The popularity of Vulfpeck, a low-volume funk band is on the rise. Founded in 2011, the group started in venues holding only 3,000 people. Today, Vulfpeck has announced an upgrade to a one-night-only performance at the worlds’ most famous arena, Madison Square Garden.
Vulfpeck will be headlining the New York City show on Saturday, Sept. 28, alongside The Fearless Flyers, a side project featuring bassist, Joe Dart. The debut will be the quartet’s second-ever live performance.
Vulfpeck however, has released four EPs and albums. The band had an admission-free tour in 2014, funded by their album on Spotify called Sleepify. The band’s most recent collection is entitled Hill Climber and was released in December 2018.
Tickets to see Vulfpeck at Madison Square Garden will be available Friday, February 1 at noon through Ticketmaster. They will also be available to purchase on Saturday, Feb. 2 at Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and the Beacon Theatre box offices.
Girl Blue has a passion for music, vocals and a stage presence to draw you in – listen. The stage name of Arielle O’Keefe, Girl Blue is one of the Capital District’s emerging singer-songwriters, alongside peers Sean Rowe, Sydney Worthley, Sawyer Fredericks, and Moriah Formica. On Thursday, January 24, she will open for Dar Williams at Cohoes Music Hall.
O’Keefe’s drive for music goes back to her childhood in Bayshore, Long Island, where she started playing piano at age 5 and guitar at age 12. From this, she sees music adhered to her identity, throughout her life. “It’s sort of a raging ambition inside me, it feels like all I have is this thing to work on.” After a move to Dallas during high school, she headed north to New York City and finally to Albany, to move her career forward. She chose her stage name, Girl Blue, from two musical inspirations – the Nina Simone album, Little Girl Blue, which she listened to a great deal growing up, and the Stevie Wonder song “Girl Blue,” where the character described was much like Arielle.
Girl Blue received broad exposure when her first single, “Fire Under Water,” was picked up by Spotify for New Music Friday, and was eventually placed in a Las Vegas tourism commercial. From there it went viral, racking up over 2.5 million plays. This led Spotify to pick up her cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” a stripped down version of the original. “I would play with vocals and looped them along with one or two guitar lines. The song is so emotional and almost creepy. I wanted to do something that was really broken down and make it a little more epic, so I covered it with just vocals and guitars, then went in and produced the final version.”
When O’Keefe is on stage, she commands attention to her performance. “When I was younger, I went to different types of venues, hip-hop showcases and singer-songwriter performances and saw singers that you have-to-listen-to, instead of being forced to listen. I do that for myself, making it so that people have to lean in.” After 14 years, this has developed into Girl Blue’s remarkable stage presence.
A range of vocal inspirations – Ella Fitzgerald, Joni Mitchell, Roberta Flack, Ani DiFranco and Tori Amos – as well as comparisons to Carole King, Laura Marling, Bonnie Raitt and Jeff Buckley, give you an idea of the powerhouse-vocals and songwriting Girl Blue has in her skill set. She looks towards Frank Ocean as one of the defining voices of the current generation. “He has a voice with character and is a talented singer, who has that intangible quality to translate emotion through his voice. He makes people feel, and that will stand the test of time. His style has been copied over and over already; that says a lot if everyone wants to be Frank Ocean.”
Last May at Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady, Girl Blue performed as part of Capitol Records Live, an event bringing together a half-dozen local artists to take on the songs of The Beatles’ – The White Album and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Singing “Glass Onion,” “Blackbird,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Getting Better,” her performance stood out among a lineup that included Wild Adriatic, Eastbound Jesus and Let’s Be Leonard.
Currently, Girl Blue is recording with Dan Dekalb and Jimi Woodul from Dark Honey, with plans to release a stripped down album in May, and the full album slated for later this year.
On March 2nd, Girl Blue will perform at The Linda in Albany with Belle Skinner and Zan Strumfield, but first, she opens for Dar Williams at Cohoes Music Hall on Thursday, January 24. Tickets are still on sale.
Girl Blue posts monthly exclusive songs and behind the scenes content online on Patreon. Click here to subscribe and support her work.
