In This Moment with Devour the Day, Butcher Babies

Change. Some people welcome it. Others resist it. Some seek it out. Others fear the unknown. Sometimes it happens beyond our control. Whatever one’s mindset, change is inevitable. The challenge comes with how we face it and deal with the consequences.

For vocalist Maria Brink and guitarist Chris Howorth, the duo at the heart of In This Moment, change came unexpectedly when they found themselves rebuilding the walls around their foundation. Stripped down to their essence, the core of In This Moment is on fire with their fourth album, aptly titledBlood.

“I knew that I wanted this album to bring out elements we’ve never shown before. This alluring, darker, sinful side of us that no one has ever seen,” says Brink. “We wanted to find something new within ourselves, and with this album, I’m definitely the boldest I’ve ever been. I’m not trying to push boundaries. It’s not a conscious thing. It’s a natural artistic place.”

Brink and Howorth began tracking Blood with producer Kevin Churko late last year at The Hideout Studio in Las Vegas, their 3rd with Churko at the helm. “In January [2012], we began writing and recording more songs,” says Howorth. “Kevin put no limits or restrictions on us. There was no setting the clock this time. He just wanted us to record until the songs were the best they could be.”

The powerful title track, “Blood,” was the first one written for the album and it’s one of Howorth’s favorites. “It really set the tone for the whole record and kicked a bunch of doors down,” he says. “I think it’s a really unique song that doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before, and I’m really proud of that. My other fave is “Hello.” I like it because it’s so heavy and melodic at the same time. Crushing riffs and huge choruses never get old to me. This song is In This Moment 101. Our fans will love it.”

In This Moment began in Los Angeles in 2005, when Brink and Howorth met at an open jam. Their debut album, Beautiful Tragedy, landed the band on the 2007 and 2008 editions of Ozzfest. Their first collaboration with Kevin Churko came with the release of 2008’s The Dream – earning them a slot on the 2009 Warped Tour.  Their third album, A Star-Crossed Wasteland (2010) was their highest-charting album.

Time on the road was both educational and inspirational in the making of Blood, says Brink. “Watching all those bands helped me let go of my fear, following my art and not worrying about ‘Is this too much?’ or ‘Am I pushing too far?’ or ‘Are people going to judge me?’ I’m going to do what I do in my moment to create, and people are either going to love it or not. There will always be people who don’t get it. You’ve got to do it for yourself and create your own path. This album is the most fearless I’ve ever felt making music.”

Working as a duo to write and record the new album brought Brink and Howorth even closer. “Maria and I are amazing friends and business partners,” says Howorth. “We created this band, we trust each other and we’re like family. We’re very protective about In This Moment. It’s very sacred. The trials and tribulations made us more resolved to make things happen.”

With the release of Blood, In This Moment is geared for the next level — as musicians, songwriters and performers. “I want the band to become widespread,” says Brink, “and that doesn’t mean selling out. If you change who you are to become part of another world, then your art is cut short and you jeopardize what you believe in. We’re not doing that. Our music is for us first, we write it for us, we’re doing our own special thing that you can only identify with us. We can do that and still be connected, still love the underground world, and tap into new crowds and people who can understand  the music. We love what we’re doing and are ready to have more people know about us.”

Savoy with Dotexe

Born in Boulder, CO and based in Brooklyn, NY; SAVOY is a live electronic music hybrid consisting of DJs Ben Eberdt, Gray Smith and drummer Mike Kelly. The SAVOY experience can be described as a high energy dance party and laser spectacular that has been referred to as “mind blowing” on multiple occasions. With the combination of a inimitable live show and original repertoire, SAVOY has climbed their way up to national notoriety as well as established themselves as not only purveyor of one of the best parties around, but as world class song writers and producers.Club hits, blog dominating remixes, and arena rock-ing swagger; SAVOY is bridging the gap from the dance world to the mainstream. Think Daft Punk meets Metallica and give it a bottle of gin and you got SAVOY…In 2012, SAVOY continues to rock mainstream festivals, live venues, nightclubs and arenas around the world while they produce with and for many high profile artists. Following a triumphant sold-out performance at the Fillmore Auditorium this past November, Savoy are poised to deliver another unforgettable night in their first headline gig at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheater.

Supercat “The Wild Apache” aka Don Dadda

Pioneer Reggae music artist, SuperCat, is a deejay who achieved widespread  popularity during the 1980’s and early 1990’s DanceHall movement.  His nickname “The Wild Apache” was given to him by his mentor Early B.  he is the elder brother of Reggae artist “Junior Cat”.

