The Syncopaths – Canceled
PLEASE NOTE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, this concert has been cancelled. Advance ticketholders will receive a full refund through Brown Paper Tickets.
We apologize for the inconvenience!
Namoli Brennet & Aimée Ringle
Tickets: $12 in advance, $15 at the door
Click here to purchase tickets in advance.
Tucson-based songwriter Namoli Brennet has been touring the country with her own brand of moody and inspiring folk since releasing her first CD in 2002. Since then she’s played over 900 shows and logged over 250,000 miles on her still-running 87 Volvo station wagon. (“I have a great mechanic”,she says.) Touching on often poignant themes, her music and lyrics ultimately paint a vivid and redemptive portrait. She’s a breathtaking and moving performer, and her sweet, road-weary voice is as quick to deliver her wit and humor as it is a turn of phrase. She’s been described as across between Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin and Sheryl Crow, and Zocalo magazine called her music, “Gorgeous and introspective.”
Brennet was given her first guitar at age 8, and after picking it up quickly the ADD songstress started playing drums, piano and saxophone. By the time she graduated from college with a degree in music composition she was waiting tables while writing songs on the side and playing in bar bands. She didn’t start singing until her 20s, because, as she says, “I was surrounded by golden-throated sisters and wasn’t really considered the singer in my family. My voice was always…different.”
Although she’s a little shy and reluctant to talk about it, Brennet also carries another secret: she was not born female. “I transitioned in my late 20s because I had just reached this state of unhappiness that was pretty unbearable.” And athough the themes of identity and freedom weave their way subtly through her songs, being transgender is not the focus of her music: “I know it’s kind of a quirky and interesting part of my story, but as a human being I’m interested in life, spirituality, meaning, social issues, justice, compassion…and these are the things I write about.”
Namoli is currently working on her 9th self-released CD, Rise, which is scheduled for an October release on Flaming Dame records.You’ll often find this prodigious musician in the studio dividing her time between engineering, producing and playing most if not all of the instruments on her recordings. She’s also recorded and produced CDs for other artists, most notably Eric Himan’s 2011 release, Supposed Unknown, which is currently being featured on Sirius XM radio.
A 4-time Outmusic award nominee, Namoli has also won the Tucson Folk Festival Songwriting Award and was a finalist in the ISC songwriting competition. Her recent release Black Crow garnered critical acclaim and was named one of KXCI FM’s top albums of 2010. Her music has been featured on NPR, PBS and in films including the Emmy-award winning documentary “Out in the Silence”, which details the struggle of a gay teen growing up in rural Pennsylvania.
As a solo performer, Aimée Ringle has been lauded for her “caramel” voice, intricate guitar work, and rejuvenating lyrics. She has sung, played guitar and arranged music for most of her life. She has worked with fellow musicians, dancers, painters, photographers, actors, farmers, elders, children, and families- composing music for weddings, rites of passage ceremonies, dance, theatre, and film.
Her newest album Bowl of Stones was performed and recorded with Michael Connolly at Empty Sea Studios during July of this year and released in September. Hard copies and digital downloads of this shiny new album are available on iTunes, and on CD Baby (www.cdbaby.com/cd/aimeeringle2).
St. Paul De Vence
Tickets: $12 in advance, $16 at the door.
Click here to purchase tickets in advance.
Fortune Jean Giordano was born in Nice, France in the late fall of 1924. Growing up the youngest of three, he came of age under German and Italian occupation of the South of France during World War II. In the spring of 1944 Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces arrived in Nice as part of the liberation. Having grown tired of the dwindling availability of work, the threat of Nazi work camps and life under the Occupation, he lied about his age, kissed his family goodbye and joined them, taking up the fight for liberation. Following the war, returning to a nation in ruin and with no prospect for work, he set sail for Coney Island and a new life.
The story of his journey – the pain and the triumph, the love and the loss – remained largely untold until his grandson, Benjamin Doerr, started asking questions and recording answers. Originally focused as a side-recording project to tell part of this story through a three-song EP (When Our Boys Have Been Buried, 2010) – St. Paul de Vence soon took shape as full band with a much bigger musical message to share.
Rain City Tales & Tunes with Auntmama, Colin Isler, and Willie Weir
Tickets: $9.00 advance, $12.00 at the door.
Click here to purchase tickets.
Rain City Tales & Tunes is a brand-new radio show which brings the Northwest’s best storytellers and musicians together onstage. Taped in front of a live audience at Empty Sea, the show features acoustic music and tale-telling. Each episode features a unique theme, and audience members are invited to volunteer for the storytelling spotlight.
Produced jointly by Empty Sea Studios and KBCS storyteller Auntmama (Mary Anne Moorman), Rain City will be available to public radio stations this fall.
June 15th’s theme is “You Win Some, You Lose Some,” featuring storyteller Willie Weir and singer-songwriter Colin Isler.
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Seattle native Colin Isler began playing music before he could read. As a 4 year-old Colin’s cello was almost larger than him, but as he grew older, and taller, his love for music also grew, prompting him to learn the guitar and
harmonica. Over the years Colin has performed and recorded a wide variety of music, from post rock to classical, with many different Seattle groups including The Head and the Heart, Post Harbor, Conrad Ford, Rebels &
Scientists, and The Tallest Building in the World. Most recently you can find him playing and singing with The Washover Fans, an American roots and folk group who released their debut album in May 2011. Colin, partnered with engineer and producer Steve Aguilar, co-owns and manages Bearhead Studio which recently relocated to a new recording and mixing space in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. When Colin is not making music he designs circuits and professional audio equipment.
www.colinisler.com
www.thewashoverfans.com
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Willie Weir has played the fools of Shakespeare and the nerds of musical comedy. He has worked as an actor, columnist, commentator, photographer, truck driver, bike courier, public speaker and tour guide.
