HEARTLESS BASTARDS
DAVID VANDERVELDE, BRIAN LOPEZ
Sat, March 31, 2012
Doors: 7:30 pm / Show: 8:00 pm
Crescent Ballroom
Phoenix, AZ
$15.00 - $16.00
Off Sale
This event is 21 and over
http://www.ticketfly.com/event/90161/
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HEARTLESS BASTARDS
The Heartless Bastards' story starts in Dayton, Ohio, where Wennerstrom found the name on a multiple choice video trivia game at a bar.
As a songwriting teenager during a time when GBV and Brainiac were packing local bars and three of the Breeders were still in town, Wennerstrom used to sneak into clubs to check out the scene. "I would just see those people—my music heroes—hanging out at the bar like everyone else," she remembers. "I could see myself in them. It gave me inspiration to do my own thing."
After doing the usual business of playing local shows, the trio set out the following year on a regional tour. One of the first gigs of the trip took them to a bar in Akron, where Black Keys' drummer Patrick Carney just happened to be one of only a handful of people in the audience. This chance encounter led Wennerstrom and the Heartless Bastards to Fat Possum Records, with whom they released their debut, Stairs and Elevators, in early 2005.
The band moved on with critical praise in their back pocket, including a four-and-a-half star review from Rolling Stone, which took note that, when Wennerstrom "opens her throat on Stairs and Elevators … she sounds like she's wailing on the shoulders of giants; her sad and angry vocals channeling all the swagger and spit of a young Robert Plant"
By whatever yardstick you care to measure, it was high time for Erika to get out of Dayton.
In true ascetic discipline, she moved to Austin, Texas in 2007 for a change of inspirational scenery and a new recording project. With the help of producer Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail of Dead), she assembled a group of musicians with whom she gave the songs life and uncovered yet another layer of Wennerstrom and the Heartless Bastards. Two of the new Bastards aren't Texas ringers, but fellow Dayton brethren Dave Colvin on drums, and Jesse Ebaugh on bass, who actually played on the original demo that hooked Fat Possum, throw in one Austin native on guitar, Mark Nathan and you've got a new unstoppable force that "Take the stage and literally knock everybody down"
The Decemberists' guitarist Chris Funk said, "It's been a few years since I've had a voice on repeat in my mind. This voice seems to arrive in my ears while sound checking, often before the shows on a pre-show play list and after shows too -- the songs are just perfect and the band has found their spots behind this incredible woman. A unique and enduring artist arrived into our world once again."
As a songwriting teenager during a time when GBV and Brainiac were packing local bars and three of the Breeders were still in town, Wennerstrom used to sneak into clubs to check out the scene. "I would just see those people—my music heroes—hanging out at the bar like everyone else," she remembers. "I could see myself in them. It gave me inspiration to do my own thing."
After doing the usual business of playing local shows, the trio set out the following year on a regional tour. One of the first gigs of the trip took them to a bar in Akron, where Black Keys' drummer Patrick Carney just happened to be one of only a handful of people in the audience. This chance encounter led Wennerstrom and the Heartless Bastards to Fat Possum Records, with whom they released their debut, Stairs and Elevators, in early 2005.
The band moved on with critical praise in their back pocket, including a four-and-a-half star review from Rolling Stone, which took note that, when Wennerstrom "opens her throat on Stairs and Elevators … she sounds like she's wailing on the shoulders of giants; her sad and angry vocals channeling all the swagger and spit of a young Robert Plant"
By whatever yardstick you care to measure, it was high time for Erika to get out of Dayton.
In true ascetic discipline, she moved to Austin, Texas in 2007 for a change of inspirational scenery and a new recording project. With the help of producer Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail of Dead), she assembled a group of musicians with whom she gave the songs life and uncovered yet another layer of Wennerstrom and the Heartless Bastards. Two of the new Bastards aren't Texas ringers, but fellow Dayton brethren Dave Colvin on drums, and Jesse Ebaugh on bass, who actually played on the original demo that hooked Fat Possum, throw in one Austin native on guitar, Mark Nathan and you've got a new unstoppable force that "Take the stage and literally knock everybody down"
The Decemberists' guitarist Chris Funk said, "It's been a few years since I've had a voice on repeat in my mind. This voice seems to arrive in my ears while sound checking, often before the shows on a pre-show play list and after shows too -- the songs are just perfect and the band has found their spots behind this incredible woman. A unique and enduring artist arrived into our world once again."
DAVID VANDERVELDE
David Vandervelde appeared before us one hot summer day like a dynamo. The sound we heard coming through in stereo was that of our coming-of-age years screaming back at us - a faithful reminder that our beauteous days of bowing before pin-up rock stars and carving iconographic logos on desktops and in famous treetrunks have not passed us by. No, David Vandervelde is here to remind us that the truest, most primal and addictive properties of rock n' roll are ageless.
BRIAN LOPEZ
It's not enough to say of Tucson's Brian Lopez that he is a young man of drive, discipline and vision, laudable as those qualities are, and how essential they are to success in almost every endeavor. Couple his estimable attributes with an artists sensibility and you really have something special, something to count on for the long haul. Brian Lopez is an artist, and with his album Ultra he has begun the real work of going inside himself to find out what he has to say to the world. And lo, it is good.
Brian grew up in a typical American home. Parents married young, had several children and Brian was raised with more of an athletic upbringing than a musical one. Competition shaped Brian and gave him a "drive to win...to compete and excel".
As a child he was an aficionado of The Beatles. Learning to play their songs on a "crappy Fender Squier" Brian quickly started a band and became "one of the cool kids" because he could play any song requested. He played in several bands not worth naming, put himself through college on a classical performance guitar scholarship and graduated with a BA in Music. And while he could play with the jazz cats and jam with the classical guitar guys, his heart always loved rock n roll.
Ultra is the product of Brian Lopez's rock n roll heart. Yes, there are the Spanish language songs, and as all the best foreign language songs do, these transcend language barriers and move the spirit with the force of their feeling. But there is more, much more to behold on Ultra, and this reveals Lopez to be very much a product of his times, speaking to his times. There is also that underlying element of desert; listening to Ultra there is almost a palpable heat and wind.
Brian grew up in a typical American home. Parents married young, had several children and Brian was raised with more of an athletic upbringing than a musical one. Competition shaped Brian and gave him a "drive to win...to compete and excel".
As a child he was an aficionado of The Beatles. Learning to play their songs on a "crappy Fender Squier" Brian quickly started a band and became "one of the cool kids" because he could play any song requested. He played in several bands not worth naming, put himself through college on a classical performance guitar scholarship and graduated with a BA in Music. And while he could play with the jazz cats and jam with the classical guitar guys, his heart always loved rock n roll.
Ultra is the product of Brian Lopez's rock n roll heart. Yes, there are the Spanish language songs, and as all the best foreign language songs do, these transcend language barriers and move the spirit with the force of their feeling. But there is more, much more to behold on Ultra, and this reveals Lopez to be very much a product of his times, speaking to his times. There is also that underlying element of desert; listening to Ultra there is almost a palpable heat and wind.
