This coming Saturday the 11th, Drew Grow & The Pastors’ Wives will be headlining their first Seattle show as they’ll be celebrating the release of their first full length album. A self titled album that can be enjoyed in its entirety via online stream HERE. Joining them on the bill will be local greats, Pablo Trucker, and Yuni in Taxco.
Enjoy this video preview created by our amazing video staff. The following videos were taken during the June 26th Grand Opening show where Drew & Company opened for Grand Hallway. Tickets are going fast! Get them here on Brown Paper Tickets
This Saturday brings the second show presented by our very own, Larry Mizell Jr, in conjunction with the fine folks from Members Only. The fantastic LA Hip Hop trio, Tanya Morgan, will be playing our theater with a great cast of locals that include Mr Mizell himself.
This Saturday, local hip hop duo, THEESatisfaction will be gracing the Columbia City Theater stage for the first time. The band has had a very busy Spring and Summer that have including show stealing performances at both SXSW and Capital Hill Block Party. Earlier this year in preparation for their SXSW tour, the ladies made a series of a capella promotional videos that we feel shows them in an incredible and completely different light. We thought it would be fitting to showcase those wonderful videos here.
Terms like Americana and Roots Music are two of the most used terms to describe Seattle’s most notable and celebrated new bands of the last few years. On Saturday night here at the Columbia City Theater we will showcase three artists who will show that some of the best music being performed today are by artists who fully embrace what used to be in America. And with that, three artists will be gracing our stage that will be showing those many new artists throwing terms saved for Old Time music like “Americana” and “Roots Music” how its done.
In a recent conversation with local musician Phil O’Sullivan, Phil described seeing Baby Gramps perform as being taken to school. If seeing Baby Gramps perform seemed like school, than Saturday’s show while will feature Baby Gramps, Frank Fairfield, and “Blind Boy” Paxton, will seem more like a master class.
Baby Gramps is an amazing amalgamation of everything that anybody’s ever heard including Mississippi John Hurt, Uncle Dave Macon, Charlie Patton, Blind Blake, Captain Beefheart, the Tuvan Throat Singers and Popeye. Baby Gramps has created a highly developed and completely original musical concoction that is easily the most intriguing synthesis to come out of the roots revival of the late 20th Century
Frank Fairfield, an exceptional banjo picker, fiddle player, and song smith, is a complete throwback to dust bowl era America. From his fiddle that he bows on his forearm to the very suit he wears, Frank Fairfield is an absolute delight for the music lover looking for an opportunity to travel back in time. Below is a video Frank did with KEXP DJ Greg Vandy on a recent trip to Seattle.
Blind Boy Paxton is a blues pianist, guitarist, and banjo player who is from the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. Barely 21, “Blind Boy” Paxton is a music prodigy whose ability to sing a song and tell a good story belies his age. You can hear a wonderful interview with “Blind Boy” here on the great Down Home Radio Show.
The show this Saturday at 9pm is $13 and shouldn’t be missed. You can get your tickets in advance here on Brown Paper Tickets
Enjoy this video and interview we made with Grand Hallway on June 26th when the played our Grand Opening! You can purchase Grand Hallway’s debut album, Promenade as well as their recently released DVD “Live at the Triple Door” by visiting their website on Grandhallway.com
Curtains For You play our theater this Saturday the 17th with Ravenna Woods for a bit of a Doe Bay Fest preview. Enjoy these two live videos of Curtains for You filmed live for Crackle & Pop! You can buy advance tickets for this amazing show here on brown paper tickets.
“Bands are weird things. They’re the most complicated relationship ever,” singer/guitarist Jace Krause said in an e-mail a few days before the final show of his band Friday Mile at Columbia City Theater on Friday. Of course no band has a perpetual life, not even The Rolling Stones, and their time must end at some point. It will still be a bittersweet feeling to watch a band I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and become close to play their farewell show.
Hannah Williams of Friday Mile
Friday Mile is a straight-forward, five-piece indie rock band from here in Seattle that excelled because their pop sensibilities are overt and there’s a genuine beauty in the way that the voices of lead singer/guitarist Jace Krause and keyboard player Hannah Williams play off of each other. Sometimes there’s a tension in their harmonies and other times they compliment and complement one another. It’s a decidedly power pop with the hooks out front. The boy-girl vocals gave them a favorable comparison point that some of the greatest power pop bands ever lacked (think Squeeze, Big Star and Fountains of Wayne); that’s only meant to illustrate one reason I found their sound so appealing, not to make any unfair comparisons.