He’s broken a couple of world records and way too many dishes. He has lived in Seattle for 25 years and lived in a billboard for 32 days. He’s received a couple of awards, but has thrown away all of his trophies. His wife’s name is Kat. His cat’s name is Deeter. He’s written two books (*Spokesongs* and *Travels with Willie*) and read a few more than that.
He shares a birthday with President Obama but rarely shares dessert.
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Named Auntmama by a nephew of choice, Mary Anne Moorman gathers audiences up in her blend of music, and storied southern lore. Her voice is a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains at dusk, rolling and misted sweet. These stories are conversations with memory as well as with the audience that’s enjoying them.
“I’d be a singer if I could sing, but I like music too much to mess it up,” she says. Her Appalachian roots are intertwined with the music she grew up with, many of her stories reflecting that harmonic heritage through influences from Gershwin, Cole Porter, Flatt & Scruggs, and Porter Wagoner.
The Stranger has written of Auntmama’s tales: “As a precious, southern belle, she’s conflicted and her extremes and voice boil out the sweetest words I think I’ve ever heard in my life. A real gem, she is. Glad I saw it, haven’t stopped hearing her lilting voice in my head.”
Moorman, a former machinist, management consultant and journalist, teaches storytelling at Washington State’s famous Wintergrass festival, Northwest Folklife Festival, Hugo House’s Write-O-Rama, as well as offering workshops throughout the country. She is the recipient of grants from Artist Trust, 4Cultural and the City of Seattle. Her three albums are available through her website, in local bookstores or through iTunes. She can be heard every Sunday morning on KBCS 91.3 FM.
And we’re off!
Hi all,
Our first two shows (Coyote Grace and the Cantrells) were amazing! Check out some pictures (thank you, Carolyn Waters for the top-notch photography.)
I’m in the process of booking shows for the rest of the summer, so stay tuned – we have quite a lineup on the way.
The pipes, the pipes…
The pipes are calling.
3/4″ inch schedule 40 pipes, that is.
In order to showcase performers at the studios in dazzling incandescence and deep, passionate washes of color, we’re hanging some black iron pipe on the walls.
One pipe is up already, and it’s enough to clearly see that this is going to look very, very cool. There’s a few more left to do – basically, by covering a couple of walls, you can project light from a bunch of different angles, which yields the appropriate color sculpting and luminosity dancing that all real lighting designers understand. Stanley McCandless, here I come…
What else is new: Trina and I figured out a plan for finishing the light rigging, where to hang acoustic treatment, and how to hang a curtain behind the stage. It’s going to be beau-ti-ful.
It’s a sign of things to come…
So after much slaving back and forth with the focus group (also known as family and friends), I finalized a sign design for the front yard and had it fabricated by our local Fastsigns store. Here’s the design from Illustrator.
In the process of working on this, I learned a lot that I wish I’d already known about the CMYK color space and how it differs from graphic design for the web. Specifically – apparently basing my entire brand around a dark, intense blue is just about the worst thing I could have done from a color-matching perspective. It’s been pretty instructive to look at the color matching between an onscreen image, the business cards I recently had printed, and the sign itself.
So, without further ado, here’s what I got back from the printer last night:
I was very, VERY excited when I saw this peeping through the window at me from inside the sign shop. I knew that the spec’d size of 5×3 feet was going to be large, but I don’t think I was really prepared for just how large that is. I felt almost like I was going to fall into the f-hole!
I have a bit of pride about that part of the design, actually; the f-hole is traced from the fiddle I built last year. There are some irregularities to it and I went back and checked: yes, they’re really part of the instrument itself.
For some scale, that’s a 34-string harp next to the sign, which is itself close to 5 feet tall! The sign comes up to my chin or so. It looks huge inside, but it’s actually the perfect size to go over the existing lawn sign (which doesn’t look all that large in context.) Thanks, visual perception!
I hope to get the signs (one for each side of the stand in the front yard) mounted soon.
Mailing list now active!
Today’s IT project was installing and configuring PHPList, a cool mailing list program which integrates nicely with WordPress. If you’re interested in heaving about our progress as we get things set up here, just subscribe to the list using the new link in the sidebar!
First things first…
Opening this space has meant facing some steep learning curves: lighting and sound design, Seattle business licensing, and not the least of all, WordPress configuration. I think it’s really that last one that’s been the hardest. But the website is now up and running.
Since I moved into the space on February 1st, a lot has already taken place: Trina, Pam, Leslie and Khaled all helped me get the main floor painted and decluttered (thanks guys!), and the same crew plus Jeff and Shula helped move over piles of clothes, music gear, and woodworking tools last weekend.
First likely headache? I may have to take a look at how clean the AC power is in the main room – I’m getting a fair amount of 60 hertz hum that I need to track down. Oh, and if anyone has any drywall tape & mud skills, now would be a good time to pipe up…
There are boxes to unpack, lights and acoustic treatment to hang, and so much more!
February was all about getting moved from my old place in Shoreline, and March will be the Month of Studio Bringup. Stay tuned – it’s going to rock.
