Tag Archives: The Swan Dive

CATHERINE IRWIN, ELEPHANT MICAH, THE HOLLOWS at the SWAN DIVE, Friday January 22nd

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CATHERINE IRWIN (member of FREAKWATER)
ELEPHANT MICAH (from Bloomington, Indiana)
THE HOLLOWS (from Bloomington, Indiana)

Friday, January 22nd
at the SWAN DIVE
921 Swan Street
9 PM, $5, 21-and-over

CATHERINE IRWIN has called Louisville, Kentucky home, or at least her home base, all her life. She began performing by playing guitar in punk bands “and not caring a bit about country music,” she says. Still, the seed for her band Freakwater was inside her: “Most of the country music I heard on radio, I hated. But I loved the Carter Family, the way they would approach songs about death and dying or being saved and rejoicing the same way. That kind of music seems to age better. I can’t see myself playing punk anymore, but this kind of music I can see playing the rest of my life” (Chicago Tribune). Her songs are just packed with sapience, despondency, and wry wit, though you don’t have to look past “Louisville Lip” or “Dirty Little Snowman” to see she’s one of America’s greatest living songwriters. Even so, she remains humble, even self-depreciating: “If I had a master plan, it’d be trying to get people used to the idea of frumpy middle-aged losers singing music” (Boston Phoenix). She will be joined at this show by (we think) fantastic Louisville guitarist Michael O’Bannon, formerly of Blinders, Antman, and current member of 1069.

Kentuckiana’s ELEPHANT MICAH has been practicing the fine art of flying under the radar for almost a decade now. In the middle 2000s, along string of home-fi folk rock albums (released by BlueSanct Records and Time-Lag Records) earned the band praise from avant-music mag The Wire and overseas gigs with Jason Molina’s Magnolia Electric Company. In 2010, Elephant Micah returns with a major CD/LP release on Time-Lag Records and its first American tour in five years. ELEPHANT MICAH is the name of a music collective led by musician Joe O’Connell. In addition, he has released work on his own LRRC (Luddite Rural Recording Cooperative), which has also released work from collaborators Justin Vollmar and Jason Henn.

THE HOLLOWS feature neo-country songstress Kate Long backed by an accomplished cast of fellow Bloomington music mainstays (see also: Fatted Calf String Band, Magnolia Electric Company, Panoply Academy, etc).  Be sure to catch them on this rare Louisville outing!

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=246305277152.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

R. Keenan Lawler, Nick Hennies at the SWAN DIVE Saturday, August 8

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R. Keenan Lawler at Terrastock, 2008

(Image of R. Keenan Lawler at Terrastock 2008 swiped with love from Chris Barrus’s Flickr photostream. Image of Nick Hennies and a dog swiped from whiskeyandapples.com.)

R. KEENAN LAWLER
NICK HENNIES (Austin, Texas)

Saturday, August 8
The Swan Dive
9 PM
$5, 21 and over

R. KEENAN LAWLER is a musician and sound artist based in Louisville Kentucky. For over 25 years his musical journey has taken him from early experiments with reverb tanks, noise and tape decks to all manner of avant-garde, “new” music, psychedelia, electro-acoustic, drone, ethnic and sampler-based work. LAWLER is best known for developing a highly personal and exploratory language for the metal bodied resonator guitar which Baltimore’s John Berdnt called “Cosmic, monolithic and deeply American.” Indeed his work is informed by carnatic classical, Charles Ives, Albert Ayler, blues, minimalism and non-western trance musics. Primarily a solo performer, he is also known for collaborative work. The “Keyhole II” album he recorded with Pelt and metal worker Eric Clark is one of Pelt’s most beautiful and memorable recordings, and his guitar playing is also heard on releases by Paul K., Jack Wright, My Morning Jacket and most visibily on Matmos’ “The Civil War.” He has collaborated or performed with a wide range of forward-thinking musicians and mavericks including Rhys Chatham, John Butcher, Eliott Sharp, Charalambides, Ignaz Schick/Perlonex, Kaffe Matthews, Burning Star Core, Jason Kahn, Ut Gret, Thaniel Ion Lee, Ed Wilcox, Ramesh Srinivasan, Kevin Drumm, Arco Flute Foundation, Helena Espvall, Ian Nagoski, Connor Bell, Andy Willis, Alan Licht, Taksuya Nakatani, Tom Carter, Bhob Rainey, Aaron Rosenblum, Joe Dutkiewicz, Evergreen,Eric Carbonara and Joseph Suchy.

NICK HENNIES is a percussionist and composer from Louisville, KY. He received his M.A. from UC-San Diego where he studied with world-renowned percussionist Steven Schick and performed with ‘red fish blue fish’, the SONOR Ensemble, Castanets, and in a duo with trombonist Tucker Dulin. Since relocating to Austin, TX in 2003 HENNIES has performed regularly with The Weird Weeds, the Austin New Music Co-op, Peter & the Wolf, and numerous collaborations with local and visiting musicians. He has worked with a wide array of musicians including Arnold Dreyblatt, Radu Malfatti, Eugene Chadbourne, Stuart Saunders Smith, and Jandek in his first ever U.S. performance. HENNIES’ solo work involves minimalist experiments in timbre with percussion instruments, as well as working with found sounds and electronic sources. His first official solo CD “Paths” was released on Thor’s Rubber Hammer in 2008 and also has released or forthcoming work on B-Boim, Sentient Recognition Archive, and Spectral House.

Listen to a clip from NICK HENNIES’ solo CD “Paths” here: http://nhennies.com/audio/paths-sample.mp3.

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