Joywave dropped the first single off their highly-anticipated third album, Like a Kennedy. In conjunction with the release, they announced “The Possession Sessions,” a handful of show dates including intimate shows in Rochester on June 29 and Brooklyn on July 11. The hometown show in Rochester at The Bug Jar sold out in a few hours, and a second-late night set has just been added. Tickets are on sale here. See the complete list of upcoming shows below.
In a commentary that is available to stream now, Armbruster explains:
“I think a lot of people will probably try to fit this song into some type of political narrative, but that’s really not the point. It’s a song about complete exhaustion and media burnout. It’s an anti-chaos song. Every screen you walk by DEMANDS your attention. Everything is BREAKING NEWS in all caps. It’s a really difficult time to think about the mundane small-scale things that have been the focus of human existence until very recently. I don’t think people should check out, but I think it’s beneficial to at least zoom out and not take the bait every time. It feels like everything is designed to keep us enraged 24 hours a day. We deserve a little sanity.”
– Daniel Armbruster
The Possession Sessions:
June 29 – Rochester, NY – The Bug Jar
JULY 9 – Los Angeles, CA – The Moroccan Lounge
July 11 – Brooklyn, NY – Elsewhere (Zone One)
July 13 – Chicago, IL – Taste of Chicago
July 18 – Fayetteville, AR – Free Summer Concert Series at JBGB *
July 19 – Kansas City, MO – Coors Light Block Party *
August 10 – Redmond, WA – 107.7 The End Presents Summer Camp *
Last weekend the annual Clearwater Music Festival, continued its amazing and rich tradition as a premier event celebrating great music and environmental awareness in our community. With a lineup that included Mavis Staples, The Wailers, Ani DiFranco and Railroad Earth, Clearwater alumni came out despite bad weather predictions to celebrate a great weekend of music and revival in Westchester county.
Day one of the festival brought amazing weather complimenting the beautiful setting of Croton Point Park. Highlights of the afternoon included intimate sets from James Maddock, and The Lone Below, as well as a Deadgrass set that filled the Dance Stage with singing and moving deadheads. Ani DiFranco welcomed in the evening with one of the top sets of the weekend, treating fans to her powerful, poetic performance – the perfect appetizer. The evenings’ main act, legendary Mavis Staples showed her audience why she is a national treasure and one of the great soul singers of our time.
Day two plagued by rain and mud did not deter fans from another fun day of music on the Hudson, and their faith paid off because in the end the weather held out. The Fatherâs Day Sunday included amazing sets from Scott Sherrard, The Del McCoury Band, and Leslie Mendleson. The weekend favorite, Railroad Earth, kept the bluegrass roots alive, treating fans to unique songs from the bands amazing catalog. Closing out the 2019 edition of the Clearwater Music Festival was The Wailers; a relaxed group of fans were treated to all the hits of the famous reggae band, closing out an amazing weekend of music and community.
Inspired by Pete Seegerâs desire to clean up the river over forty years ago, The Great Hudson River Revival initially helped raise the funds to build the sloop Clearwater, which has since become a world-renowned floating classroom and a symbol of effective grassroots action.
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. is a non-profit organization that sails at the forefront of the nationâs environmental challenges. The revenue raised by the festival goes to support Clearwaterâs numerous educational programs and its work toward environmental and social justice.
Today, seeing the success of the Clearwater organization, one cannot imagine these achievements being possible without the Clearwater Festival. The Great Hudson River Revival has helped raise funds and served as a beacon toward raising awareness in support of Americaâs First River. And it all started more than 35 years ago, when it was but the dream of a banjo-picking folksinger.
Chenango Blues Association has announced a music-filled summer for Norwich with a summer concert series and the Chenango Blues Festival. The free concert series will run every Thursday at East Side Park from July 11 – Aug. 29, and the 27th annual Chenango Blues Festival will take place August 16-17.
