Kalamazoo sometimes is a great place for getting together with your friends to get sad, contemplative, pensive, nostalgic. That might not sound like a great time if you’re not well acquainted with the folk music that comes out of this town, or that tours in, but if you are you know it’s one of the more compelling musical experiences around.
Homeless Gospel Choir – the band one man band of Derek Zanetti out of Pittsburgh, PA – last played in Kalamazoo over 2 years ago while on tour with Harley Poe. Crammed in a livingroom packed to the gills, and no PA, HGC captivated an audience mostly unfamiliar with his work. His writing is relatable – a conemplative inner self struggling with an indifferent and dishonest world. But don’t let my shoddy words try and explain, here’s a video
Grey Gordon – on tour with HGC, previously played in Kalamazoo at the Corner Record Shop traveling with Jason Anderson. Grey’s music is sweetly sad and melancholy – like your favorite songs you forgot brought back new. You may not know the songs, but they’re likely to strike you as nostalgic.
This show will also be supported by locals Arms Akimbo – your local friend and sad story songwriter, and Axel Quinlan – folk songwriter in the wrong era singing to you regardless
This show is at The Kalamazoo Institute O’ Farts (not to be confused with the KIA). Contact DITkalamazoo@gmail.com for the address. Show is at 8:00. Bring dollars for the outta towners. Be excellent to your hosts and friends and friends you haven’t even met yet.
Come on out for the Goat House’s first-ever show! Enjoy sweet acoustic goodness in our living room! We have three local singer-songwriters who will delight your ears, PLUS all the way from Scotland, folk-punker Billy Liar! Due to some last-minute Facebook wizardry, we will be joined by BILLY LIAR, “the romantic punk singer, travelling the world with a battered acoustic guitar and writing about everything he observes. He is a whirlwind of acoustic strings, folk poetry and trusty chords.”
Our lineup Thursday will include:
Kalamazoo favorite ARMS AKIMBO, whose songs always get stuck in my head at the most inconvenient times.
Up-and-coming JAIME PENNELLY, who sez: “music, performing, singing, and songwriting makes me come to life.” That’s funny, hearing her music makes me feel the same way.
JAKE NIVALA, whose gorgeous guitar playing and pensive lyrics are perfect for these autumn days.
Ghost Mice playing in Kalamazoo almost exactly 5 years ago at Rocketstar Cafe. Photo by Jes Kramer.
It’s been almost four years since the acoustic duo Ghost Mice (featuring Chris Clavin, co-founder of the almost 20 years standing record label Plan-it-X) have been in Kalamazoo Michigan. Not too long after that tour, Ghost Mice called a hiatus, mostly due to fiddle player Hannah having a kiddo. Chris did several solo tours since then, a couple of which he ended up playing wonderful shows in Kalamazoo. However, they’re back as the original band and they’ve got a new album “All We’ve Got Is Eachother,” with a fuller sound than previous, and they are just as sweet of folks as they’ve ever been.
Speaking of new albums, also on the bill for this show is local guitar and violin duo Lincoln County War, who will be releasing their first ever recordings at this show! Though LCW has been playing locally for roughly three years, the only recorded material of theirs can be found mostly on dodgy youtube videos, so come to this show to purchase at a super affordable price, properly recorded versions of these songs. Though the set up for LCW and Ghost Mice are similar, the sound is much different. Although they could both be classified as “folk punk,” Lincoln County features an angrier, harsher tone, more akin with Andrew Jackson Jihad, or if Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads were stripped down.
Long-time Kalamazoo underground composer Travis of Circle, Get Square will also be performing. Whether Travis is currently living in Kalamazoo or anywhere else, if he is performing in Kalamazoo, he is treated and appreciated like a dear local. Stylistically shifting from lo-fi keyboard pop tunes to full, melancholic folk songs, Circle, Get Square is a dynamic project that if you haven’t yet seen, you’re definitely not going to want to miss.
