INTERVIEW: VICTOR KRUMMENACHER (MONKS OF DOOM)

Interviews / News / Special Features / March 22, 2018
Nick Spacek

Although Camper Van Beethoven side project Monks of Doom released a covers album, What’s Left For Kicks?, in 2006, it’s been over 25 years since their last full-length of original material, Forgery. As an example of just how long ago 1992 was, the album was released on I.R.S. The new album, The Bronte Pin, was sent to Kickstarter backers in November of last year, but the official release on CD, digital and streaming formats comes via Pitch-A-Tent Records on March 23.

The album is a welcome return for the band — which features Camper Van Beethoven’s Victor Krummenacher, Greg Lisher, and Chris Pedersen, along with David Immerglück of Counting Crows — and sees them exploring folk-inflected progressive rock that manages to be serene and pastoral one moment, and thunderous the next. It makes The Bronte Pin quite an involving listen, and one you’re likely to dissect for weeks after first listening. We spoke via email with bassist and lead vocalist Krummenacher about the recording and release of The Bronte Pin.

Modern Vinyl: Given that the album took so long to record, is the release of “The Bronte Pin” something of a relief?

Victor Krummenacher: I would say it’s a relief, yeah. When you do an album this intensive over a long period of time, you lose perspective, and that’s certainly what began happening. It’s the most organic band I’ve ever been in; our working relationships are good and it’s very collaborative. But between all the bands we’re in, as well as having Chris living in Australia, it’s a real slog sometimes. And a labor of love. But still, making an album is NOT an easy thing. Keeping perspective is important, but very hard.

MV: All members split their time between at least two other bands, none of which are known for heavier music. Does the ability to go hard lend a certain appeal to Monks of Doom?

VK: Yes. It does. I certainly like playing acoustic music. Camper Van Beethoven has a legacy of both lightness and darkness blended together, but the band never was as heavy or as loud as the Monks. The Monks are visceral that way. It’s physically demanding, hard, loud music and playing.

MV: The folk aspect of progressive rock really seems to shine through on “The Bronte Pin,” especially on tracks such as “Duat! Duat!” and “John the Gun.” What led to exploring that particular avenue?

VK: David and I are real acolytes of things like Soft Machine, Roy Harper, Fairport Convention…and there’s a cross between Fairport and Jethro Tull because of Dave Pegg…you can have odd time signatures and drop measures with acoustic guitars, you know.

MV: Along those lines, the instrumental cuts from Monks of Doom have always had a certain cinematic quality. Is that intentional, and if so, what are your influences there?

VK: You know, the Monks was initially mostly instrumental. I don’t think I came into my own as a songwriter [until] well into the 1990s. There were moments where I hit the mark, but you know I had a slow burn there. But the band always had a fertile instrumental imagination…it was organic from the first time we played. And I think we all DO have a love of things like Nino Rota, Bernard Herman, Passolini, films like Blow Up…all that stuff just kind of percolates in us naturally. Plus, we’re all studio hounds, so the recorded versions of the songs, to be successful for us, have to have evolution and motion. So they’re kind of cinematic by default. But remember too, our first album was the soundtrack to an imaginary film.

MV: Studio engineer Bruce Kaphan added mellotron and “other odds and ends along the way.” How do you interpolate his work in the project?

VK: Bruce has been fundamental to most of my solo work for the last 25 years. He and I have a tight, intuitive friendship. We hardly have to even speak to each other in the studio. He seemed like a good choice to work with the Monks. He’s been engineering for a long time, and isn’t at all afraid to push himself or the band, and the Monks were out of his usual wheelhouse, which he likes. He’s one of those guys who gets off changing it up. He added a lot of smart choices, from small keyboard parts, to structural editing, to some damn fine mixing. He’s crucial to the success of the album.

