On Thursday, Oct. 16, Submerge got an email from Linda Swanigan, owner of the venue Marilyn’s on K and longtime supporter of Submerge (she advertised in our first-ever issue!), informing us that they had sold the business. Yes, you read that right, after 16 long years the basement-esque K Street venue and bar that many of us have come to love over the years (Submerge even held our “50th Issue Party” there in 2010, remember that?) will unfortunately close up shop after Nov. 1, 2014.
“We thank our loyal customers, whom we consider our friends and family, for your support over the last 16 years,” the official press release states. “We are so proud of our employees who have made the Marilyn’s experience possible over the years.”
Marilyn’s first opened as “Marilyn’s on 12th and K” in 1998, before that corner “became gentrified.” That’s back before IMAX, Esquire, Sheraton, etc. It was the only watering hole in the neighborhood and hosted many construction workers and people staying at the Hyatt. When the 12th and K building got foreclosed on and ultimately acquired by new owners, a bar wasn’t part of the new plans. So Marilyn’s, having already established itself on K Street, moved down the street and found their current spot, a unique underground space that offered them more room to work with. They reopened as Marilyn’s on K in 2005 at 908 K Street. With more space they were able to start hosting eclectic live music seven days a week from local and touring acts; eventually well known artists like Jackie Greene, Mother Hips, Junior Brown, Nicki Bluhm, Sal Valentino and so many others, including countless local bands, graced the stage at Marilyn’s. More than 1,600 different bands have performed at Marilyn’s! The venue has played a crucial role in the local music scene for many years, and it will be sorely missed.
So, what’s next for the space, and will the new owners/operators incorporate live music? According to Swanigan the new business taking over the space is Coin-Op, a bar/arcade, and they will not be hosting live music. “They currently have a very successful bar/arcade operation in San Diego and they will bring that same concept to K Street,” Swanigan told us. Um, can you say “mixed emotions?”
Obviously we are incredibly sad that live music will no longer be a part of the space (also, side note, as a fellow business owner, I know I would be ready for a break after 16 years!), but our inner nerds are a little bit excited about the idea of it becoming a bar that has a large selection of video games.
The website for Coin-Op’s San Diego location says, “We are a neighborhood watering hole offering craft cocktails, craft beer, delicious food and of course, classic arcade games.”
Submerge is planning on reaching out to the Coin-Op owners in the coming days to get more information about their plans for the Sacramento location.
In the meantime, we still have a couple weeks to enjoy Marilyn’s and celebrate their huge mark on Sacramento’s music scene. “We are trying to reach out to many of our favorites to play over the next two weeks,” Swanigan said, noting that they are still confirming some details. “We will be arranging for bands who have played at our club and want one more chance to play at the ‘Institution of Marilyn’s’ over the next two weeks. We are hoping to have a few bands play every night and the last day we will have music throughout the day until closing!” Keep an eye out right here on Submerge and at Marilynsonk.com for more info on the final weeks of Marilyn’s.
As of press time here are some highlights happening at Marilyn’s in the next couple weeks according to their online calendar (subject to change):
Friday, Oct. 17: You Front the Band Live Karaoke
Saturday, Oct. 18: Chuck’s Annual Halloween Party
Thursday, Oct. 23: Color the Sound, We Went to the Moon
Friday, Oct. 24: The Denver J Band, Bellygunner, Be Brave Bold Robot
Saturday, Oct. 25: The Darling Clementines Halloween Spooktacular
Thursday, Oct. 30: Farewell Performance / Halloween Party feat. Zyah Belle, Vanessa O’Connell, Lights and Sirens, Kyle Tuttle, The Bell Boys, The Royal Jelly, Spacewalker, hosted by Task1ne
Friday, Oct. 31: Foresocks (Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute), Abby Normal (Green Day tribute)
Saturday, Nov. 1: Farewell to Marilyn’s Party w/ Live Music All Day!
