Primus with Mastodon and All Them Witches on May 25, 2018 at Cool Insuring Arena, Glens Falls, N.Y.
Primus Setlist: Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers, HOINFODAMAN, Too Many Puppies – Sgt. Baker, American Life, The Desaturating Seven, The Valley, The Seven, The Trek, The Scheme, The Dream, The Storm, The Ends?, The Pressman, Welcome to This World, My Name Is Mud > Jerry Was a Race Car Driver, Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver (Encore)
Hudson Taylor, an Irish-Americana Pop duo of brothers Alfie and Harry Hudson Taylor have released the video for “Old Soul,” off their recent EP Feel it Again, which charted in the Top 5 on the Irish album chart. The video was filmed during the band’s homecoming show at Dublin’s legendary Olympia Theatre and features guest vocals from Gabrielle Aplin.
The duo recently toured the United States for the first time, supporting Aplin, and returned to Ireland where they performed to sold out crowds, as they did in Europe and the United States. Hudson Taylor will play summer festivals in Ireland, the UK and continental Europe, including high-profile spots at the UK festivals Leeds/Reading, Latitude and Isle of Wight, as well as Benicassim in Spain. The brothers will return to the UK and US for headlining tours in the fall.
Aqueous is on the road in force this summer, starting out their summer at Disc Jam Music Festival. Lead singer and guitarist (Uncle) Mike Gantzer joins host Andy Hogan for episode 5 of Empire State Music Podcast. Listen on “>iTunes, via Simplecast and below on Soundcloud.
The Salt City’s annual rite of summer, Taste of Syracuse, kicks off Friday June 1 and runs through June 2, 2018. The annual free festival pairs the region’s foods and music in Downtown’s Clinton Square. This year’s headliner is ’90s alt-pop icons, Smash Mouth.
The fest’s claim to fame is the $1 food samples from the various eateries set up in the square. You can find the full dollar menu here.
Other than the food, Taste of Syracuse also provides a great free look at the wealth of musical talent from Syracuse and surrounding areas. With three stages, there is no shortage of music to be found. Things get going at noon Friday with Just Joe on the Clinton Square Stage, Peg Newell and Robyn Stockdale on the Erie Boulevard Stage and Max Scialdone on the Main Stage.
https://youtu.be/1X0BB-61s6Q
Music continues throughout the day with soul being the theme on the Clinton Square Stage. Tanksley performs at 6:30 p.m. followed by Israel Hagen’s Stroke at 7:45 p.m. Prime Time closes out the night at 9:30 p.m.
The Erie Boulevard Stage gets funky Friday night with a double shot of Root Shock and Sophistafunk. The two Syracuse bands recently paired for a mini-tour together called the Salt City Shakedown that also included Syracuse’s Skunk City. Root Shock won the 2017 SAMMY award for Best New Artist and also captured the NYS Music March Madness title that year. Country Swagg and Hard Promises close out the Main Stage Friday night.
Saturday gets started at noon with Lori Ann singing the oldies on the Clinton Square stage. Syracuse’s master of the slide guitar, Colin Aberdeen will get funky on the Erie Boulevard Stage at the same time.
The Main Stage on Saturday will feature Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest at at 1:30, followed by the folk rock stylings of Poor Tim, featuring Shawn “Big Sexy” Smith, a former contestant on NBC’s The Voice and Justin Smithson, who has performed at Carnegie Hall.
Chris Eves and the New Normal follow Poor Tim. The New Normal’s single “Green and Blue” was recently included on Relix magazine’s June Digital Sampler. You can listen on Spotify below:
Country act, Grit and Grace and the latest “Vinyl Albums Live” set, “The ’90s Mix Tape” follow. Closing out the main stage and the festival is ’90s pop group, Smash Mouth.
Other acts performing on Saturday include Grateful Dead tribute act Dark Hollow, hip hop from Joe Driscoll and the Brownskin Band, Americana from the Old Main, and funk from Skunk City on the Erie Boulevard Stage.
The Clinton Street stage features the soulful alt-rock of the Black River, Tim Herron and Great Blue, Soul Risin’ and the Barndogs DELUXE.
Attendance to the two-day festival is free. For the complete schedule, see below.
The air gets warmer, the sun sets later, and lines begin to form around the blocks of the Italian Ice shops that were boarded up all winter: summer is around the corner. There is something special about the transition from spring to summer that seems to put a smile everyone’s face and gives people hope for what is to come. While there is always reason to be optimistic about the summer fun you’ll have and the love you might find along the way, it is also important to avoid blindly believing everything is going to turn out the way you planned it in your head. Bayside’s “Montauk” provides a cautionary look at the darker side to the end of a summer fling, and proclaims a warning to what might happen if you get too involved with someone who you know you may never see again.