MV: When you’re putting together these tracks, what’s the basic starting point: is it lyrical, a riff, or just sort of a concept? [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

http://modern-vinyl.com/2018/03/22/interview-victor-krummenacher-monks-of-doom/

Click here to check out The Bonnevilles’ new track ‘Don’t Curse The Darkness’ via Vive Le Rock Magazine in the UK

Northern Irish garage-blues duo THE BONNEVILLES are today premiering a brand new track exclusively with Vive Le Rock!
By Gerry Ranson

‘Don’t Curse The Darkness’ is from the Lurgan pair’s new studio album Dirty Photographs, which is out this Friday 16 March through Alive Naturalsound. It’s available as a CD, download limited edition vinyl and t-shirt bundle.

Says guitarist/singer Andrew McGibbon Jr, “I love this song, one of my favourite Bonnevilles tracks. This song has taken about 10 years to write, believe it or not. One of the million jobs I’ve had in my life, I delivered and removed pianos. After the last economic crash in 2008 I was sent to this guy’s house in the country to remove his piano. He had lost absolutely everything to the banks but the one thing he wouldn’t let go was the piano. We took the piano from his very nice house, which he had just given up and took them into town. He was such a lovely guy, very chipper, especially considering what he was going through, so I asked him why he seemed to be okay with everything that was happening to him and he said back to me, ‘Don’t curse the darkness, light a candle.’ That blew me away. I wrote it down in my notebook. A few years later I wrote the song and we played it out a few times. We even recorded it for our last album (Arrow Pierce My Heart) but the recording didn’t do the song justice, so I pulled it. We rearranged it a bit and tried again on these sessions and it turned out great, I would never allow a crap version of it to go out as I always felt the song has the potential to be meaningful to someone. It might end up being ‘that’ song for some soul out there that needs it.

“We dedicated it to our friend Audrey Extraordinary Fraser, she was in the room the first time we played it at a gig in Montrose in Scotland. She was going through some difficult stuff at the time and it made her cry. We took that as a good sign.”

The Bonnevilles tour mainland Europe this April, before returning to the UK to play Red Rooster Festival, Euston, Suffolk on 31 May and Mandela Hall, Belfast on 15 June.

https://vivelerock.net/bonnevilles-exclusive-track-premiere/

Beware: The Monks Of Doom Are In Your Head
By James Campion

New Album and Live Shows from the Sound of “21st Century Dystopian Dread”

It is worth noting that sitting in the middle of the living room floor of the East Village apartment of multi-instrumentalist and serial tourer, David Immerglück is a half-opened and very much tightly packed suitcase. Perpetually on the move, both psychically and musically, the man most famously aligned with such bands as Counting Crows and Camper Van Beethoven is whisking through town in the guise of a traveling troubadour, one of dozens of his acoustic or electric guitars at the ready, or maybe a few of his vintage early-20th century mandolins or a lap-steel guitar for good measure. Today, however, on this wind-swept, chilly New York City winter afternoon, he is waxing poetic about what he calls his current musical raison d’être, his not-so-secret passion; a four-piece, intensely quizzical aural assault on all-things rock called Monks of Doom.

More specifically, it is the subject of The Brontë Pin that has brought me here. The Monks new album has haunted me since I first heard its opening notes five months ago. And I knew the man affectionately known as “Immy” was the man who could shed some light on it.

“Oh, I get it,” Immy said when I told him about my sudden obsession with The Brontë Pin. “In the early ‘90s when we were touring with this band called King Missile (best known for its quirky 1992 hit, “Detachable Penis”) their sound guy complained over and over for weeks that he could not understand our music, how it gave him a headache. Then one day he comes up to me and whispers, ‘It’s weird, but Monks of Doom is the only music I want to hear now. Everything else sounds fucked.’”

In 1986, a curious collection of part-time escapees from the aforementioned Camper Van Beethoven, guitarists Greg Lisher and Chris Molla, bassist Victor Krummenacher and drummer Chris Pedersen, (joined three years later by part-time Camper, Immerglück) formed The Monks with a gnawing need to fit the sounds in their head into a construct best suited for them, or as Monks co-vocalist, Krummenacher put it; “a chance to go wherever our imagination took us.” Over the past 30 years these sounds have made their way onto six albums. The Monks newest effort is a searing compendium of imaginative musical musings that balance precariously between distilled prog rock and a pastiche of queer originality.

