Results tagged “rockyvotolato”

This weekend, we’re happy to recommend two events that may just enhance your mental and physical health, while helping to connect you with your neighbors one last time before the rain-induced hibernation officially begins. These two events combine three of the city's strengths: local music, community and the great outdoors.

      

Greenlake was alive with color yesterday. Striking red and gold leaves lit up the sky, bringing smiles to the faces of our fellow trail goers. Took a little longer than usual to make the trek, as we (and others) stopped often to take pictures. Unfortunately, we only had our phone with us, so these will have to do for now.

Tonight, everybody's favorite local chanteuse Jesse Sykes plays a free KEXP show at Seattle Center's Mural Ampitheater, featuring music from her new EP Gentleness of Nothing. (Tomorrow night, Rocky Votolato plays the Mural.)

He sang some new songs ("Sparklers," "Lucky Clover Coin") and steadfastly refused to satisfy one man's regularly howled demand for "Tennessee Train Tracks." He strummed more than he picked, shoveling away at the bass string. He got Neumo's staff to turn off the smoke/incense machine huffing away in the back, to wild cheers from anyone in the smoky vicinity. At his best, his songs are as meticulously artless as Kerouac: on the page, his lyrics read like a vagabond's travel diary--but when he sings, you hear the crafty rhyme of "pennies" with "when is." Sometimes his rhythm wandered, lines staggering off into the distance, but then finally came the short, chopped, punch of "Is is the red wire / or the blue wire?" and the hulking, bruised men in dark hoodies and boots threw back their heads and shouted along: "Oh god I love you / I mean forever / I left my body to break the news."

Tonight, head to the Sunset for the shoegaze stylings of Film School.

Audrey pretty much summed it up yesterday, but to paraphrase: Rocky Votolato and Jesse Sykes are a miraculous match made in Americana heaven.

Some things go together so naturally that you wonder how they ever existed apart from each other. Peanut butter and jelly, Spencer and Heidi, the gays and Halloween. And now a musical double-header that seems to be a match made in heaven: Rocky Votolato and Jesse Sykes (and the Sweet Hereafter). Thanks to Barsuk (their shared record label), the two singer-songwriters are on the road together, and their joint appearances promise to be something special.

We've seen Rocky Votolato's name splashed all over the web and heard the DJs out there mention him enough times that we finally had to stop and say, OK -- what's the deal with this guy. We streamed yesterday's live in-studio on KEXP and well, we didn't get much work done. So enthralled were we that it was all we could do to wiggle the mouse around, do a little tappy tap of the keys, make it look like we were working.

9:00 pm // Neumos // $10 adv.

Our sisters in arms down the road a piece have created something from nothing; That is, they went through a bunch of press releases, MySpace sites and Purevolume profiles --all of which are "information" only in the softest, squishiest, most generous sense of the word, and extracted the concrete details of who's going to be at SXSW this year. The list, in contrast to most press releases and MySpace pages, is something that's actually useful. Holy crap, guys. The list is long and distinguished, as we've come to expect from SXSW, and contains big name bona fides like Interpol, Emmylou fucking Harris and Pete motherfucking Townsend as well as a ton of bands we're not cool enough to have ever heard of like all the ones we're not going to list here to avoid admitting to not knowing and loving them as they surely deserve. Like Go! Go! 7188, for example.

Love Bumbershoot, but wish it were more elitist? You're in luck.

Bumbershoot sent out an email this morning announcing a bunch of acts for this year's Smaller, Better Festival. There's even more hiphop on the bill with the addition of local act Blue Scholars and Common Market and Brit chick Lady Sovereign (who we're looking forward to seeing with The Streets soon). Area indie rockers Crystal Skulls and Rocky Votolato will be there and to continue the trend of one Brit band for every couple of local acts Badly Drawn Boy is now scheduled.

The bane of musicians and artists around the country--the lack of adequate health insurance-- has compounded Suval's bad situation, and the 'Seattle Music Cares' benefits are an attempt to help her out. Tomorrow's show at Neumos will feature Jesse Sykes and Phil Wandscher, Matt Brooke and Jen Ghetto, Faith & Disease, Rocky Votolato and Black Nite Crash. Special guests will include Suval herself, who may even attempt to sing.