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MATISYAHU RECORD EXCHANGE IN-STORE MONDAY, JULY 25 (6 P.M.)

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July 25, 2011 - Live Shows , Live@RX , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

Matisyahu will perform live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St., Downtown Boise) at 6 p.m. Monday, July 25. As always, this Record Exchange in-store performance is free and all ages. Matisyahu is performing at Knitting Factory later that night (8 p.m.) and we have tickets for sale here at the store!

ABOUT MATISYAHU

In April of 2005, a fresh voice announced his arrival on the international stage with a stunningly inventive document titled Live at Stubb’s. Six years later, Matisyahu (matisyahuworld.com) returns to the renowned Austin venue that helped to launch his career with Live at Stubb’s Vol. II, a new CD-DVD package that demonstrates the continued originality and increasing depth of this longtime New Yorker’s craft.

Inspired by the runaway success of the original record, which spawned the hit single “King Without a Crown” and has to date sold nearly 700,000 copies in the United States, Matisyahu says he always knew he wanted to make another live album. “Performing is such a big part of what I do,” he says, “and there’s a lot about that live energy that you just can’t catch in the studio. So for me it was simply a matter of figuring out the right time to do it.”

He chose well: Last year Matisyahu released Light, a David Kahne-produced studio disc on which he jumped boldly from hard-edged dancehall and ska-inflected New Wave to laidback pop-rock and acoustic folk-soul. The album took Matisyahu well beyond his stylistic comfort zone and charted the growth of his vocals from traditional reggae toasting to a more dynamic, emotional place. But it didn’t necessarily show off his onstage evolution.

“I’ve played so many shows and gone through so many metamorphoses as a performer,” he says. Especially valuable was the opportunity to showcase that evolution at the very club where his career really took off. “It was kind of a return-to-roots occasion,” he says — albeit one where we see how far he’s come, as well.

Part of that transformation has been fueled by Matisyahu’s new band: Brooklyn’s acclaimed Dub Trio, which includes guitarist D.P. Holmes, bassist Stu Brooks and drummer Joe Tomino. The singer first came across the group—as fate would have it—while in Austin recording the first Stubb’s record. “I remember seeing their name at a record signing and being intrigued,” he says. “So I got one of their records while I was on tour, and there was this one song I couldn’t stop playing.”

Shortly thereafter, Matisyahu spent an entire day walking around Boston writing lyrics to the tune. “I love the way they bounce back and forth between really beautiful music and heavier, harder-edged stuff,” he says. “I knew right then that I wanted to work with them.” Last year he booked a show with Dub Trio at a small club in Brooklyn. “We just did an improv set after maybe one rehearsal,” he recalls. “It felt so right.”

That improvisational spirit looms large throughout Live at Stubb’s Vol. II, which pulls primarily from Light and Youth, Matisyahu’s 2006 full-length. “Dub Trio understand the concept of space,” he says, “which for a vocalist is great, because that leaves a lot of room for me to really get into my lyrics in new ways.” Here Matisyahu uses that room to dig deeper into his sound than ever before, shedding new light on its hip-hop, rock and reggae dimensions to the vocal delight of the enthusiastic (and demographically varied) Stubb’s crowd.

That audience was central to what Matisyahu set out to accomplish with Live at Stubb’s Vol. II. After all, the fans were the ones who enabled his return to the venue in the first place, affording Matisyahu the opportunity to extend the legacy Stubb’s represents. In fact, one crowd member made a lasting contribution.

“The night before the show I took a picture of my tour bus in the hotel parking lot and posted it on Twitter,” Matisyahu remembers. “Someone sent back a tweet saying they’d figured out which hotel it was and asked if they could come say hi. I said sure and a couple of kids showed up; we hung out for a few minutes on the bus. Then the next night at the show I’m pulling people up onstage during ‘King Without a Crown’ and one of them is the kid from Twitter!” The singer laughs. “So the last clip on the DVD is actually me giving him a high-five.”

The appreciation, no doubt, was mutual.

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THE SILENT COMEDY RECORD EXCHANGE IN-STORE THURSDAY, JULY 21 (6 P.M.)

