Music has always been my dream. I began writing songs to express my feelings. Sadness, excitement, anger, hope, frustration, confusion, love. I poured everything I had into writing. When Trevor and I began making music together it was all fun. We eventually threw a few songs on some website called “MySpace” and one day realized people actually wanted to hear what we had to share and let us know the impact that our music had on their lives. Knowing our music helped and inspired people in turn helped and inspired us! We wrote more songs, started touring, got signed, and have continued to write music and tour the past few years. As many of you know, this has been a very difficult process on my health and happiness. I have dealt with a lot both physically and mentally.  For several tours now, I have played our set and then was forced to retreat to our green room to cope with pain, nausea, panic attacks, migraines, and a lot of other really cool stuff that isn’t fun to talk about like vomiting. A lot of this culminated with us having to drop off our tour with All Time Low last fall.  While we know we maybe let some of you down, the support and encouragement from all of you was tremendously helpful and overwhelming.  Not being able to connect with all of you has been really hard. Our anthem has always been “We All Have A Story To Tell.” He Is We Is all about connecting with you guys and sharing in our victories and struggles together. I haven’t been able to do that for a few tours now and that is heartbreaking. Because of my accumulating health issues and concerns from my doctors and loved ones, I can not continue to tour. This is something very difficult to admit. Trevor and I have talked a lot about this and feel that my inability to tour should not be the end of the road for He is We.  We will continue with our tour plans for the “Give It All Tour.” Tomorrow we will introduce you to who will be filling in for me. It kills me that I can’t be there, but I literally just can’t tour. After our tour with The Summer Set and The Cab, I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. Put simply, my vertebrae are fusing together. I am going through a form of chemotherapy for my condition and doctors don’t know if I will ever truly be healthy enough to be on the road full time again. When I am on stage and can’t hear myself singing because you guys are louder than the PA is a magical feeling that makes me feel that He Is We can’t just stop because I can’t tour.  Our name, He Is We, basically means we are all in this life together. We as friends and fellow humans needs to pull our strength together and help however we can for the greater good of others.  Truly and whole heartedly wish I could be there, but the show must go on. I love each and every one of you and appreciate all your thoughts and prayers. I will do my best to keep you all updated on our facebook and twitter. PS Trevor says if #GetWellSoonRachel trends, he’ll sing the man part of “All About Us” Bamboozle.

http://www.facebook.com/heiswe.official/app_123966167614127

Love,

He Is We

hear Monophonics at The Social on May 8th. http://www.thesocial.org/event/110947/

For the past decade, ‘retro soul’ sounds have been somewhat of a touchstone for artists and audiences looking for musical authenticity. As a fan of vintage R&B, soul, funk, etc, it’s been great to see/hear new artists create new music with a sound that I hold so dear. At the same time, it’s been a bit worrying. How long could this trend last? Will groups just continue to recreate vintage sounds and eventually devolve into bad Motown pastiches or will those sounds be a springboard (hopefully) to something new that embraces yet transcends its influences? In Your Brain by The Monophonics answers those questions for me. Fortunately, it’s the latter and the answer is a resounding ‘YES!’

Sonically, In Your Brain sounds like a dream band featuring Dennis Coffey, the Funk Brothers, & Dr. John recording at Black Ark studios. However, this record is much more than just a culmination of sonic influences. The writing at the heart of the LP helps make this something completely original as well as something rooted in the past. I once read a Robert Wyatt quote about Paul Weller that I think is applicable. To paraphrase it, the Monophonics, like master carpenters, have created new furniture from seasoned wood. ‘In Your Brain’ by the Monophonics will be released by Ubiquity Records on May 15th. words/ c weaver

MP3: The Monophonics :: All Together

via Beach House – “Myth” – Stereogum.

Beach House play at The Beacham on May 9th.

Beach House – “Myth”

Mar 7th ’12 by amrit @ 12:51am 60 Comments Share1405

6 Photos »

Just after midnight, via @BeacccheHoussse, comes a track called “Myth.” It is presumably from their forthcoming Sub Pop LP, and assuredly right up your alley if you are into the Beach House brand of swelling sentimentality and/or the room-filling vocals of Victoria Legrand. (Possibly true fact: “Legrand” is French for “the grand.”) Dig in, and then repeat, because it is lovely:

The song’s streaming on beachhousebaltimore.com, too.

Thanks for the tip, Stephen.

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Lucero play with guests Soul Rebels at The Beacham on Thursday, May 24.

http://www.thesocial.org/event/105301/

Our rating:

Buy this album on Amazon!

SOUL REBELS TO PERFORM ON CONAN THIS THURSDAY

FESTIVAL DATES ADDED

“Soul Rebels turn brass into gold” (Downbeat)

“…puts the Soul Rebels in the company of legends – and rightfully so.” (Relix)

The Soul Rebels will be performing with Galactic and Corey Glover on Conan this Thursday, March 29th. Additionally, the band has been asked to perform at Bonnaroo, Electric Forest and at Metallica’s Orion Music and More Festival in Atlantic City on June 23 & 24. Check out the Soul Rebels and Metallica performing “Seek & Destroy” together here at Metallica’s 30th Anniversary shows in San Francisco this past December.