Any Radiohead fans out there? If so, would you like to see, hear and experience a bunch of Radiohead classics in a live environment without having to pay, like, $87 for a ticket and without having to drive to the Bay Area and back? You’re in luck! A huge group of some of Sacramento’s most talented musicians are bringing you the second ever Radiohead Tribute Show at Marilyn’s on K on Friday, May 30, 2014. Hosted by local boy on the rise James Cavern (who also headlines Concerts in the Park earlier that same night), this show will feature a special performance from local ambient rockers Life In 24 Frames and an exciting set featuring names such as Lindsey Pavao, Autumn Sky, Eddie Pig Underwood, as well as members of local bands Saint Solitaire, Odamé Sucks, Cold Eskimo, Joseph in the Well and more! The Facebook event page says “From the rabid guitar play of ‘Electioneering,’ hypnotic sounds of ‘All I Need,’ to the haunting sounds of ‘Exit Music’ we will cover an array of Radiohead favorites!” This show gets underway at 9:30 p.m. and is just $5, but as the official CIP afterparty, if you’ve got your wristband on, it’s free.99! To learn more about the event’s host, hit up Facebook.com/JamesCavernMusic
Soul/rock group The Staxx Brothers return to Sacramento and this time they’re performing with local funk band Phat Butta Jam. On Friday, June 14, Marilyn’s on K will witness the band’s coined “hard ass soul” music, a mixture of funk, soul and hip-hop. The Seattle-based band’s latest album Jungle Cat was produced by none other than Scott Colburn, the man behind albums like Feels, Strawberry Jam and Water Curses from Animal Collective, and Neon Bible from Arcade Fire. The Staxx Brothers 10-track full-length album is available for only $10 on iTunes and Amazon, but stop by Staxxbrothers.com to brush up on their music before the show.
Instagon
Marilyn’s on K, Sacramento – Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013
No two shows are ever the same, and the band has been around the Sacramento and Southern California areas as long as Lob’s ponytail. Lob being the only consistent bass player and founding member of the amoeba that is the band Instagon.
Instagon is a free-form, experimental jam band that has performed more than 600 shows to date and has logged an equal amount of intentionally rotating band members. So, how does that work, exactly? Lob extends invitations to a wide variety of local talents, like guitarist Ross Hammond or Leticia Garcia of Ghostplay to join in; he’s even included Greg Ginn of Black Flag and Rikk Agnew from The Adolescents and D.I. during past performances. However, this past weekend at Marilyn’s on K, Instagon celebrated its 20th anniversary with a one-of-a-kind live show including more than a dozen musicians featuring eight guitarists, a drum circle at the foot of the stage, two drums sets, lots of brass and the list continues.
“When [Instagon] first started it was kind of like, let’s invite everybody out to make noise at once. Then, it kind of evolved into more of a band like it is now and it’s gone through many phases,” explains Lob. “In the early days, I would show up with a hand drill. We even did a show once where it was the Instagon Tool and Appliance Orchestra where there was even a blender section.”
Lob describes Instagon in many words, but two will do just fine—noise art. And it was certainly noisy at Marilyn’s this past weekend with audience members staring at the cluster of musicians before them.
Just before Instagon’s performance, Lob calls all participants outside for a few quick pointers, and there are only two guidelines to his improv orchestra, if he brings the tone low, go ahead and feel free to introduce a solo or take the music in a different direction. But, if the tone of his bass is louder or higher, then that’s the signal to just jam along with the rest of the band. After a bit of reefer is passed around and all was said and done, the 20-year rendition of Instagon shuffles one-by-one back inside the venue, some extinguishing their last cigarette before finding a spot on stage.
“It’s really an escape for me. I’m going to invoke this demon and ride it. It’s really like a voodoo ritual,” says Lob. “I’m going to feel the energy and the power from it. I really enjoy the energy of what Instagon brings to the stage and anybody that’s played will attest to that. To be a part of that is amazing and fun.”