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July 12, 2011 - Live Shows , Live@RX , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

The Silent Comedy will perform live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St., Downtown Boise) at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 21. As always, this Record Exchange in-store performance is free and all ages. The Silent Comedy — which opened for Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses’ sold-out show at the Egyptian Theatre in February — is performing at The Bouquet later that night (8:30 p.m.) and we have tickets for sale here at the store!

We will have The Silent Comedy’s new EP, Cruelty and Clemency, for sale at the in-store, as well as a limited-edition tour-only 7-inch!

ABOUT THE SILENT COMEDY

Since 1996, brothers Jeremiah and Joshua Zimmerman have been fighting an uphill battle to pursue music. That year, their preacher father sold all of their possessions and launched the family on a worldwide adventure that included travels through Asia, Russia, the Middle East, Europe, and the entirety of the United States. From playing folk instruments in the foothills of the Himalayas, to drawing crowds around pianos at Spanish shopping malls, the boys kept their musical outlet alive by any means possible. Different elements of this life history eventually culminated in the formation of The Silent Comedy (thesilentcomedy.com) ten years later.

What started gaining momentum in 2006 as a loose collection of musicians, eventually evolved into a solid quintet of performers who turn heads for their wild live performance, genre-bending sound, and unique aesthetic. In 2008, the group recorded their eponymous debut studio EP with Brian Karscig (producer and founding member of Louis XIV). In keeping with their DIY tradition, the band self-produced their follow up LP, Common Faults, in 2010. The resulting buzz from sold-out pressings of both records, and sold-out shows around California, have resulted in sharing the bill with such diverse performers as Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Razorlight, Switchfoot, The Black Keys, Common, MGMT, Cold War Kids, Flogging Molly, The Whigs, Delta Spirit, and more.

The band is on tour in support of their newest release, Cruelty & Clemency (Singleton Records). The EP was self-recorded at their home studio with the help of Raymond Richards (Local Natives, Henry Clay People), and was mixed by Brian Malouf (Queen, Pearl Jam, Gomez, O.A.R., Wolfmother). Front-man Joshua Zimmerman describes Cruetly and Clemency as “a perfect illustration of the duality found in our music.”

Standout tracks include “Exploitation” and “Victory”, which “highlight the dynamic ranges that we [The Silent Comedy] reach as a band, as well as dark lyrical themes that are common in our work.” The ruthless lyrics of “Victory” sum up the essence of The Silent Comedy, “I hate being alive if it’s just to survive, I’d rather sing than be left making noise.”

As for tour mates Saint Motel, “We met Saint Motel at South By Southwest in Austin and really enjoyed their live show. We love touring with bands that bring a lot of energy to their performance and it seemed like they would be a great fit for this tour.  Considering the summer heat and how much both bands move on stage, the Summer Sweat Tour is a very suitable title.” With the impending release of Cruelty and Clemency and the Summer Sweat Tour on the horizon, Zimmerman is “extremely excited about the future. Ending a tour of the west with Dave Matthews at the Gorge; you can’t ask for a better summer than that!”

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Y LA BAMBA RECORD EXCHANGE IN-STORE WEDNESDAY, JULY 6 (3 P.M.)

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June 30, 2011 - Live Shows , Live@RX , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

Y La Bamba will perform live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St., Downtown Boise) at 3 p.m. Wednesday, July 6. As always, this Record Exchange in-store performance is free and all ages. Y La Bamba is opening for Neko Case at Knitting Factory later that night (8 p.m.) and we have tickets for sale here at the store!

ABOUT Y LA BAMBA

With Y La Bamba (ylabamba.com), Luzelena Mendoza draws from both her strict Catholic upbringing as an only daughter of a Mexican immigrant and a debilitating illness that led her to fall away from her faith, to create what LA Weekly calls “Devendra Banhart-influenced art-folk with hazy femme vocals and traditional Mexican sounds.”

Mendoza’s father immigrated to the Bay Area from the Michoacan region of Mexico after meeting her mother, who had received her U.S. citizenship as a teenager. Her father got a job at a southern Oregon sawmill and Luzelena would spend her childhood summers on a farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley among peach, almond and fig orchards. It was in these strong Mexican communities that she would soak up the melodies and the stories that were being told while, as she remembers it, “the men with tassel hats” strummed their guitars and sang their traditional folk songs in three part harmonies. “I remember singing along, mimicking my father’s voice and dancing like a little wild child,” she recalls. For Mendoza, this music was the only way she could relate to her father, and was a bright spot in a rough childhood.

