Manic Presents / Premier Concerts Guest Post:
We’re back with our weekly Manic Presents Redscroll Blog! As usual, we’re here to share our exciting show announcements and remind you of the great shows happening this week. Just announced at College Street Music Hall – MGMT on (5/17)! At Space Ballroom – Dub Trio on (5/11), and Moby: “Then It Fell Apart” Book Event on (5/15)! And lastly, at Cafe Nine – Gladshot (4/22) and Moon King (6/10)!
This week’s show schedule begins TONIGHT (2/28) with Weekend Friends at Space Ballroom (Front Room). The jam-packed weekend at Space Ballroom continues with Hailey Knox on Friday, (3/1), A Fun and Cool Evening with Sean Bonnette of AJJ on Saturday, (3/2), and Speak Up Storytelling presents “Exposed: Lies, Secrets, and Indiscretions Revealed” on Sunday (3/30). And to finish off the week on Monday (3/4) as part of our weekly Manic Monday series at Cafe Nine, we have The Quest Presents. Don’t forget to grab your tickets and RSVP today!
CONTEST TIME! Enter for a chance to win a pair of tickets to A Fun and Cool Evening with Sean Bonnette of AJJ on Saturday, March 2nd.
Enter here: https://goo.gl/forms/
Keep an eye out for more announcements and we’ll see you back here next Thursday!
Upcoming Shows…
Thursday (2/28)
Weekend Friends w/ Well Wisher, Two Headed Girl
$12/All Ages/Doors at 7:00PM
Space Ballroom (Front Room) – Hamden
INFO: Common Blah is the debut full-length by Portland, Maine’s Weakened Friends. Founded by songwriter Sonia Sturino, bassist Annie Hoffman, and drummer Cam Jones in 2015, the trio is a low pressure outlet for emotionally volatile music. Engineered and produced by Hoffman and perfected over the last year, the record broadcasts heavy feelings amid screech and feedback with little more than a fuzz pedal to clog up the signal chain.
For Sturino, writing in Weakened Friends is more of a physical process than a mental one.
“I have to feel the vibration or sound coming out of my body. I need the physicality to do it, to enjoy singing it,” she says. “People probably hear the vocals and think, ‘she just puts on that weird voice,’ but it’s really just what comes out. It’s my body making that sound.”
Many of the songs reckon with deep mid-20s malaise —with the feeling of being young, stuck, and settling for less. “Sometimes, things look good on the outside,but they’re not working. That’s how it used to be for me. I’d hear, ‘You have a really cool job. You live in a cool city. Your band is cool.’ It was ‘Common Blah’ though because I was miserable. I didn’t care. Now, I’m at the other end of the spectrum. People do something that they think they’re supposed to do when it’s not what they should be doing and it doesn’t make them happy. In a lot of ways, this is the first time I’ve found happiness. I wrote the lyrics about the time before that happiness.”
On Common Blah, Weakened Friends use volume —instrumental and emotional —to reassert a sense of control in a time when daily life has slid out of tune. The album also features guest shredding by peer and kindred spirit J Mascis on the song “Hate Mail.” CommonBlah will be out on CD, LP, and digital download via Don Giovanni Records on October 19th.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2rJEWlw
Friday (3/1)
Hailey Knox w/ Brett Cameron, The Como Brothers
$12/All Ages/Doors at 7:00PM
Space Ballroom (Front Room) – Hamden
INFO: Hailey Knox doesn’t just sit on the sidelines: she’s become the mastermind behind building and producing her own soulful pop songs. To push her own boundaries, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter has been cutting her teeth on the road the past two years since her debut EP release A Little Awkward, touring with Charlie Puth, Ruth B., and AJR, and making her festival debut at Austin City Limits’ 2018 festival. Because of her live shows, Knox has grown into a powerhouse, building her songs onstage with a loop pedal. Now, she’s ready to show the world the dynamic range of music she’s capable of producing, with her latest release — the ‘Hardwired Mixtape’. And she does: her latest project feels like a pile of vibrant confetti, sprinkled with never-before-recorded full-length songs and snippets of Frank Ocean-like audio notes she recorded to show that there’s more depth to her artistry. “We called it a mixtape because it’s slightly all over the place, but in a good way,” Knox said of the project. For people who haven’t experienced her live shows, this mixtape is a window into how far she’s come since 2016.
Throughout 11 tracks, Knox’s mixtape combines songs Hailey has been developing and evolving for years and some fresh cuts from GarageBand, working with the producers who discovered her Mike Mangini and Peter Zizzo, along with songwriter Imani Coppola, and showing off her own production skills. But mostly, it’s an inner look at how she spurs creative concepts.
