*Update*
*The Satellite show has been canceled. Wedding Dress had to reschedule due to health issues. Everyone is okay, they just can’t play tonight. Go to Casa Mona and be excellent to each other*

Monday night will provide show-goers plenty of entertainment as Satellite Records will be hosting an early show featuring Chicago’s Wedding Dress and then immediately following that Casa Mona will open their doors for touring bands Edhochuli and Gnarwhal.

Wedding Dress is a group that formed a couple years ago featuring members of Chicago indie giants Maps & Atlases, Joan of Arc, and Gypsyblood. Fans of any of those acts will surely be surprised as the band breaks away from the sound structures they have come from but certainly maintain the talent each has consistently displayed.

Joining them for the record store show will be a pair of newer Kalamazoo acts – Right There In Front Of You, the solo project of guitarist/vocalist Andrew Buczek of Dad Jeans, and shoegazing indie-rockers Cardboard Highway, which features members of the Glowfriends.

This show will start at 6PM and there is a $5 suggested donation!

Facebook event

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If you’re still in the mood for more that night or are just looking for something decidedly more raw, Casa Mona has what you’re looking for. Amping up the intensity will be a band that should be well known to Kalamazoo’s basement crowd, Edhochuli.

They’ll be on tour with one of the few bands to match their own gnarliness and shredability, Tennessee’s Gnarwhal. This two-piece mathcore group is as frenzied and chaotic as they are technical and have a new four-way split record out with the bands Woozy, Ex-Breathers, and Ovlov.

http://gnarwhal.bandcamp.com

Local hardcore/spazz-grind favorites Seventeen Again will be kicking this show off promptly after the record store gig ends. This show will mark the departure of their founding member, bassist Josh Miller, and throughout their set will be featuring both him and his replacement, Brok Leshman.

Bring some money to donate to the touring bands!

Toronto’s Shahman will be in Kalamazoo tomorrow night to unleash a monolithic sonic assault on the Casa Mona basement. This two-piece band combines diverging influences of extremely heavy and dark music into something unexpected – a fierce live sound greater and louder than the sum of its parts that can jump from a whisper to a deafening roar in an instant.

Their latest release, Demise of a Body, is a sprawling 25-minute meditation on the loss of a loved one that was captured from one continuous live performance. Brooding, raw, and unabashedly emotional, this release sees the band exploring doom and shoegaze territory, and moving even further away from the screamo/punk moments that were more prevalent on their last release, Sounds That Look Like Us.

http://shahman.bandcamp.com

Joining Shahman for this show will be local experimental, improv noise-rockers Forget the Times and the strangest, spookiest, surf rock band around, the Uncanny.

https://forgetthetimes.bandcamp.com

http://theuncanny.bandcamp.com

This week, our own Alex Jeffrey Young of local acts PAN, Blank, and most recently, Mold, will be hitting the road hard with Odd Dates, a Grand Rapids band that most frequenters of Kalamazoo’s dank basements should be familiar with. They’re out to cover the entire country (and even some of Canada) as they make their way out to the East Coast, down to Florida, then all the way out to the West Coast and back in 28 days time. It’s an ambitious undertaking to say the least and they could use some support this Thursday at Satellite Records to help kick their tour off right.

Joining these bodacious road dogs for the evening will be Hey! Rabbit, an expatriate duo making their way over from the Czech Republic featuring Paul Cardona, formerly of the Illinois emo superheroes Joie de Vivre.

Satellite Records – Music at 9PM – $5 suggested donation

808 S. Westnedge Ave.

Facebook Event

Alex Young on Soundcloud

Odd Dates on Bandcamp

Hey! Rabbit on Bandcamp

On Sunday night Casa Mona, one of our newest Vine Neighborhood house venues, will be hosting a nice, concise, three-band bill for those who are fans of the indie/emo/punk realm and want to top of their weekend with a tightly run basement show.

