Tag Archives: B-Side

BITCHIN’ BAJAS with ELI WINTER AND TYLER DAMON at B-Side, Saturday September 19th

Poster designed by Tim Furnish

The Other Side of Life is proud to present:

BITCHIN’ BAJAS

with

ELI WINTER AND TYLER DAMON

Saturday September 19th, 2026
at B-Side
1076 E. Washington Street, 2nd Floor
Louisville, KY 40206

Buy Tickets

$20 advance tickets, $25 day of show
Advance tickets available online at TicketLeap; Physical tickets available for in-person purchase at Surface Noise, 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204 (cash only)

21+
7:00 PM doors
8:00 PM music

The latest album from BITCHIN’ BAJAS — the trio of Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Danie Quinlivan — Inland See is deceptively immediate: four songs, entirely within themselves, all together forming an essential whole. With every successive BITCHIN’ BAJAS release, we see that the real key for them is a sense of discovery, that tingle that comes when you feel something breaking through. The sky opening up. Take “Skylarking” — a remarkable construction, built to and fro in the ether, but with a deceptive grasp of four-on-the-floor rhythm. A space dance that achieves completion in almost aggressive terms — aggressive like an oxygen bath! — showcasing jewels from their world music and jazz archives, then returning to their undulous source drone, riding smoothly back into silence. The stuff that fills this Inland See holds you up powerfully, as if you’re floating, saltwater or helium-wise — effervescent, effortless, elemental.

In the wake of 2025’s acclaimed Inland SeeBITCHIN’ BAJAS ascend to higher ground with the Isle Peaks EP! Isle Peaks was initially released as a 2-song Qobuz exclusive, but BITCHIN’ BAJAS are a band of the people, for the people – and the people demanded its availability everywhere! Set for release on August 28th on vinyl, cassette, and digital, the 12″ EP and cassette feature “Watch Your Step”, an exclusive track not included on the Qobuz version or any digital platform. Listen to the title track, out now. Expanding through equal parts krautrock and new age zones, these three tracks ascend with the listener to signal-splitting heights on both atmospheric and esoteric scales. These cuts were sourced from the Inland See sessions, lovingly recorded analog (2″ multitrack tape and ½” 2-track), including the electroacoustic textures of sampled kalimba, field recordings, and autoharp.

Along with the announcement of Isle Peaks, BITCHIN’ BAJAS share a new run of US tour dates, as well as additions to their previously announced European dates. Climb Isle Peaks with us on August 28, 2026.

Photo by Beth Kotz

ELI WINTER‘s music synthesizes aspects of folk, rock, jazz, and devotional music, maintaining a waggish disregard for genre constraints emblematic of Chicago, his adopted hometown. His new album, A Trick of the Light, is an elegantly crafted and vibrant collection that finds the bandleader at the height of his powers: the dazzlingly intense arrangement of Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s “Arabian Nightingale” that opens the album, Winter’s muscular, dreamy originals, and his daring arrangement of Carla Bley’s “Ida Lupino.” His concert history spans prestigious music festivals like Primavera Sound and Big Ears, pristine listening rooms, museums, university chapels, laundromat bars, and small rooms in shotgun houses. In Louisville he will perform with Chicago percussionist and improviser TYLER DAMON of Circuit des Yeux.

ELI WINTER‘s second turn as bandleader unfolds like a sky bleeding exhaust fumes, alternating pedal steel waltzes and jazz-burnt fuzz bombs. The record starts with an ecstatic riff on a Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell tune and doesn’t really let off the gas.” — Lars Gotrich, NPR

Live music events in Louisville, KY. Show announcements, music and news, and other ephemera at: https://bsky.app/profile/theothersideoflife.bsky.social.

SAPAT, porKistra and ABDUR-RA’UF GHARIB at B-Side, Saturday July 25th – FREE!