Thing is after a half-dozen listens to The Brontë Pin, I cannot go more than a day or so without hearing it. There is an addictively calming sense of uneasiness that is both inspiring and scary in each song. They get up inside you like some kind of inner-ear reverberating parasite where everything indeed “sounds fucked.”

An eerily seductive mind-tone, what Immy frames quite un-ironically as “21st century dystopian dread” — starkly penetrating guitars, a rumbling, tumbling, concussively distorted bass and a cracking snare so near and dear to the hearts of those who need to be reminded with every beat that the instrument has the broadest of shoulders — fills the songs of The Brontë Pin, adorned with provocative melodies and barely legible lyrics of god knows what. It opens with a sinuously recognizable “devil’s triad” before picking up the pace into a mélange of riff-laden, kick-ass dual-guitar rock reminiscent of 1970s Black Sabbath with a tinge of ethereal Velvet Underground. Trust me, this stuff is not for the weak-hearted. The Brontë Pin is where the barren desert gives way to an ebony forest with all the lions and tigers and bears. Yeah, “Oh, my.”

To that end, Immy smiles when he tells me; “We’re not afraid to use the more unusual-sounding chord sequences.”

As all-things Monks of Doom, The Brontë Pin has more than an air of mystery. Firstly, its title is a direct reference to Charlotte Brontë, the eldest of the famed 19th century authors, whose Jane Eyre cracked the lid on the private consciousness of her own unique voice and that of her gothic generation. “My mother is a cousin twice-removed from Charlotte,” Immy explains. “The pin on the cover is a family heirloom that my mom and my late grandmother called the Brontë pin, this kind of supernatural connection to people from the past that you carry with you, which is perfect for the Monks. We are obsessed with the supernatural and it comes across in these songs, specifically the instrumental that I ended up naming after this pin.”

The real mystery of The Brontë Pin begins, as all mysteries begin, at its ancient origins, which for the Monks of Doom was 2010, when they entered the legendary Fantasy Records Studios in Berkley, Calif.; a place spiritually disturbed by what Immy describes with some drama as a “bad-mojo cloud over the place”. Built on the lucratively hit-laden, 1960s icon Creedance Clearwater Revival money infamously accrued in that legendarily villainous music-mogul way by Saul Zantz and the ensuing litany of lawsuits between Creedance main songwriter and front-man, John Fogarty and Zantz in the years following the band’s contentious demise. “Growing up in and around San Francisco, it was the Bay area place for recording and also film sound-editing — Coppola worked on all his early films there — but it just had this terrible, dark vibe once you walked in. But once Zantz sold it, there was this feeling that, ‘Hey, we can record here without our record being cursed!’”

For two days, the Monks helped lift the curse by improvising on disparate licks and sort-of choruses and “check-this-out…” bridges, laying down long-form meanderings through basic structures in some wonderfully bastardized concoction of jazz meets grunge meets the sharper end of a battle axe swiftly hacking pieces from Neil Young’s Crazy Horse. “For instance, Victor brought in ‘Up from the Cain’ as nothing but a drums and bass thing and we started messing with it from there,” remembers Immy of the long hours of experimentation that would form this pseudo-punk piece of mischief, complete with dissonant piano descants that dance wildly over a raucous head-bang mantra. The title track began as a one-take 30-minute opus that producer Bruce Kaphan, who Immy calls a “genius Brian Eno on pedal-steel” chopped up into a neat piece of atmosphere in “The Brontë Pin Part One”, the rest ending up later on the record as “Part Two”.

“I didn’t even realize two songs came from the same jam until I heard the full session recording,” says Immy excitedly. “I was immediately reminded of what the original Fleetwood Mac, the one with Peter Green, did with three songs cut from a long jam that make up their record, Then Play On.”

