Guided By Voices - Fri 8/4, Iron Works, Buffalo, NY

Guided By Voices

Welshpool Frillies cover art 2023.

Guided By Voices  +  Weird Nightmare 

Buffalo Iron Works Friday, August 4  

Guided Voices ON TOUR

*Fri 8/4   Iron Works   Buffalo, NY

Sat 8/5   Positive Jam    Accord, NY

Fri 9/1     GBV 40th Anniv show   Dayton, OH SOLD OUT 

Sat 9/2 GBV 40th Anniv Show   Dayton, OH SOLD OUT

Fri 10/6    Ottobar   Baltimore, MD

Sat 10/7    White Eagle Hall   Jersey City, NJ    

Fri 10/27   Terminal West    Atlanta, GA

Sat 10/28   Grey Eagle   Asheville, NC

Guided By Voices: Robert Pollard: vocals, Doug Gillard: guitar, Bobby Bare Jr.: guitar, Mark Shue: bass, Kevin March; drums. 

In 1994, 38-year-old school teacher Robert Pollard & his merry band recorded Bee Thousand in a Dayton, Ohio, basement on a 4-track cassette recorder. This improbable rock classic became an enormously influential album: Pitchfork and Spin have called it one of the best records of the ’90s, and Amazon picked Bee Thousand as #1 on their list of the 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums Of All Time. A legendary live band with a rabid following, the Washington Post called GBV “the Grateful Dead equivalent for people who like Miller Lite instead of acid!”  With 10 studio albums already under their belts in less than 5 years, the band’s present-day line-up is nothing less than a new Golden Age of GBV. Robert Pollard will be celebrating the band's 40th anniversary with a Labor Day weekend celebration in Dayton joined by Dinosaur Jr, Built To Spill, Heartless Bastards and more. 

Robert Pollard has a very strong work ethic.

With most of their touring canceled due to the pandemic and then a fractured kneecap, Guided By Voices ran up an extremely prolific streak in the studio, recording and releasing eight albums in the past three years and garnering piles of rave 4 **** star & 5 **** star reviews in the process. In case you were snoozing, the last album, La La Land was Uncut magazine's Best of the Month. The pandemic records were particularly notable and unique that the band members recorded most of their instruments individually in separate cities. 

 Welshpool Frillies finds the gang back together, in a Brooklyn basement with producer Travis Harrison. Much of it was recorded live to tape. The catchy ear worms in these new songs are undeniable, as the kinetic energy of the band is captured in its most raw and pure form. The album is brash, no-frills, and punky, inspired by the wiliness of 90s-era GBV, specifically the Scalping the Guru compilation that Pollard put together in 2022. 

 2023 marks the 40th anniversary of GBV’s start in Dayton, Ohio. Robert Pollard was an elementary school teacher with no formal music training, and his unlikely success has been an odds-defying adventure. It's never too late to discover this vital rock band and join the GBV cult.  

https://www.guidedbyvoices.com/

Kelsey Blackstone and Gost Pepper - 2023 East coast tour dates

Kelsey Blackstone and Gost Pepper 2023 Tour

8/3, Troy, NY @ El Dorado

8/4, Binghamton, NY @ The Garden Bank

8/5, Ithaca, NY @ Deep Dive

8/6, Buffalo, NY *TBD

  

https://www.kelseyblackstone.com/

 Special thanks to Amanda.

John Surge & The Haymakers - LA, CA

John Surge and The Haymakers

 John Surge-vocals, acoustic guitar | Randy Volin-guitars, harmony vocals | Texas Players: Brad Fordham-bass (Dave Alvin, Hayes Carll) | Tom Lewis-drums (Junior Brown, Heybale) | Floyd Domino-piano (Asleep at the Wheel, Merle Haggard) | Tommy Detamore-steel, guitar (Jim Lauderdale, Sunny Sweeney) | Brennen Leigh-harmony vocals 

Los Angeles, CA - July 2023—In 2019, John Surge and the Haymakers released Your Wonderful Life. In early 2021, having written nothing in 2020, Surge made it a goal to write two songs a week for three months. 17 songs later, he knew it was time to record another album.

“Years ago I heard Sunny Sweeney’s ‘East Texas Pines’ on the radio and I jotted it down,” Surge recalls. “I really liked the sound of the production. I was going through some old notebooks around the time I was writing songs for the album and there was the note. I tracked it down to Tommy Detamore and realized he also produced albums for Jim Lauderdale, Doug Sahm and the latest Jesse Daniel record, which I also loved. I made the decision right then to get in touch with Tommy, and he was up for the job.” 

Surge enlisted his partner-in-crime Randy Volin from the live Haymakers line-up to make the trip to Floresville, Texas to cut the record with Detamore. “Much to my hesitancy, Randy talked me into driving the 1,400 miles with eight of his vintage guitars, some amps and a stock of Modelo beer. That first night we stayed at one of three ‘Worst’ Westerns on the trip— I’m a Platinum member,” Surge puns. “Of course, we had to unload all that gear every motel stop. It looked like we were setting up a music shop in the motel rooms.” 

Calling them the “Austin Haymakers," Surge and Detamore assembled an amazing band to bring life to what were mostly voice memo demos: drummer Tom Lewis, bass player Brad Fordham, and piano legend Floyd Domino. Through Detamore’s relationship, noted western swing singer-songwriter Brennen Leigh  was enlisted to provide harmony on 9 of the 10 tracks. “The pace was pretty amazing thanks to these great players,” Surge admires. “They have credits that include Merle, Waylon, Lucinda, and the Alvin brothers to name a few. And they were great to work with. We had a blast.”  

Nine days later, Almost Time was born. “I would say the thread that runs through the album is barroom tales—people sharing their troubles, bragging, pontificating, revealing their vulnerabilities,” explains Surge.  “As a working band, we spend a lot of time in nightspots and there’s a lot of unfiltered conversation. I had my antennae up and those moments got captured and expanded into the songs I wrote for this album.”

Almost Time consists of 10 songs: 9 originals and one cover—Chip and Tony Kinman’s “Big Train.” “It’s a song they recorded with their post Rank And File project, Blackbird and the western duo Cowboy Nation,” Surge explains. “We injected some honky tonk into the song, and then I invited Chip to play on it. We wound up doing a duet while he added harmonica and guitar. Rank And File is a big influence for me and I love honoring bands that mean a lot to me.” (On Your Wonderful Life, the band did a Beat Farmer’s cover, “Gun Sale at the Church”). 

A lot of honky tonk territory is covered on this record, from the country shuffle of “You’re So Right" and the roadhouse country of “Rattle Me," to the Texas sounding “Tricks of the Trade” with Volin and Detamore playing dueling electric rhythm guitars.

 “I Should Have Known” is a duet with Brennen Leigh with a crying pedal steel from Detamore and a beautiful piano solo by Floyd Domino of Asleep at the Wheel fame.  “All You Gotta Do” is a co-write with friend and musician David Serby that features flat picking guitar, fiddle, and dobro. The album ends with a 6/8 country folk song, “Sister Honeybee” that’s a tale of a free-spirited woman who follows her own path and makes honey wine. 

“For this record, I wrote more material than I planned to record, and I worked and reworked songs until they got to the right place rather than just taking what came top of mind,” said Surge. “The recording was more influenced by Tommy’s production than the location. I hear this record as an evolution from the last. It’s still spirited, rockin’ roadhouse country with this album having a more traditional country instrumentation, including fiddle, more pedal steel, dobro and acoustic guitar. It’s a moment in time and only time will tell how people will react to it, but the experience is one I’ll always feel was perfect.”