Album Release: Celestial w/ Basic Comfort, Blood at Ease
18+ Event Standing room only Celestial is a Kalamazoo-based alternative ambient rock combo. It consists of founder Brian Ritzer on bass guitar and lead vocals, Colin McKernan on drums, David Balanda on guitar, and Amanda Savitski on keyboards. They are releasing their first full-length album, with the title track “Velvet Moon”, on January 26th, 2024. Velvet Moon was tracked and mixed by Chris Frankhausen of Raygun Studios in Kalamazoo, MI. Mastering was done by Garrett Gagnon in Long Beach, California. The album features Gabrielle Balanda on backup vocals and co-founder Jeremy Cronk on guitar. Jeremy will be joining Celestial for their release show at Bells Eccentric Café. The show will also feature backing vocals by Gabrielle Balanda, Melissa Gast, Melissa Zavala, and Emily Oppenhuizen. Chris will also be joining for a couple of tunes to commemorate the completion of the album.
Starfarm
This is a 18 and over event with standing room only Do you want your MTV of old? Are you spending your Saturday nights watching VH1 count down your favorite ‘80s videos??? Then Starfarm is what you need! Starfarm brings the most “Totally Awesome!” collection of ’80s songs that you can dream of. Every song played instantly captures that nostalgic feeling, sending you back to the decade of pegged pants, mullets and Aqua Net. From the very first chord of the night you will be dancing and pumping your fist in the air, singing along to the much-loved songs of yesterday. Always ready to break a sweat, Starfarm comes complete with cardboard, old-skool adidas track suits, legwarmers and aviator sunglasses, plus a state-of-the-art sound system and light show.
Joe Hertler DJ Set
This is a 18 and over event with standing room only Long before the Rainbow Seekers, Joe was a DJ. He also played lots of World of Warcraft (he mained a Dwarf Priest). During high school, his WoW guilt mates invited him to visit Toronto – the intention being to LAN (Local Area Connection Party), but when he arrived, he found that his Canadian internet friends had no intention of playing computer games. Instead, they dragged him to a 40,000 square foot nightclub and forced him to listen to progressive house and trance until 10am the next day. He loved every second of it. Upon his return, he immediately shifted his entire life to revolve around making dance music and DJing (it’s how he learned to make music for his band). Throughout college, he hosted parties, ran a basement rave cave, and held a long standing 3 hour Sunday radio show on 91.5FM (in Mount Pleasant). Nearing the end of college, however, he took a decade-long (and on-going) detour to write music on instruments with his friends, the Rainbow Seekers. Everyone seemed to agree that this was the preferable route for his creativity to flow. But still, his affection for dance music has never faded – and every now and then, from deep within his soul, a dark urge begins to boil underneath his skin; one that requires him to dance. The feral child must be satiated – and only then can he go on living a healthy and productive and tax-paying adult. On February 24th, 2024, Joe will DJ for many hours. He likes house, disco, and tech-house – and will share music from his favorite electronic artists as well as his own dance music (which he has never quite acquired the confidence to release). It’ll be a fun show – and he’d love for you to come and party with him.
One With The Riverbed w/ Mouthful of Locusts and After Midnight
This is a 18+ event with standing room only One with the Riverbed is a five-piece post-metal band from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Since forming in 2017, the band has strived to push the boundaries of the genre by incorporating elements of atmospheric black metal with dissonant textures and dynamic shifts. Absence, the band’s first full-length album following an EP in 2018, garnered international attention upon its release in 2021, earning accolades from publications such as Metal Hammer, No Clean Singing, and Toilet ov Hell.
Gimme Gimme Disco: an ABBA Inspired disco party
This is a 18+ event with standing room only If you can’t get enough of ABBA, boy do we have THE dance party for you! We are a DJ based dance party playing all your favorite ABBA tracks, plus plenty of other disco hits from the 70s & 80’s like The Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Cher, & so much more. So honey honey, take-a-chance and you’ll be dancing all night long. Grab tickets, put on your best disco attire, bring your friends, and have the best night of your life!
Future Living w/ Moon Orchids, Tambourina
18+ Event standing room only Future Living hails from Kalamazoo and Chicago, hugging Lake Michigan with all their might. This syrupy space rock is the work of Anne and Chafe Hensley, Neal Markowski, and John Patterson. Their first record, Solutions-Based Entertainments, was released in 2021.
Saturdays At Your Place w/ Charmer & Liquid Mike & Headband Henny
18+ Event standing room only Saturdays at Your Place is an alternative emo band from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Their sound consists of both heavy and twinkly guitar parts, group vocals and heart on sleeve lyrics.
