Jason Adamo Keeping it Rockin

Local artist Jason Adamo has been turning up the heat for summer with a series of performances throughout North Carolina in the coming weeks.

Tell us about your upcoming gigs Jason!

Just got back from a whirlwhind month of playing 4 shows in NYC and LA, trying to get my original music into the right hands, so while I continue work on a brand new full length record I will be playing a ton of shows mostly in the NC area throughout the next couple of months. Hosting open mic every Tuesday, while I'm in town, at The Blue Martini in Raleigh and holding residency at Oliver Twist every Thursday night in North Raleigh.

This Monday, June 22nd I'll be at The Lincoln Theatre opening for Major Label recording artist Ryan Cabrera.

Are you performing with your band?

Yes and no. haha

This Monday at The Lincoln Theatre, I'll be performing as an acoustic quartet, two acoustic guitars, a harmonica, and Fender Rhodes piano.

Depending on the gig, this summer I'll be playing anywhere from solo to a full band, it all just depends on what type of show it is, and where the show is at. For instance July 24th I'll be back at Wilmington's Downtown Sundown with an acoustic trio.)

I see you have released the EP "Sunflower". How was it recording these songs?

It was an amazing time recording my last EP, "Sunflower" I was very honored to have some amazingly talented North Carolina based musicians lend their talents on that record. Robert Sledge from Ben Folds Five laid down the bass for a few tracks, Josh Preslar, local blues guitar legend played lead on "Purple Sky" and "Not Ready", John Briggs, Chris Johnson, Fabio Consani, Lars Egon, Beverly Kain and Jake Dean all helped breathe life into the songs I had written for "Sunflower".

We recorded most of the record here in NC, at Studio 313 in Morrisville, and Bongo John Studios in Morrisville as well. We then went down to Miami to record vocals at The Miami Sound Lab where it was also mixed and mastered down there by Derek Olds and Grammy winning Engineer Carlos Alvarez.

I was very pleased with the finished product especially knowing all of the hard work that we all put into the making of "Sunflower" and it continues to spread around the country with every gig we play!

Do you have plans for a full-length album?

Yes! We are hard at work on a new full-length record as we speak! Three songs are pretty much finished already, "Raleigh Nights", "August", and "Cold Cutting Rain". Demos of these tracks are already available to listen to on my myspace page www.myspace.com/jasonadamo

What is the strangest thing that has ever happened to you at a gig?
(I love asking this question. :-)

Hmmmm thats a tough one...one that is always a funny story to tell is this: I was playing a Blue Festival in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I was on the road with my good buddy Nathan Davis, and I was wearing one of Nathans new tour t-shirts on stage at the gig. Afterwards we're talking to the crowd and signing cds etc and one woman asked me "how much for your shirt?" So I said, "well you'll have to ask Nathan over there, there his t-shirts, he's selling them." She replied "No, how much for the one you're wearing?" I thought that was pretty funny, especially considering it was drenched in sweat at that time. Anyways, I gave it to her for $20 as we needed the gas money for the trip back to Raleigh. Haha! ...luckily I grabbed another t-shirt out of the box Nathan had in the van and still wear it today!

Local Meets International at Local 506 Tonight

Tonight at Local 506 you can catch bands from both around the corner and around the world, as Norweigan band I Was A King plays with Durham's punk grrl band Pink Flag, and DC's Deleted Scenes. Pink Flag's Betsy Shane says to come early to catch their set, because they will start promptly at 9.

I Was A King is on tour in support of their self-titled album, bringing a guitar-driven psychedelic sound to Chapel Hill this evening. I had a chance to send them a few questions, and here are their replies.

How has your tour been going so far? I see you have already played Chicago, Philly, New York, and DC.

The tour has been great so far! we really enjoy travelling around here. So many great people have come to the shows. Alway very nice when people come up to us afterwards.

How did the band get together?

It happened over time. IWAK started as Frodes soloproject in 2004, and have since then grown into becoming a full rockband.

Tell us about your influences.

Our musical influences range from everything from The Beatles to Sonic Youth. Always liked the idea of combining strong melodies with noisy stuff.

One thing I always enjoy hearing about are the strange road tales that many bands encounter. Do you have any good tour stories?