Our good friends SAPAT are presenting the following amazing FREE show:

SAPAT

porKistra

ABDUR-RA’UF GHARIB

Saturday July 25th, 2026
at B-Side
1076 E. Washington Street, 2nd Floor
Louisville, KY 40206

FREE ADMISSION

21+
Doors: 7:00 pm
Music: 7:30 pm

For twenty-five years, Louisville’s SAPAT has explored drone, minimalist composition, and experiments that blur the boundaries between rock, jazz, folk, and free improvisation, creating performances where time, resonance, and collective listening become compositional materials. This concert features the premiere of Lyric Dispositions, a new work by ABDUR-RA’UF GHARIB. Although Ra’uf spent more than fifty years making music in private, he only began performing publicly a few years ago after joining SAPAT. For Lyric Dispositions, SAPAT divides into four trios that weave through GHARIB‘selectronic score, creating a performance that is equal parts composition, improvisation, and discovery.

porKistra is Louisville’s premier porch-centric acoustic quick strike instrumental duo. Equally at home on stages, pedestrian bridges, tunnels, or in front of the fireplace, the instrumentation is bizarre, the interplay compelling, the genre elusive. Thomas Deakin on clarinet and Stephanie Nilles on melodica wend and wind through tight compositions with wild flights of improvisation, humor, and psychosis. Please enjoy this imaginary folk music from the land of our hearts.  

Despite making music at home for more than fifty years, ABDUR-RA’UF GHARIB only began performing with other musicians about three years ago, when Lowe Sutherland invited him to join SAPAT. Before that, life had other assignments. He and his wife raised five daughters while he worked first building massive pipe organs and later as a railroad conductor. Neither profession leaves much room for rehearsals, though both seem like reasonable preparation for experimental music.

His stories have an uncanny way of collapsing decades into a single afternoon. He saw John Cage in Alabama in the 1970s. He talked with Sun Ra on the telephone in the 1980s. He belongs to a reading group working through Rumi’s Masnavi which has six books and roughly 25,000 couplets. By the time they finish, Montana may have drifted somewhere else. One suspects he has shaken hands with a few ghosts but is too polite to mention it.

These days he plays guitar for four to six hours every day, wandering effortlessly between Bach and the ecstatic wreckage of Sonny Sharrock, Derek Bailey, and Henry Kaiser. Somewhere along the way he also began composing electronic music that sounds as though several weather systems have agreed to share one central nervous system.

Soon ABDUR-RA’UF GHARIB will be moving to Montana, making this July 25th performance his final appearance with SAPAT. The evening will feature the premiere of his composition Lyric Dispositions. For this piece, the ensemble will be divided into four trios, and Kris Abplanalp will attempt to conduct them.

There is something fitting about this music arriving just before a departure. Compositions, unlike people, are usually good at being in two places at once. -Kris Abplanalp.

Live music events in Louisville, KY. Show announcements, music and news, and other ephemera at: https://bsky.app/profile/theothersideoflife.bsky.social.

Victor Vieira-Branco’s BARK CULTURE; and the LIVE DEBUTS of ZEUS, AGAIN and THE GLEAMING CORRIDOR at B-Side, Saturday August 15th

(Poster designed by Ben Sears)

The Other Side of Life is proud to present:

Victor Vieira-Branco’s BARK CULTURE

plus the LIVE DEBUTS of

ZEUS, AGAIN

and

THE GLEAMING CORRIDOR

Saturday August 15th, 2026
at B-Side
1076 E. Washington Street, 2nd Floor
Louisville, KY 40206

$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show
Advance tickets available online at TicketLeap;
Physical tickets on sale for in-person purchase at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204

21+
7:00 PM doors
8:00 PM music

“The music throughout [Victor Vieira-Branco’s BARK CULTURE‘s] The Giant is Awkward is enthralling, mysterious, intelligent, disconcerting, and beautiful.” – Aquarium Drunkard

