a new EP or a new album. We’ve been putting out a lot of live clips of our newer stuff. We have a new track with Zion I that we’ve been working on and playing out at shows. We have a lot of different things in the works, but the focus has been on touring and with playing out so much it’s hard to get in the studio, but we’ve been rehearsing, together a lot more and writing a lot. The easiest place for people to hear our new stuff is to come out to a show. Definitely within the next year we’d like to put out a new EP or a full-length album.
EV: The tour has been covering a lot of ground, so there is certainly a lot of opportunity for fans to get out and see the new material at shows… it looks like you guys are busy straight through New Year’s?
LB: Yeah! Next week we are in Baltimore with Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, at Rams Head Live… that’ll be cool and then we are back up to Hartford for more of a hometown show in Connecticut at Arch Street Tavern and then our New Year’s run is going to be Pacific Standard Tavern in New Haven, The Snow Barn in West Dover, VT…which is an awesome place, we did it last year, played two sets and it was a lot of fun, and then Aqueous on New Year’s Eve in Buffalo. Now with Moon Hooch show in Burlington added, it will be four shows in a row.
EV: You guys will probably be ready for a break after that?
LB: (Laughs) There’s no breaks!
EV: What a great way to ring in a New Year though, that many exciting shows back to back…
LB: Totally, those are really exciting. It’s fun because it’s a couple headlining shows and then a couple supporting shows for bands that we like and that we enjoy playing with. Then January we are going to be headed out to Colorado and we are going to be announcing a whole bunch of other January dates, so there’s no real breaks. People will say “how was the tour?” and it’s like, wait? It’s not over yet! It’s just never stopping, which is both good and bad. We don’t do a full on two-month tour but we will play for a couple weeks and be off for a week and play for a couple weeks so it’s cycles that kinda keep going. It keeps the wheels going, we keep writing on the road.
EV: As far as the song writing goes, do you all write? How does your creative process work?
LB: It’s definitely a collaborative process, one of us could come up with an idea for a song, like maybe Jon will have a riff for a song or something like that and we take it to practice and then we kinda add our parts. There’s never anybody that says here’s a song and this is your part, and this is your part, etc. The whole writing process is very much that somebody can bring an idea to the table and then everyone… it’s the ideas that build. So there’s that give and pull when there’s no band leader and we write our music as a trio.
EV: The show you guys have booked for tomorrow night is a cool concept. Can you tell me a little about that?
LB: So, it’s at the Brighton Music Hall and it also happens to be Jon’s birthday. What’s cool about it is that we are doing one set of originals and one special 90’s “Headbangers Ball” set. Balkun Brothers are playing with us and doing a Nirvana set… pretty excited about this show because we all grew up listening to this music.
EV: You’re finishing the year out strong, ending one hell of a tour with a show with Aqueous in Buffalo!
LB: Yes, we are for sure looking forward to that, love those guys. It should be a good time! It’s not the end of the tour though, we will be announcing some dates out west soon so people should definitely keep an eye out for that.
EV: Thanks for chatting with me guys and I know I will be catching a few of these shows along the way and I will definitely see you at The Town Ballroom! Have a great show tonight!
Jamestown four-piece fusion group Cold Lazarus have recently released the video for “Butterflies.” Filmed in various locations in Western New York – including Ripley Beach on Lake Erie, downtown Jamestown and Nietzsche’s in Buffalo – over a period of about two months, the video was directed by Jamestown-based filmmaker Nigel Eastman, who was assisted by his director of photography, John Brown.
“Butterflies” first appeared on Cold Lazarus‘ debut EP All Alone in February 2017, and was re-recorded for inclusion on the band’s self-titled full-length debut album, released in January 2018. Stream their music on Spotify and Apple Music.
Although they’ve gone their separate ways, Oneonta’s Space Carnival have shared video from their late night Wormtown Festival set from September 15. The combination of “Pleasure in Sin” -> “2001” -> “Moon Boots” come from Space Carnival’s first Wormtown show and the late night set after Lettuce was a packed cabin for the duration of their two and a half hour set. One of the final Space Carnival shows, guitarist Jeremy Kraus said “We went into it with zero rules and no plans for anything, as we always did.”