In 2003, Mendoza traveled to New Zealand and India, in a quest for a deeper understanding of her spiritual growth as an active Christian, hungry for the tools to create a shift on this planet. During her trip to India, she contracted amoebic dysentery and giardia, causing her to suffer from insomnia, lose 60 pounds and fear her loss of sanity. “It shook me in ways I was not expecting, leading me to struggle with my prayer life and search for a healthy relationship with God, the universe, and with myself,” says Mendoza of her condition, which was only complicated with a misdiagnosis.  “I gave up on Christianity and what religion was starting to mean to me due to a natural awareness that was knocking on my door.”

Upon her return to the U.S., she took in a white six-toed cat to keep her company as she fought to regain her physical, emotional and spiritual health. She christened her new feline companion La Bamba, a name that she incorporated into a moniker for her home recordings and performances at open mic nights in her new home, Portland. Bassist and vocalist Ben Meyercord caught some of Mendoza’s open mic performances and the two quickly found a musical connection. In a whirlwind week that she said happened magically, Mendoza recruited Mike Kitson on drums and David Kyle on guitar. Luzelena played in an Ashland band with Kitson when she wanted a more quiet alternative to her early punk roots and Kyle was a musician she met online that shared her spiritual and eccentric philosophies. Intuition told her that she was going to meet the final piece in her musical puzzle and, sure enough, she stumbled upon accordion player Eric Schrepel playing the squeezebox at a puppet show.

With a raw songbook of home recordings under her belt and a new group of musicians to help Mendoza with her musical vision, Y La Bamba began to captivate audiences in Portland and tour stops around the U.S.  Eventually, the quintet would attract the attention of The Decemberists guitarist Chris Funk, who offered his production skills for the band’s first studio recording. Funk worked tirelessly to capture Y La Bamba’s rustic tones, songs inspired by the traditional tunes of Mendoza’s childhood, and her signature vocals that resemble the sounds spilling out of a 1930’s Victrola. Dubbing the confidently stunning body of songs Lupon (after a nickname that Mendoza’s father despised), Y La Bamba has emerged from the studio, ready to wow listeners everywhere.

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MARC BROUSSARD/MATT HIRES RECORD EXCHANGE IN-STORE JUNE 30 (6 PM)!

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June 30, 2011 - Live Shows , Live@RX , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

Marc Broussard and Matt Hires will perform live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St., Downtown Boise) at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 30. As always, this Record Exchange in-store performance is free and all ages. Broussard (headliner) and Hires (opener) are playing Knitting Factory later that night (8 p.m.) and we have tickets for sale here at the store.

Broussard and Hires will each play a few songs on The Record Exchange stage and sign autographs during this special double in-store! The first 12 people in the door get a FREE TICKET to the Knitting Factory show! (Note: Free tickets will be available no earlier than 5:45 p.m.)

ABOUT MARC BROUSSARD

Some of the greatest albums release with a fanfare of news angles. One might hit the market with a tantalizing personal back story. Another might signify some kind of career-changing milestone.

But not Marc Broussard, appropriately this unique artist’s first self-titled album. The story here is simple yet eloquent: It’s great music, pulled from the heart, crafted impeccably and delivered with the deep emotion that has long marked Broussard (marcbroussard.com) as one of the great vocalists of our time.

More than most artists in the modern spotlight, Broussard achieves a depth in all aspects of his writing and singing through his love for and mastery of tradition. Strong currents of R&B, sanctified church and the many other flavors of his Louisiana bayou home nourish his songs, more so than ever on Marc Broussard. The exhilarating drive of its first single, “Only Everything,” the old-school soul, hushed and exultant, of “Lucky,” the swampy blues that haunts “Eye on the Prize” and every other track is a lesson in transplanting the seeds of American music into the spirit of today.

What accounts for the intensity, intimacy and ecstasy of Marc Broussard? The answer is simple: “I wasn’t on a mission,” he says. “This album was just about putting out really strong music.”

