Cat’s Cradle Back Room

From the moment Bryce Avary, better known as The Rocket Summer, exploded onto the scene as a teenager in the early 2000s at the forefront of a wave of indie pop he has been a musical force. Charging out of Texas and onto the international stage he has never been in short supply of ear-worm hooks and effortless charm. Fans have flocked to Avary’s optimistic and exuberant songcraft and the community it inspires for years. Now, with a new album, Sweet Shivers, Avary’s musical evolution and the breadth of his songwriting is on full display. The album is stunningly expansive, with hallmarks of Avary’s familiar songwriting style in lyrics that manage to be both extremely personal and universally applicable. “Writing is where I feel most normal, it’s where I come alive” he reflects. As with previous records, Avary’s musical virtuosity is apparent. He wrote, produced, recorded, mixed, and performed every instrument on the album. Seven albums into his career, Avary is just hitting his stride and leaving his mark as one of the most reliable songwriters and multi instrumentalists in rock music. Links:

Oakland based garage rock sweethearts Destroy Boys are showing expansion and demanding reaction on their latest newest EP, “Crybaby/Vixen”. The female founded and fronted hi-fi rock band has grown since crossing the radar of music fans after a mention in the pages of Rolling Stone. After releasing their first album, band members Alexia Roditis and Vi Mayugba were then introduced to rock fans worldwide. Their new EP is a departure from the angsty relationship driven anthems of their debut album “Sorry, Mom” and a look into the inner thoughts of this generation’s riot girls. Since inking their deal with Uncool Records in 2016, Destroy Boys has been rocking stages and festivals throughout the country including an invitation to House of Vans at 2017’s SXSW. Destroy Boys’ new EP “Crybaby/Vixen” showcases the duo’s growth as songwriters and musicians with Mayugba’s driving sonic guitar creating a raw, gritty canvas for Roditis’ ethereal, haunting, and sometimes comical vocals. A raucously introspective road trip to early adulthood, with the feeling of a cross between Blondie and Tragic Kingdom-era No Doubt. Destroy Boys are the perfect soundtrack for slaying the patriarchy or going skating with your friends. Words by Andru Defeye Links: Website | Facebook | Instagram

KOLARS is one of those rare acts which descends from another dimension, struts its sequin skin, blares it’s unabashed musical thrill ride and leaves audiences with their mouths on the floor. Rob Kolar twists and turns as he sings imaginative lyrics with a raw swagger. He spins his guitar as notes sail and scramble through the room. A presence that embodies elements of Elvis and Marc Bolan with a ragged punky edge. The magnetic, one of a kind, Lauren Brown uses her whole body as a percussion instrument, tap dancing rhythms with her feet while simultaneously playing a full stand up kit with her arms. An alluring hybrid of Mo Tucker and Gene Kelly with a dash of Iggy Pop wildness. Yes, there have been iconic duos before but none like this. On record KOLARS are slightly more subtle and nuanced. Rob produces and mixes the music and has created a genre melding soundscape influenced by his film scoring. The band has inspired evocative descriptions such as “space blues,” “glam-a-billy” and “desert disco.” The style combines elements of new wave, blues, pyschedelia, glam, folk, disco and punk. The production experiments are infused into the live show. In essence, the duo are a hybrid of modern technology and raw rock and roll. KOLARS have toured extensively across the US, Canada and Europe, playing many festivals and concerts in front of thousands. They have headlined national tours and have shared bills with Spoon, LP, Julian Casablancas & The Voidz, STRFKR, The Kills, Best Coast, Shonen Knife, RZA, Pussyriot, Built To Spill, The Horrors, The Growlers, Alanis Morissette, Funkadelic, The Revivalists, Father John Misty, The Roots, Nikki Lane, Strawberry Alarm Clock and many others. The Sh-Booms There’s this dynamic that churns hard in The Blurred Odyssey, the debut full-length album by ascendant Orlando garage-soul enterprise The Sh-Booms, out March 22, 2019 on Limited Fanfare Records. The music pumps with the hot, red blood of life irrepressible. But there’s a cloud on the horizon, the doomed sense of life’s finitude, that fueled these songs. Rather than dead-end nihilism, though, it’s resulted in the kind of urgent, creative friction that Hunter S. Thompson could get down with. In making this album, The Sh-Booms have dug through the blur of life, swam through a sea of booze, to find love and truth in the shadow of the void. Although a soul band through and through, the grease and bite they’ve been picking up in the years leading up to this big step out have been forged in the bad company of punk and garage bands. From that underground now rises a new hurricane of big orchestration, maximum stomp and fresh intent. It’s a little ache and a lot of party all wrapped up in a wrecking ball. Since their 2011 inception, The Sh-Booms have become kind of a thing in their native scene and beyond. Besides perennial winners of “Best Soul Act” in the Orlando Weekly’s big annual Best of Orlando issue, they’ve been tapped to share the stage with national names like The Roots, Of Montreal, Talib Kweli, KRS-One, Jacuzzi Boys, Budos Band, Big Freedia, Lee Fields, St. Paul & the Broken Bones and The B-52’s (whom the band toured with in 2017 and 2018). They’ve been featured on NPR, their music has been made it on TV (CW’s Supergirl) and they’ve played Austin City Limits, Okeechobee Music Festival, SunFest and Gasparilla Music Festivals.