It is still very early stage on this tour, but we had a few funny episodes in Europe earlier this year. One venue we played, we had a soundguy who also made us dinner while we played our set. So we could see him from stage running between the soundboard and kitchen, and on his way he always came in front of stage dancing like crazy for a few seconds.

How do you approach composition?

Songs seem to come when least expected. But I've been walking around on this tour now with a lot of new ideas, so really look forward to sit down and get things sorted out, when back home.

Is there a supportive music scene in Norway? It seems like we are seeing and hearing a lot of good things coming from Scandinavia over the past few years.

There is a lot of good things happening there these days yes. Many of our friends are now either finishing up new albums and some just released new stuff. It is good times.

I see you are playing a lot of music festivals this summer. What is that like?

Actually this is the first year for us playing all these outdoor festivals, so we look forward to it. It will be a very different experience playing out in the sun, instead of the dark clubs we normally play at.

Thank you for your time and for coming to visit us in North Carolina!

We really look forward to it! Heard great things about Chapel Hill!

Troika Music Festival Benefit Tonight

This just in via Facebook, with thanks for the tip to Triangle drummer James Hepler..

The 5th annual Pin Projekt fund raiser for the Troika Music Festival will take place on May 29th, 2009 at the Pinhook on 117 W. Main Street in Durham. The event features an auction of used bowling pins that local artists, musicians, and craftspeople have turned into painted or carved pieces of decorative and functional art. This year’s event features the work of over a dozen artists, including Shirle Hale-Koslowski, Wendy Spitzer, and Triangle favorite Jodi Hoover (www.jodihoover.com).

Viewing and cocktails begin at 6:30 p.m. with the auction at 8:00 p.m. There is a $5 cover charge that will be collected at the door.

Cocktail hors d'oeuvres are being provided by several amazing local restaurants:Alivia's, Amelia's, Chamas Brazilian Steakhouse, The James Joyce, Piazza Italia, Piedmont, Pop's Backdoor Pizza, Revolutions, and Six Plates.

Music will be provided by Cool John Ferguson beginning at 10:00 pm. Cool John and his band will be among the first blues acts to play at the Pinhook, which is one of Durham’s newest venues. Cool John has collaborated with many well-known artists, including Taj Mahal, Kenny Wayne Shepard, and BB King.

All proceeds from the Pin Projekt benefit the Troika Music Festival, which is a three-day, Durham-based festival featuring local and regional bands happening November 5th-7th, 2009.

“We're lucky to host this one of a kind event in its 5th year. The auction is an important fundraiser for us, but more than that, it's an opportunity to host an art event affordable for many. If you have not attended a Pin Projekt, make this your year!” says Chair Melissa Thomas.
More information is available at http://www.troikamusicfestival.org.

Ponytail Trots Through Town This Week

Ponytail is pretty much my "hometown band"! I grew up near Baltimore and my sister went to Maryland Institute College of Art, which is where Ponytail got started, a class project formed by teacher Jeremy Sigler. The band has exploded onto the indie scene, with their trademark primal energy and experimental punk sound. They are in the midst of their first tour as a headlining act, supporting their second release, "Ice Cream Spiritual", and now... KAAAPOW!!! They will be here in Chapel Hill at Local 506 on Sunday, May 24th. On MSN.com, the reviewer of their SXSW show awarded the band "most original sound".

I had the chance to do an e-mail Q&A with the Ponytail's Dustin Wong, who was kind enough to take a break from the sonic mayhem to give us these answers:

I see from your various blogs that you have seen a lot of the world lately! How is the tour going so far?

The tour is going great! we brought along our friend to help with the tour and he's really adding an awesome layer of vibes to the whole journey.

What is the strangest thing that has happened to you on tour?

Well, last night in Lawrence, Kansas I was sitting outside with a few talking and this huge ultimate fighting style dude started picking fights with the crowd outside the venue. He said something about wanting everybody's nuts and he took off his shirt and flexed his muscles. That's not the strangest thing that has happened but it happened and it was bizarre.

Do you foresee quitting your day jobs as artists to become full-time artists, only much louder?

That sounds cool, but probably won't get any louder...

It sounds to me like your music is very jam based, improvisational. How do you approach writing?