Of course, Immerglück would be reminded of a mostly forgotten 1969 recording by a blues band that is known to the wider public for its 1970s smash hits with a completely different line-up. The 56-year-old’s compulsive knowledge of any kind of music from the 20th century and beyond is frankly disturbing. While on tour with Counting Crows this past summer not a two-minute conversation, or a four-hour bus-ride symposium, would pass without the two of us diving into the deep end of some musical minutia. [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

http://www.theaquarian.com/2018/03/28/beware-the-monks-of-doom-are-in-your-head/

Arthur Alexander Has One Very Good Bar Left
by Marc Michael

From the Communist East to the rock-n-roll West

Rock and roll is a genre rife with stories of excess, debauchery, groupies, drugs, destruction and indulgence, all of which can make for an interesting weekend, but it’s good to know there are still some powerful and uplifting stories too.

Take Arthur Alexander, for example; a young man in a Communist bloc country when rock first rolled over the world.

While folks in the West insisted it was just a passing fad and folks in the East dubbed it another example of western decadence, the young Warsaw native saw nothing less than opportunity and the shape of things to come. One guitar and a whole lot of rebellious attitude later, he found himself deported from his native land and on his way to New York City just in time for the advent of punk rock. That’s where he helped found The Poppees, a CBGB mainstay and one of the hottest bands of its era.

Arthur eventually left The Poppees to form Sorrows, a power-pop ensemble that soon had a record deal with CBS and a hit debut album called Teenage Heartbreak. After enjoying some success with Sorrows, Arthur left for Los Angeles where he’s worked steadily as a producer, racking up album after album for a small army of up-and-comers.

If the old adage “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” has any merit at all, then Arthur is firmly a doer, because for all of his immersion in helping others make their music, he never stopped writing until finally, he had what he considered a solid album’s worth of tunes and that brings up to the present with the upcoming release of his debut solo album, One Bar Left.

The culmination of a lifetime spent making rock and roll music, One Bar Leftis a masterpiece evincing elements of Mersey Beat, rockabilly, proto-punk and, so help me, Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound.”

It is a musical tour from the time that rock music was a fledgling art form up through the moment when the music of rebellion rebelled against itself, answering the profusion of ungainly, overproduced albums with a return to the basics of speed, power and simplicity.

It simply isn’t possible to pigeonhole this collection of 17 tracks; it is a beautiful cross-section of an era, with elements of Beatles, Stones, Byrds, Bowie, Costello, and much, much more. The vocals are melodic, the drums are straightforward and no-nonsense, and the guitar work is simply pure, golden rock and roll. [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

http://www.chattanoogapulse.com/music/features/arthur-alexander-has-one-very-good-bar-left/

Click here to check out The Bonnevilles’ new song “The Poachers Pocket” from their hard-hitting new LP “Dirty Pictures” via Punk News

Listen to the new Bonnevilles’ single!
BY JOHN GENTILE

Today, Punknews is pleased to debut the new single by The Bonnevilles!

“The Poachers Pocket” takes the bluesy swing of groups like The Stooges and MC5 and adds just a touch of honky tonk crunch. Then, when a garage rock fuzzed out solo darts into the track, it shows that this is a band that has studied their textbook and are summoning those same ominous spirits of the legends.

Speaking to Punknews, vocalist/guitarist Andrew McGibbon Jr. said, “The Poacher’s Pocket is the hidden pocket on the inside of the poachers coat. If he’s caught by the game keeper, he can hide what he’s caught in the event he gets searched. I’ve used it as an analogy to take the good out of life, stick something away in the event you need it and don’t forget to look after yourself. It’s also a little bit of a personal manifesto to remind me to do the same.”

The band’s new album Dirty Photographs is out March 15 and you can pre-order it here. Meanwhile, check out the new tune below, right now!

https://www.punknews.org/article/66255/listen-to-the-new-bonnevilles-single

Santa Cruz Art-Rock Legends Monks of Doom Reunite
Camper Van Beethoven side project catches a second wind
BY STEVE PALOPOLI

Greg Lisher is best known as the guitarist for one of the most successful bands to come out of Santa Cruz, Camper Van Beethoven. While they had a minor hit with their cover of Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men” in 1989, they broke up a year later—just before the Alternative Nation music revolution of the early ’90s took what Camper and other bands had been quietly building through the ’80s on college radio, and launched a generation of alt-rock superstars.

