Acoustic Basement @ The Barbary: Brian Marquis, Koji, A Loss For Words, Geoff Rickly and Vinnie Caruana.
Text and images by Mikki Pratel.
The Barbary hosted the Acoustic Basement Tour, sponsored by the Warped Tour, last Thursday. Punk rock artists such as Brian Marquis, Koji, A Loss For Words, Geoff Rickly and Vinnie Caruana stood on stage with only their guitars and made the crowd move.
The Bailey Hounds @ Art In The Age.
Surrounded by handmade handbags, fancy T-shirts and expensive eyeglasses, The Bailey Hounds performed last night at Art in The Age in Old City. It was a great set from the indie/folk/alt-country quartet who announced that they are planning to drop their next album in two months.
There were members of The Quelle Source, Seamus Browning and Shorty Boy Boy in attendance, as well as way too many graduates of St. Joe’s Prep (and yes, the hair sample drug testing did come up in conversation). It seemed as though everyone in the small crowd of 50 or so folks knew each other. But maybe it was just the free Narragansett beer, Spodee wine and root cocktails that made for the convivial atmosphere.
Weekend Music Picks: Lots Of Philly Talent (And The Most Popular DJ In The World).
Some of these shows are pricey and we’re betting they will still sell out, or come close to it. Who know what that means? But there is something for everyone this weekend, from old school punk and good old Philly hip-hop to rockabilly sounds and the most popular DJ in the world.
GrassROOTS: Black Thought Wants Young Girls To Grow Into Healthy Women.
Text and image by Sofiya Ballin.
We caught up with Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought of The Roots, on Saturday before a charity show called Let’s Move It Philly! at Sigma Sound. Proceeds from the night went to Trotter’s personal project, GrassROOTS Community Foundation, which assists young girls in Philadelphia.
Trotter launched the project in 2010 with his friend Janice Johnson Dias.
“The First Lady was launching her initiative, Let’s Move,” said Johnson Dias. “I thought it was a brilliant initiative but I thought there were a few things missing that I could lend my own efforts to. It hadn’t really been specifically targeted around poverty, which is the mother of all diseases, and had not asked the hip-hop community, who I think are dramatically effective because of the intersection of poverty and hip-hop.”
A sociologist who earned her Ph.D at Temple, Johnson Dias wanted a program that would teach girls to grow up as healthy women – physically and mentally. By raising smart women, you create a foundation for society. So she reached out to her neighbor, the frontman of The Roots.
“The Roots, we support a wide range of charities and their events but in all the years that we’ve been rocking out, there hasn’t been anything that’s been the charity The Roots gets behind,”Trotter said. “After seeing people misappropriate funds and people raising money and never seeing where it trickles down to, I wanted to be involved in something I could actually be about, as opposed to talking a good talk. “
GrassROOTS funds programs around the city. At Warren G. Harding Middle School, for instance, they run an after-school program called C.H.I.C.K.S., where at-risk children are taught to eat healthy and exercise as a form of developing healthy minds. The foundations hopes to operate in ten cities across the country soon.
We’ll have a lot more about GrassROOTS in the summer issue of JUMP, which will debut at The Roots Picnic. See pictures from their Saturday show here. There were a ton of Philly artists who performed, with unexpected appearances by Kindred the Family Soul and Freeway.
WIN FREE TICKETS! See Willy Moon at Underground Arts Saturday.
It’s a blessing and a curse to have a song on an iPod commercial. Listen to the beginning of Willy Moon‘s “Yeah Yeah” and you’ll almost instantly recognize it if you’ve watched television over the past few months. And it could seem annoying.
But Moon is more than that ubiquitous track. He wears vintage suits, slicks back his hair and sings like a gravelly-voiced roots rocker set against modern beats.
“Think Bo Diddley,” he told the Guardian (UK), “remixed by Swizz Beatz.”
And he’s toured with Jack Black.
On Saturday, Moon will perform at Underground Arts with TJ Kong and the Atomic Bomb and Lily & the Parlour Tricks and we’re giving away tickets to the show.