Music By: Waggy Tee, Supa Sound, & More

Men 21+

Ladies 18+

Edon

Edon is a 15-year-old student and singer/songwriter. He has played piano since he was nine years old and has been singing even longer. After growing a fan base through his YouTube covers of Top 40 songs, Edon recently completed a successful run on the NBC show “America’s Got Talent”, where he reached the finals out of thousands of auditioning contestants. Sharon Osbourne observed that Edon reminds her of a young Billy Joel. Edon has received favorable tweets from artists whose covers he’s performed, including Andy Grammer and Sara Bareilles, and was featured in a fan appreciation video created by The Plain White T’s. He has performed at the JUF General Assembly, and recently has completed concerts across the country. The Chicago Sun-Times has said that “the young crooner gains more fame and fans with each performance.” And the Chicago Tribune writes that Edon’s talent “as he sings and plays the piano often blows audiences away.”

Revolution Live Presents Blackberry Smoke – Fire In The Hole Tour 2014

The members of Southern Rock quintet Blackberry Smoke are no strangers to hard work. Playing up to 250 dates each year, the guys are on the road more often than not, and they’ve seen tangible results of their labor. The band has toured with and befriended idols such as The Marshall Tucker Band, ZZ Top (with Billy Gibbons jamming with the band on a Florida stop), Lynyrd Skynyrd and George Jones. The band was even asked to play for Jones on his 80th birthday, not long after the country legend turned in a guest appearance on the band’s sophomore album. They’ve toured Europe thrice over, and had their songs featured in video games (EA Sports’ NASCAR 08) and films (Swing Vote), as well.

Mixing elements of gospel, bluegrass, arena rock, soul and more than a touch of outlaw country, Blackberry Smoke has earned a passionate fanbase that continues to grow as the band itself evolves. The band is as blue collar as the bandanas its members wear.

“Our fanbase is as organic as you can get,” says drummer Brit Turner. “Each fan has been won by live performance or good old word of mouth.”

In a little more than a decade together, Blackberry Smoke has released three full-length albums—including 2012’s The Whippoorwill, the band’s first for country megastar Zac Brown’s Southern Ground label—two EPs and a live DVD, Live at the Georgia Theatre, which serves as the perfect showcase for the band’s raucous, rockin’ good-times-for-all take on rock ’n’ roll. A chunk of the DVD’s concert footage has aired numerous times on Palladia, and the band also shot a DirecTV concert that has aired countless times.

Brit, along with singer and guitarist Charlie Starr, bassist and vocalist Richard Turner, guitarist and vocalist Paul Jackson and keyboardist Brandon Still, have slugged it out on the road for more than a decade, but now regularly sell out headline appearances across the country and overseas. The band’s audience, Brit says, feels like more than fans, which is appropriate given that their families are their biggest supporters. (A word to the wise: hitting on the pretty ladies in the front row might get you decked.)

Though these road dogs rarely have downtime, they recently managed to carve out enough time to record their newest batch of songs for The Whippoorwill, an album that serves as a platform for smart, battle-tested songwriting and for the band’s ability to leave audiences breathless.

Despite the additional resources at its fingertips, the band decided that The Whippoorwill would be largely an in-house affair—its own songs, done its own way. Consequently, the band is more excited for this album’s release than any effort thus far.

“I remember not being able to sleep well at night when we were making this new album,” Charlie recalls. “I was so excited about which songs we were going to cut the next day. After it’s done and we can hold it in our hands and be proud of it we know that there’s another one that will have to be made in the not too distant future, but it feels really good to have this one finished; we’re all really proud of it.”

With Zac Brown and the entire Southern Ground team behind them, Charlie and the boys are experiencing all the benefits of life on a larger label. For an already busy band, business is booming.

“The only time we stop or take any time off is when someone’s wife has a baby,” Charlie adds, chuckling. “So, we’ve had to come up with a fictitious band member whose fictitious wife is having a fictitious baby.”

Yet even though they have a wealth of experience under their belts, with the release of The Whippoorwill, the guys find themselves in uncharted territory.

“We’ve never done an album and actually planned a tour around it,” Charlie confesses. “It’s always been ‘tour constantly and whenever the album is done, it comes out.’ It’s a new thing for us to actually plan this far ahead.”

And while the recording process for The Whippoorwill might have afforded the band a few additional luxuries—“It was strange being able to go into a nice recording studio without having to not pay ourselves for awhile to get the money to do it,” Brit says—the band still found itself backs against the wall. Fortunately, that’s exactly where Blackberry Smoke seems to thrive.

“For all the planning ahead, we still had to get it done in four-and-a-half days, so it’s not like we had time to stretch out and find the most comfortable chair in the studio,” Charlie says. “In a perfect world, I’d like to take a little bit more time to record, but it’s not possible until they add more hours in the day and more days in the week. We’re used to doing it that way anyway.”