More than that, this is strong music inspired by real life. It’s a sign of Broussard’s creativity that he is able to find poetry and meaning in everyday experience and translate them into song.

“This is as honest as any record I’ve ever made,” he explains. “I wasn’t trying to surprise the listener. We just took some of the basic feelings as well as some of the more specific stories surrounding my life and applied them to the lyrics.”

“We” in this case includes Broussard, his band’s drummer Chad Gilmore, bassist and longtime friend Tony Hall, a small team of ace players from Louisiana and Nashville, and a new creative partner in producer Jamie Kenney. “I have to give a lot of credit to Jamie on this record, not only in the production but in the writing,” Broussard says. “He definitely pushed me to find what I really wanted to say to people as well as to pull me out of my comfort zone as a singer. He encouraged me to do things I wouldn’t normally do, which turned out so well. The things he pushed me to do are what made this record what it is.”

Based in Nashville, Kenney also contributed his distinctive keyboard style to the flavor of Marc Broussard. The irresistibly funky piano solo on “Bleeding Heart” shows the producer’s perfect insight as a musician too into Broussard’s feel for texture and expression.

“I love writing and working with piano players because it gives me a fresh look into my music,” Broussard says. “And I love letting other people take the reins when it comes to arranging. Jamie comes from the same background as mine: He’s from the South. He loves football and talking politics. So working with him was a no-brainer.”

Kenney also understood that commitment to honesty that defines Marc Broussard. Working together, he and Broussard matched message to music so that each energized the other. As examples, Broussard points to “Let Me Do It Over,” a heartfelt plea in a setting that might recall some of the Beatles’ most ambitious conceptions; the achingly romantic “Our Big Mistake” (“It was a privilege that I was able to put this song on my record,” Broussard says); and “Yes Man,” a more humorous account of momentary disagreement. Each of these allows the listener a glimpse not only into Marc’s love for his wife but also into similar feelings shared by every couple as they move together through life.

A different relationship provides the basis for “Eye on the Prize,” the only song on the album that Broussard had written several years ago. “It was supposed to be on my previous album, Keep Coming Back,” he says. “I wrote it with my band on tour because I was on the phone with my son. He was five years old at the time, and he said, ‘Dad, I want to be in a working band.’ He didn’t say ‘a band’; he said ‘a working band.’ That stuck with me, so we fleshed it out in an afternoon before a show. Originally, it was a very smooth R&B song. But toward the end of this project, I wrote the lyrics down and played it on the iPod for Jamie. He took the lyrics into the music room. Ten minutes later he called me in and said, ‘Check This Out.’ He played what you hear now on the record.”

For a performer who learned the basics of music from his father, the celebrated Louisiana guitarist Ted Broussard, this song represents a closing of that familial circle. And having won critical notice with his fusion of gospel, classic R&B and down-home Southern roots at age 20 with his debut Momentary Setback, and built on that foundation through multiple tours, national TV appearances and philanthropic work for Habitat for Humanity, United Way and post-Katrina relief, he brings a more insightful perspective to the passion that has always animated his sound.

All of this and more animates the power and passion of this new album. If making great music that connects with us all was the mission, Marc Broussard represents a mission accomplished.

ABOUT MATT HIRES

On the surface, Florida native Matt Hires (matthiresmusic.com) seems to be the epitome of the sunshine state: bare-footed, artistic, and coolly easy-going. But there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye. As a child, Matt was introduced to different musical genres by his father. It was Matt’s father that passed along his old, handmade acoustic guitar from 1977 to Matt when he was sixteen years old – the same guitar that Matt uses today. A homeschooler, Matt taught himself to play the guitar. During high school, Matt gravitated towards the punk/hardcore scene, which is a far cry from his own introspectively powerful acoustic pop sound.

By the time he was seventeen years old, Matt wrote his first song, and began performing in public a year later. With his solo full-length debut, Take Us to the Start, Matt captivated audiences with his endearing personality, melodic sound, and undeniable talent. Between opening for the likes of Paolo Nutini, Eric Hutchinson, Marc Broussard and even performing on the John Mayer Mayercraft Cruise in March, Take Us To The Start was recorded with producer Eric Rosse (Sara Bareilles, Anna Nalick, Tori Amos).

