Some GIGS

8/17 Bev and Shannon's, Turners Falls, MA
8/25 1794 Meetinghouse, New Salem, MA I am playing #4 But the write up is below some sick gigs...

1794 MEETINGHOUSE PROUDLY PRESENTS A SPECIAL AUGUST SERIES “NORTHERN ROUTES: 4 ADVENTURES IN NEW MUSIC”The artists participating in Northern Routes are explorers, discoverers, charting unknown aural territories and shifting the old, familiar musical boundaries. They use laptops, mixing boards, field recordings, acoustic instruments and found objects to create sonic landscapes that are uplifting, haunting, challenging and occasionally uncomfortable. Experimental music has a home in the Pioneer Valley because of the community of artists residing here, but it also has an enthusiastic audience willing to question the same assumptions. Ultimately the goal of this series is to bring that excitement to the North Quabbin. Co-organizer Adam Frost adds, “We expect the Northern Routes audience will be as challenged and engaged as they would be with contemporary art in a gallery or museum, but with this music there’s a very different alchemy, an exciting interaction that draws the listener into the creative process.”

THE AUGUST SERIES IS SPONSORED BY: 

Franklin Community Co-op/Green Fields & McCusker’s Markets,

and Orange Innovation Center
Fans can learn more about the artists on the Northern Routes Facebook page,  facebook.com/northernroutes.

Northern Routes #1 with Son of Earth +
200 Years + Bill Nace + Steve Zultanski:

Saturday, August 4, 7:30 P.M.
Tix $10 advance or at the door. BUY TIX
Northern Routes kicks off with a heavy-hitting bill of four performers, familiar from the underground music scene of the Pioneer Valley and beyond. Son of Earth formed more than a decade ago, and over the years has winnowed its sound down from noise/anti-folk to something quieter but no less tension-filled and demanding, becoming what Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore describes as “one of the tightest bands I’ve seen.. and all they do is sit there making weird noises.. quietly.” 200 Years is a collaboration between Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers) and Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), showcasing the artists in a lo-fi, stripped-back setting of guitar and vocals where “the sounds are more not there than they are there.” Guitarist Bill Nace, in contrast, fills the room with sound, slowly creating sonic stormclouds out of string-scraping, feedback and other unconventional techniques. Author Steven Zultanski will round out the evening with a reading of his conceptualist poetry.

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Northern Routes #2 with Marissa Nadler + Bunwinkies + Hallock Hill:

Saturday, August 11, 7:30 P.M.
Tix $10 advance or at the door. BUY TIX
The second installment of Northern Routes takes the audience on a more introspective path. Marissa Nadler, who studied visual arts at RISD before making music her career, fingerpicks and sings dreamy story-songs of seduction, loss and death with “the sort of voice you’d follow straight to Hades” (Pitchfork). Valley favorite Bunwinkies, of Turner Falls and Easthampton, bring a sweet, folk-tinged psychedelia that incorporates the mellowness of 60s folk-rock with the darker seductiveness of 80s Paisley Underground groups like Opal and Mazzy Star.  Hallock Hill (New York-based guitarist Tom Lecky) uses laptop and guitar to create mesmerizing, evocative soundscapes that have been likened to “unpacking 100-year old handtools, bird’s nests, alfalfa hay, heirloom jewelry, and a 300 page manual on joinery techniques from inside the soundhole of a single acoustic guitar” (Dan Bodah, WFMU's Airborne Event).

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Northern Routes #3 with MV & EE +
P.G. Six:

Saturday, August 18, 7:30 P.M.
Tix $10 advance or at the door. BUY TIX
After a decade of visionary innovation in the 90s as part of the NYC “free folk” collective that was Tower Recordings and another decade of refinement to their individual sounds, former bandmates Matt Valentine (half of MV & EE with Erika Elder) and Pat Gubler (P.G. Six) will have a reunion of sorts, sharing the bill on August 18th.  Since the demise of Tower, Valentine and Elder have approached folk and psychedelia with a maximalist, “more-is-more” glee, playing effects-soaked ragas and coloring the fabric of their unique brand of Americana in the most unlikely tie-dyed hues with nods to Neil Young, the Grateful Dead and Sun Ra at their free-ranging bests.  By contrast, Pat Gubler–who plays under the name P.G. Six both solo and with band in tow–has followed a more contemplative path, one first charted by the troubadours of Britain’s 1960s folk revival, while maintaining his identity from Tower days as an explorer of rare and delicate atmospheres.

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Northern Routes #4 with Red Heart the Ticker + Crystalline Roses:

Saturday, August 25, 7:30 P.M.
Tix $10 advance or at the door. BUY TIX
The Northern Routes series wraps up with a return to roots, northern and other. Red Heart theTicker, the husband-and-wife duo Tyler Gibbons and Robin MacArthur, released their most recent album in the fall of 2011, reworking songs collected by Robin’s grandmother Margaret MacArthur, a folksong collector and singer from Vermont; Your Name in Secret I Would Write erases time, bringing voices from the past into the present, creating musical dialogues with ghosts. Crystalline Roses mixes one part Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, one part Fahey’s “American Primitive” guitar, and one part Robbie Basho ragas with his own distinct style to create a unique blend of cosmic one-man string-band music.