The punk band Bayside has deep roots in New York (they are named after the Queens neighborhood where they formed), so it is not out of place that they wrote a song dedicated to one of the state’s most famous vacation getaways. When most people think of Montauk they often have wonderful memories of their time on the beach, eating lobster with their families, or visiting the Montauk lighthouse. However, when Bayside wrote “Montauk,” they made a conscious decision to avoid all of the pleasant memories they might have had and took a more negative, yet humbling, approach to writing about the seaside town. They wanted to remind people that unfortunate circumstances can occur in amazing places, and sometimes saying goodbye is the hardest part of life.
“Montauk” tells the story of losing a love at summer’s end. The narrator had to say goodbye to a lover he ended up caring about more than he originally intended. Even though he knew the fling would end once the leaves began to change, he didn’t think it would hurt so much when the relationship actually ended. He knew the consequences to falling in love with someone in such a short amount of time together but he took the risk anyway. The narrator is filled with angst, misery and fear that he will never love again, and an even worse fear that he will regret losing his lover for the rest of his life. While anyone who has had their heart broken knows that in time it is possible to love again, the song provides a rational warning not to get too involved with someone you realistically may never see again after such a short period of time.
Although it has never been confirmed, many fans believe “Montauk” was inspired by the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet) in which a painful breakup leads to a young couple undergoing a controversial medical procedure to have their memories wiped to forget it all. The movie takes place, in part, on Long Island and Montauk is where the two lovers always plan to meet, much like the lovers in Bayside’s “Montauk.”
While “Montauk” may provide a cautionary measure about what could happen at the end of a summer fling, it is just that: cautionary. Sometimes it’s worth it to take the risk with someone, even if you don’t think you’ll ever see them again. If you find someone who made you happy, even if they left your life forever after a couple of months, it is important to learn from the past and remember how hard it was to end things; but it’s equally as important to appreciate the joy you once felt.
‘Montauk’ Lyrics:
Teddy Midnight, the Brooklyn-based live electronic band, dropped their newest EP, titled French Press, at its release party at Pianos NYC on April 26. The EP has a jazzy feel to it. It’s sample heavy, but it doesn’t feel like it is when listening to it. It doesn’t sound like something you’ve already heard; it’s got its own originality to it. One of the ways it’s able to do this is with it’s blend of new and vintage synths, keeping the music unpredictable. It uses combinations of Disco, Soul, 90s House, New Wave, Techno and a little Hip Hop, into non-stop, dance party vibes to keep itself intriguing to the listener.
The EP starts off with the song “Say it Loud!” which is an all instrumental track except for the very end when the title of the song is said. It has a very, almost “New Order” feel to it which mostly comes from the repetitive drum machine acting as a backbone to the song. It then moves into the song “Eclipse (Go There)” which is also an instrumental track but more upbeat and best illustrates the intended Hip Hop feel. This sounds like a song that you might hear in a dance club soon. Both songs are good, but slightly repetitive and long. Each song lands close to the six and half minute mark, and for someone not particularly knowledgeable or invested in electronica, it was hard to sit through without having some repetitive pieces of the song to anchor onto, like a chorus.
Then French Press takes a turn with its next song, “Come Over (feat. Tara Lawton & David Schnurman).” You finally get to hear some vocals and the fact the song is six minutes long is barely noticeable, unlike like the previous songs. The album then goes into “Mind the Gap,” which is another instrumental piece. It is very upbeat and has a lot of change-ups that make it one of a kind and continually interesting; this is important since it’s almost nine minutes long. The next song is “Not Enough” which starts off saying, “It’s not enough baby. It’s just not enough,” building up with the tempo in the song. The techno dance party feel increases with those lines appearing often in the change ups of the song. This song, much like “Come Over,” was easier on a listener like myself who might not have as much experience listening to instrumental electronic music. Even though it only really landed on those simple phrases throughout the song, it acted as a point of destination for the song to loop itself back in. The EP concludes on an instrumental version of “Come Over,” which was good, but knowing what it sounded like with the lyrics it felt like it was missing something slightly important to its overall feel. It was able to convey the emotion through the music but, without the words, the listener is left without a direction in which to run those emotions.
The six song EP has a run time of 41 minutes, which is long but, if you’re into mellow synthesized electronica, this definitely could be an album for you. Even the dance party songs have very mellow undertones to them to make the EP something the listener can just close their eyes and disappear into. Not being someone who previously listened to much electronica music, this album wouldn’t necessarily be something I would pick up to listen to regularly, but it was a satisfying mix of those mellow, almost entrancing, undertones, and upbeat, “can’t sit still while listening to” overtones. First time listeners might want to start by dipping their toes in and starting with “Come Over” or “Not Enough.”
