Yeeeeeoooooowwwww! Behind a lean, mean piano, Baltimore’s J. Roddy Walston and the Business are traveling the East Coast spreading the love and documenting their highs and lows with humor and innuendo. Opening the show is Dangerbird, which features Brian Gray and Bradley Coomes, formerly of The Pine Club, and Nashville’s Hotpipes return once more. Everything goes down at Uncle Pleasant’s (2126 S. Preston St., 634-4147) on Friday. Doors open at 8 p.m., cover is $5.
Saturday, July 7
The Slow Break’s Katie O’Brien and Matt Fox bailed out on beachy Santa Cruz, Calif., to move here two years ago. But although the scenery’s changed, the couple has adjusted fast because of the music community’s open arms. “Everyone’s been real supportive and welcomed us,” O’Brien said. “We’re not used to that. In California, everyone’s a little bit more exclusive.”
Originally a duo, O’Brien and Fox found kindred spirits in another couple, Shauna Dellecave and Jason Cox, of the local psychedelic folk-rock band IamIs. Dellecave and Cox share a taste for unscrupulous songwriting and an egalitarian mindset. “There’s no real ego involved,” said O’Brien, the group’s primary drummer. “We all like to play everything, and we all write songs. Nobody leads the pack. We let each other do what we want.”
Live, The Slow Break is no Cali-pop retread. It floods the room with meaty, raw power. O’Brien’s pipes have a jagged edge, at times sounding as if her throat was being slashed by razor blades, zigging where Dellecave’s stentorian voice zags. Fox, too, belts out gritty tones to Cox’s glassy, breezy lines, and it all comes together in a bold, savage display designed to shake your boots.
The group is recording a new album at Dellecave and Cox’s MotherVein Studios. “It’s a little psychedelic and crazy,” O’Brien said of the sessions. “It’s like we took a bunch of peyote or something and decided to write an album. We’ve got a lot more dynamics.”
The Slow Break joins Brooklyn’s Low Water and The Broken Spurs Saturday at The Rudyard Kipling (422 W. Oak St., 636-1311). Show starts at 10 p.m., cover is $5.
Saturday, July 7
There are exchange programs, and there are exchange programs. One requires applications and college essays. The other, in Cregan Montague’s case, requires merely a backpack and a fiddle.
Montague, singer and electric violin player for Asheville, N.C.’s folk-rock duo divineMAGgees, left Wellesley College when the powers-that-be there said they didn’t have a study-abroad program in Ireland, so she went on her own dime. “I always felt something with Ireland,” she said. “I didn’t know anybody or anything.” Montague spent three months hitchhiking, playing pubs and busking on street corners, returning to the States richer in spirit and convinced of her artistic path.
Montague met Danielle Tibedo, a child of professional jazz musicians, at a bar in Boston, and the two have made a home for themselves in various locales in Maine and Athens, Ga., before landing in Asheville three years ago. “I don’t know if a lot of people really know about it yet, but it’s very diverse,” said Montague, an avid hiker and mountain biker.
MAGgees released Love Me Like the Roses independently in 2005 and have been touring ever since. “As a team, we use each other’s strengths,” she said. The two play Saturday at The Alternative (1032 Story Ave., 561-7613). Doors open at 9:30 p.m., cover is $8.
Now!
The CW Louisville (WBKI-TV) network is offering free airtime for all local bands starting, well, now. Bands and solo musicians will be allotted 10-second promotional announcements, as well as a feature on cwlouisville.com that lists the artist’s Web site, MySpace page and online music stores.
“Many of The CW Louisville shows incorporate music as the soundtrack to our characters’ lives,” said Dan Spangler, regional stations manager for The CW Louisville, in a news release. “And I’ve always been passionate about supporting local artists. To give this airtime is a small step in acknowledging the important contribution music, and the artists who make it, has in our community.”
Bands slated to be featured on the network include: Cabin, Leigh Ann Yost, The Glasspack, Dave Cox, Dick Sisto, Between Two Lions, Foree “Guitar” Wells, Todd Hildreth Accordian Trio, a.m. sunday and Edgehill Ave.
The CW Louisville can be seen over the air on channels 28 and 34, Insight channel 7, in high-definition on channel 34.1, and on Dish Network and DirecTV systems.
The move fits in with CW’s mission to document not just music, but Louisville’s vibrant artistic community as a whole. Carol LaFever, CEO of the Cascade Broadcasting Group, which owns the CW’s local affiliate, said as much in an interview earlier this year.
“We’re a privately held corporation; we don’t have a big corporate infrastructure. It lets us be a little bit more fleet of foot, and we’re staking out a different kind of real estate,” said LaFever, who worked for Westinghouse and ABC for more than a decade before moving to Louisville in 1999.
“We’re going out into the community and shooting artists, musicians, break-dancers, local people who are talking about Louisville, why they live here and what makes it cool. I don’t care why the mayor lives here,” she said. “I care why the guy who blows stained glass lives here.”
Local artists can send a CD with cover art and a suggested song to be used during the spot to The CW Louisville, 1601 Alliant Ave., Louisville, Ky., 40299, Attention: Dan Spangler.
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