A punk show headlined by St. Catherine’s, Ontario’s Inhalants will take place Feb. 2 at Spark Contemporary Art Space on East Fayette Street in Syracuse. The show will also feature a litany of New York State punk and hardcore bands, including Troy’s Your Brain on Drugs, Syracuse oi/street punks, the War Lovers, Syracuse old school punks, Lucky 33, Syracuse skate punks, the Shuvits and another touring band to be announced.
The $5 show starts at 8:00. Tickets will be available at the door. Proceeds are for the touring band. There will also be an array of out of print hardcore and punk t-shirts available for $5.
Lucky 33, a veteran of two Vans Warped Tours, is currently working on new material. This show will be the band’s first with new guitarist/vocalist Zac Birdslow and last show until their second annual Punk Rock BBQ on Memorial Day weekend.
Check out the official video for their song “Paycheck” below. The song is a solid mix of high energy, late ’80s-mid ’90s era punk with shades of pop-punk thrown in. The band has found a second home in Rochester of late and is looking to further their success in their hometown of Syracuse and beyond.
This low-cost show is the perfect opportunity to check out what’s happening in the Syracuse punk scene. For more information, follow the event page here.
Plan Bee, the Baldwinsville HS Pep Band, is celebrating its 10th anniversary Saturday Jan. 19 at the Palace Theater in Syracuse with a performance and release of its first full-length LP, Bee Sides.The album is being released by Syracuse label L.R.S. Records.
Record sales and the performance, which also includes appearances by ’90s tribute act My So-Called Band and Matthew Blake & the Blues Dragons, will help defray costs for the Baldwinsville Marching Band’s trip to the 2020 Rose Bowl Parade.
The pep band’s origins are owed to band director, Casey Vanderstow. Describing the creation of the band, Vanderstow stated, “A lot of these students are in our field band program. When that ends in the fall, there is indoor drum line, and winter guard, but there wasnât anything for brass and woodwind players who wanted to keep playing. So this band was formed for students to continue playing, and it has grown over the past decade.”
The band also acts as the Carrier Dome’s house band when the Syracuse University pep band is off for the semester break. Below is some video of their performance of “Land of 1000 Dances” at Syracuse’s game versus Old Dominion on Dec. 15 of last year.
Vanderstow modeled the band on his alma mater, Syracuse’s popular pep band, the Sour Citrus Society, and they now boast a repertoire of more than 60 songs ranging from classic rock to top 40 music.
Plan Bee’s partnership with L.R.S. Records began three years ago, with an idea to record a vinyl LP with digital download. Over that time, L.R.S. recorded the band at various venues, including basketball games, at the Onondaga County War Memorial and at the band’s annual summer appearances at Baldwinsville’s Paper Mill Island Amphitheater.
The album will feature arrangements of songs by the White Stripes, Daft Punk, the Beastie Boys, Elton John, Aerosmith and others.
Tickets for the show are still available through the Baldwinsville band website and range from $15 to $50.
WNY’s Carpool and Syracuse’s Lily Grave are heading out on a weekender this month – hitting Buffalo, Rochester, Asbury, NJ and Brooklyn. They start off with an intimate show in Buffalo on January 16 before hitting their familiar stomping grounds at Bug Jar in Rochester on January 17. From there, they head to Asbury Park Brewery for a show on January 18 before wrapping it up at Bushwick Public House in Brooklyn on January 20.
Carpool recently released I Think Everyone’s A Cop, a follow-up to 2017’s I Still Blame Everything Else. In an interview with NYS Music, lead vocalist and guitarist Chris Colasanto said the latest collection of songs “is about complacency, substance abuse and relationships – like you’re stuck in a stagnant state of molasses.”
Lily Grave also had a new release in 2018, entitled Absurd Faces.
Jan. 16 – house show w/ Ghostpool & Previous Love – Buffalo, NY Jan. 17 – Bug Jar – w/ California Cousins – Rochester, NY Jan. 18 – Asbury Park Brewery w/ Toy Cars, ManDancing, and Prim – Asbury, NJ Jan. 20 – Bushwick Public House w/ Cold Wrecks, & Common Sage – Brooklyn, NY