When we write we do normally start with a simple idea and jam it out until everyone in the band is satisfied once we have a part we work around that part. Normally if we have something it begins in the middle and we build part that come prior and after. At the end all the parts kinda fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Tell us a bit about your visual art. It looks like you definitely have a hand in putting together your album artwork, yes?

I did mostly video work but did my share of drawings and paintings. We all contributed to the album art work. It was a pretty long process of us starting threads of images through email. I suggested to use Ken's artwork from when he was in high school and it seemed to fit well. After that everything kinda came into place!

Ponytail started as a quintet, but rumor has it that during a particularly intense solo, your bassist exploded. OK, I just made that up, but you now play without a bassist. Are you sticking with the quartet for now?

Yeah we're going to stick with 4 for now. Our fifth member was a keyboardist actually and he is an explosion! A really good guy.

I really enjoyed your laundromat video. How did that come about?

Pitchfork TV suggested and they were looking for laundromats everywhere in Brooklyn and Queens. It was a really fun time!

Who are your various influences, both musically and otherwise?


I like The Beach Boys and The Ventures. I love surrealism and Buddhism.

We look forward to seeing you in Chapel Hill! Will you say hi to all of my Balmer homies for me?


HI!!

Many thanks to Dustin from Ponytail for taking the time to blog with us today. You can check out their latest release, "Ice Cream Spritual", and see them at Local 506 on May 24th.

Taxes done! Time for SIGNAL!

Did you know that Chapel Hill hosts the Southeast Electronic Music Festival this week? SIGNAL is the name of the electronic music festival, now in its 4th year, and every year it draws more people, notable national artists, and of course, an outlet for the thriving local electronic music scene.

Here the story of how it all began, as told on the SIGNAL website:

Held on April 7th and 8th, 2006, the festival drew over a thousand electronic music fans and curiosity-seekers from across the Southeast. Signal provided something for everybody: internationally-renowned DJs, producers, and bands in more than a half dozen venues ranging from large clubs to cafes covering a wide spectrum of musical styles. Because the electronic music scene is so rich in the Chapel Hill area, Signal drew from lots of local talent as well. While the nights were full of music, seminars were held during the day for festival-goers to meet artists and learn about the music industry.

One of Signal’s most unique characteristics is that it was able to be held in venues within walking distance from each other. This allowed festival-goers to freely move between events in such a way that it was possible to experience part of almost every event. When SIGNAL 2006 had come to a close, festival-goers left inspired and enthusiastic for the next year’s festival.

This year's schedule features a wide range of artists, including our local friends Subscape Annex (aka Steve Burnett), Ted Johnson, Joe Hendrix, and many others.

The fun starts TONIGHT! Enjoy.

HNMTF Releases Gladiator-Style Smackdown!

This week, Durham's own Hammer No More The Fingers released its first full-length album, "Looking For Bruce" available on Churchkey Records. This album builds on the music from their self-titled EP, including many of the tracks off the debut, but with a bit more production, and the benefit of many more performances. I caught up with lead man Duncan Webster on the origins of the album's curious title. He fills us in on the LFB story!

We were making an eleven hour late night drive from Richmond, VA to Bloomington, IN to play a show in March 2008. We passed through the town of Nitro, WV. At the same time I got a call from a friend who had some good news, so I replied "That is so nitro!"

A week later, we started jamming on the song that is now "Nitro". It sounded like it should be called "Nitro", just because of the fast paced, sort of cheesy, but bad ass rhythm. The whole passing through Nitro, WV and saying "That is so Nitro!" was still on the mind as well. I thought it might be funny to actually make the lyrics be about Nitro, the somewhat forgotten American Gladiator. I did some research on him, and he turns out to be a very active person. He mentors at a teen center, he just wrote and published an autobiography, he's a consultant on the new "American Gladiators". But most of all he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in an action packed Kung Fu movie called "Looking for Bruce". We've been looking for a copy of the movie for a year now--no luck. It remains a mystery. The whole thing we have seen is a trailer that Dan "Nitro" Clark posted on YouTube (That's Nitro's full name). We decided to call our album "Looking for Bruce" as a tribute to the man, and also to poke fun at us never being able to find a copy of the movie. We're really into campy B Movies as well. Somehow he found out what we were calling our album. He got in touch with us. He seems like a really cool guy. He sent us his new book. We haven't yet had the guts to ask him to send us a copy of you know what. We've made plans to take him out to lunch if we ever make it out to LA.

