Thanks for joining us on this week’s Redscroll blog. Just announced at Space Ballroom is Applachian soul collective Upstate (formerly Upstate Rubdown) with Belle of the Fall on (2/9); an evening with Americana/folk artist Amy Helm on Friday (2/15); iconic post-punk band Gang of Four on (2/20); experimental Brooklyn duo Buke and Gase on (3/27); plus And the Kids record release on Sunday (4/7).
At College Street Music Hall, we’ve got SoCal rapper Vince Staples on (2/26) with Buddy; The Claypool Lennon Delirium (featuring Les Claypool and Sean Lennon) on Saturday (4/13); and Gogol Bordello’s 20th Anniversary Tour on Tuesday (3/19). Tickets for all shows go on sale this Friday (12/14) at 10AM.
Additionally at the Wall Street Theater in Norwalk, legendary guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Adrian Belew takes the stage with support from Saul Zonana on Saturday (4/13) and NYC dark synth-pop group Weeknight comes to Cafe Nine in New Haven on Monday (2/4) as a part of our weekly Manic Monday series.
This week’s show schedule starts tonight at Space Ballroom with Wizardfest – a Harry Potter themed dance party. It will be a night filled with trivia, dancing, a costume contest, and butter beer (21+)! On Friday (12/14), an evening with Hiss Golden Messenger at Space Ballroom. On Monday (12/17), Ward Hayden & The Outliers (formerly Girls Guns & Glory) comes to Cafe Nine as part of our weekly Manic Mondays music series. And lastly on Tuesday (12/18) is Portland indie/folk singer-songwriter Chris Pureka at Space Ballroom (Front Room). Be sure to get your tickets today!
CONTEST TIME! Enter for a chance to win a pair of tickets to Chris Pureka on Tuesday (12/18) at Space Ballroom and two copies of Back in the Ring on CD.
Enter here: https://goo.gl/forms/
We’ll see you back here next Thursday!
Upcoming Shows…
TONIGHT, December 13th
Wizardfest
$20 ($15 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 7:00pm
Space Ballroom- Hamden
INFO: Harry Potter fans will need to make a special trip to Diagon Alley for a fresh pair of dress robes because Wizard Fest is flying into town.
The Yule Ball will include trivia, games, drink specials, magicians, music and cosplay. The best dressed will also have a chance to enter into the Costume Contest for cash and prizes.
Along with the DJ and dancing, there will be a special Quidditch Pong Tournament, the reward also being cash and prizes.
Special themed drinks will be served all night long to keep the potions flowing.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2zi8ScR
Friday, December 14th
An Evening with Hiss Golden Messenger
$20/All Ages/Doors at 7:00pm
Space Ballroom- Hamden
INFO: Hallelujah Anyhow is the latest studio album from Hiss Golden Messenger, out September 22 worldwide on Merge Records. Its ten new songs, penned by HGM principal M.C. Taylor, were recorded with Brad Cook, Phil Cook, Chris Boerner, Josh Kaufman, Darren Jessee, Michael Lewis, and Scott Hirsch. Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, Tift Merritt, Skylar Gudasz, Tamisha Waden, Mac McCaughan, and John Paul White provided vocal harmonies.
“I see the dark clouds. I was designed to see them. They’re the same clouds of fear and destruction that have darkened the world since Revelations, just different actors. But this music is for hope. That’s the only thing I want to say about it. Love is the only way out. I’ve never been afraid of the darkness; it’s just a different kind of light. And if some days that belief comes harder than others, hallelujah anyhow.” —M.C. Taylor
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2wk5eg3
Monday, December 17th
Ward Hayden & The Outliers (formerly Girls Guns & Glory) w/ Adrian+Meredith, Roses Wild
Free with RSVP (or $5 at the door)/21 and over/Doors at 7PM
Cafe Nine- New Haven
INFO: Love and Protest: two concepts that seldom go hand in hand. Until you think about it a while. That’s what singer, guitarist and songwriter Ward Hayden did as he began mapping out plans for Girls Guns & Glory’s next album, which happens to be called Love and Protest. “That title sums up this album and it sums me up very well too,” he says. “We’ve done 10 years of touring, living, learning and growing, maturing and developing a broader world view, a view outside of the small town where I grew up.”