Released in January, Unlock Your Mind (Rounder), the first nationally distributed album from the Soul Rebels – a band that gets right to the heart of New Orleans music. Containing eight members, the Soul Rebels are known for playing ferocious funk, second line grooves and incorporating fresh elements – hip hop, go-go and reggae beats – on top of a hundred years of street-wise jazz tradition. At the forefront of New Orleans’ musical revitalization, the Soul Rebels bring a resurgent energy to Unlock Your Mind, filling it with the most exciting, head-spinning, body-pumping music to emerge from the city in years.

NEW TOUR DATES:

4/28 The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival following Cee-Lo Green

6/8 Bonnaroo

6/16 The Playboy Jazz festival at The Hollywood Bowl

6/23-6/24 Orion Music and More with Metallica

6/22 The Brooklyn Bowl

6/29 Electric Forest Festival

The Soul Rebels will also be touring Europe in July and will be playing the world renowned Womad festival on July 26.

UPCOMING TOUR DATES WITH GALACTIC:

3/27 Moe’s Alley Santa Cruz, CA

3/28 Belly Up Solana Beach, CA

3/29 The El Rey Los Angeles, CA

3/30-31 The Fillmore San Francisco, CA

hear Lucero play with guests Soul Rebels Brass Band on Thursday, May 24.

http://www.thesocial.org/event/105301/

Memphis Americana group Lucero’s ninth studio album Women & Work is a parachute of interwoven themes of working women, work and men who work and love their women.

It’s been a long time since 1998, and with the growing years Lucero’s sound has evolved from their identifying restrained playing to a sonic layering comprised of vibrating guitars, joyous horns and quicktime keys.

Women & Work’s “On My Way Downtown” has lead vocalist Ben Nichols prodding, “come on baby, don’t you wanna go, wanna go? I ain’t looking for forever I’m not asking for your hand, I’m just on my way downtown and I thought I’d take a chance.” Saturated with catchy energetic key arrangements and honky-tonk lyrics, “Women & Work” captures the Deep South’s unabashed will to two-step, drink booze and smash televisions (as Nichols promises) under a canopy of good company.

“It May Be Too Late” tells a story of unrequited love and self-reflection, while “Juniper” holds a mirror to the lonesomeness lust brings. Nichols continually grunts, groans and pleads through his rusty, catch-all vocals, though some tracks fail to resonate. While themes begin to feel overworked during the middle tracks, the piano solo of “Like Lightning” starts off the jam track and then we’re back—full attention and ears are directed to the twangy, good-vibe lyrics “don’t go wasting lightning.”

The six-piece has restrained its punk traditions on this 2012 album, bridging the transition between the shadow of the past and the prospects for the anti-pop future. The contradiction is the very foundation of their Americana roots—a mixture of a retrospective eye and solace of the future rounds out the album with final track “Go Easy.” The hymnal tells us, “we’ll find our way” with backing female vocals and an atmospheric church choir awareness.

Chocked with perspectives, inexpensive times and homegrown storytelling, Women & Work is the perfect album for when you’re on your way to a family reunion and hoping your country family will be appreciative of your taste in music.

this is a very interesting profile of a really unique musician. Thomas Dolby brings his Time Capsule Tour to The Social on March 18th.

http://www.thesocial.org/event/89713/

Speakers Thomas Dolby: Electronic music pioneer

Thomas Dolby has spent his career at the intersection of music and technology. He was an early star on MTV, then moved to Silicon Valley; now he’s back on the road (with friends) with his new album, “A Map of the Floating City.”

Perhaps best known for blinding us with science, TED Music Director Thomas Dolby has always blurred the lines between composition and invention. As a London teenager, Tom Robertson was fascinated with the convergence of music and technology. His experiments with an assortment of keyboards, synthesizers and cassette players led his friends to dub him “Dolby.”

That same fascination later drove him to become an electronic musician and multimedia artist whose groundbreaking work fused music with computer technology and video. Two decades, several film scores, five Grammy nominations and countless live-layered sound loops later, it’s clear Dolby’s innovations have changed the sound of popular music.

In the 1990s, Dolby re-created himself as a digital-musical entrepreneur, founding Beatnik, which developed the polyphonic ringtone software used in more than half a billion cell phones. Now back to touring and recording (after a 15-year hiatus), he’s using seriously retro technology — ’40s-era oscilloscopes and Royal Navy field-test equipment — to control his modern synthesizers, in shows that are at once nostalgic and cutting edge. And he continues his tenure as TED’s Music Director, leading the eclectic characters of the TED House Band.

“Dolby enjoys the enviable position of not having to make music for a living, and that allows him to give serious consideration to what’s important to him about being a pop artist.”

San Francisco Chronicle

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• “When the polar ice caps melt, my recording studio will rise up like an ark, and I’ll float off into the drowned world like a character from a J.G. Ballard novel.”Watch this talk »

Continue reading on Examiner.com Thomas Dolby at the Social on March 18th – Orlando Concerts | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/concerts-in-orlando/thomas-dolby-at-the-social-on-march-18th#ixzz1pDdOuS8h