Finally, Arms Akimbo will also be performing to round out this acoustic endeavor. Though this project is the newest locally, Topher, the singer/songwriter of this one man project, has been writing and performing for many years, and for several different musical stylings. Here you will find introspective folk songs, fitting perfectly into the mix of this show.
This show will start at 7PM on Sunday the 24th, and is the first show at this location! If you don’t know where it is, shoot an email to DIT. Please bring donations for the touring group (or even some dollars for merch), and please respect the household.
I appear to have some competition…that is there are many shows going on this Friday night for all the variety of tastes that listeners young, slightly older, and possibly older than them, may desire. Buts it’s really the generational aspect that entices the eye and the gut: the ageless quality, the community of patches; comprised of the old-punks, the new-hipsters, the college capitalists, and the cantankerous DIY veteran. So supposedly all are welcome to welcome the music.
But if the shows busts than the blame will squarely be placed on the drunken piss waggler in the street with a mighty crunch of the beer can. I cannot vouch for the folks over at Touchdown City 2.0, but a swift kick in the ass may be appropriate in any case if the threat to community ever comes to pass.
That being said, the actual music being presented is brought to you by a collection of four odd-men, three from home-base Kalamazoo and one from the West. That music they play being the sort of “I’m all by myself and this here guitar is my only friend” type, or “mayhaps this will be my murder weapon” sort of string strumming. More so these one-man-acts provide the kind of show that allows listeners to really appreciate the grain in the coniferous wood body of the performer’s chosen instrument and perhaps even whisper the word “intimate” into the next show-goers ear.
Graveling about from the state Oregon, crawling out of that creative cess-pit of villainy, saxophone players, and liberal-arts majors known as Portland, Ghostwriter (or Steve Schecter to friends) has the sound of an electric guitar that had the pleasure of being crammed into the exhaust pipe of a Ford 4 x 4 along with Tom Wait’s left boot. Schecter is an embattled, entrenched, and entertaining DIY performer that chews out notes like the death rattle of some rusted-pick up that needs a carburetor replaced, all the while keeping passengers calm by the occasional usage of a hand-brake, or more accurately, a pedal-operated tambourine. A treat for the DIT deviants and fans of tin-can, swamp-punk.
Though the namesake isn’t clear to some, Arms Akimbo seems most at home when flaking the skin flecks off the metal banded strings adorned on his southern-lute, or banjo for short. (I don’t plan on addressing the namesake) While the guitar playing is settling, it’s the cracked voice, the uneasy quality in the timbre, the uncertainty bounding from one word to the next in his performance that coddles both wary and ignorant listeners into a bleary past of some golden creation, full of crickets and cat-tails.
Occasionally an ass-fool, Tim Tapper is a prolific son of Vine St., always trying and always contentious. His sound follows suit with confidence, with delicate attention to his instrument–carefully navigating through the muggings, murders, and poverty of the surrounding neighborhood from whence it played. The sour tone occasionally flowing into Tapper’s singing always chains me to this place–Kalamazoo–exposing the flaws in the pavement and the chips in the paint of the wood panels covering the student ghetto residences, whilst sobering dark imaginations.
I sat down with Alex Young the other day in studio. He was barefoot for the most part and carried his coffee in a mason jar. I was late, but so was he so we called it even. With my colleague David had setting-up the microphones and the decade-old Canon postured into my palm, the only bit of business left to attend to was the young-man’s performance. While the orange-lamp glared, the red-camera eye blinked in constant attention, and the dry-wall held its breath, Alex began a few songs that just made the scenery seem something electrically correct. The nasal-pitched voice climbing through vocal chords that sound scratched from screaming is complemented by an attentive electric guitar diddy. Makes the rug under your feet warm, and the wood smell like the city.
Show is at 10 p.m.
If directions to Touchdown City 2.0 are needed, email ditkalamazoo@gmail.com
Respect the house, the idea, the people, and yourself.
DITKalamazoo 