Vincent Neil Emerson (18+ Event)

Vincent Neil Emerson is an East Texas songwriter. He is a La Honda Records recording artist.

The Warped Band (21+ Event)

Weedeater (21+ Event)

With a sound and presence like no other band in the world, Weedeater stand apart from all others, both live and on their recordings. Their unfiltered and unrefined energy surges uncontrollably through the band and anyone who bears witness to their live show. Spite and deep resentment somehow fuse with comedy and maximum volume to produce an indignant, vomitous (both figuratively and sometimes literally) performance that is forced upon the willing yet hapless crowd. You are instantly swallowed whole by both Dixie and Shep's nearly indistinguishable monster bass and guitar tones, and you are absolutely beaten to a bloody pulp and scared for your life by Keko's crazed, yet amazingly potent bashing of his kit; with sticks that look like tree trunks turning into a splintered mess by the end of every song. If you had any sense you might actually take a step back and contemplate your safety for a moment, but then you come to your senses (sort of, anyway) and realize you're at a f*cking Weedeater show, and this is why you came here, and there is no way to deny what you are witnessing. Pure, unabashed, musical violence in every form. It's real, and it's dangerous, and it feels so damn good. After 2007's critically acclaimed and now classic release, "God Luck and Good Speed" had been toured to death around the world, the boys finally took some time between the mishaps and mayhem of 2010 to write and record their 2nd album for Southern Lord Recordings and 4th full-length CD/LP, "Jason...The Dragon", which will be released March 15th on both CD and LP. Recorded and mixed once again by the legendary Steve Albini at Electrical Audio Studios in Chicago, and mastered once again by the equally as legendary John Golden at Golden Studios in southern California, "Jason..." continues the legacy that has culminated over nearly 15 years of the band's existence into something truly unique and masterful. Once again, we are dragged through the mire by three of the finest dirge merchants in the world, and the songwriting is just as ingenious as ever and seems to start just where "God Luck..." left off, with "Hammerhandle" kicking things off in an oscillating groove that builds and falls and then eventually melts into "Mancoon", a ripping tune that spans themes from homemade dynamite to true tales of human bite wounds and other guttural warnings that are surely not meant to be taken lightly. The band returns to their swampy roots via acoustic bass and banjo with the album's closer "Whiskey Creek", and they venture into totally new territory with the hook-laden, driving force that is "Homecoming". Dixie's solo performance on "Palms and Opium" sounds like a narcotic jam that he and Dean Ween had at a private nitrous party on a deserted island; the track was inspired by and written during the blissed-out visions Dixie had while laid up on pain pills for a month after blowing off his big toe with a shotgun in early 2010. We don't need to go back there again, do we? Seems like we just did. The masterpiece is of course the album's namesake, "Jason...the Dragon" which takes the listening doomernaut on a slithering journey though a sludgy world of viscous, black molasses riffs that are punctuated by cannon drums and some of the album's most memorable lyrics. With a full headlining tour of the US planned for February and March and a European tour shortly thereafter with a stop at Roadburn and more dates to be announced soon, the band is rearing to take 2011 by storm and there is a horde of rabid fans ready to hear their newest offerings.

The Dip

The Dip is a Seattle-based Rhythm and Blues band that is known for its poignant songwriting, detailed arrangements, and vintage sound. Featuring a three-piece horn section, the group’s music harkens back to earlier soul and funk influences while hinting at the jazz foundations that brought the band’s members together. Along with singer and guitarist Tom Eddy, bassist Mark Hunter and drummer Jarred Katz are equally at home in a tight-pocketed groove as they are spacious free-improvisation. Trumpet player Brennan Carter joined by saxophonists Evan Smith and Levi Gillis serve as the band’s melodic counterpoint, playing off Eddy’s vocals to create a distinct sonic character that has drawn in millions of listeners to date.   'Love Direction', the follow-up to 2022’s 'Sticking With It' (which landed at #1 on the Billboard Current R&B Albums Chart) is the band’s fourth full-length studio album and second for Dualtone Records, due out 7/12/24. This new record is the sound of the band taking their next step forward. The interplay of old and new is on full display throughout the album; and, the group augments their classic sound with an expanded instrumentation throughout. Eddy says of the album’s inspiration: “As you get further along in a relationship, sometimes you lose your way. The things that came easily in the beginning get hard. The love is still there, it’s just that people and life are complicated. Sometimes you don’t have the tools in the toolbox to figure out what you need to do to support the other person, so you have to get help and ask for directions.”   Still, despite the title, this latest record isn’t a collection of straightforward love songs, but an investigation into the different angles and challenges that relationships can bring. Expanding on the album’s theme, Eddy further notes “These aren’t ‘Love Songs’ in the most obvious sense. They deal with the middle stages, the hinterlands of love and life together - figuring someone out and what they need, learning how to communicate, and examining your own faults. We set out to write music that felt more grown, a little wiser. The songs that emerged all pointed in the Love Direction.”   Their last album cycle saw the band headline and sell-out shows at iconic venues across the country. They have also had the opportunity to support new friends like Lake Street Dive and The Black Pumas, while also appearing at major festivals including Bonnaroo and Outside Lands. No strangers to the road, this new album represents a reflection on the band’s touring gravitas as well as the promise of a new destination appearing on the horizon. Directions now in hand, The Dip is looking forward to furthering this exploration into all matters of the heart by bringing this expansive and detailed new recording to life in their next travels together.