Highlights of the Chenango Blues Music Festival lineup include four time winner of the Blues Music Award for Entertainer of the Year, Tab Benoit, and 2019 Contemporary Female Artist of the Year, Danielle Nicole. Benoit plucks on your heartstrings with each strum of his guitar, you can feel the passion he puts into his music. Nicole’s strong and sultry voice with her distinctive bass work feeds your soul. The lineup also features Downchild Blues Band, Johnny Sansone, Joe Louis Walker Trio, and much more. Check out the full lineup below. Tickets are on sale now, check out the festival website for more information.
Woodstock may be returning to Central New York at Vernon Downs for the 50 year anniversary of the iconic music and arts festival. Scheduled to be held Aug. 16-18, some of the previously announced headliners for the event include Jay-Z, The Raconteurs, The Killers, Miley Cyrus, John Fogerty and Dead & Company.
The festival would still be held on the originally planned weekend of Aug. 16-18, only now possibly at Vernon Downs Casino Hotel in Vernon, a small town located along the New York State Thruway between Syracuse and Rome. There would most likely be no camping and the performances would run from until 11:00 p.m. each day.
After Watkins Glen International Speedway pulled out as host of Woodstock 50 on June 10, organizer Michael Lang vowed the festival would still be happening and that they were in discussions with other venues. It now appears that Vernon Downs was one of those venues.
Michael Lang is no stranger to the Central New York area. Woodstock ’99 was held at the decommissioned Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome. The festival drew upwards of 200,000 people that year and was marred by riots and sexual assaults that brought the festival to a fiery conclusion.
The harness racing track located on site has a past of hosting larger concert events, the latest being Aug. 29, 2012 when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band visited during the Wrecking Ball Tour. Track owners at the time suggested that they could comfortably host 30,000 people for the Boss’s show at their venue, a sharp decline from the 100,000 attendees Lang had originally anticipated for his event at Watkins Glen this year.
The track has also hosted Phish, the HORDE tour, the Other Ones (one of many Grateful Dead offshoots) and several versions of the regional radio festival, K-Rockathon.
Even with a lack of on-site camping, attendees would still have several lodging options in the area. The nearby Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona has several hotels and an RV park. Other local options for lodging include two state parks at Verona Beach and Delta Lake, along with several private campgrounds and hotels in nearby Utica, Rome and Syracuse.
Ticketing information was unavailable at press time but would be contingent upon organizers acquiring final permits from the town. The lack of camping would preclude the need for a mass gathering permit from New York State.
NYS Music will have more information as it becomes available.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited to reflect a different number of attendees at Woodstock ’99.
This morning online ticket mecca, CashorTrade, launched a Trader’s Protection™ program which provides 100% assurance – and insurance. Now, all #Embracetheface users including Gold Members have a full proof money-back guarantee on all tickets sold on the site. Not to mention, tickets are already being sold at prices “set to disrupt the secondary ticketing industry.”
CashorTrade is a rapidly-growing hub, sucking music fans into a “Face Value Movement,” unavoidably changing how we experience the concert experience. Co-Founder, Brando Rich praises his community for holding out for a one-to-one ticket exchange with likeminded fans.
Not only is CashorTrade generating a love of music and community, but it cuts the competition by a landslide – disrupting a $15 billion industry, taking on ticket giants such as Stubhub and SeatGeek. For Gold Members ($24/yr), Trader’s Protection matches Paypal’s 3% rate, which approximates CashorTrade’s credit card processing costs. Any free member pays 10% of each transaction. In comparison, secondary ticket platforms charge an average of 28%-45% on top of an already-inflated price
Fun Phact:In the summer of 2017, the website supplied over 50,000 tickets to fans at face value throughout Phish’s “Baker’s Dozen” shows, amounting to nearly 25% of all the seats at Madison Square Garden during the 13-night run.
