The Bowery Ballroom upcoming shows
Erin McCarley
Landon Pigg / April Smith And The Great Picture Show
- Venue:
-
The Bowery Ballroom
- Date:
- Thu 10/08
- Notes:
- 18+
- Doors: 8:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
- $14 Advance / $16 Day Of Show
- Erin McCarley
- official website
- myspace
- Erin McCarley calls the music on her debut album, Love, Save the Empty, a document of her search for authenticity in herself and in others. If that sounds heavy, there’s a reason why: According to McCarley, “Loving You” is about “being honest at the beginning of a new relationship and saying, ‘I have nothing left to give,’ to this amazing person standing right in front of me.” “Sleepwalking” profiles a cynic that can’t hear it come back his own way. For the title track, McCarley was inspired to write a song about the effects stemming from a lack of role models in a parentless world. And yet the 11 songs collected here (songs that ignited an industry-wide frenzy when McCarley performed them at SXSW earlier this year) pull off the trick that all great pop performs: They do heavy philosophical lifting with a lightness that boosts the spirit. This is elegantly crafted, deeply melodic music that resounds with echoes of the Beatles and Aimee Mann, Alanis Morissette and Amy Winehouse.
- Landon Pigg
- official website
- myspace
- Ask Landon Pigg about his formative years and he’ll be the first to tell you he escaped from the clutches of normalcy. He tends to get a nosebleed more often than most, but he likes it when life happens naturally, and for him, it has seemed to flow that way from his very first day – August 6th, 1983. Born in Nashville, TN, he moved to Chicago as a child and it was there he learned to appreciate that flow; to read and write and ride a bike, and eventually, to have that bike stolen by a gang of ruffians from the city along with other typical childhood setbacks and milestones.
Soon, back to Nashville it was, where Landon applied himself to more benign interests such as Algebra and Chemistry and – lucky for everyone who has heard his debut RCA album, LP – Music - learning to make his own sounds as he began to rifle through the wonders of his dad’s record collection.
It was Landon’s father, a studio veteran himself, who encouraged Landon’s musical curiosity, as Landon recalls ‘Ray Stevens being the first CD I ever owned.’ Pretty soon Landon was unearthing his own musical breadcrumb trail – David Mead and Rufus Wainwright who showed him the beauty of a melody; Bands like Radiohead helping to etch a deeper emotion into his songwriting; Masterworks from groups such as Led Zeppelin and the Beatles imbuing in him both the love of a creative turn of phrase and a knack for writing indelible hooks. And there’s no denying the upper register of Harry Nilsson floating around somewhere amid Landon’s creations, completing a patchwork topography of the singer/songwriter’s musical exoskeleton that pop writer Nick Hornby would be proud of.
Landon also credits his mother for nurturing his poetic side. For the record, she still sends him words of wisdom meant to buoy one’s strength on those days where the setbacks seem to outnumber the milestones. ‘And’ – laughs Landon, ‘she still cuts my hair.’
With all these threads in hand, Landon Pigg has fastened together his own mercurial outlook on life which he effortlessly and magically captures on his debut album. Yet, he’ll also be the first to tell you it does no good to equate all these disparate strands with ‘figuring him out.’ Those who try to solve him like a puzzle end up confused. He likes to keep his thoughts to himself. Likes to keep even ‘himself’ guessing. Fortunately, a faithful listen to his new CD reveals he’s really not that different from any of us. The songs, which Landon says are ‘about things like losing love and finding hope – about how life will start to make sense and then stop again,’- reflect an uncanny ability to cobble his own confusion into unforgettable music.
Guided by a host of maverick producers, Dan Brodbeck (Dolores O’ Riordan), Paul Ebersold (3 Doors Down), and Clif Magness (Avril Lavigne, The Calling), he fuses his own raw edges into subtle and rollicking pop gems, like the plaintive ‘Sailed On,’ or the sparse but scrappy ‘Last Stop,’ which brandishes ripe examples of what can only be described as musical Pigg-speak – ‘I pick up all the pieces of the chords I didn’t use…’.
The hint we’ve been waiting for about solving at least part of the musical puzzle?
‘Maybe there is a naiveté in my approach,’ he says. ‘I never had a guitar lesson when I started out. I’ve always felt that when you don’t learn all the rules you’re much more inclined to break them with a smile.’ Which dovetails nicely into another inclination of his: You might not always get to hear Landon speak his mind – but you’ll always hear him sing it.
- April Smith and The Great Picture Show
- myspace
- April Smith & The Great Picture Show will self-release Songs For A Sinking Ship on February 23, 2010. Smith and her band are riding a wave of critical acclaim, including the RollingStone.com proclamation, \"It\'s possible you haven\'t heard much about April Smith, but all that is about to change.\" The album\'s sound was informed by the \'30s and \'40s, juke joints and cabaret, the Andrews Sisters and Tom Waits. Smith covers a wide range as a singer and songwriter, from the heartbroken ballad \"Beloved\" to the cheeky tell-off \"Stop Wondering\" and the sexy swagger of \"Wow and Flutter.\" Her voice swoons and seduces, and then escalates to breathtaking peaks, backed by piano, upright bass, drums, guitar, horns, ukulele, accordion and even, when the occasion warrants, a suitcase used as a bass drum.
It\'s the music of a precocious child that never lost her curiosity and verve, and of a beguiling woman who clutches music to her chest and embraces new twists to her character. She bounds between happy, anxious, sassy, seductive, melancholy, and murderous - sometimes in the same song. \"I\'m a little sarcastic and sometimes I\'m a little bit creepy,\" she says. She\'s also silly and whip-smart, with a strangely sage outlook. \"I judge people by how long they\'d survive in a slasher movie. If I think they\'d make it to the last ten minutes, they\'re alright!\" She knows it\'s \"kinda weird,\" but \"it all comes out just the way I want it to in my music.\"
OTHER UPCOMING SHOWS FROM THE BOWERY PRESENTS
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