Bowery Boy Blue On Tour

Hey Midwesterners:

Those handsome (mostly) bastards in Bowery Boy Blue are hitting the road for a bit. Go see them!

R

Mar 3 2010 8:00P	Russian Recording	Bloomington, Indiana
Mar 4 2010 9:00P	The Whistler	Chicago, Illinois
Mar 5 2010 9:00P	The Brick	Kansas City, Missouri
Mar 7 2010 9:00P	Soundpony Lounge	Tulsa, Oklahoma

Bowery Boy Blue and Lesser Lights - Now We Will Be Brothers

Ah, Bowery Boy Blue! Despite being located individually all over God's creation, the fearsome foursome sure do make a nice sound when they are in the same room. It's been a good year for the Boys. Their debut full-length Stalk This Myth dropped about a year ago on Space Photo Records to almost universal regard. Short tours over the last year were exceedingly well-received and showed the Boys that are both Blue and of the Bowery to be one hell of a force on the stage. Live, the Stalk songs took on dimensions that the recordings only hinted at, boding well for the band's future.

Now We Will Be Brothers is the product of the last days of the historic Looking Glass Studios in NYC. Bowery Boy Bluesmen Zeb Gould and Sam Crawford brought Lesser Lights proprietor Nate Baker to see the space while the SF-based Lesser Lights proprietor was in town playing shows. As luck would have it, the fabled Studio A was open for the afternoon and BBB ended up backing Baker for the two tracks that appear here. It seems to have been a happy coincidence for both parties. Bowery Boy Blue play wonderfully, but their backing is unobtrusive to say the least. Crawford adds wonderful vocal backing to the opening Waving At Trains That No Longer Run, but for the most part the Lesser Lights tracks feel a little bit more solo songwriter. Baker's vocals here show a warm sonority that is equal parts unsettling and engaging. Think Mark Kozalek or Kurt Wagner, maybe Tim Barry on an exceedingly good day. The two Now We Will Be Brothers tracks are a nice introduction and I like what I hear. Suffice to say, I'm excited to hear the EP that I hear is coming in the new year.

At the inception of Bowery Boy Blue, Zeb Gould arguably filled the role Baker holds in Lesser Lights, wherein he would bring songs to the table and flesh them out with players as needed. It lent a Jason Molina meets Neil Young vibe to the proceedings that was wonderful to listen to, but didn't do justice to the BBB live sound. The last couple of years have found Bowery Boy Blue coalescing into a band and fostering a new direction that incorporates a lot more Pixies/Cake rock quirk into the sound. The two songs here show both sides of the band. Now We Will Be Brothers shows more of the early sound, with violin and steel adding texture. It's wonderful, but the closing Give 'Em What They Want melds an arpeggiated guitar riff to a gritty lead that should make waves in eardrums from dorm rooms to home theater systems all over. It is a track that lives up to its name.

As does the record's title. Now We Will Be Brothers pairs two great up and comers in Bowery Boy Blue and Lesser Lights. These are artists that are two sides of a single coin, players that come closest to capturing whatever is still relevant in the increasingly nebulous term that is Americana. Now We Will Be Brothers is American music in the truest sense, combining classic elements of folk, rock and country music with the alternative sounds of their collective youths to form something beautiful and new. You would be foolish not buy this. Get Now We Will Be Brothers from your favorite digital retailer or grab a hard copy from the good folk of Space Photo Records. Tell 'em JS-NYC sent you. Look forward to both parties being out on the road in the new year and keep an ear out for the second Bowery Boy Blue record coming next year.