Brooklyn indie rock duo comprised of twin brothers Tim and Dan have recently launched the EP Two Songs under the name The Reflections. The release features the songs “Union Sq.” and “Beachy Preachy,” a pair of tunes steeped in contemporary NYC indie aesthetic, yet bearing overtones of classic 90’s alternative.
The brothers have been making music together for years, performing under the name Middle Infield. The re-branding occurred in conjunction with dropping the new songs.
“We changed our band name to The Reflections because we wanted a band name that represented ‘us’ more-so,” Tim told NYS Music. “With my twin and I, it’s always been a situation where the sum is greater than the individual parts; where people are more drawn to our collective energy by simply us being together… And when people meet us, they sometimes just see the same person ‘twice’. So our band name highlights this phenomenon, but once you get deeper we’re obviously quite different people.”
“Union Sq.” and “Beachy Peachy” were mixed by Hunter Davidsohn (Frankie Cosmos) and Mike Ditrio respectively, and mastered by Paul Gold (Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, and LCD Soundsystem).
Two Songs is just the beginning. The Reflections plan to record and release more songs this year. Follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for updates and events.
Colorado Springs mother, musician and trauma therapist, Xanthe Alexis, pierces the heart with emotion and unmistakable conviction. She is otherworldly; transcending mind, body, music and soul. Alexis remained on the Top 20 Alternative Folk Charts for six months, and Top 200 for the entire folk genre. Her spiritual workings are proven through a deep connection with the world around her, confronting realities of society through song.
Today, June 17, Alexis will begin her Artist Residency at Mothership – a space for international artists across multiple disciplines to live and hone their craft. Their mission: to support and promote artists through collaborative opportunities; build sustainable artists networks; and help retain creative forces in New York. Alexis will bask in the Greenpoint-neighborhood of Brooklyn through Wednesday June 26. She will perform an intimate Stage One, Rockwood Music Hall matinee at 3 pm, on Sunday, June 23.
At first listen to Xanthe Alexis’s 2016 debut-album, Time of War, nothing crosses your mind. In this blank slate, you involuntary start to breathe deeply into meditation, with finger-style guitar. Alexis’ breath (accompanied by Colorado local, Curtis Boucher) slowly restores your soul, filling you as you inhale – and hold. “Hey Love,” is just the beginning of the 10-track, fan-funded release that weaves-raw throughout your body, giving you that one-on-one feeling with Xanthe. A self-release so soft and filled with intimacy, it articulates a chaotic world with grace.
Her Mothership residency is special for threefold: Xanthe admits, Time of War was mostly first takes, recorded in six hours; She has recorded, but not yet finalized a second album; and already has four tunes in mind that will bloom towards a third release – hopefully to be influenced by the wonders of Mothership, Brooklyn, working artists and the inner workings of Xanthe’s Muse.
“With the last album, I had a lot – a lot – to say about mental illness. I don’t say it directly. I say it poetically. I think people get what I am talking about; and we need to talk about in our culture,” said Xanthe. “As A kid I was always sup-er sensitive, and emotional. I found music was the safe place for all of that. When you hear a powerful vocalist and all of that emotion, it is accepted in that arena. I was drawn it.”
There was this force, that transposed our phone conversation. We were connected by more than just music, and had oddly-specific parallels in our spiritual lives. “That otherness is what we weave throughout the music. It is close to all of us, and some of us are more aware of it,” said Xanthe, soothingly. “These strands of conscious explain to a whole other forum,” perhaps in more ways than we know.
Strangely enough, Xanthe feels zen-ed out in New York, a therapeutic calmness juxtaposed to the city. ”I’m going to live there [Mothership] for a few days with painters, poets and dancers. That is where everybody comes to work and live.”
For her upcoming album, Xanthe thought: I’m gonna put something out that is radio friendly that I still feel stayed the course of musical expression that I wanted to capture. But It’s been a long road. It will be interesting to see how this weeks experiences shape her final production of album two, as the lines between her professional world and musical pursuit disappear.
