The Bowery Presents upcoming shows
Dr. Dog
Eli "Paperboy" Reed & the True Loves / Chief
- Venue:
-
The Beach @ Governors Island
- Date:
- Sun 8/15
- Notes:
- all ages
- Doors: 6:00 PM / Show: 8:15 PM
- FREE
FREE!
- Governors Island
- official website
- FAQ & DIRECTIONS click here
We encourage everyone to come early and enjoy the beach. Governors Island ferries will run from the Battery Maritime Building until 5:30 PM ONLY. If you are on the island early, please make sure to get yourself to the Beach venue by 5:30 PM where concert wristbands will be available. Doors will open at 6:00 PM.
Dedicated concert ferries will depart starting at 7:15 PM. Please enter the ferry queue at the NORTH end of the Battery Maritime Building – 10 South Street. While there will be no ferries departing between 6 PM and 7:15 PM, concert wristbands will be handed out, subject to availability, in the ferry queue.
Show time is 8:15PM.
- Dr. Dog
- official website
- myspace
- “There was this feeling inside me going into making this record that we’d never made an album before,” says guitarist/vocalist Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog’s Shame, Shame, their Anti- debut and the first album made outside the safe confines of their home studio. “Four albums ago, we set out with this unspoken or unconscious mission, and I feel like we accomplished that to our own standards of fulfillment. With our last record [2008’s Fate], there didn’t seem to be the next logical step with the general set of sensibilities and aesthetics that we’d been working from up until that point. It felt like a closed book.”
As a band that has traditionally built their scrappily spirited albums layer by layer in the undisturbed seclusion of their Philadelphia studio, Dr. Dog realized they would need to leave these comforts and work in a professional studio with the help of an outside engineer and producer if they were to continue their album-by-album growth. Having evolved from a band whose primary creative outlet was the album-making process into one that increasingly favored the energy of their live performances, they knew they wanted to document the new dynamic they had developed on the road.
In Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith) they found a producer who had earned his reputation making albums in much the same fashion as Dr. Dog had, eventually moving on to the bigger and better sounds that they now wanted. With his help, the intricate arrangements of Fate were peeled back to reveal the raw immediacy of a tight five-man unit honing their craft. During these sessions at Dreamland Studios in West Hurley, New York, their unkempt edges were pruned, producing lean and muscular arrangements they could perform live without having to translate violin lines into guitar solos or vice versa. Along the way, what could have been merely a live-in-the-studio detour became nothing less than the culmination and unification of everything they’d done to that point.
Founded on a creative relationship whose roots stretch back to when McMicken and bassist Toby Leaman met in the 8th grade, Dr. Dog was years in the making. After long hours practicing in basements, performing in barns, and tweaking knobs on cassette four track machines, Dr. Dog was officially established in 1999 with the Psychedelic Swamp record. What followed was an intense period of stockpiling eight-track recordings, open-ended enrollment policies where Dr. Dog membership included a man who played a one-string guitar in a skintight skeleton costume and another who danced in the crowd while wearing a tuxedo. Despite their loyal hometown following, Dr. Dog could have very well remained a Philadelphia phenomenon had McMicken’s then-girlfriend not slipped a copy of Toothbrush, a collection of home recordings, to Jim James of My Morning Jacket, who would take them on their first tour and prepare the way for the waves of positive press that would greet 2005’s Easy Beat. By 2007, their next album We All Belong was earning the band opening slots for Wilco and the Raconteurs and they were turning up all over late night television. They upped the ante with their sonically ambitious Fate and started headlining their own tours. By the spring of 2009, the treadmill had run them ragged, and their new songs reflected a life spent with the nagging realization that things were out of a balance.