That decade began with Hayden and several like-minded musicians getting together. Their love for early rock ’n’ roll, true country, raw blues and pretty much any kind of authentic American music branded them quickly as anomalous — and electrifying. Since that time they’ve barnstormed far beyond their Boston hometown, playing honky-tonks, beer joints and more recently concert venues throughout the U.S. They’ve amassed a loyal legion of fans along the way. The media have noticed too, including Rolling Stone, which heralds them as a “modern-day Buddy Holly plus Dwight Yoakam divided by the Mavericks.”
Now, in this milestone year, with Girls Guns & Glory recording for the first time on its own label, the group has channeled all it’s experienced into its most personal and, paradoxically, hardest-rocking release to date. “Love and Protest is the name of the album because its songs explore the emotion of love,” Hayden explains. “And when love is faced with opposition, it’s the protest of that emotion. It’s alpha and omega — love and protest. There’s a lot of ground to cover between those two extremes.”
RSVP HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2NDLX4Y
Tuesday, December 18th
Chris Pureka w/ Crys Matthews
$18 ($15 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 7:00pm
Space Ballroom (Front Room)- Hamden
INFO: It’s rare for an artist to bridge the divide between critical acclaim and dedicated fan engagement. Chris Pureka is a Portland-based singer-songwriter whose body of work has resonated deeply with these seemingly disparate milieus. Her bold vulnerability in processing the intimacies of her life in song has long appealed to those listeners who crave authenticity. Now, five years coming, she shares with us another powerful entry in her life’s work, her sixth release, the aptly titled, Back in the Ring.
Chris’s elegant emotionality as a vocalist, and her flair and immediacy as a lyricist have garnered her favorable comparisons to Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen, and Patty Griffin. She’s earned accolades from such distinguished taste-making outlets as The New York Times, Paste, Magnet, Billboard.com, and The AllMusic Guide. She’s shared the stage with such diverse and esteemed artists as Dar Williams, The Lumineers, The Cowboy Junkies, Gregory Alan Isakov, Martin Sexton, and Ani DiFranco. Along the way, Chris has remained fiercely independent, selling nearly 50,000 albums through her own label, Sad Rabbit Records.
Chris’s journey in music mirrors her path toward self-discovery. At 16, writing songs became a way of journaling. “I was shy and introverted, and songwriting was a very personal process. I never had any intention of performing,” she shares. Post high school, she went on to complete a biology degree at Wesleyan University, and afterwards, worked in a microbiology research lab at Smith College. Meanwhile, she established a music career parallel to her biology work through touring and issuing a clutch of well-received indie releases. In 2006, when Chris found herself turning down too many opportunities as a musician, she shifted her priorities to become a full-time artist.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2LAc374
SHOW ANNOUNCEMENTS
Monday, February 4th
Weeknight
Free with RSVP (or $5 at the door)/21 and over/Doors at 7PM
Cafe Nine- New Haven
INFO: WEEKNIGHT is a dark synth pop band from Brooklyn, NY that formed in 2012. Leading up to and following the release of their debut LP, Post-Everything, in 2014, the duo, longtime couple Andy Simmons and Holly MacGibbon played hundreds of shows, sharing the stage with Phantogram, Amanda Palmer, Bear in Heaven, Frankie Rose, Moonface, School of Seven Bells and Crystal Stilts. In 2017, they welcomed two new band mates, bass guitarist Russell Hymowitz and drummer Jasper Berg. Their long awaited follow-up record Deadbeat Creep will be released on Dead Stare Records on February 1, 2019. It is an album truly of the moment: both a statement of resilience and an emotional refuge. In these harrowing times, Weeknight stand firm in their resolve to create beauty in the void.
RSVP HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2GbfVtS
Friday, February 15th
Amy Helm
$30 ($25 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 7:00pm
Space Ballroom- Hamden
INFO: Amy Helm sought what she calls a “circular sound” for her new album. It’s a well-rounded one, one marked by streaks of Americana, country, blues, and gospel, and the kinds of four-part harmonies that can burst open a melody and close the loop of an octave. And sentimentally, it’s a sound that represents the feeling of
Community. This Too Shall Light, released September 21, 2018 on Yep Roc Records, comprises 10 songs produced by Grammy-winning producer and songwriter Joe Henry. Helm left her home and comfort zone of Woodstock, NY, choosing to record in Los Angeles
within the confines of just a four-day window. The musicians were directed not to overthink the songs, and Helm herself barely performed any of the selections while leading up to the recording. As a result, the sessions forced fast musical trust among the collaborators and yielded the vibrant instrumental improvisations heard throughout This Too Shall Light.