Tyler Daniel Bean hails from Burlington, Vermont, which is about the most quaint New England settlement you could go to, and he seems to embody quite perfectly the spirit of that city. If you like your tunes emotionally charged, deliberately personal yet highly relatable, and sung to you in a deep, frank voice, then this is something for you. Tyler makes gorgeous tunes all by his lonesome but he rocks a full band most of the time and they like to get loud – thus it’s going to fit extremely well with the other bands on the bill:

Bike Tuff, a long-time Kalamazoo favorite whom we might not see around as often anymore due to band members being spread across the state. If you like going to basement punk shows but have more of a 90’s emo leaning, there’s a good chance you already love this band. They can do a Jimmy Eat World cover set at the drop of a hat.

Guppy is a brand spanking new Kalamazoo band featuring members of Ackley Kid, the Reptilian, and George Costanza. Expect nothing but great things.

Due to a cancellation, Pittsburgh touring musicians Unraveler, Average Joey, and A Life of Arctic Sounds were nearly stuck with a day off, until the Victory House stepped in and offered up their living room instead.

All three acts are acoustic and will be joined by local giants of acoustic guitar, Tim Tapper and Alex Quinlan. Come on out and show them that playing a show in Kalamazoo, last minute as it may be, will always be a hundred times better than not playing a show at all!

Find out more here! -> Facebook event

Flyer for a flyer show by Rory Svekric

The Kalamazoo Collective Arts Center is presenting a retrospective of local music through flyer art and live band photography. On display will be flyer work from the personal collections of some of Kalamazoo’s music world veterans as well as prints from some of our city’s up-and-coming photographers.

The reception begins tonight at 6PM and will run until around 11. There will be snacks and refreshments on hand as well as a pair of WIDR DJs on deck spinning records throughout the evening.

Swing on by and hang out for a while or just stop on by on your way to one of the shows going on elsewhere in the Vine Neighborhood. (Check the sidebar for details!)

It’s going down at 509 W. Vine st. and is totally free.

For more details, check out the facebook event here.

Wayne Manor is delivering something a bit heavier this weekend. East Michigan’s Sawchuk  and Dead Church are doing a weekend from Hell around the Midwest and making Kalamazoo their last stop. Joining them will be locals That’s Blood and the band I’m Dead to Me from Chicago (not to be confused with the band Dead to Me – although if it brings more people to the show, go ahead and confuse them!).

Sawchuk plays some pretty straight-up, honest-to-goodness hardcore that is tough as nails and compliments well their tourmates Dead Church who play a much faster, more frenzied take on the genre.

I’m Dead to Me play a style of heavier music that fits quite appropriately but on this bill, but are perhaps the most adventurous band of the bunch, exploring slower tempos, sampled dialogue, and more atmospheric elements akin to post-rock.

And if you’re not familiar with Kalamazoo’s That’s Blood, now would be the perfect time to check them out in their element – among similarly styled bands in a gnarly Michigan basement. These hometown boys are about the only local offering of Screamo we have to offer; fast, angular, aggressive. But they also just love to party.

Check it out if you like your punk rock shows heavy and full of energy. This is something Kalamazoo doesn’t get to see too much of and is sure to please.

Jon Follet, Kalamazoo music staple-turned visiting Portland resident, is back in town for a proper CD release at Touchdown City this weekend. A handful of years back, Follet started performing as a solo musician under the name Everyone and Their Empty Cups. Eventually this project evolved into a full-fledged three-piece rock and roll machine that hearkens back to other such 90’s three-piece rock and roll machines as Nirvana and Modest Mouse*.

Joining them for the album release celebration will be a couple acts sharing members of Empty Cups; Blank (which bassist Mark Heyboer recently took over on bass duty for) and The Wrap (the long-running hip-hop project of drummer/sex-demon Gabe Hovey); as well as Koster and The Pork Rinds, which is, as far as I know, a relatively new Kalamazoo act.

The show is guaranteed to rage in all the best ways that Kalamazoo basement shows are known for and this may be the last time you get to see Everyone and Their Empty Cups for a good while. Bring a few bucks and pick up a copy of Mechanically Separated Children, the long-time coming fruits of these boys’ labors.

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*Modest Mouse was totally and officially only a three-piece for a number of years, many of them being during the 90’s. Count it!