“It’s hard when you spend half your time away from your friends and family to feel like you’re as connected as you could be to the people around you,” says Leaman. “I think that’s a lot of what this album is about. ‘I’m alone of my own making’ – that attitude. You see that all these people have lives and things go on and on, and if you’re in a band it’s pretty much static. ‘What are you going to do this year?’ ‘Well, I’m going to make an album, and I’m going to go on tour.’ That’s your life. You see your friends and you wonder how close you are to the people you feel close to, because maybe you haven’t seen them for months and months. I’m not complaining, because this is all we’ve ever wanted, but it’s a disorienting way to live.”
Dr. Dog has created a song cycle of doubt and despair, bookended with the woozily swirling harmonies of Leaman’s lonely opener “Stranger” and the harsh self-critique of the title track, a gnarled admission that sometimes it’s best to admit your mistakes and move on. Their most openly autobiographical release, ranging from McMicken’s exploration of West Philly underlife in “Shadow People” to his account of two soul-bearing late night conversations in “Jackie Wants a Black Eye,” it’s an album whose dark themes are soothed by bright harmonies, taut guitar riffs, and soaring melodies. Past stylistic references remain, but the tone is entirely different, with doubt, confusion and unanswered questions. And yet Shame, Shame is not a joyless affair Just like each of their previous albums, it’s record destined to claim its place on the timeless margins, untouched by modern tastes and content to exist on its own terms. Dig deeper, and you’ll see that it’s the sound of bones groaning to support new growth and the story of how just how difficult the maturation process is, even when you want it more than anything. It’s the sound of Dr. Dog writing their next chapter, the one they’ve been working towards since they played their first notes together.
- Eli "Paperboy" Reed & The True Lovers
- official website
- myspace
- Growing up in Brookline, MA, Eli Reed had wide exposure to music. His father was a critic and lent his extensive record collection to his son, who soaked up as much as he could, gravitating toward the gospel, soul, blues, and R&B albums especially. Reed taught himself piano, guitar, and harmonica, and busked in Boston's Harvard Square to practice his chops and performing skills.
After finishing high school he found work in Clarksdale, MS. Upon moving there, and finding that the job had fallen through, Reed introduced himself to the music community, playing frequently at local clubs and even ending up under the tutelage of drummer Sam Carr. It was in Mississippi that Reed also got his nickname, "Paperboy," thanks to the newsboy-styled hat he was wearing at the time.
After nine months there, at his parents' bequest he moved north to attend the University of Chicago. In Chicago Reed was able to meet soul singer Mitty Collier, who had had a hit in 1964 with the single "I Had a Talk with My Man" but had since turned to ministry. The young musician impressed her so much -- he auditioned on the piano in his dormitory -- that she asked him to be the Minister of Music at her church, a position he held until he returned to Boston after a year of school.
Back home, Reed worked on assembling his band, called the True Loves, and in 2005 he self-released the record Sings "Walkin' and Talkin' (For My Baby)" and Other Smash Hits, a collection of covers and originals.
The band began to gain recognition around town, particularly thanks to Reed's enthused and passionate singing, and a performance at 2007's SXSW attracted some label interest. Signed to Boston-based Q Division, Eli "Paperboy" Reed & the True Loves issued their second full-length, Roll with You (with all songs written or co-written by Reed), in the spring of 2008.
Since then Reed and the True Loves have toured the world and gained international attention for their famously fiery live shows. 2009 promises more touring (including trips to Australia and Japan) and a highly anticpated new album in the fall.
- Chief
- official website
- myspace
- The story of Chief is one of two coasts. Though Evan Koga, Mike Moonves and brothers Danny and Michael Fujikawa were all born and raised as sons of Los Angeles, they left for New York University, worlds away. It was in New York that they first got to know one another as collaborators, rumbling through a number of semi-serious projects and solo ventures before feeling swept away by a small run of songs Koga had penned and presented to them. He had written them under the name Chief, a moniker the brothers Danny and Michael opted to keep the day they first formed their trio. It was on New York stages that they honed their songs and found their sound, a thoughtfully melodic update on summer and road records past. Neil Young. Tom Petty. The Band. Crosby, Stills and Nash. Natural, timeless songwriting for times that change too quickly. LA was never far away.