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DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR. ALL-AGES RX IN-STORE THURSDAY, JUNE 9 (4 P.M.)!

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June 3, 2011 - Live Shows , Live@RX , The Record Exchange Blog - by - No Comments

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. will perform live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St., Downtown Boise) at 4 p.m. Thursday, June 9. As always, this Record Exchange in-store performance is free and all ages. The band is playing Neurolux later that night (8 p.m.) and we have tickets for sale here at the store.

The band’s new album It’s a Corporate World drops on Tuesday, June 7, but you can download the new track “Morning Thought” HERE and stream the entire album HERE.

Says Pitchfork: Live, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. perform in logo-emblazoned NASCAR regalia. Couple this fact with their moniker and the title of their debut LP, It’s a Corporate World, and you might peg them as some sort of subversive, Adbusters-influenced project. But Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. are a sweet, fairly unassuming electro-tinged indie pop band.

Says Paste: If you set aside the fact that their hometown will forever be known as the ‘Motor City’ and ignore the quirk that their name pays tribute to the famous NASCAR driver, you’ll quickly find that laid-back Detroit indie-pop duo Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. aren’t interested in revving engines. Instead, the duo of Daniel Zott and Josh Epstein are concerned with creating a refreshing wash of shimmering electronics and bare-bones percussion—a distinctive blend of Washed Out’s synth layers and The Dodo’s drumstick-driven medleys.

ABOUT DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. (daleearnhardtjrjr.com) is a Detroit-based based recording and songwriting project created by Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott. The project’s inception was the result of a simple idea many of us get regularly, but often fail to act upon.

In late 2009 Josh Epstein picked up the phone and dialed Daniel Zott. He had just seen Zott playing a show in Detroit, and was impressed by the performance, songwriting and charisma he had witnessed on stage. A musician himself, Epstein recognized his style wasn’t entirely similar to Zott’s, but felt their two differing headspaces would form an interesting combination. As such, even though they were both fairly busy with other musical endeavors at the time, he suggested they join forces and attempt something together.

The next day, the two got together and worked on a song Epstein had been kicking around in his head … a track called “Simple Girl.”

Creativity can be an endlessly difficult thing to harness on one’s own terms, and thus the creative process can be a difficult thing to share with another human being. But, if there is a lesson to be learned in the formation of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. it is to not be afraid of reaching out to a complete stranger and seeing where it might take you. Epstein and Zott quickly learned the two had a great deal to offer each other in the studio, as the project meshed almost instantly.

Upon completing ‘Simple Girl,’ the duo felt strongly their collaboration contained the possibility to nurture even more creativity and quickly began to co-write an entire batch of new songs. Shortly thereafter, Epstein and Zott decided to start going under the name Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., a title that was immediately jarring but paid homage to their philosophy of mixing together different ideas. If a listener could accept a band with the name Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., then there were no limitations or preconceived notions as to where the project was meant to go next.

In July of 2010, Quite Scientific Records released the very first Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. material, Horse Power EP, recorded entirely in Zott’s basement studio using a single microphone and home recording gear. Consisting of three original songs and a cover of Brian Wilson’s “God Only Knows”, the EP drew instant praise from numerous outlets such as NPR, The Guardian, the New York Times and ever-pioneering U.S. radio stations KCRW and KEXP. In the months that followed, their sound came to be described as everything from ‘psych-retro pop’ to ‘an inspired mix of hip-hop and folk’ to ‘minimalist alterna-pop’ to ‘beach wave,’ and alongside such descriptions nearly every review criticized the sleight of hand that was their chosen moniker.

Regardless of their name or the adjectives involved, the music of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. has reacted in the ears of many. Being noted as one of the ‘best new bands’ of 2010 from the likes of Stereogum, SPIN, Under the Radar, Real Detroit, The Metro Times and a slew of others has thrust Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. quickly into the spotlight and onto the national touring stage where they are now bolstered by the addition of live percussionist David Vaughn.

Having taken the time to fully piece together a dozen carefully crafted tracks, the band barrels into 2011 with their first full-length album, It’s a Corporate World (June 7). A project that started without expectations may suddenly have to contend with some, but by throwing aesthetic limitations out the window, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. have allowed for the creation of the unexpected and a seemingly limitless future.

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