Victor Vieira-Branco’s BARK CULTURE is a trio led by vibraphonist Victor Vieira-Branco featuring drummer Joey Sullivan and bassist John Moran. With over four years of immersive collaboration, the trio is known for their strong ensemble identity, high-energy live performances and extensive touring. Their record “Warm Wisdom” was cited as the Debut Release of 2024 by New York Times Jazz Critic Hank Shteamer and listed as Best Jazz on Bandcamp September 2024. More recently, the trio was enlisted by Rob Mazurek to perform on the soundtrack of Kelly Reichardt’s new film The Mastermind which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. For the group’s second album The Giant Is Awkward, the trio is joined by pianist and composer Sam Yulsman for five pieces that mirror the prismatic nature of a sound Vieira-Branco has been tirelessly crafting with the group since 2021. With the addition of Yulsman, the group reveals, as Peter Margasak states, “a heightened sensitivity and grace, with increased harmonic splendor thanks to the added chordal voice. The record also marks the vibraphonist’s clear growth as a composer.”

ZEUS, AGAIN is the musical project of Ken Brown, Bob Dixon, and Mathias Kolehmainen. They perform on electric bass, electric guitar, and drums. Collectively they have many decades of experience in performing and recording groups that have been based in Chicago, Louisville, and the Bay Area. Their music builds on their experiences in post rock, post punk, jazz, noise, ambient, traditional settings; references the work of their peers in the contemporary neo-minimalist community; and explores novel interpretations of their personal canons.

THE GLEAMING CORRIDOR is the instrumental electronic solo recording project of Ben Sears, a longtime Louisville area drummer and cartoonist. After six years and three self-recorded/released full length cassettes, he is making his live debut in late summer 2026.

Special thanks to Ben Sears.

Live music events in Louisville, KY. Show announcements, music and news, and other ephemera at: https://bsky.app/profile/theothersideoflife.bsky.social.

SPECTRE FOLK and PIPE FITTER at B-Side, Monday April 20th

Flier by Richard "Mooch" Peyton.
Flier by Richard “Mooch” Peyton.

The Other Side of Life is proud to present:

SPECTRE FOLK

and

PIPE FITTER

Monday, April 20th, 2026
at B-Side
1076 E. Washington Street, 2nd Floor
Louisville, KY 40206

$10 advance tickets, $15 day of show
Advance tickets available online at TicketLeap;
Physical tickets available for in-person purchase at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204

21+
7:00 PM doors
8:00 PM music

Picture of Spectre Folk
Spectre Folk

Pete Nolan was SPECTRE FOLK before drumming and strumming in Magik Markers was his main gig, and will be SPECTRE FOLK long after he shuffles off this mortal coil. The main benefit of ghost-folk is: you can play it way after you’re dead, and while you’re alive the Spectre can haunt any decent willing body with a gift for the unreal. This time around, fellow Abbey Road alum and cinematographer Eben Bull creates scapes of sound on keys to accompany Pete, who jams his kief-encrusted thumbprint directly in the center of the proceedings. Also, in the crew are Tuscadero frontperson Mellie Ferris on bass, fellow Magik Marker John Shaw on drums, and Pete’s daughter little Violet Ray on guitar. The music they make takes a leisurely pace, like opening the cabin for the first time in the season, introducing all the ambient nature world funk that seeped through into the nose and lungs. They deal in righteous, stank Lazy Horse/CCCR type jammers and a general sense of “folk vacation,” the beer’s gone, what a time we had so let’s roll another number for the road. Fearless as a lemming, Nolan creates a private universe, a Society of the Spectre-cal, if you will, and his gift is his freedom. Let’s have a drift.

SPECTRE FOLK‘s most recent album, “Quabbin Winter,” was co-released by Nolan’s Arbitrary Signs and Ryan Davis’s Sophomore Lounge in 2025 in a limited edition of 200, and features James Canty (The Make-Up, Nation of Ulysses) and Eben Bull, and was produced by Mike Donovan (Sic Alps, Peacers).

PIPE FITTER is the duo of Britt Walford (Slint, Evergreen, and much more) and Kris Abplanalp (Sapat, Freud County Limits, and much more). This show is their live debut.

Special thanks to Kris Abplanalp.

Live music events in Louisville, KY. Show announcements, music and news, and other ephemera at: https://bsky.app/profile/theothersideoflife.bsky.social.