Everybody in your life will write his or her own chapter in your story. Take a step back, and you’ll see the influence of your loved ones, mentors, and friends in your decisions. Shook Twins refer to these folks in the title of their fourth album, Some Good Lives. Throughout fourteen tracks, the duo-identical twin sisters Katelyn Shook and Laurie Shook -pay homage to everyone from a late grandpa and godfather to Bernie Sanders. “We realized there was a theme,” Katelyn reveals. “Even though our minds are mostly on the women of today and wanting the monarchy to rise up, we have several men in our lives who have been such positive forces. We wanted to thank them and honor the good guys who showed us the beauty in this crazy world we live in. So, it’s an album for Some Good Lives that have crossed paths with ours-and to them, we are grateful.” Laurie agrees, “It’s also an acknowledgment of our thankfulness of the good life that we get to live.” However, the pair derived their own strength from these relationships. Over the course of three full-length releases and a handful of EPs since 2008, acclaim would come by way of everyone from USA Today and Baeble Music to Langhorne Slim, The Lumineers, Mason Jennings, and iconic best-selling author Neil Gaiman who enthusiastically decreed, “They make music that twines through your soul the way vines cover an abandoned shack in the woods.” Beyond gigs with the likes of Gregory Alan Isakov and Ani DiFranco, they captivated crowds at High Sierra Music Festival, Lightning In A Bottle, Bumbershoot, Hulaween, Summer Camp Music Festival, and Northwest String Summit, to name a few. During 2016, they planted the seeds for what would become Some Good Lives by thinking bigger. The girls intermittently recorded at Hallowed Halls in Portland, OR. Within this old library building, “which feels full of stories,” they tapped into palpable energy like never before, locking into a groove inside of the spacious, reverberant live room. Moreover, the full band-Barra Brown , Sydney Nash , and Niko Slice -expanded the sonic palette. “It took us a long time to find the band that we wanted to record these songs with and for the songs to fully mature,” admits Laurie. “Once Barra, Sydney, and Niko joined us, we really started to explore what our music could be. These amazing players helped us realize that we could be more than just ‘folk pop’. We started adding other genres to the word like ‘disco,’ ‘psychedelic,’ ‘funk,’ and ‘soul.’ We really honed in on a new sound.” They initially teased that evolution with the single “Safe.” Its airy acoustic guitar and delicate harmonies materialize as a heartfelt and hypnotic rumination on love. The track quickly surpassed 1 million Spotify streams and stoked excitement among audiences for the eventual arrival of Some Good Lives. “‘Safe’ was written up at a cabin in the woods,” recalls Katelyn. “I had the line ‘a love that feels safe’ in my mind for a while. That’s the only kind of love truly possible and healthy when you’re touring and away from your person all the time. You feel like you can trust it, and it’s not going to change within either of you-no matter how long and far you are away from each other.” “I was struggling to find that kind of love at the time, and Katelyn had this other perspective,” adds Laurie. “It’s my breakup song my sister wrote for me,” she laughs. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | YouTube

“We went through a pretty dramatic shift with this record,” says Seratones frontwoman AJ Haynes. “The band lineup, the creative process, the sound: all of it changed in ways that really reflected our growth and evolution.” One listen to ‘Power,’ Seratones’ spectacular sophomore album, and it’s clear just how much of an evolution has taken place. Produced by Cage The Elephant guitarist Brad Shultz, the record finds the Shreveport five-piece trading in the brash proto-punk of their critically acclaimed debut for a timeless brand of gritty soul, one that takes its cues from vintage Motown and Stax even as it flirts with modern synthesizers and experimental arrangements. Haynes’ captivating voice remains front and center here, but her delivery this time around is more measured and self-assured than ever before, a beacon of confidence and clarity amidst a sea of social and political turmoil. Perhaps even more marked than the any sonic development on the record, though, is Haynes’ lyrical turn, which points her gaze inwards for the first time as she grapples with race, gender, and justice, writing with an unfiltered honesty that at once exudes strength and vulnerability, hope and despair, beauty and pain. “I learned to tap more into my own stories with these songs,” says Haynes. “I came to recognize that I have this lineage and these inherited experiences that are beautiful and worthy of exploration. The more personal my writing got, the more deeply I was able to connect with people.” Seratones have been chasing those kinds of deep connections since 2016, when they first rocketed into the national spotlight with their breakout debut, ‘Get Gone.’ Rolling Stone called the album a “fitful collision of punk, soul and jazz echoing out of a shed strewn with whiskey bottles,” while Pitchfork praised the collection’s “soulful grease and punky grit,” and NPR hailed it as “lean and compact, with an impressive assortment of anthemic stompers.” The music earned the band dates on the road with artists as varied as St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, The Dandy Warhols, and Drive-By Truckers, along with festival slots from Hangout to Newport Folk and invitations to perform on national television and at NPR’s Tiny Desk. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