Darren Kiely

Hailing from a quaint town in Co. Cork, Ireland, Darren Kiely's folk-infused pop sound originates from his inherited love of traditional Irish music, intertwined with modern influences such as The Lumineers, Mumtord & Sons, and Noah Kahan. At just five vears old, Darren learned the tin whistle, and at eight years old he picked up the fiddle, eventually teaching himself to play guitar as well. Darren began singing in 2019, quickly garnering attention for his raw and fervent vocals and emotive delivery. After winning numerous honors at a national level in Irish traditional music, Darren found his way to NYC in 2022 to continue developing his own music and sound, and soon after headed to the songwriting hub of Nashville. Signing to Free Flight Records, Kily's unique presentation of folk-infused pop and lush storytelling, which echoes the backdrop of the inish countryside where he was raised, is the foretront of his debut EP, Lost. The seven-track project explores the triumphant war of overcoming self-doubt, struggling to find himself, questioning emotions and seeking answers, while his follow up EP, From The Dark, Kiely takes his craft to new heights as he explores the harsh realities that come with growing up and moving on. Lost features track "Mom & Dad," which debuted in the Top 40 on the Irish Singles chart and lop 5 on the Irish Homegrown chart, as well as tan-tavorite "Sunrise" which reached No. 1 on the chart. Kiely took his new music on the road with his headline THE ROAD HOME TOUR & THE LOST TOUR, where he sold out shows across his home country of Ireland and in North America and has toured with the 502s and Mat Kearny.

Superchunk (18+ Event)

Like every record Superchunk has made over the last thirty-some years, Wild Loneliness is unskippably excellent and infectious. It’s a blend of stripped-down and lush, electric and acoustic, highs and lows, and I love it all. On Wild Loneliness I hear echoes of Come Pick Me Up, Here’s to Shutting Up, and Majesty Shredding. After the (ahem, completely justifiable) anger of What a Time to Be Alive, this new record is less about what we’ve lost in these harrowing times and more about what we have to be thankful for. (I know something about gratitude. I’ve been a huge Superchunk fan since the 1990s, around the same time I first found my way to poetry, so the fact that I’m writing these words feels like a minor miracle.)On Wild Loneliness, it feels like the band is refocusing on possibility, and possibility is built into the songs themselves, in the sweet surprises tucked inside them. I say all the time that what makes a good poem—the “secret ingredient”—is surprise. Perhaps the same is true of songs. Like when the sax comes in on the title track, played by Wye Oak’s Andy Stack, adding a completely new texture to the song. Or when Owen Pallett’s strings come in on “This Night.” But my favorite surprise on Wild Loneliness is when the harmonies of Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley of Teenage Fanclub kick in on “Endless Summer.” It’s as perfect a pop song as you’ll ever hear—sweet, bright, flat-out gorgeous—and yet it grapples with the depressing reality of climate change: “Is this the year the leaves don’t lose their color / and hummingbirds, they don’t come back to hover / I don’t mean to be a giant bummer but / I’m not ready / for an endless summer, no / I’m not ready for an endless summer.” I love how the music acts as a kind of counterweight to the lyrics.Because of COVID, Mac, Laura, Jim, and Jon each recorded separately, but a silver lining is that this method made other long-distance contributions possible, from R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, Sharon Van Etten, Franklin Bruno, and Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura, among others. Some of the songs for the record were written before the pandemic hit, but others, like “Wild Loneliness,” were written from and about isolation.I’ve been thinking of songs as memory machines. Every time we play a record, we remember when we heard it before, and where we were, and who we were. Music crystallizes memories so well: listening to “Detroit Has a Skyline,” suddenly I’m shout-singing along with it at a show in Detroit twenty years ago; listening to “Overflows,” I’m transported back to whisper- singing a slowed-down version of it to my young son, that year it was his most-requested lullaby.Wild Loneliness is becoming part of my life, part of my memories, too. And it will be part of yours. I can picture people in 20, 50, or 100 years listening to this record and marveling at what these artists created together—beauty, possibility, surprise—during this alarming (and alarmingly isolated) time. But why wait? Let’s marvel now.