Ah, the week after AthFest is always one of the most difficult times of the year to schedule anything. Nobody wants to work, nobody wants to play, and nobody wants to go out. Well, tough luck, punters. Don’t worry. I haven’t loaded this column with a bunch of activities. Even so, there’s a whole week’s worth of news below, and I expect you to act accordingly. Get in accord now…
PSSST. OVER HERE: Birmingham, AL’s Secret Stages festival is, hands-down, one of the most exciting live music things happening in the Southeast. For the unfamiliar, Secret Stages is billed as a “music discovery festival,” which means you’re not going to deal with a high ticket price, the same lineup as a billion other summer festivals, or any number of headaches major music events present. What you will get is a killer lineup of—to steal a phrase from JoE Silva—bands that are just off the radar of the national scene. Chances are good they’re heavy hitters in their hometown scenes, but in any case, they haven’t yet made that jump from super indie to major indie. Secret Stages has always been enthusiastic about booking Athens bands, and this year, we’ll be represented by WesdaRuler, Partials, Lambda Celsius and Eureka California. Secret Stages happens Aug. 2–3, and you can find all the information you need at secretstages.net and facebook.com/secretstages.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE: Drew Kirby (Marching Banana Records) has a new collection of tunes out under his Civils project. This one is named Birch Richmond’s Rainbow Cowboy Collection and, ostensibly, is an outlet for the songwriting of totally made-up character Birch “Hardbody of the Hills” Richmond. At any rate, this is pretty off-the-rails. It’s full of freak-folk, tape manipulations, sampled oddities, etc. It’s also got some bursts of incredible and pretty melody, and deliberate songwriting. For example, “Levity Reaching” and “Kinda Lighted” are real shining gems here. Sing along sort of at marchingbanana.bandcamp.com.
TWO FOR FLINCHING: Group Grope and Wet Garden, two of Athens’ most stalwart and steadfast names in experimental electronic music, will head out on a short tour this week. They’ll be hitting up Boone, NC, Lexington, KY, and Columbus, OH on this jaunt. But first, there’s a tour kickoff show happening at their home base of Go Bar on Saturday, June 29. DJ Other Voices, Other Rooms—a Group Grope member himself—is spinning this night, too. If you’re unfamiliar, learn yourself something over at soundcloud.com/group-grope and soundcloud.com/wet_garden.
FAMILY AFFAIR: The next instance of Museum Mix at the Georgia Museum of Art happens Thursday, June 27 from 8–11 p.m. Museum Mix is a thrice-yearly event that is free, open to the public and an opportunity for folks to gather at the museum, see the exhibitions and hear some DJs spin tunes. There’s also food, beer and wine, and I’m pretty sure that got your attention. It’s a really neat piece of community outreach, to be honest. This time around, the guest performers are John Fernandes (Cloud Recordings, et al.) and his sons Ravi and Kiran. It’s anticipated that the three will play a combination of live music and tune spinning. For more information, see georgiamuseum.org.
EVERY MOTHER’S SON: Local dudes Jet Phase just released their debut self-titled EP. These guys have been playing out for quite a while now, so it’s high time they recorded something. One of their self-identified descriptors is “adult alternative pop/rock,” and that’s certainly true enough on the Boz Scaggs-meets-Matchbox 20 “Bad Karma” and the soft-rocking “Nowhere.” Opening track “Sane” has a fairly catchy lead guitar line reminiscent of the Descendents, and “Who Could Do Right by You” shows Jet Phase doing its Foo Fighters best. Overall, this is all really characteristic of what we used to call a booking demo. That is, a short collection of tracks meant to show clubs the breadth of a band’s music and get their feet in the door. It isn’t really something that should be for sale. This is the kind of thing that’s given away at shows—if manufactured in quantity at all. That said, you can totally buy it at store.cdbaby.com/cd/jetphase5 and stream it on all the major services.
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