“A lot of stuff that we were trying to touch on at the time wasn’t as popular as it became a few years after we broke up,” Lisher says. “I always think, ‘god, what if we hadn’t broken up?’ It could have been a different path.”

It’s a good way to describe what could have happened for Camper—except that he’s not talking about Camper. In fact, he’s talking about Monks of Doom, the other Santa Cruz band he was in throughout the late ’80s. The Monks formed as a side project for Lisher, CVB bassist Victor Krummenacher and drummer Chris Pederson, and guitarist David Immergluck (who replaced Chris Molla very early on, and eventually played with Camper, too, before joining Counting Crows).

In the indie-rock world of the 1980s, where Camper was considered “out there” for their instrumental jams and world-music influences, Monks of Doom was even more out there, with a darker, heavier art-rock sound. The band found a successful niche of its own, getting distribution from prestigious labels Rough Trade and I.R.S. But it broke up just before its sound was about to find a much larger audience, in 1993.

“Soon after the Monks broke up, there were all these heavy bands that became really popular in the ’90s. In a lot of ways, they were both on the cusp,” he says of CVB and Monks of Doom.

But Lisher, the only Monks member who still lives in Santa Cruz, isn’t bitter; in fact, he’s maybe even a little thankful that the bands broke up when they did.

“You’re in a band, you’re slogging away for five years, and all you’re thinking about is, ‘it’s gonna be nice when I get some time to breathe.’ And that’s important, too. The fact that we were able to resurrect these bands might be directly connected to the fact that we took a break. If we had kept going, they might have broken up for good.”

Camper reunited in the early 2000s; the Monks reunited briefly in 2005 for a covers album, What’s Left for Kicks. But this year, Monks of Doom is back in a much bigger way, with an album of original material—The Bronte Pin, which came out last week—and a U.S. tour. (The May 19 show at the Make Out Room is the closest it comes to Santa Cruz.)

It might seem incredible that the band actually started working on this album in 2009, but when you consider their circumstances, it’s actually kind of amazing it ever got finished at all.

“It’s important for us to work together as a band as much as we can, and it’s just hard to get all the members together at one time. It’s super complicated. The other guitar player, David Immergluck, he’s in the Counting Crows, and if the Counting Crows decide they’re going to go on tour, their tours can last up to a year. That’s totally understandable; it’s part of the deal. Plus, Chris lives in Australia,” says Lisher. “The time flies by, and then we might get stuck on something. Sometimes we’d disagree on something, and that would kind of hold us up. So then at a certain point it just became ‘Ok, we’re going to need to finish this and get this out.’” [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

http://goodtimes.sc/santa-cruz-arts-entertainment/santa-cruz-music/monks-of-doom-reunite-new-album-tour/

Click here to check out The Bonnevilles’ new song “The Good Bastards” from their fantastic new LP “Dirty Pictures” via New Noise Magazine

Song Premiere: The Bonnevilles – “The Good Bastards”
We’re pleased to bring you the premiere of The Bonnevilles’ new song “The Good Bastards” (listen below). The track is taken from the band’s forthcoming album Dirty Photographs, which is scheduled to be released on March 16, 2018 through Alive Naturalsound Records. You can pre-order the album here.

The band commented on the song:

“The good bastards are the people who do the difficult things that need doing despite the consequences. The people that take the difficult decisions in life and don’t care what people think of them just so long as the right thing gets done. Publish and be damned.

It’s pretty obvious what the song about, nothing cryptic beyond the title really. It’s a political manifesto to a point, but there are enough good bastards who may be able to look after all the people.

I dedicate this one to my friend, Lisa Magee. She’s one of the good bastards.”