Teddy Midnight will perform next on June 1 at Olives in Nyack, NY. And be sure to check out the entire EP available on SoundCloud and Spotify
Key Tracks:
https://soundcloud.com/teddy-midnight/not-enough
https://soundcloud.com/teddy-midnight/come-over
Post Malone’s coast-to-coast, sold out tour made its only upstate NY appearance at Darien Lake on the last Saturday of May.
All the signs aligned for for an memorable night for fans of the Syracuse native: postcard perfect weather, free entry to the adjacent theme park, first show of the season at Darien and a bevy of up-and-coming hip-hop acts on the bill. Check, check, check and check. From the reaction of the throngs of teenagers and twenty somethings, Posty did not disappoint.
June 21 will bring out Hayley Jane and Friends for Funk Night in Albany at Parish Public House! Hayley brings along her friends Michelangelo Carubba (Turkuaz), Beau Sasser (Kung Fu), Justin Henricks (Wurliday, The Chronicles) and Daniel Lawson. Tickets are only $10 at the door with the show getting underway at 9pm, shortly after Alive at Five with Matisyahu wraps up at Jennings Landing, just two blocks north of Parish Public House! Get tickets and more info here.
Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, so they say. But what about an album? In the case of the self-titled album from The Tins, a trio out of Buffalo, you’d do okay making judgment without listening to a note. But you definitely should… listen that is.
At passing glance the cover is just a painting of the band’s members, keyboard player and vocalist Mike Santillo, drummer and vocalist Dave Muntner, and guitarist and vocalist Adam Stanley. But to any readers of Rolling Stone magazine in the ’90s, the style will feel quite familiar. That’s because it’s the work of Philip Burke, whose art donned the magazine’s covers for nearly a decade. Burke is also from Buffalo, as is the album’s producer, the Goo Goo Dolls’ Robby Takac. So The Tins have the backing of some historical talent in their hometown.
Burke’s cover, familiar as it is, is sprinkled with bold surprises. Bright and unnatural color combinations jump out of the frame, figures that seemed normal at first glance ooze with distortion on further examination, and hidden shapes emerge from nowhere the longer you stare.
Likewise, the music inside the package, familiar at first, is packed with surprising twists and turns and exciting splashes of color that push it past the ordinary. The rock trio lays out interesting enough rock tunes at their base, with bits of psychedelia, new wave and folk mixed in, and just the right amount of melody and hook to reel the listener in closer. That’s when the colors and shapes start to pop, turning the interesting into the exciting.
Santillo’s keys carry the first pair of songs. Immediately, a bubbling and floating organ joins Muntner’s driving beat on “Hear Me Out,” then returns with an 8-bit sounding flurry near the song’s end. His sound gets crunchier and a bit reminiscent of Genesis next in “Oh My God.” Stanley’s guitar picks up the next two, with a catchy Death Cab for Cutie-esque head bobber in “Sundried Mind” and the ’80s-style rocker “Jigsaw Queen” that bursts with colorful zigs and zags throughout. Bruce Springsteen’s classic “State Trooper” gets updated with a dark underbelly of keyboard swirls and an exhilarating post-scream rock out. “A Minute of Your Time” seems standard at first, but slows to reveal a watery guitar jam, and later again opening up to a suspenseful building finish. “Mountain Song” is what it says, a mountain of a song, a straight up power rocker with loud crunching guitars, pounding drums and big three-part harmonies. But it, too, is not without surprises, as it repeatedly dips into atmospheric interludes.
What does it all mean?! According to Stanley, the songs stand as a singular unit, “about feeling stuck, the need for freedom and escape.” But more importantly, it’s about making people dance. “What good is this if you can’t groove to it, you know?” The Tins‘ eight tracks clock in at a bit over 30 minutes. Perfectly situated to throw it on repeat, surely cracking with new discoveries on each listen.
The album drops this Friday, June 1 when the band will celebrate with a release show at the Lockhouse in Buffalo, followed by a summer tour that will bring them all over the northeast. See the full dates below.
Key Tracks: Jigsaw Queen, Sundried Mind, State Trooper
Intrepid Travelers kept their month long residency at Nietzsche’s going with a skillful tribute to the movies with a theme by the name of John Williams. Opening up with a Star Wars Suite, which included “Main Theme,” “Force Theme,” “Emperor Theme,” “Imperial March,” “Rebel Strike,” and “Cantina Band” all seamlessly linked together for an opening segment you have to see. Throughout the rest of the night, the band performed original IT arrangements of John Williams compositions from Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter, along with originals mixed it.
https://www.facebook.com/intrepidtravelersfamily/videos/1952134884819376/
Setlist: Star Wars Suite, Maddy & Anna, Jurassic Park Theme > Randoh’s Island, On the Grass > Indiana Jones Theme > On the Grass, Boomerang, Groove’s On You > Hedwig’s Theme > Groove’s On You
Stay tuned for this week’s show, the final of the residency, joined by Mosswalk with a theme of Freedom. More info here.