Wails and screams emit from Instagon’s unique, 20-year anniversary performance courtesy of one short-haired woman. A masked man very reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter sits at the foot of the stage aggressively slapping his conga-looking drum, another woman fiddles with her Theremin radiating off-kilter, sci-fi notes while another man dressed in a black top hat and long fancy coat (like something Luciano Pavarotti might wear) gets weird on another Theremin. Then, there’s the saxophonist, who continually wails into a microphone. And then, there are the two drummers, jamming alongside one another toward the back. Plus, the single trumpet player from the band Egg of Winters is dancing about. Oh, and the eight guitarists. Not to mention countless extra musicians hidden behind one another on the crowded stage. In the end, the list of musical instruments goes on longer than “The Twelve Days of Christmas” song and all band members are contributing just about every note scaling the entire alphabet. It’s chaotic. It’s a bit Sun Ra. It’s a bit tribal. And at the center of it all is Lob, a conductor of noise art and his baton, a bass guitar.
Former guitarist of indie rock band Der Spazm and founding member of her newest project Ghostplay, Leticia Garcia, has performed in a couple versions of Instagon and says the music helped her the most at a time when she stepped away from music. She says the improvisational style kept her on her toes and often introduced her to new musicians.
“I really had no idea what to expect,” admits Garcia. “It was challenging and forced me to play a different style of guitar than I was used to. I was also surrounded by other very talented musicians including members of Musical Charis, ZuhG and the Trees. It ended up being a real rush because it was all improv. There was no way to tell what bass riff Lob was going to throw down and how the other musicians would react.”
And it was just that, which kept Garcia accepting Lob’s invites when Instagon scheduled another performance around town.
“You just never know what is going to happen. Sometimes, the music will be so-so, but then all of a sudden you have a moment of ‘Whoa! That was amazing!’” says Garcia. “That’s what [it’s] about, those little moments of amazing, those musical moments that will never ever happen again. It becomes something special for everyone there watching the show and the musicians playing.”
With more than 600 different combinations of musicians and more than 600 shows logged on Instagon’s website, which is like an intricately kept Internet database, one can read all the names Lob’s invited to play alongside him. He’s even attached dates to each name and whether or not the musician performed a second or third time. Yeah, it’s all there.
“I’ll see a player who’s really fluid and I’ll go, ‘Oh, I gotta invite him to [Instagon]’ because he’s gonna get it,” says Lob. “Sometimes, people are standoff-ish because they don’t want to join [another band]. I don’t want you to join my band. I just want you to come experience this on stage jam thing. Instagon’s the mistress band.”
Finally, a band you can cheat on your band with.
Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers go viral for all the right reasons
Words by James Barone –
Much of how the music industry does business has changed, especially over the past decade, but some things remain the same. Perhaps labels aren’t the way to go anymore, and maybe artists are better off releasing EPs or singles as opposed to full-length albums. That’s really just window dressing. What matters is good voices and musicianship plus good songwriting usually equal good music. Unfortunately, another constant of the business seems to hold true: Good music doesn’t always equal success. If there really was a formula that guaranteed a hit, everyone would be using it. In most cases it’s just a matter of chance.
It was perhaps good fortune that Nicki Bluhm’s career in music began at all. Her now-husband Tim Bluhm, frontman for The Mother Hips, overheard her sing at a New Year’s Eve party, as the story goes, and encouraged her to start writing songs and perform live. Along with her band The Gramblers, Nicki released her first album, Toby’s Song, in 2009 and has since shared stages with notable rockers such as Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Jackie Greene.
But despite all that, Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers recently had an unlikely breakthrough that brought their music to a wider audience. One of a series of videos called “The Van Sessions” the band posted to YouTube went viral. The video features the band singing as they drive between gigs, in this case a cover of Hall and Oates’ classic “I Can’t Go for That.” Posted March 23, 2012 the video currently has over 1.2 million hits, and when Submerge conducted a Google search for the song title, Nicki and the Gramblers’ video came up second only to the original.
“Subconsciously, I think we knew that it was good content to have, but again, you can never really premeditate or expect anything like that to happen,” Nicki says of the impetus to post the videos in a recent interview. “There are tons of people in the world who do really incredible stuff, and it doesn’t get any attention at all.
“For us, we’ve had way more triumphant moments, whether they’re at a show or in the studio or whatever, that people don’t really know or hear about, but for whatever reason, these videos in our van were the things that people like. There’s no way to know that. But what we do know, what we were doing was pure and fun and real.”