About the band:

Northern Ireland rockers The Bonnevilles are renowned for both their incendiary live shows and soulful song-writing skills. Their music is full of heart, smart, and always fun. On Dirty Photographs, their second studio album for Alive, they display their love for gritty blues, primitive rock ‘n’ roll and Irish folk.

While their new effort still traffics in a similar garage-blues-rock vein as their previous 2016 studio album, Arrow Pierce My Heart, the mood has shifted as Dirty Photographs is more of an upbeat affair. As singer-songwriter-guitarist Andrew McGibbon Jr. reveals, “There’s an emotion of positivity on these songs, rather than the usual tales of woe. Most of the tracks are upbeat, or have a positive message, a message of love or even just plain old fashioned sex. I know others have written a world of songs about those things but we haven’t, so we thought it was our time to jump in.”

And as far as the album’s title track is concerned, McGibbon is quick to admit, “It’s a poem of tribute to my wife’s bum. She’s very pretty and does have a lovely one.”

http://newnoisemagazine.com/song-premiere-bonnevilles-good-bastards/

Click here to check out Arthur Alexander’s (The Poppees / Sorrows) new “One Bar Left” single via Magnet Magazine!

Warsaw, Poland, native Arthur Alexander was at ground zero of the New York City punk movement as guitarist for the Poppees, the first band signed to the legendary Bomp! label and an outfit that helped bridge the gap between power pop and new wave during its mid-’70s existence. A staple of the CBGB/Max’s Kansas City live scene, the Poppees broke up in 1976, and Alexander went on to form the seminal Sorrows before moving from NYC to L.A., where he’s worked producing records for younger bands. Now, he’s back making his own music, and the result is the 17-track One Bar Left (Dead Beat, May 4), a collection of newly recorded songs selected from tunes he’s written over the years.

Today, we bring you the LP’s title track. “I wrote this song in Brooklyn,” says Alexander. “If anyone thinks this is about some down-and-out, broken-hearted guy desperately looking for a place to have a drink, it’s far more involved than that. While on tour with my band Sorrows, we were loading in for a show at the Bowery Electric, and my cellphone fell into a rain puddle. I dried it in rice overnight, charged, recharged and charged again—and again. Alas, the battery showed only, well, one bar left! And it was downhill from there. I spent the whole day running around Brooklyn trying to save it. The phone died a tragic and slow death, but the song was born.”

We’re proud to premiere “One Bar Left” from this onetime Beatle of the Bowery today on magnetmagazine.com. Check it out now, watch the video teaser below, and, kids, hold on tight to your cellphones.
http://magnetmagazine.com/2018/03/15/magnet-exclusive-premiere-of-arthur-alexanders-one-bar-left/

Click here to check out The Prefab Messiahs’ new “Warmsinkingfeeling” video via EarBuddy!

VIDEO PREMIERE:
Out now is the new album, Psychsploitation Today, by The Prefab Messiahs. You might be thinking they’re a new band, cranking out garage rock jams like some of your favorite artists: Ty Segall, King Tuff, Thee Oh Sees. But The Prefab Messiahs have been rocking out since the ’80s. Aside from the 1983 cassette Flex Your Mind, though, no recorded material was available from them until 1998’s Devolver CD-R – an anthology of their recordings from the early ’80s. Several songs on the album were produced by their friend and outsider psychedelic singer-songwriter Bobb Trimble.
Burger Records released the official remastered version of Devolver nearly three decades later, followed by a well-received eight-song maxi-EP of new material entitled Keep Your Stupid Dreams Alive (2015). Psychsploitation Today continues the band’s recent surge of new music. Today, we’re sharing the premiere of the official video for the song, “Warmsinkingfeeling”, which you can watch above.