Like us on facebook and email us at FreeJumpStuff@gmail.com to enter to win a pair of tickets (give us your name and put “Willy Moon” in the subject line).
If you want to play it safe and get your own tickets, find details for the show here.
Second Annual Tri State Indie Awards @ World Cafe Live.
Congrats to all the winners at last night’s winners at the second annual Tri State Indie Awards, which was held at World Cafe Live. Toy Soldiers‘ frontman Ron Gallo (below) hosted the event, with more than 30 bands, artists, venues and festivals honored after being voted on by fans on the Tri State Indie website.
GrassROOTS Benefit Party: Black Thought, Kindred The Family Soul, Freeway, Chill Moody, STA and More @ Sigma Sound.
Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought of The Roots, headlined a night of Philly talent at Sigma Sound as a benefit for his charity, GrassROOTS Community Foundation.
Malene Younglao, Dice Raw, Chill Moody, Suzann Christine, Beano and STS performed. Kindred The Family Soul and Freeway made surprise appearances, blowing away the crowd. Marsha Ambrosius was scheduled to perform but she had to travel to Arkansas where she received a Black History Month living legend award from Walmart.
Pissed Jeans @ Underground Arts.
Text by Nikki Volpicelli. Images by G.W. Miller III.
Shows like this one are usually reserved for basements, or first-floor warehouse spaces, or any small, dimly-lit and half-torn apart venue that that can barely accommodate the amount of bodies sweating and throwing themselves in it.
I was nearly the 400th person to enter Underground Arts to see Pissed Jeans, where the doors were manned by two guys and a list of check marks. And it was early.
When Pissed Jeans took the stage, there was a liter of carrot juice on top of an amp. Matt Korvette, Pissed Jeans’ front man, went back and forth, winding up his face into a disgusting looking grimace. It looked like he was going to cry or crap uncontrollably. Instead he ran through songs. Last night’s show was the release party for the group’s fourth full-length album, Honey, which came out February 12 on Sub Pop.
Why? @ Union Transfer.
Text by Greta Iverson. Images by Evan Kaucher.
Yoni Wolf, Why? lead singer and the goofiest of goobers, pranced around the stage with awkward dancing to the indie-hip-hop music of his band at Union Transfer on Valentines day.
Why? Is a confusing genre mash-up that incorporates a complex rhythmic section (two drummers and plenty of xylophones all over the stage). While some songs feature a 1980’s melody line (“Sod in the seed” from Mumps, etc) others use pretty modern indie-folk music (“Fatalist palmistry” from Alopecia). The band is considered hip-hop by loose definition because of Yoni’s rhythmic vocals. Yoni, sporting a thick and prominent moustache like always, raps about a number of things including conforming (“Crushed bones” from Elephant Eyelash), lost love (“These few presidents” from Alopecia), and suburban isolation (“Sod in the seed” from Mumps, etc).
The band dropped their newest album, Mumps, etc, in December but this late winter tour was not so focused on their newest songs that are picking up in popularity in the indie-sphere. Instead, the band focused on some of their older songs, keeping the die-hard Why? fans at ease with something to sing along to. The band played quite a few songs from Alopecia, an album they put out in 2008, including “The Vowels pt. 2,” “The Hollows,” and “Fatalist palmistry.” As they so often do, the band played a couple of songs from other albums, most notably “Crushed Bones,” “Waterfalls” and “Gemini (Birthday Song)” from 2005’s Elephant Eyelash.
Liz Wolf, the bassist/back-up vocalist and wife of Why?’s drummer, opened with her new solo project, Dream Tiger. Liz’s solo work shows a totally different side of her music and features some psychedelic beats and very dreamy, powerful vocals that capture the audience.
The second opening act, Astronautalis, took the stage with an attitude.
“All right,” said Astronautalis’ Andy Bothwell, “let’s get fuckin’ loud!”
Weekend Music Picks: Everybody’s A Winner.
It’s a pretty awesome weekend for Philly music, with a ton of great acts playing all over town, and most of the shows are wicked cheap. There’s so much good stuff, it’s going to be hard picking which show to see. So, get out there and support your community, people!
JUMP: The Philly Music Project 