New Tim Barry on Suburban Home

Tim is a great guy and Suburban Home is a great label. There's a new record called 28th & Stonewall coming your way 1/26 courtesy of both parties. If you're of a mind, you can preorder and get a slew of other swag along with it. Check out the preorder offer here.

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Ninja Gun Tour Dates!

Hey Kids:

New info from Ninja Gun HQ. Peep the skinny below:

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Ninja Gun recently got a taste of life off the Valdosta farm and have already been asked to take it on the road again. This time theyll be heading out to support their critically acclaimed album Restless Rubes alongside their long time buddies from Florida, Fake Problems. Ninja Gun recently recorded a new track entitled Time and a Half with Lee Dyess at Earthsound Studio in their hometown of Valdosta, GA. Dyess was also the mastermind behind the wonderful production of Restless Rubes. The new song will appear on a split tour 7 with Fake Problems courtesy of Sabot Productions.

The band has also released a split 7 with Whiskey & Co. for Vinyl Collectives Under the Influence series. The label just launched an Under the Influence podcast featuring interviews with both bands about why they chose the songs they covered and what their respective futures hold. You can listen to the bands versions of classics by The Pogues and The Kinks, as well as the interviews, on the main page of the Suburban Home site.

Ninja Gun Tour w/ Fake Problems
7/16 - St Louis, MO @ Off Broadway
7/17 - Lawrence, KS @ Jackpot Music Hall
7/18 - Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
7/20 - Salt Lake City, CO @ Burt's Tiki Lounge
7/21 - Reno, NV @ Tonic Lounge
7/23 - Ventura, CA @ Bombay Bar & Grill
7/24 - Hollywood, CA @ Knitting Factory
7/25 - Riverside, CA @ Back to the Grind
7/26 - Phoenix, AZ @ Modified Arts
7/29 - Austin, TX @ Emo's
7/30 - Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves
7/31 - Little Rock, AR @ Vino's
8/2 - Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree
8/4 - Tallahassee, FL @ Big Daddy's
8/5 - Gainesville, FL @ 1982 Bar
8/6 - Orlando, FL @ The Backbooth

Mike Hale - Lives Like Mine

You may (or should) remember Mike Hale from his time fronting the mighty Gainesville punk rock triple threat that is/was Gunmoll. They were sort of a Gainesville Jawbreaker and were no strangers to bringing the noise to a basement or house show. They broke up sort of acrimoniously a couple years ago. In the interim, Hale has moved out to California and formed a new band called In The Red that have a record called Volume 2 out courtesy of the good folk of Suburban Home. You can get it here. Look for a review soon on JS-NYC.

In The Red are still a band, but Hale has decided to quit his job and give up his lease to become a full-time musician. It ambitious, especially in this day and age, but he's got a decent record to springboard with.  Lives Like Mine is all Hale, with spartan guitar and/or piano backing. It's nice, if not especially engaging for me personally. Hale has a nice voice and the songs are all better than the average stuff you'll hear. Forgive me, but Austin Lucas has raised the bar improbably high for me as it concerns solo fare in this day and age. It's definitely worth checking out and, as luck would have it, Suburban Home and Vinyl Collective are giving away Lives Like Mine away for free here, so check it out yourself and spread the gospel, if you see fit. Hale has a running series of posts from the road at punknews.org that you can keep up on here. His social networking engine can be found here, if you do that sort of thing.

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Jon Snodgrass - Visitor's Band

Jon Snodgrass is one-half of the songwriting Cerberus that is Ft. Collins mainstay Drag The River, a band whose records you should purchase immediately. Visitor's Band is his first solo release, comprised of ten new songs and the time-honored bonus track in the DTR tradition that reprises the entire album as a single track. While Drag The River used this to ensure they could monopolize jukebox time, Jon breaks a little from tradition by reprising the entire record in a string of demo versions. 

As is becoming the norm for Suburban Home releases, Visitor's Band is a great singer-songwriter record. Snodgrass has a voice that is equal parts Don Rich and whiskey; warm yet ragged throughout, despite the fact that the record was recorded on the fly at various impromptu sessions across the US. Brave With Strangers and Long Way Found are two of the higher points of Visitor's Band, but all of the songs are top fucking notch. Buy it here from the good folk of Suburban Home. Jon's been hitting the road pretty hard as a solo artist, recently returning from a West Coast tour with Joey Cape. He's in Europe through the middle of next month, with an East Coast tour scheduled for May. Keep track of all things Snodgrassian here and look out for some Drag The River dates soon.

Free Suburban Home Fest Comp!

So, here marks another year that I sit in NYC when I could be shouting my lungs out in Gainesville to all of the good bands that currently exist. The Fest is a magical thing, and goddammit, come hell or high water, I'm going there and seeing fucking Tiltwheel next year.

That bile somewhat purged, Virgil Dickerson and the good folk of Suburban Home will be in attendance this year, as will a good part of their spectacular roster. Virgil has been really putting in work. In addition to tirelessly blogging, hawking vinyl and going out on the road with his bands, he's managed to build a roster with some of the best up-and-coming bands out there.  Come on, he's dropped amazing records like the amazing Ninja Gun (oo-wee-ooo) and Two Cow Garage records, as well as the new Useless ID and Lagrecia discs. And for once, I'm not being stubborn about calling them records. If you look at the graphic, it says Vinyl Collective. VC has released a gang of new and old stuff on the old licorice pizza. If you still follow the format, you owe yourself to check it out.