On her new mixtape, Knox combines stripped-down songwriting and lyrical detail of A Little Awkward and the husky, textured grooves of her singles since then. It’s an effort in chronicling her journey of self-discovery in music and beyond, revealing the loneliness of life on the road and her own personal anxieties. But there are still hints of cheeky pop culture references to Sour Patch Kids and Scooby Doo, embedded in her songs.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2LnwbH8
Saturday (3/2)
A Fun and Cool Evening with Sean Bonnette of AJJ w/ Shellshag, Glambat (solo)
$15/All Ages/Doors at 7:00PM
Space Ballroom – Hamden
INFO: AJJ is a band from Phoenix, Arizona. We try our best.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2MwPCha
Sunday (3/3)
Speak Up Storytelling presents “Exposed: Lies, Secrets, and Indiscretions Revealed”
$20 ($15 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 6:30PM
Space Ballroom (Front Room) – Hamden
INFO: Speak Up is a Hartford-based storytelling organization that seeks to promote the art of personal storytelling to a wide audience and foster and support a community of storytellers in Connecticut. Speak Up brings professional and amateur storytellers to the stage to share true stories from their lives. Speak Up founders and producers, Matthew and Elysha Dicks, work closely with storytellers to help them craft their stories for the stage and teach storytelling workshops to storytellers and professionals at all levels.
Speak Up shows feature storytellers who tell true stories from their lives on a predetermined theme. Our shows showcase a blend of seasoned storytellers and people telling stories for the first time and always promise to be surprising and entertaining.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2sAKhwg
Monday (3/4)
The Quest Presents w/ Falconeer, Forest Room
Free with RSVP (or $5 at the door)/21 and over/Doors at 7PM
Cafe Nine – New Haven
INFO: A super group of musical minds that will get the party jumping to their sick beats and rhymes. The Quest Presents is made up of Mooncha, DJ Fife, MarkdaMighty, and Chef the Chef.
RSVP HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2NlBkQP
SHOW ANNOUNCEMENTS
Monday, April 22nd
Gladshot w/ Skating, Dangerous Animals
Free with RSVP (or $5 at the door)/21 and over/Doors at 7PM
Cafe Nine – New Haven
INFO: Considering they’ve already worked on everything from a “dystopian rock musical” (Barcode) to songs that scored TV shows on TNT, ABC and MTV – and after wrapping up a live set on WFMU’s Goddamn Dave Hill show where they lit up Dave’s message board and then went on to headline a sold out NYC show – it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Debb Andrews and Mike Blaxill are at the peak of their creative powers on the new Gladshot album These Are Vitamins. Released in fall 2017, its their second effort with super producer John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile, Waxahatchee), who continues to perfect the push-and-pull dynamics Mike and Debb perfected on their last EP, Maxwell’s Cool Demon.
It’s something they’ve been working on ever since the two met at a songwriter collective that performed and critiqued one another’s songs. At the time, Mike and his propulsive guitar were on more of a roots-rock tip, and Debb pulled in pop influences and the serious jazz skills that earned her a National Endowment for the Arts nod and lessons with the legendary pianist Joanne Brackeen (a session player and live performer for such esteemed musicians as Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey, and Stan Getz).
Now Gladshot can be best described as bold garage band, striking a perfect balance between pop and psychedelic music. Not to mention reflecting such varied influences as the Rolling Stones, Neil Diamond, AC/DC, Crowded House, Marvin Gaye, and the road-tested records of Cherry Glazerr, Langhorne Slim, and Speedy Ortiz.
“We each generate our own musical ideas,” the pair explains, “then we get together to decide what will be a song. Once it’s written, one of Debb’s favorite things is coming up with keyboard parts—cool ones that meld into the song, the way Nicky Hopkins does on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ or ‘She’s a Rainbow’. They inspire her to keep it all lo-fi and simple.”
RSVP HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2Nukuzh
Saturday, May 11th
Dub Trio
$15 ($13 adv)/All Ages/Doors at 7:00PM
Space Ballroom – Hamden
INFO: Every time we wake up, we return to life. Shaking off slumber, the world seemingly begins anew in front of our eyes.
Dub Trio underwent such an awakening.