Cris Jacobs w/ Jessi Phillips
This is a 18 event with standing room only From Baltimore comes Cris Jacobs — an unexpectedly gritty soul-blues singer and guitarist with outlaw country ethos. Blending a variety of musical traditions, Jacobs creates a distinctive voice and sound of his own punctuated by emotive songwriting and explosive guitar playing. Equally at home playing heartfelt Americana ballads or funky blues rockers, Jacobs is known for his mesmerizing live shows, where his improvisational guitar playing, powerhouse band, and deep reservoir of songs make each night a unique experience. Named one of Rolling Stone’s “10 New Country Artists You Need to Know” in 2017, Jacobs has collaborated with the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Dumpstaphunk’s Ivan Neville, and earned opening slots on tours with Sturgill Simpson and Steve Winwood. In his early days coming up in Baltimore, Jacobs spent 10 years as a member of eclectic rock band The Bridge before making his debut as bandleader and sole songwriter with 2012’s Songs for Cats and Dogs, emerging with renewed focus and a refined sound. With three solo albums to his name, a collaborative record with Ivan Neville aptly titled “Neville Jacobs”, songwriting credits that include bluegrass artists Audie Blaylock and Frank Solivan, New Orleans funksters Dumpstaphunk, and gospel legends Blind Boys of Alabama, Jacobs continues to evolve and display his wide range of writing and performing prowess. “No matter the song”, he says, “I just like to keep it soulful and let the music speak for itself”.
Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band
This is a 18+ event with standing room only NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The latest album from Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band was written by candlelight and then recorded using the best technology available . . . in the 1950s. But listeners won’t find another album as relevant, electrifying and timely as Dance Songs for Hard Times. Dance Songs for Hard Times conveys the hopes and fears of pandemic living. Rev. Peyton, the Big Damn Band’s vocalist and world-class fingerstyle guitarist, details bleak financial challenges on the songs “Ways and Means” and “Dirty Hustlin’.” He pines for in-person reunions with loved ones on “No Tellin’ When,” and he pleads for celestial relief on the album-closing “Come Down Angels.” Far from a depressing listen, Dance Songs lives up to its name by delivering action-packed riffs and rhythms across 11 songs. The country blues trio that won over crowds on more than one Warped Tour knows how to make an audience move. “I like songs that sound happy but are actually very sad,” Peyton says. “I don’t know why it is, but I just do.”
Carbon Leaf
This is a 18+ event with standing room only Though Carbon Leaf had traditionally embraced a wall of sound approach in the studio, this time around they went back to the basics, focusing on raw, acoustic arrangements that placed the storytelling front and center. With guitarist Terry Clark handling engineering duties, the band—Privett, Clark, stringed instrument wizard Carter Gravatt, bassist Jon Markel, and drummer Jesse Humphrey—captured performances on and off over the course of roughly six months, experimenting with a wide variety of instruments and mic placements to generate a series of immersive, transportive sonic landscapes. “Space was a big thing for us when we were making these recordings,” says Clark. “Moving the microphones further away so we could really capture the room and the air helped add lot of the character and dimension these songs needed.” While some of the tracks here began life as instrumental demos from Gravatt, others first took shape as a capella lyrical or melodic ideas from Privett. Regardless of where each tune began, though, the finished product would inevitably wind up bearing the unmistakable fingerprints of all five bandmates, whose infectious chemistry consistently yields more than the sum of its parts. “We like to take a world-building approach in the studio,” says Privett. “We’ll stack things up and layer them on top of each other until we’ve got something that sounds way beyond just five guys in a room together.” That alchemy is obvious from the outset on The Hunting Ground, which opens with the churning “Everything’s Alright Mama.” Mixing gritty Appalachian folk with lilting Celtic influences, the track begins with both feet on the ground and builds into a soaring work of bittersweet beauty, balancing the mundane and the magical in equal measure as it reaches out into the void for connection. Like much of the album, it’s a bright, uptempo tune, but dig beneath the surface and you’ll find an underlying sense of sadness that permeates the often-impressionistic lyrics. The driving “Her Father’s Pride,” for instance, grapples with division on both a personal and a communal scale, while the rollicking “Smokey Joe Of The Poconos” explores what happens to those left behind in the name of progress, and the mesmerizing “Pale Blue Dot” zooms out to contemplate our place and our purpose in the greater scheme of the universe. It’s perhaps the muscular title track, though, that best encapsulates the sense of questioning and longing that defines the collection, with Privett singing, “Is this all we have, the natural world? Is anyone around?” “The idea of the hunting ground is that it’s this place where you’re searching for something out in the great wild unknown,” says Privett. ”How do you process grief? How do you fix your soul in the face of losing someone you care about? How do you carry on when life doesn’t go the way you’d planned?” In the end, of course, there are no easy answers to these questions, and that’s precisely the point. The hunt is an endless one, but it doesn’t need to be lonely. We’re all in the search together, and after more than a year of distance and isolation, it’s hard to think of anything we need more than a good old fashioned gathering.