The video brought the band some much-deserved attention. Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers’ most recent album, 2011’s Driftwood, is a beautiful collection of country-fried pop-rock mixed with sun-baked soul–the kind of songs that seem as though they would be far more at home spinning on vinyl than queued up on Spotify. Nicki is happy to report that once the extra attention was turned her and her band’s way, she and the Gramblers were able to hold on to it.
“It was interesting to see something go viral,” she says. “Ultimately, you have all this attention that you weren’t expecting, and your goal is to direct it to your original music. I think we did. I think we managed to do that. I think people saw the video and got curious about who we were. A lot of people really did check out our original stuff and bought our records, and I hope that continues.”
As long as they keep putting out good music, it should. Nicki says that the band is currently hard at work on their third album, which should be out in early 2013. When we caught up with Nicki Bluhm, she was fresh back from a rehearsal where the band was revisiting some of their earlier material.
When you go back to the old stuff, do you feel the need to tinker with it a little bit or do you leave it as is?
A little bit of both actually. I know when I hear a song off a record, I really appreciate it being played the way I know it and not deviating from that. I guess just putting a little extra glitter on top is what we aim to do, so maybe we’ll add an extra harmony or maybe we’ll add a little extra instrumentation, but structurally we like to stick with how the song was originally written and arranged.
You said you’re working on some new songs…
We’re in the studio recording our third full-length album. We’ve been playing one song off of that. We’re just so excited to play some of the new songs. We definitely continuously work on the new songs. We’re trying to save a lot of them for the album release, because it’s a lot more fun when the album is fresh, but we can’t help it sometimes. They’ll slowly trickle into our set, I think, leading up to the third album’s release.
How long have you been in the studio working on the next record?
We’ve been in for a couple of months. We did a lot of it live, full band in the studio, which was really fun. And now we’re doing a lot of going back and listening. Initially we were planning a fall release, but now we’ve pushed it back to 2013 so we can really take our time and make sure we’re really happy with the way the songs turn out. We’re hoping to be done in the next couple months, but we’re still spending some time on it and giving it some extra love and care.
Did you start trying out different things than on your last album writing-wise?
I think so. Like Driftwood, there were multiple songwriters, so I’ll do a lot of the writing, and so will my husband Tim and Deren Ney, our lead guitar player, and our newest member of almost two years now, David Mulligan, will have a song on the new record. It’s really fun to have multiple songwriters. I think this album will be a little different, because we’re coming more at it as a band in the way that it was recorded–the nature of how the songs were arranged. We went in with skeletons of ideas, and we all helped arranged each other’s songs. There was a bit more of a group effort, I think, in this record as opposed to coming to the studio with a totally finished product and having other people play on it. We all put a little bit of our two cents in on each song.
Listening to Driftwood, it felt like a live album. It sounds like a band record as opposed to a producer’s record. Was a lot of that recorded live?
Honestly, I can’t even remember that well. I think it was probably a mix of both. But certainly, I think it was done a bit more piece by piece than the album we’re working on now. We always strive to have that live feel. None of us really like over-produced records. I think the best way to achieve that is to do stuff live, but certainly the current record was done more in that fashion than Driftwood. On Driftwood, there was a little bit less of the live happening, though, of course, there was some.
Do you go back and listen to your previous albums?
Typically, I don’t love to go back and listen to them. We obviously will reference them. Like today, we were referencing an old record of ours that we’re going to start playing again. It always feels so good. It had been a couple years since I’d listened to the recording and I’d finally listen back and laugh at it, or sometimes it just really warms me too. A lot of times I listen to live recordings and I’m like, “Oh God, I can’t believe this is in the world.” With a lot of the recordings from the studio, you go back and remember the time that you were doing it and what was going on in your life, and it can be very nostalgic, which is always really fun–or it can be really sad, or whatever it was that you were going through. But I don’t make a habit of it, but when I do I typically enjoy re-listening to the recorded songs.
Before you were talking about how you like having multiple songwriters. Do you write all the lyrics, or do the guys writing the songs chip in lyrics also?
Tim and I will co-write songs, but typically we’ll write our songs independently. One person will write the lyrics and melody. There are exceptions where Tim and I co-write, but for the most part, the songwriter does music and the lyrics.