There is no shortage of after shows to hit up when Phish come to NYC for their New Years Eve run, and for those feeling the pinch of the holidays in the Big Apple, Sounds Good To Steve and the Offside Tavern have you covered.
On December 28th and 29th, FREE after shows will get started at 11pm and stretch until to 3am, with the music going late and live painting both nights. Not far from Madison Square Garden, Offside Tavern is located at 137 w 14th Street between 7th avenue and Avenue of the Americas.
On Friday the 28th, The Mike O’Donnell Band will be playing all night with live painting by James McNulty of The Uncommon Culture. For this new project, guitarist Mike O’Donnell called on some friends from various Long Island based bands and things took off. Michael Mirino, who plays bass with O’Donnell in the band Sofus is joined by Ben Pinnola from the band GeoTribe on keys. Julian Sarabia Maultsby from Medicine Fish teams up with Danny Roman for duel drumming and percussion duties. O’Donnell and Roman also play together in the up and coming band and winners of the 2018 Long Island Blues Challenge, Carrie and the Cats.
Sunday, December 30thfinds Brooklyn based Jazzjam band International Orange (iO) teaming up with rising ragers, Ronald Reggae for a long long crazy crazy night. Featuring former members of the Mike Gordon and Steve Kimock bands, and a current member of Peter Apfelbaum’s NY Hieroglyphics, iO pulls some serious grooves out of their deep pockets.
Speaking of groove, sitting in with iO will be some special friends from the Easy Star All-Stars. If that’s not enough, undoubtedly still riding the high from jamming with Twiddle front man Mihali during one of their back to back Twiddle pre-shows at Garcia’s, you can count on the energy from Ronald Reggae to keep you going late. The bands provide the tunes, live painter GalaxyGus creates the eye candy and all you need to do is stroll on in.
Tickets are not on sale because these shows are FREE! Stop down after Phish and spend the night boogieing down on Friday the 28th and Sunday the 30th!
In an unprecedented collaboration between an academic journal and live music community, Phish.net, the Philosophy School of Phish, and the Public Philosophy Journal (PPJ) are soliciting abstracts for essays about the improvisational rock band Phish, its music, and fans. Selected papers that successfully complete the PPJ’s Formative Peer Review process will be published in a special issue of the Public Philosophy Journal, co-edited by Dr. Stephanie Jenkins (Oregon State University, assistant professor of Philosophy) and Charlie Dirksen (Mockingbird Foundation, Vice President and Associate Counsel).
Contributors may submit abstracts on any topic of philosophical significance related to the Phish phenomenon. Proposed essays should explore philosophical questions, problems, concepts, themes, or historical figures through connections to the music and fan culture of Phish. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Aesthetics: beautiful; sublime; emotion
Music, performance, and lyrics: conceptual themes; Gamehendge mythology; improvisational ethos; live performance; music ontology; narrations; gags
Ethics: “phan” ethos; ticket trading and secondary market; tarping; environmental impacts of tour
Politics: fan counterculture; activism; issues of race, gender, sexuality, disability, class, and religion
Phenomenology: embodiment; lived experience of jams, “IT,” lighting, or concert space
Technology: recording; social media; RFID data and surveillance; live streaming; tape trading
This special issue is part of a PPJ pilot project that aims to reconfigure the relationship between the academy and the public. To this end, the editors seek proposals for essays that will be of interest to both audiences. You do not have to be a professional scholar or philosopher to submit.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit abstracts of 250-500 words and a brief bio via this Google form. Your abstract should summarize your proposed essay, outline its argument, and identify its significance to both Phish fans and scholars new to the band.
Relevance: Responds to an issue of concern to the Phish community
Accessibility: Written clearly for a general audience, with technical terms and concepts unpacked. Does not assume previous knowledge of the band.
