after three grueling nights of combat, The Fight for the Tuna has come to a staggering culmination. Bands played. Haterade was sipped. Votes were cast, counted, recounted, double-checked for hanging chads, and finalized. The numbers are in, and it is good.
This year’s winner is Kalamazoo’s very own Coma Nova. They’re awesome, and it’s equally as awesome that they get to open for Cheap Girls, Wolf Eyes, and of course Lightening Bolt. It will be a sight and a show to be certain.
Barking Tuna Fest Occurs this Octorber 7th, 8th, and 9th. Tickets are on sale around town (The Strutt specifically) and go for 12 bucks a night or 30 for a festival pass. All three nights are at The Strutt, and all three nights are gonna be a blast.
Tonight, though, there’s a free and excellent show at No Fun House. There’s also a slightly more expensive and equally as awesome show at The Strutt (12 bucks at the door, 10 bucks presale) featuring A Place To Bury Strangers, of Brooklyn Crash City Saints of Kalamazoo, and Skeleton Party of nearby Grand Rapids. If you’re looking for something to do, no excuses.
The Philadelphia-based outfit Conversations with enemies had a transmission drop out of the bottom of a van on ’em, and so won’t be able to make it up tonight for the show at No Fun. As a result, No Fun House’s show tonight has been canceled. We know, it’s lame, but hopefully we’ll catch them next time around.
Meanwhile, there’s all kinds of great stuff going on this weekend at The DAAC, the Strutt, and elsewhere, so make sure you check something out. Oh, and some punk-sissy jazz quartet is at the Craftsman Chop House in Portage tonight from 7:30 to 10:30, so if you really need something to do, the food is good, the drinks are reasonable, and the band will probably do something that closely resembles music. Probably.
One way or the other, you probably ought to be at a show on Saturday night.
Not only will spastic math-rock virtuosos Tera Melos be in town performing with our local boys Pan and Good News, but legendary folk punks Defiance, OH will be coming to Grand Rapids performing with our very own The Almanac Shouters.
Something like four years ago now I had the chance to catch a little band called By the End of Tonight at the Dolphin House (RIP) here in Kalamazoo. Not only was I blown away by their performance that night, I was also introduced to the equally mind-altering Tera Melos through the split release they put out, Complex Full of Phantoms. Here we are, four years on, and they’re finally making their way from California for what I believe will be their first ever visit to our fair city. Since 2004, this three-piece (formerly a quartet) has been honing and constantly evolving their style, putting out release after release, and touring hard – thus establishing themselves as a touchstone of the math-rock genre. They’ll be touring behind their newest release, the poppier, Patagonian Rats.
Joining them for this show will be locals Good News who may arguably not be the band they are today if it weren’t for Tera Melos (or at least bands of that ilk) and Pan, who I’ve watched only get better and better in the year and a half since they’ve formed.
That same night Defiance, OH will be playing what will surely be a packed to the gills show at the DAAC in Grand Rapids. For about the last decade these folk punk troubadors have been defining a genre and inspiring countless others to mix up their punk rock with banjos and upright basses and cellos, invoking the the activist spirit of classic rabble-rousers like Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger. All the while, they’ve remained true to the DIY ethos. If you’re a fan of sing-alongs and capacity shows you can crowd surf at, you would do well to be at the DAAC Saturday night.
Also performing will be solo artist Toby Foster from the punk mecca of Bloomington, IN (original home of Plan-It-X Records) and Grand Rapids’ Radiator Hospital, as well as the afformentioned Almanac Shouters (our Kalamazoo darlings).
It’s easy to be torn, but Saturday will be an undeniably excellent night for music in Southwest Michigan. Either way, you win.
Unless you’re talking about the game, in which case you definitely just lost.
Well, while I’m not trying to tell you what to do, I am trying to tell you that Kalamazoo Gazette’s Reader’s Choice awards are occurring presently, and that WIDR is in the running. You can vote at the Gazette’s portion of MLive.
There isn’t any real good reason that a student-run, 100 percent local, ad-free radio station shouldn’t win a popularity contest by it’s local newspaper, but let’s make sure of it anyway. Support your source for Radio evolution, and of course, make sure you tune in to 89.1 on the FM dial. Hippies.
There hasn’t been a lot of content updated here this week, and that’s a shame, as there’s been a fair bit of action here in Kalamazoo. The Roman jazz-punks on Monday, the American Folk-punks at No Fun on Wednesday, and Kalamazoo Noise‘s magazine West Michigan Noise dropping the same day.