When you’re writing your own lyrics, you know what place it comes from emotionally or mentally or whatever, but when you’re singing someone else’s lyrics, do you have to change your approach to how you connect with the words?
I think that because we all know each other so well, but I think we all come at the songwriting–and I obviously can’t speak for everybody else–but it feels like everyone comes from a place where they’re writing songs for the band. So, I’m not sure how personal the songs are to the writer, because they know that they’re writing songs that will be sung by me in this band, so they’re specifically crafted songs. I tend to relate to them all pretty closely. Daren will write songs sometimes from my perspective, so it’s almost like me singing this story of what he thinks about me. It’s all very intimate. We’re all very close…we’re family. If the song is written as a deep emotion for the writer, I feel like I know that person so well, I don’t really have to talk to them about it. I can feel and sense. I don’t know. All I can say is that we’re all really close, and the songs are vehicles for each other and this band, I think.
Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers will play Marilyn’s on K in Sacramento on June 1, 2012. Tickets are just $8 and the show will get underway at 8:30 p.m. For tickets, go to http://marilynsonk.com/ or http://www.nickibluhm.com/
Jesi Naomi finishes up her first album with The Trippers
For Jesi Naomi, energy is everything. If you focus your energy on the things you desire, and release that energy out into the world, you will attract the things you want in life.
So once she had her mind set on playing music back in 2009, she took some advice from her aunt. She began telling everyone she knew that she was going to become a musician.
Next thing you know, the singer/songwriter was singing ballads at Capitol Garage. Then she met local indie band Bell Boys at Fox and Goose downtown during an open mic night, and they helped her learn the tricks of self-promotion. Later she met local jam band ZuhG, of which she is now a member.
When Naomi is playing solo, ZuhG members JR Halliday, Bryan Nichols and Kevin Martinez comprise her backup band, altogether as Jesi Naomi and the Trippers. In March she will go on a two-month “For the Love of Music” tour, performing both in ZuhG and as a solo artist.
Two years into the music scene, the 24-year-old is now preparing for Jesi Naomi and the Trippers’ debut album, Earplay, to be released in January.
Earplay is seven tracks of blues and soul combined with psychedelic nuances and djembe, saxophone and ukulele thrown into the mix. It was recorded in the span of around three months by Joe Johnston at Pus Cavern.
The album opens with “Kosen Rufu,” which is the title of both the intro and outro tracks. It is also a guiding theme of the album. Broadly defined, it is world peace through individual happiness, a concept stemming from Buddhism. As a practicing Nichiren Buddhist, this concept is paramount for Naomi.
“[Kosen Rufu] is world peace by making each person have their individual peace,” she explains.
Certainly this applies to the song “Change Train,” which Naomi wrote for her mother, who was an alcoholic.
Her mother’s attention was constantly split between her children and the bottle, and Naomi remembers thinking, “If I write this song, I want her to find her change train. If I sing this song as many times as I can, she’ll get better.”
A year later, after performing the song show after show, her mom told her she had gone sober.
Though school had never been Naomi’s thing, it is what brought the Chico, Calif., native here to Sacramento. Naomi thought she was going to make music videos for a living. She was enrolled at Sacramento State as a media/marketing major.
Yet reading, comprehension, spelling, memorizing was the sort of thing she felt detached from. Whenever she hit a burn out point, she would think to herself, “Forget this. I’m gonna go paint.” Up to this point, painting had been her artistic release.
But somewhere along the way she discovered the pianos in the music rooms at school. Then a guy by the name of Richard Martin started listening in on her practicing piano and pushed her to learn scales.
“That’s where it all started,” she remembers. “I just needed a little direction.”
That Christmas her younger brother taught her how to play the guitar, something she thought she would never be able to do, mostly because the thought of memorization intimidated her. But memory is just a muscle, she can now say with confidence, and what’s more important than memorization is feeling the music. And she has come to realize that she’s got music coursing through her veins.
“Music is in my blood,” she says earnestly.
