Meg Riebesell and her band, Rootbrew, are digging into their own cultural history, reaching across the ocean, pulling it all together, and putting out an exciting, authentic sound centered around love, positivity, and passion. This is to say, that in Rootbrew’s songs one can noticeably feel the influence of popular Caribbean, South and West African styles while appreciating a clear connection to American roots music.
The lyrical messages delivered by Riebesell range from simple love songs to politically charged songs about women’s movements, immigrant rights, and non-violent resistance, as well as laments on war, suffering, and spirituality.
The band has a debut album and recently recorded Resistance EP available, and has performed with bands such as Lakou Mizik (Haiti) Mamadou Kelly (Mali), and Mokoomba (Zimbabwe). Together, Riebesell and her group create a sound that will make the audience want to sing along, dance along, shout, jump, listen, discuss, and dream.
My name is Rhys and I am 11 years old. I identify as gender-fluid. I devote my life mostly to music. I write songs and play violin, piano, guitar, drums, bass, ukulele and mandolin.
Alyssa Dann is a 16 year old singer songwriter raised in the legendary artist enclave of Woodstock, NY. The daughter of acclaimed producer and session musician Mark Dann and his wife, Lisa Klotz, herself a voice major, Alyssa began writing stories in elementary school. At 15, she was already a strong singer and guitarist when a creative writing class ignited her desire to write her own songs. In 2016, she received a youth scholarship to the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) conference and received favorable reviews in the pool of professional singer songwriters. She continues to build her repertoire and hone her performance and songwriting skills.
SCHMAVE is the indie / lo-fi / jazz project of Avery John, based out of the thriving music scene of New Paltz, NY. In Avery’s New Paltz bedroom, there is a small path weaving between music equipment, leading to the recording gear and a blanket-lined closet that serves as makeshift vocal recording booth. The debut album, Painted Post, is filled with references to books, cryptic and relatable personal experiences, and stream-of-consciousness thoughts that often reflect indecisiveness. The live ensemble creates an intimate, yet energetic atmosphere, drawing everyone’s eyes and ears to the stage.
Evan Griffith Dando formed The Lemonheads with two high school buddies in late winter ’86, in their senior year at Boston’s tiny Commonwealth School.
A few months later, they spawned what is now one of the most sought-after punk relics of the 80s, the indie EP Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners. Boston-based Taang! Records immediately picked up on The Lemonheads, with three college radio pleasers to follow: the LPs Hate Your Friends (1987), Creator (1988), and Lick (1989). In 1990 Atlantic Records took notice of the massively expanding Lemonheads fanbase in Europe (where they toured in 1989) and America by signing the band and releasing their well-received (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) fourth LP, Lovey.
Even by this time, The Lemonheads lineup had been volatile: more than a dozen different configurations over a period of just five years, all sorts of bit parts and reshuffles, with Dando as the only constant. At one point it got so confusing that an ex-drummer, just a week after getting kicked of the group, answered The Lemonheads’ ad to replace himself. By a conservative estimate, the band has had more than ten bass players and at least a dozen drummers over the years.
But out of this primordial chaos came a veritable Golden Age for The Lemonheads. A 1991 tour brought Evan to Australia, where by chance he met songwriter Tom Morgan and future Lemonheads bassist Nic Dalton. Their collaboration made all the difference for the next Atlantic release, It’s a Shame About Ray (1992), a concentrated blast of pure pop perfection that clocks in at just under 30 minutes. Thanks to songs such as “Confetti”, “My Drug Buddy”, “Rudderless”, and “Ceiling Fan in My Spoon”, Dando hit a whole new audience (“they’re getting younger,” he confessed to Kathie Lee Gifford at the time).
Mainstream media hype of The Lemonheads shifted into high gear, with lots of wild speculation as to the exact nature of the relationship between Dando and long-time friend Juliana Hatfield (who played bass and sang on Ray). It also didn’t hurt when a 1993 People magazine spread devoted a full page to Evan as one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world. That news came to Evan in New Zealand, on his 26th birthday. When a magazine rep called to tell him he was among the “fifty dishiest people”, Dando recalled, “I thought she said busiest”. And I thought, ‘kin right!” With all the traveling, I was busy!”
Atlantic released a smash follow-up, Come on Feel The Lemonheads, in October 1993. The album brought Dando a genuine charting single (“Into your Arms”) as well as instant classics such as “Great Big No”, “Down About It”, “Being Around”, and “You Can Take it with You.” In winter 1993/1994 Evan Dando was in your living room, thanks to live appearances on the Letterman and Leno late night network TV shows. Inevitably, in Warrington, Pennsylvania, a 20-something named Jeff Fox published the first issue of his backlash ‘zine Die Evan Dando, Die.
Two years of brutal touring for The Lemonheads followed, which Evan punctuated with some high-profile personal meltdowns on various continents that caught the imagination of a press ever eager for negative copy. Still The Lemonheads (now with Boston friends John Strohm on guitar and Murph on drums) managed to crank out a defiant 1996 release Car Button Cloth, with some of their best melodic pop/punk to date: “It”s All True”, “If I Could Talk I”d Tell You”, and “Tenderfoot”. After a year promoting the record, Dando announced at the 1997 Reading Festival that he was disbanding The Lemonheads. Atlantic released a Best of The Lemonheads album in 1998, and a lot of geezers surmised that that was that.
“I just decided to duck out for a while”, explains Dando of his self-imposed exile from the scene. “I didn’t have it in me. It took until I met my wife in 1998 until I got back into making music.” That would be Elizabeth Moses, Newcastle-born English supermodel and musician. Once married in 2000, Dando started to come alive again like Frampton, first with a 2001 live album Live at the Brattle Theater/Griffith Sunset, and then in 2003 with a well-received solo LP, Baby I”m Bored.