Intellectual coherence: Provides evidence to support arguments and identifies theoretical concepts that illuminate the philosophical problem, question, or idea under consideration
Scholarly engagement: Demonstrates awareness of ongoing dialogues within relevant scholarly and/or community conversations
Completed essays will be approximately 2000-4000 words. Formatting and citations should follow the guidelines set in the Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition).
Submission Timeline
Abstracts due: January 18, 2019
Completed papers due: April 15, 2019
Contact
Questions can be addressed to:
Dr. Stephanie Jenkins
Assistant Professor
Oregon State University, School of History, Philosophy, and Religion
stephanie.jenkins@oregonstate.edu
Adam Chase of Jazz is PHSH embarks on a new allstar exploration of music with The DAB Sessions, premiering on January 10 at Brooklyn Bowl. Joining Chase are Aron Magner of The Disco Biscuits and Jacob Bergson of Nerve, two keyboardists from leading exploratory electro-jazz live bands, as well as bass prodigy Felix Pastorius and Antibalas saxophonist Morgan Price. The evening is presented by Instrument Find and will mark the debut of The DAB Sessions.
Get to know the players in The DAB Sessions:
Jacob Bergson is the multi talented keyboardist and producer for the world renown electronic band, NERVE. NERVE is a band led by famed masterful drummer JoJo Mayer that formed out of underground parties hosted by JoJo Mayer that led the way for electronic music to be performed on live instruments.
Aron Magner has been on the forefront of the electronic music scene since it first began to grow. As the keyboardist and founding member of The Disco Biscuits, Magner has been instrumental in the growing popularity of electronic music being performed by highly proficient live musicians.
When many people hear Felix Pastorius perform there are reasonable and obvious preconceived notions and expectations being that he is playing the same instrument as his legendary bass playing father, Jaco Pastorius. While the appreciation of the seemingly genetic talent is obvious, it is also obvious that Felix has put the time in to achieve his own voice on the instrument.
Adam Chase is a drummer that is multi-faceted and the visionary behind The DAB Sessions. Chase is a multi instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriting music director that entered the world of drums in the 1st grade when he had the opportunity to see a young Tony Royster Jr. make mastering the drums look easy.
Morgan Price is a multi-instrumentalist that found his way into the Dap Tones world with his saxophone, flute, and keyboard skills. His skills on tenor saxophone and baritone saxophone have led him to steady gigs with Antibalas and The Duke Ellington Orchestra.
The ensemble will play six shows, starting in Portland, ME on April 4 and making three stops in New York. Ghosts of the Forest will feature all new material and is said to be reminiscent of Anastasio’s 1998 project 8 Foot Florescent Tubes. Trey is well known for his past side projects such as Trey Anastasio Band, Oysterhead, G.R.A.B. and Surrender to the Air. Fans can look for Trey on stage with Phish for a four–night New Year’s Eve run at Madison Square Garden and in February in Mexico for the destination event Riviera Maya.
Tickets are limited to four per show and go on sale to the general public on Friday Dec. 14 and Saturday Dec. 15 depending on venue.
April 4 – State Theatre – Portland, ME
April 5 – The Met Opera – Philadelphia, PA
April 6 – Anthem – Washington, DC April 9 – Palace Theatre – Albany, NY
April 10 – Orpheum – Boston, MA April 12 – United Palace Theatre – New York, NY
April 13 – United Palace Theatre – New York, NY
Mihali Savoulidis, the lead singer and guitarist from Vermont jam-band Twiddle made a stop on his solo tour at Putnam Place earlier this month. Playing to a sold out crowd, the energy in the room was abuzz with excitement and positivity. Playing a combination of covers, solo originals and Twiddle songs, Mihali shared his usual charisma with the audience and this spirit and animation carried over into our conversation after the show. We discussed collaboration, inspiration and gratitude.
Emily VanderWiel: A new song with Nahko and Trevor Hall just released, “Fading State.” Can you tell me about what the creative process is like when working with them?