R

Bowery Boy Blue: West Coast Tour and new EP

Hey Kids:

The handsome men (and drummer) of Bowery Boy Blue are currently touring the Western parts of our fair US. There's a release show for their new EP (a split with Lesser Lights) on Wednesday in SF, if you're out in that neck of the woods. Peep the skinny below:

R

10/12 - The Ruby Room, San Diego CA
10/14 - The Crepe Place, Santa Cruz CA
10/15 - The Queen Bean, Modesto CA
10/16 - KUSF, San Francisco CA
10/16 - House of Shields (EP Release Show), San Francisco CA
10/17 - Blue Six, San Francisco CA
10/19 - Green Frog Tavern, Bellingham WA
10/20 - Tupelo Honey Radio Show
10/22 - The Axe and Fiddle, Eugene OR
10/23 - Music Millennium, Portland OR

Bowery Boy Blue Blog

Hey Kids:

The men of Bowery Boy Blue have decided to cater to both my love of internet chatter and alliteration by entering the blogosphere. Keep track of new songs, tourdates, and the current level of beardedness of their drummer via this handy link.

R

Live: Bowery Boy Blue @ Les Poisson Rouge 11.11.8

Bowery Boy Blue are playing the big rooms now. Les Poisson Rouge is the old Village Gate and is down in the frightening strip that is Bleecker Street. Hey, at least it's not Kenny's Castaway. Regardless of location, LPR is a good sounding big room. There were tables out this night, but when bands like Soulive and whatnot play, they open up the room accordingly. This show happened to be with Luke Rathbone's In Search Of The Miraculous.

The first BBB record, Stalk That Myth, is out now on Space Photo Records. It's a great record that reflects the quieter side of the Bowery Boy Blue oeuvre. It's a wonderful recording, but live the band transforms into a snarling beast that starts off subtle, then grabs you by the collar and shakes you a bit. Trust me, you'll like it. Singer/guitarist Zeb Gould has a keening voice that evokes Stars In Bars-era Neil Young. He's played with lap steel/Danelectro wizard Sam Crawford in a bunch of projects over the last couple of years, including Three On The Tree and they have formed a comfortable stage alliance vocally and musically. Paired with the rhythm section of Christian Rutledge and Michael Trepanier, they make a lot of bands just seem unremarkable by comparison. There is talk of a Spring tour, but in the meantime check out the links below and see them around town.

You can keep up on current events in the BBB world here and socially interface with them here. You should also probably buy Stalk That Myth here for all your friends. It makes the perfect holiday gift for anyone currently in possession of a pair of ears.

R

Live: Bowery Boy Blue @ Cake Shop 9.1.8

Bowery Boy Blue brought their rock (and in one case, a big ol' beard) to The Cake Shop last night.
The gents are supporting their new release Stalk That Myth on Space Photo records. Maybe you've read about on some of the hipper blogs.

It being the end of the holiday weekend, I though maybe the gents would be wanting for people in the room, but it was a pretty decent crowd for 11pm on a holiday Monday night. Doing the math, it ended up being kind of a hip room: a couple Vagina Panthers, a Grammy Award Winning mixer, and even the odd academian were in attendance and eating every one's favorite alliterative rock band up with the proverbial spoon.

Bowery Boy Blue has a heavy Neil Young influence. Most of it is in singer/guitarist Zeb Gould's voice, but the sympathetic backing borrows equally from Young's Crazy Horse and solo eras. The rest of the Bowery Boys tend to play the back, save for multi-instrumentalist Sam Crawford, who doubles on lap steel at some points. At their louder points, the band reminds me a lot of Centro-matic, which is never a bad thing. I like to see them push the louder end of the
envelope a bit more, but regardless of the volume Bowery Boy Blue are a band that we are going to hear a lot more of in the future. Look out for more dates in town soon. Midwestern kids should look for dates in Columbus and Bloomington towards the end of the month.

Keep up with all Bowery Boy Blue related info HERE
Web presence? Here
Buy Stalk That Myth here

Vagina Panther: Live @ Trash Bar 8.22.8

Christian was after me to come out to this show. In addition to being a good buddy, he plays with Bowery Boy Blue and is known to have a pretty good ear. His boy Trent, who used to play with Xtian in Canadian powerhouse Jonestown Punch back in the 80s, was behind the kit for Vagina Panther and I hadn't seen either of them in forever, so out to Brooklyn on a Friday night I went.  I had been to Trash a couple times, but it is not high on my list of places to be on a Friday night, but I think we all know my ambivalence with the lands across the East River.