Primary Prefab Provocateur Xerox Feinberg on the video:

“WARMSINKINGFEELING” is a post-reality cold sweat throbbing in your veins like a persistent Fever Dream, bleating itself hoarse with ’80s saxophone, Bowie hand claps, assorted psychedelic ephemera, and a cut-rate Lizard King weighing down your mind, almost all the time. In the video, a renegade, one-eyed, animated Biker Rabbit goes nowhere fast and gets there. The song’s got a beat so you might as well dance — or die trying. The Prefab Messiahs will follow you the whole way down.
http://www.earbuddy.net/70953/premiere-the-prefab-messiahs-warmsinkingfeeling-video.html/videos

Click here to watch Young Valley’s new “Til I Cross Your Mind” video from their new self-titled LP via PopMatters!

Young Valley Is Suckerpunched by Love on “Til I Cross Your Mind” (premiere)
By JONATHAN FRAHM

AMERICANA TRIO YOUNG VALLEY’S LATEST MUSIC VIDEO IS A RAW REFLECTION ON A STILTED LOVE AND THE AFTERMATH OF ITS END—ACTUAL SUCKER-PUNCH INCLUDED.

Young Valley’s Spencer Thomas is sucker-punched by love in the opening moments of the band’s latest music video for the song “Til I Cross Your Mind”. The song is featured on the Jackson, Mississippi trio’s forthcoming self-titled album, which is coming out on 20 April via Matt Patton (Drive-By Truckers/Dexateens) and engineer/producer Bronson Tew’s new imprint, Dial Back Sound.

Before then, though, fans of the band comprised of Thomas and fellow songwriters Zach and Dylan Lovett will be able to enjoy this all-too-relatable music video and the song it accompanies. Young Valley encapsulates the same raw, rootsy sound that listeners had come to love from their 2014 effort, No Filter, but with a greater sense of self that artists can only really gain by touring as much as the Lovetts and Thomas have these past few years.

“This song fell out onto the page,” says Thomas. “After realizing the person I wanted did not feel the same, I fought with myself to find reconciliation. This song was my way to reach it. Also, I had a blast spitting out fake blood!”

TOUR DATES
23 March – 116 Mobile (Florence, Alabama)
12 April – Santos (New Orleans, Louisiana)
13 April – Live @ 5 Festival (Hattiesburg, Mississippi)
14 April – Slowboat Brewing Company (Laurel, Mississippi)
20 April – During Hall (Jackson, Mississippi) RECORD RELEASE SHOW!
21 April (DAY)- Cotton District Arts Festival (Starkville, Mississippi)
21 April (NIGHT)- Proud Larry’s (Oxford, Mississippi)
4 May – Hey Joe’s (Cleveland, Mississippi)
18 May – Blue Canoe (Tupelo, Mississippi)
24 May – Thirsty Hippo (Hattiesburg, Mississippi)
25 May – Siberia (New Orleans, Louisiana)
26 May – Government St. Grocery (Ocean Springs, MS)
https://www.popmatters.com/young-valley-til-i-cross-2551439504.html

Click here to check out The Tillers’ new “Dear Mother” video from their new self-titled LP via Americana UK!

Video premiere: The Tillers “Dear Mother”
By Mark Whitfield

Cincinnati-based folk string band The Tillers’ new self-titled studio album comes out March 23rd (this Friday, date fans) via Sofaburn Records and they’ve shared the track ‘Dear Mother’ with us which is really rather lovely and features my favourite type of overcast sky. Singer-songwriter-guitarist Sean Geil told AUK: “Most of the subject matter for this song comes from the environmental issues we see in our area of Cincinnati on a daily basis. Polluted waterways and air, a generations-old farm torn down and a subdivision built in its place, River Road lined with factories. In this shoot we went 5 minutes down Rt. 50 to the top of a hill overlooking the Ohio River. In the background you see the beautiful Ohio River Valley stretching and winding along. But in the distance, a billowing power plant juxtaposes the scene, casting a dark and unsettling cloud. It’s all perfectly captured with one camera, in one shot by renowned photographer, Michael Wilson.”
http://americana-uk.com/video-premiere-the-tillers-dear-mother

All this week, KUTX profiles the Ones To Watch: seven must-see artists at SXSW 2018.