Mihali: I wrote the tune and I had them in mind, so when I recorded I literally left those places blank and hoped that they would say yes, they are both some of my very good friends. I met Nahko first, feels like many years ago, probably 6 or 7 years ago and I met Trevor a few summers ago and it was one of those things where both times we jammed, hung out and played. We are all born in 86, we are kind of cut from the same cloth. A blessing for me, truly though mainly because I was a huge fan of their music before I met both. I knew their catalogue and their writing style, and I felt connected before I knew them, and it just flowed from there.
EV: You are a role model for so many of your fans, both musically and personally. How do you feel about the idea of role models, and do you have someone that you look up to?
MS: I don’t think so, I’ve realized that all the people I have looked up to over the years, and just in general human beings are flawed, sensitive people and no one is really, truly a role model. Nobody is perfect, no one is the end all, be all the best person there is.
EV: How about musically?
MS: Well, both questions go hand in hand because I have to say when I met Trey at LOCK’n two summers ago or something, I walked up to him and said, “Hey I’m Mihali from Twiddle, and thank you for showing me that recovery is possible and that music after recovery is possible.” Trey is just always busy, trying new things, making music and I love that about him.
MS: You know, the least favorite question I ever get asked is “what’s this song about.” It’s never what its “supposed to be about.” It could be totally different than what the singer wrote it about but if it means something to that fan in their world, I’m not going to bust their bubble and tell them that’s not what the song is about. It’s all totally subjective. My question is to the fan, what do you think it’s about? Then I agree.
EV: I have a fan question for you. What was the inspiration for the song Juggernaut when you wrote it and how do you feel about the fan reaction to it?
MS: At this time in age, and where we are right now I know the political climate is gnarly and we (Twiddle) have always stepped away from that because nobody wants to get involved with politics in music. But when I think about my wife and my daughter and all the females in my life and the people around me that I love, and respect aren’t getting their dues, and they are not getting respected then it feels like I have to say something. For the first time ever, well, I have always been the one in the band that’s been like No, no, no, let’s not get involved in politics. So, I wrote it as a joke. In the studio I said “Let’s do a grunge song, Nirvana or something. I’ll just write some chords and we will go record it.” And Kyle, our guitar tech, he had told me a story about when he was in third grade, some kid came up while they were playing king of the kill on a sandcastle and kicked him in the face and said, “You’ll never be king of the hill!” It was a big deal to him in third grade, and so when I was recording that first vocal “You want to kick me in the face cuz I’m different, yeah you think you’re king of the hill.” I had recorded that verse as a joke, and we sat home for months with the demos for the album and as the political climate started changing and we started seeing what was going on, I thought that hey now that really fits. The verses then came after that. What can I talk about that is going on in the world? What is bothering me, so that’s where that song came from.
Mihali’s solo tour has been very successful and is wrapping up Dec 15 at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke, MA. Also just announced, Mihali will be joining Pigeons Playing Ping Pong Saturday January 26 at The Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY.
2018 has been a tremendous year for Aqueous, hailing from Buffalo, as the groove-rock foursome has taken the nation by storm with their Color Wheel tour and the momentum will continue into 2019 with a Winter West Coast tour co-headlining with BIG Something.
Kicking off in February, the 20-date tour will include several stops in the Midwest, a five-date run in Colorado and debut appearances in Oregon, Washington and California.
Guitarist Dave Loss stated, “We couldn’t be more excited to head west. The band has played Colorado several times now and it almost feels like a second home to us. We always feel so much love there. This will, however, be the band’s first venture out to the West Coast. We’ve been wanting to get out there for a long time now and we’re stoked to finally make it happen. Doing it with our good friends BIG Something just makes it that much better!” The band will then bring their maiden voyage south for three shows in Texas before wrapping up in New Orleans.
Tickets for the upcoming co-headlining tour are on sale this Friday, December 14 here.
Emily VanderWiel: This fall/winter tour has been quite extensive so far and you’ve covered a lot of ground since September. What have been some highlights of the tour so far?