“It wasnt until recently that my patients knew about my other life,” turning her words plafully. “ I had a music program for middle aged school children. It was totally like School Of Rock; Kids would come together with no experience and become a total band. They would write all their own music and I would teach them chords – the language of music. I’d teach them: the chords are like a painters pallet.” Xanthe would play them a C and ask, “what doesn’t this sound like.” And they would talk about it.
“What does a D sound like: Oh, Its bright. What does an Em sound like: It’s dark and sounds a little angry. All of a sudden we would have this shared language through emotion. Kids are like sponges, they don’t have all that insecurity and fear yet, so they would just do it, ya know. They are at that age where they are coming out of their innocence, and they need to know that is alright.”
By combining life’s passion with professional life, those surrounding Xanthe realize “I Practice what I preach. They realize, this is a brave chick.”
A note from Xanthe: “If you want to be pleasantly spooked-out and hear your heart break a little bit and maybe then soar a little bit, [giggling] Come see me at Rockwood Music Hall, Sunday, June 23 at 3 pm.”
Back in 2008, the entertainment industry watched as decades of history burned to the ground. At 4:43 am on June 1, 2008, a security guard on the backlot of Universal Studios Hollywood noticed flames erupting from a rooftop on the set known as New England Street. Hundreds of firefighters tried to extinguish the blaze, but poor water pressure and damaged sprinkler systems hindered their ability to do so. Eventually the fire reached one of the most important buildings on the lot, Building 6197, otherwise known as, ‘the video vault.’
The video vault was home to videotapes, film reels, and a library of master sound recordings owned by Universal Music Group. A master recording is the original recording of a piece of music, the source of how we listen to everything today. The recording industry is a business of copies, and copies of copies. With each copy that is made, some of that original sound is lost as the audio is converted between formats. The massive fire destroyed almost everything in the vault, including the masters for an estimated 500,000 song titles, recording sessions, multi-track recordings with the instruments still segregated, and recordings that have never been released.
“A master is the truest capture of a piece of recorded music. Sonically, masters can be stunning in their capturing of an event in time. Every copy thereafter is a sonic step away.”
– Adam Block, former president of Legacy Recordings
The catalog of masters destroyed includes music of countless legendary artists spanning across multiple decades. Artists like: Steely Dan, Duke Ellington, Judy Garland, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Neil Diamond, Ray Charles, R.E.M., Guns N’ Roses, Patti LaBelle, Eric Clapton, Sonny and Cher, and hundreds more. Some of Aretha Franklin’s first appearances on record when she was a teenager, tape masters for Billie Holiday’s Decca catalog, and Nirvana production masters with songs no one has ever heard were all destroyed. In a tweet, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said he believes the Nevermind masters are “gone forever.”
Billie Holiday, 1946. CreditPhoto Illustration by Sean Freeman & Eve Steben for The New York Times. Source photograph: William Gottlieb/Redferns/Getty Images.
This took place eleven years ago, why are we just hearing about the master recordings now? For months afterwards news surrounding the fire, most importantly the vault, was heavily covered by media. However, majority of the coverage referenced the film recording damages, and eventually it was written off as crisis averted. UMG avoided bad publicity by ensuring most of everything that was lost was digitally backed up, or that it was only copies engulfed by the flames, and the masters were at a different facility in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t until New York Times released an extensive article which included information from legal documentation of the fire from a 2009 lawsuit UMG filed against NBCUniversal, who owned the warehouse where these relics were stored; that the news about the lost music became more public.
Artists were not even made aware that their masters were destroyed until the Times article. Attorney Howard King told LA Times that some artists effected will be seeking legal action against UMG, saying: “This has a potentially huge impact on [the artists’] future, coupled with the rather disturbing fact that no one had ever told them that their intellectual property may have been destroyed. There is a significant amount of discussion going on, and there will be formal action taken.”