Regardless of whatever pressures the band might have been under while the red light was on in the studio, that stress isn’t evident on any of The Whippoorwill’s 13 tracks. For example, album opener, “Six Ways to Sunday,” is a footstomping tune that mirrors the song’s carefree attitude, and could be mistaken for an old Motown track at times. At the same time, the title track has the effortless blues approach of ’70s-era Pink Floyd, but with more grease. Nothing feels forced.

Indeed, the band’s history together gives them a natural chemistry when writing the songs that could easily find a home with a diverse set of audiences.

Straddling the line between paying homage to one’s heroes and blatant theft is a tricky business, but it’s a divide that the members of Blackberry Smoke traverse with ease. The band invites a few comparisons to the hallowed forefathers of Skynyrd, but don’t expect to hear the same worn out clichés in their songs that every other band with country, pop or rock leanings have already espoused.

“We’re not in the business of writing the same song over and over and over,” Charlie says bluntly.

Speaking of “over and over,” at many points it would have been easy for these blue-collar musicians to get tired of bashing out song after song in distant dives and hang it up, get straight jobs and rock out as weekend warriors—if at all. But despite some lean years, they kept building an audience and keeping up with wives, children and girlfriends from long distances. So what’s kept them so passionate?

As Brit Turner emphasizes, it’s not necessarily dreams of stardom. It’s simply the love of the game. “We love it or we wouldn’t do it.”

Official Jam Cruise 12 Post Show with Les Claypool’s Duo de Twang

Official Jam Cruise 12 Post Show

www.jamcruise.com

 

The most original rock bassist to come along in the ’90s was unquestionably Les Claypool. With his oddball sense of humor and funky playing, Claypool took his varied musical influences and created an invigorating and completely inventive style.  Well known as the lead vocalist and bassist in the band Primus, Claypool’s funky, creative playing style on the electric bass mixes finger-tapping, flamenco-like strumming, whammy bar bends (unusual on a bass guitar), a Larry Graham-like slap technique, and Geddy Lee influences. He is a multi-instrumentalist, novelist, music producer, film director, wine maker, and avid fisherman.  His stage shows at times border on the genre of performance art.  His newest side project is an acoustic band called Duo De Twang, which he brings to the Revolution Live stage.

 

 

The Devil Wears Prada with The Ghost Inside, Volumes, and Texas in July

With Dead Throne, the groups fourth studio album due out mid August, he technically proficient, guitar-driven American metal band The Devil Wears Prada has turned a corner, by turning up the aggression and turning on the emotions. Dead Throne is the product of hard work and The Devil Wears Prada’s inevitable musical evolution, which tends to focus more on the band’s unique, punishing dual-vocal assault this time around.  “We aim to give listeners and fans something they can enjoy, but we’ll also always make songs we personally stand behind,” says frontman Mike Hranica. “We’d write differently if we were purely trying to sell albums: that’s just not how it works for us. No compromises.”  Dead Throne finally takes hold of what the band has merely hinted at in the past, and fans both old and new will quickly see this album for what it is — a brilliant, emotional, captivating and brutal journey brought forth from the heart of a band that won’t conform to the latest trends. Ultimately, Dead Throne tackles issues of failed relationships and perseverance of faith.

NOFX with Dillinger Four, Masked Intruder, The Implants

If someone were to walk into a store and pick up their very first punk record today, they could do much worse than NOFX, This quartet, fronted by Fat Mike, plays fast-paced pop punk, mixed with elements of ska and hardcore. The overall attitude of the band dwells heavily on traditional punk and DIY ideologies. Fat Mike is a very charismatic frontman for a band – depending on your definition of charisma, that is.  He is bold and often snarky and sarcastic, as well as often blatantly political. They are great qualities for a punk rock band that is out to make people think and push a few buttons.  NOFX has been a testament to the potential of a punk band on an independent label to enjoy popularity and success.

Formed in Berkeley, California and relocating to Los Angeles, NOFX steered clear of major labels and commercial exposure over the course of their career, recording an impressive number of full-length albums plus an assortment of EPs and singles. They have made a few videos, but have not given permission for them to be played on mainstream channels like MTV or VH1. In addition to the blatantly political nature of the band’s lyrics, Fat Mike is also politically active. He launched Punk Voter, a collection of punk labels, bands and fans that seeks to educate and inform America’s youth and get them to vote. Specifically, their goal at one time was to vote George W Bush out of office, but even after his reelection, Punk Voter still continued to actively educating young voters about issues that affect them.