Although a profound songwriter herself, Helm and Henry jointly arranged a diverse collection of songs for the record, which range from Rod Stewart’s “Mandolin Wind” to Allen Toussaint’s “Freedom for the Stallion” and even the Milk Carton Kids’ “Michigan.” The title track in particular, written by Hiss Golden Messenger’s MC Taylor and Josh Kaufman (Josh Ritter, Bob Weir, Craig Finn), is a brilliant summation of the record’s sound and spirit. Seemingly a play on the old adage that “This too shall pass,” Helm’s voice veers from commanding to supplicating within a single soulful verse, as she manipulates that message so that light leads throughout even the darkest of times.
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 12/14 @ 10AM: https://ticketf.ly/2GcY99p
Wednesday, February 20th
Gang of Four
$25/All Ages/Doors at 7PM
Space Ballroom- Hamden
INFO: Pioneering post-punk band, the Gang of Four were formed in the bricolage punk rock fallout culture of late seventies Leeds – a place where art was a mirror and guitars were machine guns. Gang of Four tore up the template and made sense of the question marks thrown up by year zero.
They redesigned rock in the punk aftermath, taking the incendiary energy of the form and criss- crossing it with funk, stripping away the baggage of rock excess and creating a new stripped-down music that was full of agit energy, heavy grooves, shrapnel guitars and politically charged lyrics matching the fervour of the times. Swerving trad rock rhythms, the beats were invented from scratch and every instrument played a pivotal role in the sound in a non-hierarchical structure.
In short, they came up with post punk.
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 12/14 @ 10AM: https://ticketf.ly/2zVucVK
Tuesday, February 26th
Vince Staples w/ Buddy
$29.50-$35/All Ages/Doors at 7PM
College Street Music Hall- New Haven
INFO: Recording artist Vince Staples has come a long way from his trying upbringing in Long Beach, California’s Ramona Park neighborhood. Releasing his critically acclaimed debut Summertime ’06 album in 2015, the then twenty-year-old saw his life turned right side up, going from being nearly trapped to having what appeared to be complete freedom.
Yet, as his most recent projects suggest, appearances can be deceiving. The LPs delves into the confusion of sudden fame and acclimating to a lifestyle antithetical to the one he’d known in Long Beach – one wrought with gang violence and poverty. It’s a fundamental narrative in hip hop, but rappers have always found a new way to breathe life into it. Staples brings forth a vision that’s brutal, elegant, playful, and despondent in one breath.
Such is the nature of his music, as self and socially aware as it is comical. With FM!, Big Fish Theory, Prima Donna and Summertime ’06 behind him, Staples has set the tone for what’s yet to come. A standout rapper in today’s hip hop world, he keeps his sound deeply tied to his west coast roots and his message one that knows no boundaries.
In a world of full of painful departures, his art gives listeners reason to believe that, somehow, as he advances, the people who have left him and the people who he’s left behind will still be waiting for him at the end.
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 12/14 @ 10AM: https://ticketf.ly/2GlvNtw
Tuesday, March 19th
Gogol Bordello
$27.50-$35/All Ages/Doors at 7PM
College Street Music Hall- New Haven
INFO: Gogol Bordello never stays in the same place for long. Bandleader Eugene Hütz started to hear the songs of Seekers and Finders as he shuttled back and forth between three continents, and the nine-piece ensemble developed and refined them on the road. From its inception, Gogol Bordello has been a band of immigrants, with members hailing from Ukraine, Ecuador, Russia, and Ethiopia. They tour relentlessly. Travel is in their blood.
Yet for all the long hours and far-flung adventures that birthed it, Gogol Bordello’s seventh studio full-length advocates loudly for living life in a specific time and place: right now – and in the real world.
“People think you explore the world with the latest phone in your hand,” says Hütz. That’s the antithesis of living for Gogol Bordello. None of these songs sprang forth from an interesting news story or an extended studio improvisation. “My focus is always on staying experiential. Go for first-hand information, transmute it into wisdom, and share it with the people in a communal celebration.”
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 12/14 @ 10AM: https://ticketf.ly/2G8OZuy
Wednesday, March 27th
Buke and Gase
$15 ($13 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 7PM
Space Ballroom- Hamden
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 12/14 @ 10AM: https://ticketf.ly/2GdvPUq
Sunday, April 7th
And The Kids
$15 ($12 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 7PM
College Street Music Hall- New Haven
INFO: Since their earliest days as a band, And The Kids have embodied the wayward freedom that inspired their name. “When Rebecca and I were teenagers we just lived on the streets and played music, and people in town would always call us kids—not as in children, but as in punks,” says Mohan. On their third full-length When This Life Is Over, the Northampton, Massachusetts-based four-piece embrace that untamable spirit more fully than ever before, dreaming up their most sublimely defiant album yet.