So if I can make a vague attempt at making any of this cohesive; about the free shit and The Fest, Virgil's got a free sampler to commemorate the Suburban Home bands' presence in Gainesville. You can buy it on vinyl (ooh, a third strand woven!) here or download it for free here. It's got stuff from Joey Cape, Two Cow, Austin Lucas and a gang of others. And it's fucking free. Not a bad deal from a great label and great people. Snag the sampler and buy some full-lengths afterward. I'm not sure how long the download is going to be up, so you should probably step lively. Virgil may be at The Fest taking all comers in the competitive PBR shotgunning, but he's going to come to his senses sometime.

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Two Cow Garage - Speaking In Cursive

Things are well in the world. There have been a slew of great releases lately, but few have been more exciting for this shut-in than the new Two Cow Garage record. It's called Speaking In Cursive and it's coming out via Virgil Dickerson and the good folk of Suburban Home (and the Vinyl Collective, if you are so enamored of the concentric spiral groove). I just got the pre-order a day or so ago, complete with buttons and beer coozie. Other than ears, what more do you need?

Speaking In Cursive marks the first Two Cow record without original drummer/Jesus doppelganger/God Of Thunder who lives and walks among us: Dustin Harigle. While Two Cow are hardly The Who, his drums were a big part of their live show. The gents seem to have found a replacement, and a full-time keyboard dude, since and expanded their arrangements accordingly. Don't expect a Marillion record or anything, but the move to a five-piece and mentoring by Brent Best (The Drams, Slobberbone) and Matt Pence (Centro-matic) has made for a bigger (and better) Five Cow sound.

Maybe you saw the This Is American Music tour last year with Glossary, The Drams, Grand Champeen and Two Cow? If you did, you probably heard some of the songs that have finally been magnetized on Speaking In Cursive, most notably Micah's stellar new Skinny Legged Girl. If that was the only track on the record, I would still put it in my top ten for the year. Lucky for us, it's not and the other dozen or so tracks are pretty damn good. Micah's got the lion's share of the tracks, but Shane and his baritone weigh in with a couple of numbers that are rapidly becoming my favorites.

And hopefully yours, too. They've cancelled more shows in NYC than they've played, but I'm looking forward to seeing them at DC's in Hoboken on 10/24. I've flown out to a handful of shows that historically would be stymied by amp failure or other enviornmental issues, but when they overcome the rock inertia, those boys tear it up live. I hear Chris Flint (manager and occasional guitarist) is out with them, so it's a fully-functioning death star. You really need to see them. Just watch out for the flying headstocks. The record's not out until 10/21, but I believe you can still snag the pre-order here. Buy it even if you don't need the buttons or the coozie.

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LaGrecia - On Parallels

LaGrecia broke up before they really got off the ground but, in doing the math, it's really not so much of a surprise. You may remember one Jason Shevchuk from his time fronting Kid Dynamite, or maybe Bound if you want to take it all the way back. You may also remember that Jason "decided to go back to school" and left KD pretty much high and dry, then "got back into music" when Fat Wreck offered him a deal for his medio-core None More Black project. With None More Black, Shevchuk pursued an ambitious plan: to have every able-bodied man, woman or child that could be drafted into the fold play in the band, ideally for as short a time as possible. After achieving their goal of becoming the LA Guns of the post-hardcore set, they too found themselves "on hiatus" while Shevchuk pursued his OnGuard solo project and then, most pertinently for today, our heroes LaGrecia.

While None More Black was a total snooze-fest, LaGrecia fires on all cylinders. Of all the material that Shevchuk has released post Kid Dynamite, Lagrecia is definitely the best of the lot. Hands down. It's a three piece, my favorite format, with Sal Dellaquila and Dana Berkowitz (Red Spaerows) filling out the rhythm section nicely. Save for the silly Zeppelin riff jock that opens the record, pretty much every song contained in On Parallels is catchy as hell. It doesn't hurt that Berkowitz plays her ass off all over the record either. The record sounds like a band, and a good one. Maybe even one that should be around today.

Buuuut. There was the small matter of two of the three members "saving money on the road" and "sharing a bed". Evidently the demise of that ill-fated (and incidentally the only relationship land mine that I've yet to jump on with both feet) dalliance also led to the end of the band. Judging by the responses from the other members of the band post-breakup, it's pretty obvious Dana used that powerful kick drum foot of hers to kick somebody to the curb.

Cue someone's decision to "pursue a career in broadcast" and the untimely end of LaGrecia. While Dana and Sal were none too pleased, I suspect that Virgil at Suburban Home none too that chuffed to find himself in the position Grey Flight found themselves in with The Cardinal Sin. It's never a good look to have money tied up in an independent project that you can't promote with a tour. Or to bail before you release a record someone else paid for. It's not the first time it's happened to a band/label, but if my female readers (ha!) will excuse my parlance, that sure seems like a Grade A bitch move on Shevchuk's part. Nobody wants to tour in the van with someone who dumped them, but a couple good faith weeks on the road seems like a mutually beneficial way to part ways for all parties involved.

To add insult to injury, a month or so after "hanging out for a weekend" with the ex-None More Black guys Shevchuk had NMB back in full swing, and conveniently still under contract with Fat Wreck. One can only assume there is a record coming. If it is boring as the last None More Bland record, we can only hope that it grinds into slow obscurity and makes this record sell that much more.

Help Virgil and the rest of Suburban Home out and pick up a copy of the record here. And yes, silly goose, they have it on vinyl

LaGrecia myspace