August Burns Red with Bless The Fall, Defeater, Beartooth

Since launching out of Manheim, PA, the industrious outfit has successfully transitioned from shake-up-the-field upstarts to one of the biggest names worldwide in the genre. On stages across the U.S. to Europe, Japan, Australia, South America and more, from renowned fests such as UK’s Download Festival to the Warped Tour, which they join again in 2013 as a mainstage act, AUGUST BURNS RED have spent years taking their music and message directly to fans, and in the process have grown into one of the leading forces in the modern metal scene, a fact bolstered by their 1.4 million Facebook fans and more than half- million albums sold.  With so many bands in the heavy music scene seemingly intent on madness, AUGUST BURNS RED aren’t afraid to branch out, weaving in elements of other influences from punk to indie to rock.  The band artfully blend piano, cello, violin, trumpet, various percussive elements and more into their sonic arsenal, taking their music to new aesthetic heights and contorting the boundaries of heavy music.  “At the end of the day we are still a very heavy band,” explains guitarist and principal songwriter JB Brubaker. “We still have plenty of really heavy stuff, techy odd meter riffs, and all the stuff that people have come to expect from us, it just has a lot more surprises along the way.”  Even if some people don’t realize that music needs to be saved from falling neatly into easily digestible boxes, this band is doing its part anyhow without a hint of cynicism. There’s an earnest sincerity behind AUGUST BURNS RED’s desire to continue to warp the constraints of what it means to be a metal band.  “With every album we want to get better as musicians, as songwriters, as performers. We all genuinely love what we are doing and that is great motivation to always try to improve and expand,” Brubaker says. “I think our best days are still ahead.”

Mayday Parade with Cartel, Stages + Stereos

House of Blues celebrates its 20th Anniversary with a tour featuring Mayday Parade.

For the past six years, the members of Tallahassee, Florida’s Mayday Parade–vocalist/keyboardist Derek Sanders, bassist Jeremy Lezno, guitarists Alex Garciaand Brooks Betts and drummer Jake Bundrick–have been perfecting their unique brand of pop-inflected punk rock. It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while a band comes along who have crafted a sound that’s so unique it’s hard to believe they haven’t been playing together for decades.  After playing the 2006 Vans Warped Tour, Mayday Parade made 10,000 new fans before playing a single show. In July of 2007 their full-length album debut, the critically acclaimed A Lesson In Romantics, was received with enthusiasm. Dubbed “the best album to come out this year” by the MTV GirlsGonePunk Blog, A Lesson in Romantics has gone on to sell nearly 170,000 copies.  The band recently released their self-titled third album, the follow up to their hit second album Anywhere But Here.  Their next new album is scheduled for a Fall 2013 release.

Infected Mushroom

To pioneer your own sub genre of electronic music in the music industry today is no simple task, it is essentially equivalent to Chuck Berry inventing Rock music in 1955 or Massive Attack effectively originating Trip Hop in 1983.  Electronic music, mega-revolutionaries Infected Mushroom are renowned for being the sonic innovators of crafting hypnotic arrangements, complex layered melodies and synthetic rhythms known as “Psychedelic Trance,” leaving behind all their dying “Trance” cousins in the mainstream.  Twice ranked as the world’s “10 Best DJ’s” by the Bible of the Scene (U.K.’s DJ Magazine), the Israel-bred, L.A. based duo Amit “Duvdev” Duvdevani and Erez Eisen have established their self- invented genre among the highest in the scene.  One could easily scour pages of the Internet in vain to find the epic level of music history defining the Infected Mushroom “kingdom.”  Their critically acclaimed and highest-grossing album Vicious Delicious, catapulted the duo onto new levels. The success of that album was met with high anticipation for another The Legend of the Black Shawrama. The album hit #8 on the Billboard charts.  If that’s not impressive enough—there is the band’s average 120 live performances a year.  What the guys “do best” is invent, experiment, create, re-arrange, flip-up, bend-over, twist-sideways while staying true to their electronic roots diced with their own and of course, always trippy and psychedelic.  Infected Mushroom, the world’s greatest Psy-Trance band of the decade.

Bro Safari with Torro Torro

Bro Safari is the alter-ego of DJ and producer, Knick. He’s already well-known and deeply established in the music scene as a result of his work with leading American Drum & Bass group Evol Intent. Not to mention, his wildly popular output as 1/2 of the genre-bending mash-up duo, Ludachrist.  While his production work spans the entire spectrum of bass music, Bro Safari has been relentless at pushing his unique take on the burgeoning Moombahton movement. As a result, Bro Safari is currently ushering in a new wave of listeners to the genre and he is set to be an early champion of this new scene. With support from artists like Diplo, DJ Craze, Knife Party and more, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that Bro Safari is someone to keep an eye on.