Shemekia Copeland
This is a 18+ event with standing room only 17 and under admitted with a parent or guardian Shemekia Copeland possesses one of the most instantly recognizable and deeply soulful roots music voices of our time. The multi-GRAMMY nominee is beloved and honored worldwide for the fearlessness, honesty and humor of her revelatory songs, as well as for her winning, engaging personality. The Chicago Tribune says, “Copeland is the greatest female blues vocalist working today. There’s no mistaking the majesty of her instrument, nor the ferocity of her delivery.” On Copeland’s new album, Blame It On Eve, the songs all hit hard, with jaw-dropping performances that instantly take hold and command repeated listening. “There’s serious business on the new album,” Copeland says, “but there are a lot of smiles here too, a lot of joyous moments. It’s my blues for sure but it’s the brighter side. Issues are always important to me, but so is rocking, dancing and just having fun. And that’s something we all can all agree on.” Blame It On Eve was recorded in Nashville and produced by instrumentalist/songwriter Will Kimbrough (who also produced her previous three albums). It features 12 new songs that tackle subjects as important as a woman’s right to choose and climate change, but also leaves space for Copeland to have fun and unwind. From the autobiographical, rocking blues boogie Tough Mother to the anthemic title track’s good-humored but serious focus on reproductive self-determination to the happy hour of Wine O’Clock, Copeland is inspired throughout. Famed multi-instrumentalist Jerry Douglas adds his dobro to the fascinating, true story of Tee Tot Payne, the obscure early 20th century Alabama musician who taught Hank Williams the blues, and sacred steel player DaShawn Hickman brings his magic to the feisty and uplifting Tell The Devil. Shemekia’s friend, roots-rocker Alejandro Escovedo, joins in on the anguished, celestial query Is There Anybody Up There?. On the sad lover’s tale Belle Sorciere, Copeland sings the chorus in French, with the haunting melody composed by Pascal Danae of the Paris-based band Delgres (who were recently featured on the cover of Rolling Stone France). Copeland’s blistering, deep blues delivery of Down On Bended Knee—by her late father, the great bluesman Johnny Copeland—sets up the thought-provoking closer Heaven Help Us All, a song originally made famous first by Stevie Wonder and later by Ray Charles. Taken as a whole, the passionate, charismatic, joyous and at times confrontational Blame It On Eve is bound to become among the most celebrated releases of Copeland’s impressive, still-unfolding career. With Blame It On Eve, Copeland embarks on what she calls “a vacation from all the heaviness.” Blame It On Eve contains plenty of Copeland’s trademark bold and courageous songs, but here Copeland is also looking to unplug from the weight of world. “My last three records have dealt with breaking news,” she says. “This record is for people like me who want a break from the news.”
The Dead Tongues with Libby Rodenbough
This is a 18+ event with standing room only 17 and under admitted with a parent or guardian After five months of not picking up an instrument, The Dead Tongues’ Ryan Gustafson wanted to get rid of everything that was tied to his identity as a musician. He even thought about changing his name. He was getting ready to throw out old notebooks packed with years of material but, for some reason, he decided to stop and go through them, just to see if there was anything worth saving. And sure enough, he found some images and lyrics, threads from former selves he didn’t want to lose. Thus was the catalyst for Dust, his fifth and best album as The Dead Tongues. Gustafson recorded Dust in nine days, the fastest he’d ever recorded anything. It was the fastest he’d ever written anything, too – in the past, writing a song would take months, but this time he somehow felt freer, and wanted to have fun. The record was recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in the woods of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He built it out with help from a number of his musician friends – Joe Westerlund (Watchhouse, Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse) on mandolin, backing vocals from Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarlé of Mountain Man, among others. Dust is meant to be listened to while taking a night drive, farflung and roving and existential. Somewhere between the expansiveness of American jamband and the banjo-centric folk songwriting of Gustafson’s Appalachia home. Gustafson explains the thematic throughline succinctly: “It’s this idea of uprooting and rebirth and cycles, and the past informing the future, and the future informing the past. There is no single story. Everything is connected.”
Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers wsg Bri Bagwell
This is a 18+ event with standing room only 17 and under admitted with a parent or guardian“Here’s to life!” Fans around the world can be found singing the chorus of the Roger Clyne-penned fan favorite “Mekong” and toasting their glasses in unison to celebrate life through rock-n-roll. But the inspiration for the song dates back to the time Roger went to Taipei, Taiwan, as a college student to teach English during the day and busk with his guitar at night for money. Today, as Clyne prepares to record his 11th studio album, he continues to transform his life experiences, inspirations, observations and his own muses into timeless music. And whether he’s wearing his Converse high tops, boots or sandals, Clyne’s blend of punk rock, country-western and mariachi influences have made him, drummer PH Naffah, guitarist Jim Dalton and bassist Nick Scropos – collectively known as Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers – one of America’s best live rock-n-roll bands.AMIGO PASS DETAILS & LINK TO PURCHASEhttps://www.etix.com/ticket/p/76002577/amigo-pass-roger-clyne-the-peacemakers-wsg-bri-bagwell-kalamazoo-bells-eccentric-cafeDoes not include a ticket for entry, much purchase that separately. Entry 40 minutes before doors Amigo Pass Laminate 30 minute band performance with Q & A Bars will be open, pass holders can pick their best spot to watch the show prior to GA entry
Guided By Voices w/ Deadbeat Beat
2024 Bell’s Beer Garden Summer Concert SeriesThis is a 18 and over event 17 and under admitted with a parent or guardian #1 Album Of The Year – MAGNET Magazine “The album is an unabashed, bombastic and unapologetic statement of purpose from one of America’s greatest living songwriters.” – Paste Magazine – Album of the Week “GBV’s hot streak continues with one of their best albums in ages.” – Brooklyn Vegan – Album of the Week Listen to new single Serene King: https://lnkfi.re/sereneking In 1994, 38-year-old school teacher Robert Pollard & his merry band recorded Bee Thousand in a Dayton, Ohio, basement on a 4-track cassette recorder. This improbable rock classic became an enormously influential album: Pitchfork and Spin have called it one of the best records of the ’90s, and Amazon picked Bee Thousand as #1 on their list of the 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums Of All Time. A legendary live band with a rabid following, the Washington Post called GBV “the Grateful Dead equivalent for people who like Miller Lite instead of acid!” With 14 studio albums already under their belts in 6 years, the band’s present-day line-up is nothing less than a new Golden Age of GBV.
Lettuce
2024 Bell’s Beer Garden Summer Concert SeriesThis is a 18 and over event. 17 and under admitted with a parent or guardian LETTUCE is (a) the prime ingredient in a salad, (b) a slang for cash, (c) a green herb that can be smoked, (d) a genre-busting six-member musical collective formed in 1992 by four alumni of the prestigious Berklee College Of Music, or (e) all of the above. If you answered “e,” then you’re in on the sheer magic of a band that both feeds the rich history of funk music and combines it with strains of hip-hop, rock, psychedelia, jazz, soul, jam, go-go, and the avant-garde. The GRAMMY® Award-nominated six-piece is comprised of Adam Deitch [drums, percussion], Adam “Shmeeans” Smirnoff [guitar], Erick “Jesus” Coomes [bass], Ryan Zoidis [alto, baritone, tenor sax, Korg X-911], Eric “Benny” Bloom [trumpet, horns], and Nigel Hall [vocals, Hammond B-3, Rhodes, clavinet, keyboards]. To date, their discography includes Outta Here [2002], Rage! [2008], Fly [2012], Crush [2015], the EP Mt. Crushmore [2016], the live album Witches Stew [2017], Elevate [2019], Resonate [2020], Unify [2022], and now VIBE – a single 48 minute continuous session of pure, free-flowing improvisation, available digitally for the first time. With VIBE, Lettuce cement their status as boundary-pushing innovators over three decades into their lauded career, blurring lines and smashing up jazz chords, psychedelic passages, big horns, strains of soul and go-go, hip-hop elements for an uplifting, improvisational sound all their own. Ryan Zoidis explains, “we got into a vibe and hit record. 48 minutes went by like a blink of an eye. This is our first purely improvised recording. Nothing planned, nothing edited or overdubbed. This is a true spontaneous musical expression captured in its entirety.” All together now… Lett us VIBE.