Welcome to NYS Music’s comprehensive guide to all the music festivals found in the Empire State throughout the Summer of 2019! Read on to learn about what festivals are coming up, ticketing and lineup info, and what past years can tell us about what to expect for next year!
Historic Cobblestone District – Downtown Buffalo, NY. T
It’s a good spot for a mid-level band…they treat you like a king. At the end of the day, when you treat your musicians well, they’re going to play better, your patrons are going to be happier…it works all around. It’s definitely a music venue for musicians.
Past Highlights: Broken Social Scene, The Sheepdogs, Turkuaz, Aqueous, Chicano Batman, Golf Clap, Andy Frasco & the U.N., Michelangelo Carruba Super Jam, Ratboys, Dynamo.
2019 Lineup: Aqueous, Sloan, Tauk, Joy Wave, Billy Strings, Langhorne Slim, Witty Tarbox.
Pricing: $35 Two-Day Pass ($45 Walk-up), $20 Single Day, $100 VIP. *Late night passes to be announced
Emerging Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Artist, Ian Flanigan seamlessly weaves intricate acoustics and lyricism across supportive cello arrangements and skillful percussion. His sound — an eclectic blend of progressive folk and percussive finger-style — is reminiscent of the road less traveled, paved with poignant lyrical truths of his past.
Past Highlights: Adam Ezra Group, Beth Molaro, Buddy System, Bunkhouse Boys, The Clayfoot Strutters, Dan Navarro, Dar Williams, Eclectic Dance Orchestra Sun.
2019 Lineup: Andrew VanNorstrand, Stephen Kellog, Annie & the Hedonists, Annie Wenz, Beth Molaro, Buddy System, Carolann Solebello, Crys Matthews, Emma’s Revolution, The Falcon Ridge House Band (Mark Dann, Eric Lee, Radoslav Lorkovic).
Pricing:$175 3-Day Ticket w/ Camping; $130 Without. (May 16-July 10th). FREE for Children 12 & Under. All 3 day tickets include Pre-Fest Thursday admission.
The art and music festival started with a house show featuring a stage on the lawn and acoustic acts on the back porch of the farmhouse. Over the past decade, it has grown into three-day-long music festival in a natural amphitheater nestled between the rolling hills of Cortland.
Past Highlights: Sophistafunk, Root Shock and NYS Music 87/90 artist, Space Carnival, The Unknown Jones, The Neighbors, Dirty Blanket.
2019 Lineup: The Comb Down, The Blind Spots, The Speculators, Digger Jones, Root Shock.*A special film screening Sunday with live score by Chris Kuklis and The Seedstock Cinematic Orchestra.
For the fifth consecutive year, the Riverboat Bar in Alexandria Bay (A-Bay) will host a summer series of live music running from mid-June through the end of September. In all, more than 30 bands will be gracing the newly renovated stage over the course of the summer.
The series opens this weekend with Pennsylvania funk-reggae band, Kluster Phunk. They’ll be performing on Saturday, June 15 and will be joined by special guest Ben Carrey of Pigeons Playing Ping Pong.
The weekend of June 21-22 turns back the clock to the ’90s with Buffalo’s Tiny Music doing a tribute to the Stone Temple Pilots on June 21 and fellow Nickel City alt-rockers Stalking Jenna playing a reunion show on June 22.
June wraps with Toronto party machine After Funk on June 28 and two bands on June 29 when Saratoga’s Let’s Be Leonard will perform with local favorites, Adapter.
Fourth of July weekend is packed with music at the bay. Three shows dot the weekend beginning on Thursday, July 4. Utica psychedelic rockers Trampoline Jetstream make their debut at the Riverboat on Thursday followed by the funktronica of Tweed on Friday the 5th and the resurgent Annie in the Water on Saturday the 6th.
Visit the Riverboat Bar in A-Bay this summer and don’t miss the great music offerings they have in store!
