EGRET (from Louisville)
ELEPHANT MICAH (from Bloomington, Indiana)
PILLARS AND TONGUES (from Chicago, Illinois; on Empty Cellar Records)
MIKE TAMBURO (from Pittsburgh, PA; on the New American Folk Hero label)

Sunday, September 5th
at SKULL ALLEY
1017 E. Broadway (near the corner of Barrett and Broadway)
8 PM, $6, ALL AGES!

EGRET is a newer Louisville band composed of Greta Smith on vocals, autoharp, and guitar; Paul Rushford on lap steel and guitar; Chet Gray on cello, guitar, kazoo; and Zack Kennedy on drums and percussion. They recently released their first album Bright Up There! which can be purchased at ear X-tacy or Underground Sounds.

ELEPHANT MICAH is music by southern Indiana based singer and sound recordist Joseph O’Connell.  Taking cues from 1970s songcraft (Townes Van Zandt, Joni Mitchell) as well as midwestern lo-fi rock (Guided by Voices), ELEPHANT MICAH has gradually built a cult audience over a decade of do-it-yourself releases and tours. His latest release, Echoer’s Intent, is the first ELEPHANT MICAH album to fully foreground O’Connell as a writer and solo performer.  These minimal, mostly live recordings often approximate more “traditional” blues or Appalachian stylings.  In the same breath, O’Connell takes up imitation and authenticty as his central lyrical themes, producing an album that is both a critique and an example of what can only be termed folksploitation.

Listen to “Loon Call” by ELEPHANT MICAH here: http://www.elephantmicah.com/Loon%20Call.mp3.

PILLARS AND TONGUES is a trio based in Chicago, Illinois whose musical pursuits seem to defy genre categorization. The ongoing result of these pursuits has been called, variously, “holy” and “sexy” and it may well be the tension between these two concepts which lights the fire under (over?) PILLARS AND TONGUES. Think on those things which are so beautiful they become obscene. Speaking literally, the trio makes extended use of the human voice, violin, double bass, drums, bells and organs. The music is perhaps distinctly American in both its affair with American forms and its refusal to adhere to them at all. Their most recent album, Lay of Pilgrim Park, was released this year on Empty Cellar Records.

Listen to a track by PILLARS AND TONGUES from Lay of Pilgrim Park here: Made Sheen

MIKE TAMBURO is a 21st century Renaissance man who has forged his way into the consciousness of the American underground music community. For the past 13 years, Tamburo has been relentlessly releasing records (31 releases and counting) under different monikers and projects including Meisha, Arco Flute Foundation and various imprints under his own name. He has performed over 500 shows all over the United States, traveling to every nook and cranny, searching for some kind of an understanding of what America truly is. Though always considering himself a multi-instrumentalist, he gained fame and notoriety with his fingerstyle guitar playing and his idiosyncratic use of effects; only to swear himself off of the acoustic guitar, eventually setting it on fire and hurling it off of Pittsburgh’s 40th Street Bridge. His effects soon followed. Tamburo is a man who continues to reinvent himself, recently finding his new musical passion in the hammered dulcimer; building upon his own unique compositional stylings, he has developed a voice for the instrument that is very much his own. He is greatly inspired by American folk and minimalist music traditions as well as Indian classical music, but often expands outward to include influences from avant-garde to noise to modern compositional music. A Tamburo performance is always a very transportive experience. Tamburo is also an artist, film maker, writer, instrument builder, curator of the Fantastic Voyagers Festivals, Kundalini Yoga and Pranayama devotee, and inner state researcher; exploring alpha and theta states, floatation tanks, ethnobotany, orgone energy, and ecstatic states of being. He also runs the New American Folk Hero label, which continues to release an eclectic roster of creative and experimental musics.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101904136535547.

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