Luckily (for whom, I'm not sure) I didn't get lost or too irritated on the ride out. I ran into Christian in short order and set to catching up with him and getting the low-down on Vagina Panther. VP are a five piece, with female lead vocals. Melding the guitars of The Stooges to the vocals of Lush, they put out quite a pleasant wall of sound. It really wasn't what I expected, but it was far from bad. They rock, but Vagina Panther could use a little more of a stage show. I'm not sure whether they should push the vagina or the panther end of the equation, but they seem like obvious places to start.

Now don't get me wrong, Dead June holds her own as the frontwoman for Vagina Panther. It's fortunate, as the rest of the boys spent most of the set with their back to the audience. Initially, I thought it was a Swiz homage, but finally have reconciled it to the fact that Trent must look really good with his shirt off. Trent's formidable sexual aura aside, they tore through seven or eight tracks in short order and got a pretty good response from the room. I'd like to see them again.

VP are currently recording for a full-length with Grammy Award winning producer Mario McNulty. No word about a label, but I'm figuring on a self-release, at least initially. There are four recordings up on the MySpace to pique your interest in the meantime. Check the webpage and MySpace for more live dates and a time frame for the release of the recordings. 

R

Vagina Panther web portal

VP social networking engine

Bowery Boy Blue - Stalk That Myth

Bowery Boy Blue is a local band helmed by Indiana ex-pat Zeb Gould. You may know him from his old Bloomington band Three On The Tree, or perhaps from his work in and around NYC with Sandusky or Stereofan. Regardless of the project, his high tenor vocal and dexterous guitar playing bring whatever song he's involved with to the next level. Stalk That Myth comes on the heels of the (mostly) instrumental release All The Morningbirds.
ATM struck fear in the hearts of acoustic players around town, but the two tracks with vocals showed Gould to be a bona-fide bit of double-trouble.

Gould's musical foil (and wife - sorry ladies) is Megan Gould. Her violin and backing vocals have been a staple of Gould projects for some time now, establishing her as the Gillian Welch to his David Rawlings, and she also arranged the strings on Stalk That Myth. Her sympathetic arrangements bolster the songs wonderfully without being obtrusive or obfuscating the quiet beauty of the vocals. It's cliched to drop the Neil Young comparison, but the comparatively spartan arrangements and high lonesome vocals really do bring the great Canadian's CSNY and Harvest work to mind.

Lest you think that this is some slavish homage to another time, rest assured that Gould and the rest of Bowery Boy Blue are a forward thinking lot. Stalk That Myth was tracked at Chicago's Electrical Audio by up-and-coming producer Steve Albini and engineered by long-term cohort (and BBB co-guitarist) Sam Crawford. The end result is a warm, yet spartan, indie rock vibe ala Silkworm or Low.

The duality of the old and the new is reinforced by the tracks that bookend Stalk That Myth. The opening Great Dead Town mates minimalist backing with Gould's hushed voice. It sets the hook nicely and sucks you in for a half-hour or so of myth stalking before reprising as the closing Dead Great Town in an expanded Magnolia Electric full-band arrangement. Songs are songs, and the test of good ones is their ability to be played pretty much any way, whether it be solo or with expanded instrumentation. Stalk That Myth shows Gould to be a performer who knows his craft and his talent. Nothing is overwrought or needlessly tarted up, just well-written and recorded. It's a simple philosophy that more artists would do well to embrace.

Bowery Boy Blue play tomorrow night at Union Hall in Brooklyn with Beau Jennings as well as the Soft Drugs, who feature TW Walsh in their ranks. Buy Stalk That Myth here or check out the links below.

Bowery Boy Blue web portal
Bowery Boy Blue social networking interface
Zeb Gould web portal
Zeb Gould social networking interface
Space Photo Records