BLACK PUMAS

Whether it’s playing guitar with Brownout or producing records by Third Root and Grupo Fantasma, Austin’s Adrian Quesada is a busy man. Last year, a break in his schedule found him writing some psychedelic soul songs, but he needed a singer. Enter Austin’s Eric Burton, and together, they’re Black Pumas.

Recorded at Quesada’s studio, Black Pumas’ debut is out later this summer. Quesada finds it thrilling to start from the ground-up again. “It’s exciting to make new music, you know,” he says. “Imagine if you asked a director to just make Star Wars 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. I feel like I like telling different stories, I like writing different music, and it’s hard for me to write the same style of music every year.”

Listen to the feature below, hosted by Jody Denberg and produced by Art Levy, with engineering assistance from David Alvarez. Catch Black Pumas at the All The Friends Ball at Spiderhouse Ballroom on Sunday, March 11 at 11:30 p.m.

Ones To Watch: Black Pumas

Click here the listen to Young Valley’s new track “Til I Cross Your Mind” via No Depression

SONG PREMIERE: Young Valley — “Til I Cross Your Mind”
By Rachel Cholst

Young Valley is one of those bands that makes you excited about discovering new music. They’ve hit on a formula that’s tried and true: strong harmonies and a solid, Midwestern rock beat with an energy that makes you feel like you’ve never heard it before. “‘Til I Cross Your Mind’s” lilting melody is equal parts fun, nostalgic, and spiteful. You wouldn’t know it was off the cuff, but according to the band’s drummer and singer-songwriter Spencer Thomas, “This song was one of those ‘fall into your lap’ kind of tunes. I was struggling with a past relationship I believed was worth fighting for. After a text conversation confirming that she did not feel the same, I wrapped up all the words I couldn’t properly communicate into ‘Til I Cross Your Mind’ and moved on.” The band handles these complex emotions with a breathtaking confidence, creating a song that is equal parts poignant and cathartic.

Young Valley’s self-titled album will be available April 20th on vinyl, CD, digital and streaming formats via Matt Patton (Drive-By Truckers / The Dexateens) and engineer/producer Bronson Tew’s new label imprint Dial Back Sound. Click here to pre-order all formats.

FOR MORE INFO ON YOUNG VALLEY:
https://www.youngvalleymusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/youngvalley
http://www.dialbacksound.com/young-valley
http://nodepression.com/article/premiere-young-valley-til-i-cross-your-mind

Click here the listen to The Tillers’ new track “Like A Hole In My Head” via The Boot

THE TILLERS, ‘LIKE A HOLE IN MY HEAD’ [EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE]

Folk quartet the Tillers are premiering their new song “Like a Hole in My Head” exclusively with The Boot. Readers can press play below to hear the track.
“Like a Hole in My Head” features lush strings and an upbeat melody, but its sound masks its serious subject matter. Singer, songwriter and banjo player Mike Oberst tells The Boot that the song is “pretty personal” and also written in honor of friends lost to substance abuse.

“In some ways, it is also an outreached hand to those friends who are currently struggling with addiction and depression, to help them rise above,” Oberst tells The Boot. “For so many, that friend is never far, and it’s up to us to listen and love before it’s too late.”

Along with Oberst, guitarist Sean Geil, Sean’s brother Aaron on bass and fiddle player Joe Macheret make up the Tillers; Aaron Geil joined the band in 2010 following the departure of original bassist Jason Soudrette, and Macheret came on board in 2015. The group formed in August of 2007 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and their roots lie in the city’s punk rock and hardcore scenes — which shouldn’t be too surprising after hearing “Like a Hole in My Head.” They’ve earned numerous local awards, toured throughout the U.S., UK and Ireland, and released five albums so far.

The Tillers’ upcoming sixth album, The Tillers, is set for release on March 23 via SofaBurn Records. The album is available for pre-order on vinyl and on CD. Keep up with the band’s tour plans on their official website. – ANGELA STEFANO
http://theboot.com/the-tillers-like-a-hole-in-my-head/