You could say Naomi is following in her father’s footsteps. He played drums in a band called Pole Cats back in the day and went on tour when she was still in her mother’s belly. Though he’s no longer in a band, he played drums on the track “Hold Me Nice” on Earplay. It is the first song Naomi ever wrote, back when she was learning how to play piano.
She often catches people by surprise when she reminds them that it’s only been two years since she started playing music.
“There’s no better way to learn than to just get thrown into the deep end and hope to swim,” she laughs.
Yet when she is performing it is as though she’s been a musician on a stage all her life, as though that is where she is meant to be. She wields a sense of confidence and power that is hard to come by in a performer.
Offstage Naomi is warm and easygoing. Sitting in the practice space behind the ZuhG Life store, she sips on Earl Grey tea and speaks effortlessly about her music in a conversation that lasts a good 45 minutes. She wears an enchanting smile on her face and responds coolly in a bluesy tone.
Make no mistake that this is a woman with self-respect.
In a way, Naomi says, women have it easier in the music world because they are more marketable. The notion is that they just have to look good.
“That in turn makes it harder for a woman to really put out her true soul,” she says.
“I’m not going to go up there and wear some skanky outfit and not know what I’m singing,” she continues. “I want the music to shine, that’s pure beauty to me.”
Still, she’s been approached by the occasional creep for the wrong reasons.
There was one, she recalls, who made himself out to be the big-time producer who would get her work noticed.
“I thought I was going in to make a demo tape, [but] it wasn’t like that,” she says. “Thank God my mom raised me to know about those kinds of things.”
She went her separate way, with her mind in one place. It’s all for the love of music.
And despite the few exceptions, Naomi says she’s received a wealth of support from her male colleagues.
“I feel like I get a lot of respect being a [female musician], especially if I respect myself,” she says.
If that is the energy Naomi puts out into the universe, certainly that’s what she’ll receive.
Jesi Naomi and the Trippers will be putting forth positive energy at Marilyn’s on K Jan. 7, 2012 when they celebrate the release of Earplay, a seven-song EP. There will be a $10 cover, which will include a copy of the CD. Also playing will be Brad Relf, The Bell Boys, James Cavern and Monkey Flower. Show starts at 8 p.m.
Downtown Sacramento does not lack fun things to do on New Year’s Eve, that’s for sure. Allow this breakdown of NYE options to be a bit of a road map to your having an epic night. This surely isn’t everything happening in town, but here are a some great options nonetheless: District 30 (1022 K Street) has DJ Serafin (who is huge in the Los Angeles and Las Vegas club scenes) spinning his seamless integration of house, hip-hop, pop, Bmore and rock. Ace of Spades (1417 R Street) has Hollywood-based rapper Mickey Avalon with openers Big Chocolate and Richard the Rockstar. The Hyatt Regency Sacramento (1209 L Street) has an “Acoustic Lounge” with Quinn Hedges and Ryan Hernandez as well as a bigger/louder party inside their new L on 12 Nightclub with DJ Rated R and the super-fun cover band Cheeseballs. Speaking of cover bands, Shenanigans (705 J Street) has a huge party lined up featuring live music from Departure, a Journey tribute band, as well as 8 Track Massacre, an ‘80s cover band. Old Ironsides (1901 10th Street) has DJs Shaun Slaughter and Roger Carpio for a special NYE Lipstick party. The Blue Lamp (1400 Alhambra Boulevard.) has The Pine Box Boys, an Americana/bluegrass/experimental band from San Francisco along with three opening bands and Marilyn’s on K (908 K Street) has The Mother Hips. This list could easily go on and on, but we’ll spare you. For more NYE party options, click here for our calendar
Wires in the Walls, Love Is
Marilyn’s on K – Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011
We’ve all spent time arguing over the philosophical question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?” This age-old question was put to the ultimate test last Tuesday night at Marilyn’s in downtown Sacramento, but instead of trees trying to make themselves heard, it was music. When I first entered the bar it was apparent that they predicted a slow night as the cover charge had been lowered from $5 to only $3. Marilyn’s on K is a pretty cozy venue, but the lack of bodies made it seem more spacious than it usually is.