Over nearly two decades together, the Brooklyn triumvirate—Stu Brooks [bass], DP Holmes [guitar], and Joe Tomino [drums]—not only delivered a string of albums that forever redefined the term “dub” under cover of metal, punk, alternative, and shoegaze, but also infused its musical prowess into the studio recordings and the shows of genre-bending icons ranging from Mike Patton to Lady Gaga. The three-piece introduced itself on 2004’s “live-dub experiment” Exploring the Dangers Of followed by successors New Heavy [2006], Another Sound Is Dying [2008], and IV [2011]. Conjuring up instrumental music hummable enough to sing, praise came from the likes of Pitchfork who predicted “Dub Trio are on to something.” Along the way, the guys served as Peeping Tom’s live band and toured alongside everyone from Clutch to Gogol Bordello and Dillinger Escape Plan.
However, the band took a hiatus as a collective in 2015 after touring heavily behind IV. Having an impact on various genres, they served as the backing band on the Lady Gaga demos that famously attracted the attention of Interscope in addition to backing Matisyahu for six years. Brooks received a GRAMMY® Award nomination for his work with Pretty Lights in addition to backing Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® Inductee Dr. John on the road. During 2018, he played bass in the Saturday Night Live Band sharing the stage with the likes of Kanye West and Kid Cudi. Moreover, he is the musical director and bassist for the GRiZ Live Band alongside Tomino. Additionally, Tomino hit the kit for The Fugees as Holmes lent his six-string talents to Mos Def, Common, and more in the studio. Members shuffled around the country with Holmes in North Carolina and Tomino in Cleveland before regrouping for a European tour in 2017.
TICKETS AVAILABLE 10AM FRI 3/1 HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2Eydajp
Wednesday, May 15th
Moby: “Then It Fell Apart” Book Event
$34.95 (includes copy of book)/All Ages/Doors at 6:00PM
Space Ballroom – Hamden
INFO: Moby was born in Harlem in 1965. He is a singer-songwriter, musician, DJ and photographer. The first volume of his memoirs, Porcelain, was published in 2016.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2s2J5Bo
Friday, May 17th
MGMT
$45-$55/All Ages/Doors at 7:00PM
College Street Music Hall – New Haven
INFO: MGMT is an American psychedelic rock band founded by Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden. After the release of their first album, the members of their live band, Matthew Asti, James Richardson and Will Berman, joined the core band in the studio. Formed at Wesleyan University and originally with Cantora Records, they signed with Columbia Records and Red Ink in 2006. On October 5, 2007, Spin.com named MGMT “Artist of the Day.” On November 14, 2007, Rolling Stone pegged MGMT as a top ten “Artist to Watch” in 2008. The band was named ninth in the BBC’s Sound of 2008 Top Ten Poll. They were also named as Last.fm’s most played new artist of 2008 in their Best of 2008 lists.
MGMT’s first album, Oracular Spectacular, debuted at No. 12 on the UK album chart, No. 13 after 34 weeks in the New Zealand RIANZ charts, number six on the Australian ARIA Charts, and hit number one on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart. It has also been named the 18th best album of the decade by Rolling Stone magazine. It was named the best album of 2008 by NME. MGMT also appeared prominently in Australia’s Triple J Hottest 100 2008, coming in 2nd with “Electric Feel”, 5th with “Kids” and 18th with “Time to Pretend”. MGMT was nominated for the 2010 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and their track “Kids” was nominated for Best Pop Performance By a Duo or Group with Vocals. These are the first Grammy nominations for the band. At the 2009 Grammy Awards, the Justice remix of “Electric Feel” won the Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. Their second album, Congratulations, was released on April 13, 2010. In January 2011 they began work on their third album, which was released in 2013.
TICKETS AVAILABLE 10AM FRI 3/1 HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2EzIXAp
Monday, June 10th
Moon King w/ Falconeer
Free with RSVP (or $5 at the door)/21 and over/Doors at 7PM
Cafe Nine – New Haven
INFO:
Moon King is the synthpop project of Toronto-born singer & producer Daniel Benjamin. In the early 2010’s Daniel was part of the flourishing electronic music scene in Montreal, performing as a touring musician with Grimes, Sean Nicholas Savage and Doldrums, all while beginning to write & produce his own music. A 2016 move to Detroit and immersion in that city’s vibrant dance music and DJ culture soon began to influence his own recordings, moving towards underground disco and synthpop and culminating in “Hamtramck ‘16”, his 2017 debut release for Montreal label Arbutus Records (TOPS, Sean Nicholas Savage). He’s toured extensively in North America, Europe and the UK, with a new full length anticipated for 2019.
RSVP HERE: https://ticketf.ly/2txm6PD
**Tickets are available for all these shows in the shop (cash only for ticket sales) without the online fees. **