The Yussef Dayes Experience w/ Jordan Hamilton
2024 Bell’s Beer Garden Summer Concert SeriesThis is a 18 and over event. YUSSEF DAYES is a tour-de-force behind the drums. Widely recognised as one of the most electrifying live performers of his generation, watching the South London-raised producer, composer and drummer perform is an exhilarating combo of technical prowess, intensity and emotion – leaving audiences in no doubt as to the role of rhythm in channelling spiritual energy. Yussef grew up with three brothers in a home where musical experimentation was fully embraced. He was drumming by the age of four, tutored by Miles Davis’ drummer, Billy Cobham, aged ten, and quickly developed an ear for a wide range of musical styles: from the influence of East/West African rhythms and its journey through the Caribbean and South America, to the soundsystem-heavy impact of grime and jungle. That music, with its intertwining sonic language, are the building blocks of his philosophy around jazz as a form of black classical music. While still only in his pre-teens, he joined his two brothers – Ahmad and Kareem – and saxophonist, Wayne Francis (aka Ahnanse) in Afrocentric quartet, United Vibrations.Dayes’ meteoric rise came via the short lived duo Yussef Kamaal, with keyboardist Kamaal Williams. Black Focus (2016, Brownswood Recordings) — the pair’s sole and critically acclaimed album — instantly became the blueprint for a generation of music lovers and makers embroiled in the multicultural inner city junglism of Brexit-era Britain. In 2018, Yussef launched his own imprint Cashmere Thoughts Recordings and released a string of solo releases including the classic Love is The Message live at Abbey Road Studios, a collaboration with Alfa Mist, Mansur Brown and Rocco Palladino. In 2020, Yussef announced What Kinda Music, a collaboration with Tom Misch via Blue Note Records. The latter turned heads at an all-new mainstream level, reaching Top 5 in the UK Album Charts, garnering a coveted Ivor Novello nomination, and a BPI Silver Sales award.Since then, his list of collaborators has blossomed to include the finest talents across both music and fashion. Championed by the late polymath visionary and creative director Virgil Abloh, Yussef fronted multiple shows and multi-disciplinary collaborations between 2019 and 2022 including leading the curation of the soundtrack to the Men’s Spring-Summer 2021 show in Tokyo, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, the Freeze art fair in London, events with Off-White and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Now ready to share his debut solo studio LP, and in a new partnership between Warner Music / Brownswood Recordings and Cashmere Thoughts Recordings, it looks as though 2023 will see Dayes ready to take his uncompromising talent and vision to new audiences globally, unrestrained by previous conceptions about where instrumentalist artists, or indeed “jazz” can go.
Katy Kirby w/ Mei Semones and Jes Kramer
This is a 18 and over event with standing room only Let’s face it: There’s no such thing as “real life”. There is only experience and the negotiations we undertake in orderto share it with other people. On her second album Blue Raspberry, the New York-based songwriter Katy Kirby divesheadlong into the artifice of intimacy: the glitter smeared across eyelid creases, the smiles switched on with an electricbuzz, the synthetic rose scent all over someone who’s made herself smell nice just for you. An exegesis of Kirby’s firstqueer relationship, Blue Raspberry traces the crescendo and collapse of new love, savoring each gleaming shard ofrock candy and broken glass along the way.