The self-produced follow-up to Friends Share Lovers—a 2016 release acclaimed by NPR, who noted that “Mohan’s striking vocals rival the vibrato and boldness of Siouxsie Sioux…[And The Kids] make music that’s both fearless and entertaining”—When This Life Is Over unfolds in buzzing guitar tones and brightly crashing rhythms, howled melodies and oceanic harmonies.
Although And The Kids recorded much of When This Life Is Over at Breakglass Studios in Montreal (mainly to accommodate the fact that Miller was deported to her homeland of Canada in 2014), a number of tracks come directly from bedroom demos created by Lasaponaro and Mohan. “The sound quality on those songs is so shittily good; it’s just us being so raw and so alone in the bedroom, writing without really even thinking we were going to use it,” says Mohan. “We recorded them right away, and there was a really strong feeling of ‘Don’t touch them again.’”
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 12/14 @ 10AM: https://ticketf.ly/2zT3Yn0
Thursday, April 11th
Adrian Belew w/ Saul Zonana
$25-$40/All Ages/Doors at 7PM
Wall Street Theater- Norwalk
INFO: Adrian Belew is a legendary guitarist well-known for his diverse travels around the musical map. He is a multi-instrumentalist whose solo records are critically acclaimed. His moving singing voice and prolific songwriting has endeared a loyal fan base of music lovers. His music is being discovered everyday by more and more listeners thirsty for great music with a creative standard not often pushed by the commercial music industry.
For more than a decade the Adrian Belew Power Trio stunned audiences around the world.
Now Adrian is ready to re-invent his live show with a new quartet which includes Jordan Perlson on drums, Saul Zonana on keyboards, guitar, and vocals, and bassist extraordinaire Julie Slick.
The tour dates will be in support of Adrian’s newest release “POP-SIDED”, coming March 2019. Don’t miss this opportunity to enjoy master musicians playing great songs and having a ball!
Adrian describes the show as, “a more complete picture of most things I’ve done. More songs, new songs from the award-winning FLUX app, King Crimson material I haven’t played for years, and a dose of classic Power Trio. It’s my intention to make this the best Adrian Belew show ever!”
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2zVkzXd
Saturday, April 13th
The Claypool Lennon Delirium
$30-$35/All Ages/Doors at 7PM
College Street Music Hall- New Haven
INFO: Two worlds have collided, and what glorious and odd worlds they are. After a successful summer tour pairing Primus with Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, Les Claypool and Sean Lennon have decided to combine their abstract talents into a project called The Claypool Lennon Delirium. Their efforts thus far have spawned the upcoming, full-length release called “Monolith of Phobos.”
“Sean is a musical mutant after my own heart,” said Claypool. “He definitely reflects his genetics—not just the sensibilities of his dad but also the abstract perspective and unique approach of his mother. It makes for a glorious freak stew.” After some impromptu, backstage jams and an epic live sit-in on Primus’s psychedelic opus, “Southbound Pachyderm,” Claypool approached Lennon about doing a recording project. “I was trying to wrangle up an Oysterhead reunion since Primus was taking a rest for 2016 but the planets just wouldn’t align for that,” said Claypool. “I don’t like sitting around, so when Sean said he didn’t have plans for this next year, we started kicking around the notion of making an old-school, psychedelic/prog record. Next thing I know, he’s staying in my guesthouse, drinking my vino and banging on my drums.” Lennon responded, “I told Les that I was Neil Diamond’s nephew. I think that is what really sold him on the idea of working with me.”
Over the course of six weeks or so, the two wrote and recorded a total of ten songs with both of them sharing various vocal and instrumental responsibilities, going beyond their core instruments of bass and guitar. Claypool explained, “Usually I play the drums and percussion on my records but Sean has such a different feel than I do, it just made more sense for him to man the kit on most of the tunes on this project. I took the helm at my old vintage API console and let him bang away. He was happy as a piggy rolling in shit every time he grabbed the sticks…his drumming is like a cross between Ringo and Nick Mason. But I think folks will be most surprised by what a monster guitar player he is, especially when you prod him a bit.”
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 12/14 @ 10AM: https://ticketf.ly/2zWkuT5