In addition to all that, tickets for the best Barking Tuna festival in years (dare I say ever?) went on sale at The Strutt for 12 dollars a day, or 30 dollars for a full fest pass. The festival itself will be held at The Strutt, and everyone will be getting down hardcore and personal.
The festival starts Thursday, October 7th, and runs ’till Saturday, October 9th, with the lineup as follows:
One of DIT(K)’s very own, Tim Tapper of The Number Eight, has taken on a pretty laborious project – a service with the potential to be priceless to gigging musicians the country over. A forum, a blog, and a database of the various venues that book touring acts across the U.S.A. Enter VenueReview.
The concept is simple: When bands play bars, houses, and other venues on tour, there are idiosyncrasies that band members encounter which differ at every stop. Most of the time, kitsch and aesthetics is all one has to offer, but every once in a while there are important things to know. For example, it may behoove a visiting act to know that No Fun House is a basement in an old wooden house on a 1-way street, or that The Strutt has two stages.
VenueReview is there to arm the masses. There is a short guideline for formatting on the blogsite, with all the actual work being done on the attached forum. The forum is free to access and post to, and no account is needed, so you don’t have to worry about being on the grid, hippies.
If you have experience with venues anywhere in the US, throw up a review real quick. If you’re going to a venue and don’t know what to expect, throw up a review when you get back. Share the knowledge, share the site, and get this sucker moving, ‘cuz once it’s rolling, this project will be absolutely invaluable. I’ll be adding content presently.
We here at DIT Kalamazoo are always doing our best to keep this a community minded project. We’re dedicated to constantly setting up the best shows we possibly can, keeping you updated on upcoming cool shows and events and at the very least providing you with yet another entertaining way to kill time on the internet. However, all this work is extremely time consuming.
We’re always on the look out for new people interested in joining the team. We can use just about any skill you might have including: writing posts for the blog (show revues, album reviews), making/putting up flyers for shows, taking pictures or videos of shows, booking bands from all over the world, finding good local bands to open for them, making facebook events or just talking us up to everyone you know. If any of this sounds like something you can do, please stop on by the next meeting. FROM NOW ON ALL MEETINGS WILL BE HELD AT 210 ALLEN BLVD. EVERY SUNDAY AT 2PM. We’re friendly people. We promise.
Summer is rapidly ending, which mean Fall is rapidly beginning, which mean it’s almost time for WIDR’s Barking Tuna Fest! Which also means it’s time to fight . . . for the Tuna.
Last Year's poster. So awesome.
But what does it all mean? Well, essentially, every year WIDR puts on a festival where they bring in most excellent touring talent from all over the place and have them rock a great show over the course of some days. There’s local talent involved, though, and that’s where the fighting comes in.
Fight for the Tuna is a 10-day precursor to the festival. Essentially, it’s a battle of the bands for local talent to duke it out, all gunning for the chance to open for whatever illustrious and righteous headliner the folks at WIDR manage to bring in to town. The format is 3 rounds (read: three nights) where the contenders get to show their stuff. Attendants of the shows each get a ballot with which they can vote for the winner (this is, after all, America). The winner then plays Barking Tuna.
But WIDR needs bands! So, if you have an outfit that’s local and wants to rock it at Barking Tuna, you can send your demos/press packages/pleas and petitions to:
WIDR FM/WMU attn:FFTT,Michelle
1501 Faunce Student Services Building
Kalamazoo,Mi 49008
OR
Send Digital copies to: Widr.tuna@gmail.com
Make it happen.
But before you do that, check out tonight’s show at No Fun House. It’s gonna be a good one.
The boys and girls over at Kalamazoo NOISE! are doing the difficult thing: dropping content on a full-color hard-copy magazine all over West Michigan. Don’t believe me? Well, check their press release and get back to me.
They’re looking for help with distribution, so if you know anything about store-fronts or other means of getting paper circulating, you should let ’em know. Also, as many people know, getting something published for hard copy is a lot of hard work and money. If you feel like you want to see this thing really take off, why not toss them a few bucks to help with printing costs? Just an idea.
DIT(K) will be working with NOISE to make sure as much of the local music scene is accurately represented, so if anybody has any ideas for things you’d like to see covered, let us know at ditkalamazoo@yahoo.com.
There’s a show at No Fun tonight, with The Fox and the Law and And I Was Like, What? kicking it all the way from Seattle, with locals Good News rockin’ it even. It’s going to be an excellent show, with lots of great guitar work and fantastic arrangements. Check it out.
This year’s winner is Kalamazoo’s very own Coma Nova. They’re awesome, and it’s equally as awesome that they get to open for Cheap Girls, Wolf Eyes, and of course Lightening Bolt. It will be a sight and a show to be certain.
DITKalamazoo 