Emo Nite
This is a 18 and over event with standing room only $1 from every ticket sold will be donated to Living The Dream Foundation Since they threw their first party at an East L.A. dive bar, Morgan Freed and T.J. Petracca, and a dedicated crew of regular attendees, built Emo Nite into a phenomenon. Top-tier emo artists, old and new, curate playlists and perform, with guest lists boasting members of blink-182, All Time Low, Dashboard Confessional, The Maine, and Good Charlotte. Scene-friendly pop culture mavericks often participate, like past attendees Post Malone, Demi Lovato, Machine Gun Kelly, and Skrillex. It’s all too easy to forget that before the first Emo Nite in December 2014, “emo” was a joke. Somehow on its journey from a melodic post-hardcore subgenre, built on earnest emotional expression, to a mainstream moniker assigned to anything remotely angsty, “emo” became a dirty word. Despite the positive impact ushered in by waves of bands, from the crucial “Revolution Summer” and Sunny Day Real Estate through Taking Back Sunday and My Chemical Romance, accepting “emo” as a dismissive designation or identity invited polite embarrassment and even scorn.But Freed and Petracca grew up loving the music associated with emo and the people like them who similarly embraced outsider art and subculture, regardless of changing fashions or pretentious snobbery. Petracca told The New Yorker the idea behind the first Emo Nite celebration was to center a happy, communal experience on the music they once listened to when they were upset and alone.As emo reenters popular culture with a blend of adoring nostalgia and optimistic forward- thinking, Emo Nite remains an authentic space to celebrate diversity, experience passionate catharsis, and champion authentic expression. Emo Nite isn’t a band or a DJ crew. It’s an idea, one as simple as the urge to throw a party for a beloved style of music. Often imitated but never truly duplicated, Emo Nite’s founders and supporters are fond of saying, “If you don’t see the grave, it ain’t our rave.”The co-founders continue to look ahead. “Emo Nite definitely impacted culture,” Freed notes. “But we have no plans to stop changing the way we view the evolution and expansion of the genre.”
Over the Rhine
This is a 18+ event with standing room only When you listen to Over the Rhine, the supremely talented musical couple comprised of Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, you quickly fall under the spell of Karin’s timeless voice “which has the power to stop the world in its tracks” (Performing Songwriter). But then the songs start hitting you. Paste Magazine writes, “Over the Rhine creates true confessional masterpieces that know neither border nor boundary” and included Bergquist and Detweiler in their list of 100 Best Living Songwriters. Rolling Stone recently wrote, Over the Rhine is a band “with no sign of fatigue, whose moment has finally arrived.” That’s quite a sentiment for a band celebrating 30 years of writing, recording, and life on the road. But as Karin Bergquist states, “There is still so much music left to be made.” Love & Revelation, the brand new album from Over the Rhine, is a record for right now. The songs have been rigorously road tested and burst at the seams with loss, lament, and resilient hope. The LA Times writes, “The Ohio based husband and wife duo has long been making soul-nourishing music, and the richness only deepens.”
Keller Williams’ presents DeadPettyKellerGrass ft. The HillBenders
2024 Bell’s Beer Garden Summer Concert SeriesThis is a 18 and over event. Virginian, Keller Williams, released his first album in 1994, FREEK, and has since given each of his albums a single syllable title: BUZZ, SPUN, BREATHE, LOOP, LAUGH, HOME, DANCE, STAGE, GRASS, DREAM, TWELVE, LIVE, ODD, THIEF, KIDS, BASS, PICK, FUNK, VAPE, SYNC, RAW, SANS, ADD, SPEED, CELL, GRIT and DROLL. Each title serves as a concise summation of the concept guiding each project. Keller’s albums reflect his pursuit to create music that sounds like nothing else. Un-beholden to conventionalism, he seamlessly crosses genre boundaries. The end product is music that encompasses rock, jazz, funk and bluegrass, and always keeps the audience on their feet. Keller built his reputation initially on his engaging live performances, no two of which are ever alike. For most of his career he has performed solo. His stage shows are rooted around Keller singing his compositions and choice cover songs, while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, bass, guitar synthesizer and drum samples; a technique called live phrase sampling or “looping”. The end result often leans toward a hybrid of alternative folk and groovy electronica, a genre Keller jokingly calls “acoustic dance music” or ADM.” Keller’s constant evolution has led to numerous band projects as well; Keller & The Keels, Grateful Grass, KWahtro, Keller and the Travelin’ McCourys, Grateful Gospel, More Than A Little and now DeadPettyKellerGrass ft. The Hillbenders! Keller can be found playing clubs and festivals around the U.S. with these projects throughout the year. The Hillbenders are a talented five piece band consisting of dobro, banjo, mandolin, guitar and upright bass. They hail from Missouri and are a passionate and animated gaggle of players.