In fact, in early 2009, they all started to migrate home to the City of Angels for good, the newly added Moonves along for the ride on bass. “We simply wanted a change of pace,” guitarist Koga says. “Our BPM is a little bit slower here.” On Modern Rituals, their first full-length and Domino debut, that transcontinental downshift is captured in gorgeous, full-bodied stereo. Recording began in November of last year, the foursome taking their songbook into the studio with New York-based, producer and Grammy Award-winning engineer Emery Dobyns. The goal was to create a rock record free of gimmicks and fences, a fresh look at classic sounds fitting of its title. The end result is just that. “It’s a traveler’s record. I listen and it immediately feels natural to see myself driving down the Pacific Coast Highway,” guitarist Danny Fujikawa explains. “But at the same time, maybe it would feel the same way if I were walking through New York.” Modern Rituals was tracked in four different studios, parts of some songs scattered across time in New York, Echo Park, Los Feliz and Venice, California. “You wouldn’t know to listen for it, but it’s like a math problem,” says Michael. “I can hear personal experiences from all those times layered across some of these songs. It’s insane.” To his brother, one element unifies the album as a whole. “There is a good bit of ocean in there,” Danny says.
True—in the saltwater crash of “Breaking Walls” or hilly expanse of the “This Land,” there is an unerring sense of landscape, of clean air in your gums and on your skin. But Modern Rituals isn’t simply a rock n’ roll record born of American shoreline. It’s a band of songs that bridge all the rhythms and wavelengths in between. And in a way, it’s bound together by much more: in the process of making Modern Rituals, the men of Chief have become a family, too. Since Koga’s first, decidedly more folk-y offerings, each member of the band has grown together and come of age as the songs have evolved. The evolving songwriting partnership between Koga and Fujikawa in particular can take one’s breath away. A self-taught guitarist, Danny had long made music alone with sequencers and loop samples of his own imagining. When given the opportunity to work with Koga and his older brother, he left school early to join. “I had faith in this band and Evan’s songs,“ he says. “Evan has a great grip on finding very powerful chords, ones that could even be seen as classic. He doesn’t just sing over them—he flows.” In the union between their two guitars, each of its own completely different discipline, one can hear a synergy as lasting as the vocal harmonies all four have clearly worked so hard to combine and refine. The commitment to creative democracy in the band is felt outside and in. An older song of Koga’s, “Breaking Walls” was one the band had stopped playing for a while and one with which its author had lost touch. But after hammering away at it as a group in the studio, it took on shades he hadn’t expected to find. “In revisiting it together and just hearing it in its final form, I started loving it again,” Koga explains.
“You Tell Me” is a Danny-penned bracer sometimes felt most by his older brother. “Because he’s my brother, we’re already cut of the same cloth: everything about him is to do with me and everything about me is to do with him,” Michael says. “But that song is literally about how my mom and I are constantly telling Danny to get up and go, to snap out of it, that he can do it. To hear him sing that song is huge. As a band, we go through everything together. We’re all deeply invested in this music, even if we didn’t write the song or lyric.” Though that love is audible from Modern Rituals’ first strum to its last, few moments ring as true to the sentiment as “In The Valley”. Koga and Danny’s guitars slow dance with one another. Moonves and Michael’s rhythm section is loose but totally in-step. And beyond the many constellations of melody that unfolding from top to bottom, you can hear all four meet vocally. Since the very beginning, Chief has prided itself in braiding together every member’s voice in a way both unique to their own modern sensibilities and loyal to the rock & roll touchstones that helped bring them closer to together. “Chief has opened my eyes musically,” Danny says. “I’m not just working on my own anymore and in that way I’ve grown as a person: I started out as a guitarist and now I have a voice. I want people to be able to hear just how proud we are of all of these songs.”
They will.
OTHER UPCOMING SHOWS FROM THE BOWERY PRESENTS
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