In 2004 Evan Dando found himself fronting the MC5, the most incendiary rock band of 1960s America, as lead vocalist in a 41-show tour. And it was hard to miss Dando during 2005 and early 2006, as he toured widely in North America and Europe with various bass players (Juliana Hatfield and Josh Lattanzi) and drummers (Bill Stevenson, Chris Brokaw from Come, George Berz of Dinosaur Jr), and occasionally as a one man electrical wrecking crew. Memorably, in September 2005, Dando, Stevenson, and Lattanzi played two instantly sold-out shows in London as part of the Don”t Look Back series, where they rocked through It”s a Shame About Ray from start to finish.
In 2006 came The Lemonheads, released on Vagrant records and recorded with Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez of The Descendents. Stevenson co-produced with Dando, and wrote or co-wrote three of its eleven songs, while long-time collaborator Tom Morgan added another two. There were cameos from bassist Josh Lattanzi (“Poughkeepsie”, “Rule of Three”, “In Passing”), Garth Hudson (of The Band, who plays keyboards on “Black Gown” and “December”), and some real foot-on-monitor guitar work by Dinosaur Jr’s J. Mascis (“No Backbone”, “Steve’s Boy”).
“We started out in Jam and Buzzcocks territory,” explained Dando at the time, “We got some psyched-out country on there as well, but all of it is squarely in The Lemonheads tradition.” Following a Rhino reissue of …Ray in 2008, complete with stripped-down demos, next up for The Lemonheads was a covers LP, Varshons. The idea for the band’s new covers record was inspired by Gibby Haynes, ringmaster of the Butthole Surfers, who for years has made mixes for Dando, a longtime friend. “Making a good mix is an art, and Gibby has it down,” says Dando. “I thought it would be fun to share these songs with other people like he shared them with me. So I picked the ‘greatest hits’ from his mixes and covered them, along with a few other songs I always wanted to play.”
Varshons was produced by Haynes and features Dando along with Vess Ruhtenburg (bass) and Devon Ashley (drums). The collection is filled with strange bedfellows – from G.G. Allin to Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt and garage rockers The Green Fuz. The Lemonheads make each track their own, with help from actress Liv Tyler, singing back up on Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye,” and Kate Moss, who sings over the dance groove of Arling & Cameron’s “Dirty Robot,” which also features lead guitar by John Perry on loan from The Only Ones.
Varshons unearths a pair of psychedelic treasures with “Yesterlove” – a song recorded in 1969 by the group Sam Gopal featuring future Motorhead bassist Lemmy Kilmister – and “Dandelion Seeds” from July, record collector’s Registered Landmark Band. For “Layin’ Up With Linda,” the band filters Allin’s cold-blooded tale through the swaggering country-honk of The Stones’ “Dead Flowers.”
Filled with obscure nuggets, the tracks on Varshons cut a wide swath, jumping from early British psychedelic to Dutch electronica and like all good mix tapes, you never know what is coming next.
Three divine Creatrixes have come together to conceive The Star Sisters. Each a remarkable song writer in her own right, Ella Kondrat, Liana Gabel and Madeleine Grace fuse seamlessly as a harmonic force of nature. Their sweet and intriguing harmonies over guitar and ukulele communicate the deep love rising from their undulating hearts. The Star Sisters are shepherds of new perspective, offering healing opportunities to their audiences.
The Bobby Lees are a 4 piece Punk Blues band from Woodstock, NY. Formed in early 2017, they recorded their first record ‘Beauty Pageant’ later that year and released it on Feb 2nd 2018. It received some great indie press in the US and UK, as well as radio play in the UK and on local station 100.1 Radio Woodstock. They have played packed shows in NYC at Mercury Lounge, Berlin and Bowery Electric, as well as BSP in Kingston. They will be playing The Colony in Woodstock on Thursday June 21st, MELTASIA in July, and leaving for their first midwest tour in August.
Some recent press: “Their anarchich-DIY-bluesy-punk-rock&roll sound is music to our ears in a relentlessly digitally synthesised world, their raw an unapologetic energy promising to make us feel alive!” – Audiotox, UK
Phil Mossman (Ex.LCD Sound System) on bass, Vito Roccoforte (The Rapture, Poolside) on drums, Steve Schiltz (Longwave, Blue October) on guitar, Jaiko Suzuki on vocal.
The truest forms of struggle are the ones that enable the most vulnerable to succeed in the worst of environments. Ariel Acevedo’s story not only embodies that very idea, but he takes action in delivering his message through his craft. Flown to the U.S. at the age of four by a single mother, the Chilean-born singer/songwriter has overcome the oppressive forces that have pushed him and his family back for being hispanic immigrants. Now at 22 years old, he aims to share his life as a stranger in a strange land. From his non-existent relationship with his father to the way politics have undermined the stability of the people, Ariel Acevedo touches on the sensitive and controversial themes of immigrant life growing up.
Having released his first debut EP in 2017 titled, “Yolanda Yolanda EP”, Acevedo has been working constantly and quietly on his upcoming debut full-length album: “Estados Separados”. While juggling a 70 hour work week, social life and personal time, Acevedo is reaching a new sense of maturity and introspection with “Estados Separados”. Estados Separados meaning separate states, looks to pull in the listener to the realities of the current socio-economic environment and how divisiveness has played a big role in the pay-to-play politics.
Yolanda Yolanda’s debut full-length “Estados Separados”, available this Summer!