This show is now part of our Aid for the Bahamas event – all proceeds will go toward Hurricane Dorian relief efforts. English/American duo, A Different Thread deliver a bluesy blend of Beatlesque folk rock meets Gillian Welch dark country. Alicia Best (of Durham, NC) and Robert Jackson (of Lichfield, UK) were both traveling songwriters in their own right when they met busking in Ireland in 2016. Joining forces they have been on the road together ever since. Their original songs are inspired by the music that has crisscrossed the Atlantic over the generations, in true folk fashion. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Apple Music Honey Magpie is an indie-folk trio from the Chapel Hill, NC area. Their sound is both traditional and modern, blending classical string instruments and three-part harmonies with pop, rock, and indie influences. They began playing together as a band when Rachael Hurwitz (vocals, guitar, keyboard) moved to North Carolina in 2014. She recruited Pippa Hoover (cello, vocals) to fill out her original songs about life, love, and travel. Kati Moore (violin, vocals) joined the band in 2015, completing Honey Magpie’s lineup. Pippa and Kati soon also brought original material to the band, expanding Honey Magpie’s repertoire to include a wide variety of nature-inspired songs as well as some traditional and popular covers. They released their first album, Honey Magpie, in July 2017. Their second album, which they began recording in March of 2019, expands upon their classic sweet folk sound to include a unique blend of comedy, snark, darkness and angst. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram Infielder Links: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Videos

Dr. Bacon is a genre blending “Appalachian Funk-Rock” band from Asheville, NC. Performing an infectiously danceable blend of funk, soul, jazz, rock, blues, folk, hip-hop and more. Featuring as diverse instrumentation as influencing styles including: guitars, resonator, harmonica, bass, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone drums, trombone, violin, lap steel, mandolin, kazoo and more. Dr. Bacon is sure to get you moving and grooving. Links: Website

What will we do? For Lula Wiles, the trio made up of Isa Burke, Eleanor Buckland, and Mali Obomsawin, the question is central to the creation of their music-and it’s the title of their sophomore album, out in 2019 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. “We wanted to make an album that reflected, in a current way, what we are all staying up late thinking about and talking about over drinks at the dinner table,” says Obomsawin. “What is everyone worried about, confiding in their friends about, losing sleep about?” Anchoring the band’s sharp, provocative songcraft is a mastery of folk music, and a willingness to subvert its hallowed conventions. They infuse their songs with distinctly modern sounds: pop hooks, distorted electric guitars, and dissonant multi-layered vocals, all employed in the service of songs that reclaim folk music in their own voice. The musicians take turns in different roles–Burke and Buckland on guitar and fiddle, Obomsawin on bass, all three singing and writing-but no matter who’s playing what, they operate in close tandem. All three members grew up in small-town Maine, and the band came of age in Boston’s lively roots scene. Since then, they have toured internationally, winning fans at the Newport Folk Festival and the Philadelphia Folk Festival, garnering acclaim from NPR Music and a Boston Music Awards nomination, and sharing stages with the likes of Aoife O’Donovan, the Wood Brothers, and Tim O’Brien. Lula Wiles exists in the tense space where tradition and revolution meet, from which their harmonies rise into the air to create new American music. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

The National Parks was formed by Brady Parks in 2013 in Provo, Utah and has since independently released three studio albums. Upon the release of their debut LP, Young (2013), the band climbed to #13 on the iTunes Singer/Songwriter chart and with their sophomore record, Until I Live (2015), the 4-piece became a Billboard Regional Heatseeker. The National Parks’ third studio album, Places, was released in late 2017 followed by a deluxe version in February 2018. In the first month after the release of Places (2017), the record had been streamed more than 1,000,000 times on Spotify alone with individual tracks landing on major Spotify playlists like Pop Chillout, Indie Pop and Morning Commute. Despite operating as a true independent, the band has built and maintained an impressive following with a Spotify monthly listenership nearing 400,000 and appearances at SXSW, CMJ, Snowmass Mammoth Fest, Oyster Ridge Music Festival, School Nights at Bardot’s. Praise has come from major press outlets such as NPR, Paste, Baeble Music, The Vinyl District, and The National Parks create atmospheric and “anthemic indie-folk as boundless as their name would suggest” (Paste Magazine) centered around male/female harmonies backdropped by guitar/piano/violin instrumentation. The band’s earliest touring was done as a three-piece but as the music has evolved, so has the band. A wide cast of musicians have joined as touring members of The National Parks but by 2015, the group had settled into a consistent four-piece setup with original members Brady Parks (vocals/guitar) and Sydney Macfarlane (vocals/keys) playing alongside, Cam Brannelly (drums) and Megan Parks (violin). Links: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | YouTube WILD is a trio from Los Angeles, CA. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | SoundCloud | Spotify | YouTube | Apple Music

Quinn Christopherson is an Athabaskan and Inupiaq songwriter who is born, raised and based in Anchorage, Alaska. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | Apple Music