Before headliners Wires in the Walls took the stage, the show started with the soft acoustic sounds of Love Is. And although the frontman was flying solo without his band, he made sure to fill the hollow room with his soothing voice and acoustic guitar riffs. His set was so full of energy and soul it was no surprise that after the show he explained that most of his songs are based on personal experiences and his “spiritual journey” through life. His audience that night only consisted of four people sitting at the bar, a couple playing pool and six people in the crowd. Every once in a while, a loud slam would come from a game of dice with the bartender at the end of the bar. At one point the lead singer acknowledged the few people that were in attendance and took the time to thank the few individuals for coming.
To my surprise, after Love Is’ set was over most of the audience members left to get ready on stage–they turned out to be in the headlining band, Wires in the Walls. But that wasn’t about to stop the Los Angeles-based band from rocking out. Wires in the Walls, who got their name from the Elvis Costello song, “Green Shirt,” started to play catchy folk-rock jams that made it hard not to tap a foot to the beats. Despite the low turnout, the band played with as much energy as they would have to a sold-out crowd, and the lead singer, Warren Sroka, even broke into a small sweat. All five band members owned the stage with their alternative sounds and seemed like they were having a blast. Unlike most shows, the bartender could be heard too easily in the bar and got the chance to talk to the band in-between a few of their songs. During the middle of their set a young woman left her game of dice to place a dollar in the glass tip jar that was near the stage and received a mouthed “thank you” from one of the guitarists. Before they broke into their latest single “New Symmety,” the guitarist placed a camera on top of his head to shoot their new 3D video of the tour.
“Doesn’t he look great in that headpiece?” Sroka asked with a smile. “I find it hard not to laugh.” Wires in the Walls played their entire set and didn’t seem to be bothered that they were only playing for a few people at the bar, in fact they didn’t seem to be phased by it at all. “It doesn’t really matter how packed the place is, it’s how many people you can connect with,” said bass player Nick Tracz after the show. “Despite the crowd we had a great show. We had a ton of fun.” Wires in the Walls proved to be one band that knows how to put on a great show despite the circumstances. So, if a band rocks out on stage and there is barely anyone to hear it, do they still make a sound? The answer is yes: nothing could have stopped Wires in the Walls from being heard that night.
I’ve got a soft spot for instrumental music. I’m really not sure why. Maybe it was the extreme amount of Joe Satriani albums my parents played while I was growing up. Maybe it’s because most lead singers aren’t very good. (That was sarcastic. Mostly.) There’s just something about guitar, bass, drums, keys, etc. doing all of the talking that gets me. The Bumptet is a new group with Sacramento ties that fits this bill perfectly. This jazz-funk trio is made up of Sean Lehe (of the band Izabella, which packs out Marilyn’s on the regular) on guitar, Jonathan Stoyanoff (from Global Funk Council) on bass and Zack Bowden (who tours with Jackie Greene and previously played in Chingus) on drums. They take a cool improvisational approach to their music, which gives it a very loose feel. Their self-titled debut album will see its Sacramento release on April 15, 2011 at Marilyn’s on K where the trio will perform alongside Lake Tahoe’s electro-funk group STC. Show starts at 9 p.m. and it’s 21-and-over. For more information and to sample some tunes, visit Thebumptet.com
Photo by Kurt Bertilson
Bob Woods Band CD Release/Video Shoot
Sacramento musician Bob Woods goes way back. He started playing music in 1971 with the Sacramento Western swing band Tokpela. He then went on to form the Nevada City club favorite band the Bob Woods Trio. He’s played with a slew of notable cats, including Tiny Moore, Bill Kirchen and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, among others. Now, his current four-piece band (Woods on guitar and vocals, Pete Kmeto on bass and accordion, Steve Namie on drums and Ray Elzey on pedal steel), is readying their full-length, This Town, for release on March 12, 2011 at Marilyn’s on K. The group will also be shooting a music video that night, so bring your dancin’ shoes and your best moves, and you just might end up in the final cut. Also performing will be Nothin’ Personal and Dirt Nap Band. Doors open at 7 p.m. and tickets are just $10 at the door. If you RSVP ahead of time, you’ll save yourself five bucks. Call (916) 524-9671.