That's quite a story! Let me just say that this album is absolutely fantastic, combining the band's upbeat but intricate writing style, tight musicianship, witty and occasionally hilarious lyrics, and catchy hooks galore. It is rare that an album bears repeated listens within the same day, but with LFB I literally wanted to play it over and over. It's like Chinese food--you eat an entire meal, and in another hour you are ready to go back to the buffet! Mmmm... buffet... What were we talking about?

Musically, I can hear several stand-out qualities. Outstanding use of dynamics, variations on themes, vocal harmonies, and interesting rhythms make for an great ride. At the end of "Radiation", for example, we get a taste of polymeter, a phase-shifted guitar riff in 6/8 against the main 4/4 beat. It is difficult to choose just one "hit single"--there is not one weak track on the album, but "Shutterbug" is one of the strongest, inspired by Webster's one-time relationship with rock icon Patti Smith's daughter when the band lived for a time in New York City.

If "Looking For Bruce" were matched up to just about any other release I have heard lately in an "American Gladiator" style competition, they would probably win the gold.

You can catch Hammer No More The Fingers opening for Superchunk at Cat's Cradle on April 15th, as they continue with many more performances in North Carolina, Virginia, DC, and Maryland.

I am the last guitarist alive

WARNING: following the advice given in this blog could lead to injury or death!

I went to the fourth installment of the discussion panels known as Secondhand Freespace last night at Local 506 in Chapel Hill. The topic was "online music marketing", moderated by Heather MacDonald who oversees the music section at About.com, and including Jed Carlson of Reverb Nation, Lindsey Kronmiller of Merge Records, Mike Robinson of the band Annuals and their label Terpsikhore Records, and David Rose from KnowTheMusicBiz.com.

Everybody was cool, but the entire experience just underscored the fact that the music business completely sucks. As Exhibit A (in case you need evidence of this), we have the Raleigh band Annuals, who are arguably one of the more successful bands from our area, attempting to make it in the music industry nationally and internationally. They cannot yet support themselves as a band full time. The money just isn't enough for them to do it.

I think David Rose hit the nail on the head when he said that now musicians have so many tools available to them that were never available before, but the bad news is that now they also have to compete with the Dave Rose band, "which is pretty bad". (I haven't heard the DR Band, so I don't know. I'm just taking Dave's word for it.)

Therein lies the problem. There are just too many musicians out there. Period.

What we need to do is go back to the feudal system. No more capitalist crap! Basically, we will just have Lord Brussel Sprout LVII who appoints his royal minstrels, and THAT'S IT! Nobody else. Lord BS will just cut a fat check for his minstrels every month, and the rest of you musicians? Well, you just have to die right now.

So here's what we do. Go find all those extra rolls of duct tape you stockpiled during our last Code Orange Terror Alert. Yeah, we know you've got 'em. OK, now seat yourself comfortably in a chair where you won't knock anything over. Oh wait, before we go any further, please write the following on a piece of paper: "I hereby bequeath all my stuff to Blogger Dave, Royal Minstrel of Lord BS LVII", and sign it in blood or something. Anyway, now take the duct tape and wrap it firmly around your mouth, being careful not to leave any air holes. (.. and now, kids, here is the part where we tell you not to try this at home, because we are only after the musicians. If you are a kid who is an especially good musician, well, get your parents to help you with this part.) Now, take two Number 2 pencils, and shove them firmly up each nostril. I think the eraser end first is probably going to work best here. Lastly, count backward from 57 slowly...

La la la... we will just wait a bit here. Are they gone? Yes? Ha!

So now I pretty much have it made and I can be a full time musician. Lord Jim Goodnight can hire me to play at his SAS piano bar, nevermind that I don't play piano, but hey, what choice do you have? I guess I can find bandmates somehow, those few who did not get the memo. But tell me this--will you honestly miss the Jonas Brothers? No, you won't. You have me.

Next week check back for my review of Hammer No More The Fingers' new release. I just may let them live as well, because I care.