When the band (self-)released what would be the final Friday Mile album, Good Luck Studio, in November of 2009, music journalist Paige Richmond wrote in the Seattle Weekly, “[Krause] mentioned to me that Friday Mile’s fanbase has grown organically. There hasn’t been much buzz about the band — a positive review on Three Imaginary Girls, a few write-ups here and there — but the band has been growing in popularity mostly by word of mouth and the musicians’ own motivations.”
The review in TIG she may have been referring to was this one, a review of their 2007 EP Love & Gasoline that I wrote, though it wasn’t the only time the band was mentioned on the site favorably. I may have the timeline off by a bit, but if I remember correctly, Love & Gasoline came across my radar around the same time I met Krause for the first time after learning we had a handful of mutual friends (unless you never leave the house, it’s an inevitability that you meet someone who knows someone in a band in Seattle). I don’t remember if my score of that (positive) review was lower because EPs are graded on a more difficult curve or because I was cautious of writing about a band whose lead singer and I share friends. Still, Friday Mile was recommended to me because people familiar with my taste in music knew a power pop band with boy/girl harmonies was likely to be a band that I would enjoy. They were, of course, correct.
Friday Mile in Mountain View, CA
Since then, I became friends with the band, and they played the one show I booked (it was on Inauguration Day, three days before I turned thirty). Another happenstance put the band and I in San Diego at the same time a few months later, quite randomly. As that happened, I wrote about them less and less, partially because of that and partially because I was confident that Good Luck Studio would cause the other Seattle music writers, my friends and peers, to reach the same conclusion I did. Aside from the Weekly’s Richmond (who has written about the band favorably several times), it didn’t happen that way but they did play bigger and bigger shows to bigger and bigger crowds, including building a sizable following up and down the west coast.
And now those shows will come to an end on Friday.
Guitarist Phil O’Sullivan was the last member of the band to join, establishing it as a quintet while making Good Luck Studio, but also ironically noted in an e-mail that “Jace and I are actually the only two remaining original members of Friday Mile. Friday Mile played its first show on campus at PLU circa 2002. I was on bass.” He said he joined when “Hannah and Jace asked me to consider joining FM one night after I sat in with them for a song at Jazzbones in Tacoma. I initially was pretty cool to the idea, but after a few more conversations and hearing some of the basic tracks for Good Luck Studio, I realized that I could make a good contribution to the band.” His guitar parts do give the band a fuller sound with a second guitarist to complement Krause’s guitar parts. Or as Williams noted, “I think our sound evolved and became more complete when we added Phil. Phil is a really good guitar player and I’m not just saying that because he’s my boyfriend.”
Krause said the band evolved as “we started off with a little more folky and jangly slant to our music. I think that’s still embedded in there, but we were starting to go for a more straightforward pop sound in the past couple years”
Williams joining the band, though, was the most crucial change as it gave a female voice to the band and led to a softer dynamic. She said it happened when:
I knew Jace a little in college at PLU. We had a jazz theory class together and he sat in front of me. I think we maybe said hi to each other and I remember commenting on his Jimmy Eat World t-shirt. When I moved to Seattle after graduating, I re-met him in a group of people at the Crocodile during a John Vanderslice show and invited the group back to my apartment where we passed around a guitar. After hearing me sing, I think I probably sung “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell, he did the whole “we should get together and sing some songs” thing. He also handed me the first FM record, which I listened to and immediately liked. We got together the next Wednesday, learned 3 songs and walked to the nearest open mic and played them. A few weeks later, I was invited to the garage where I met Chad and Jake. The next rehearsal, I brought a keyboard. And that was it!
Friday Mile is a great local band whose sound and fanbase has grown substantially over its existence but one thing the band never has was a time to strike while the iron was hot, or there was never a scene that similar bands could play shows with and tour together the way there is for Americana/roots rock or hip hop. That’s not any one’s fault, it’s just the way things are in the music business; lots of great bands don’t “make it” as big as they hope. The Weekly wrote about some tension between Williams and Krause, not to mention Krause recently becoming a new father, so it made sense that the band would see this as a time to let go.
Drummer Chad Clibborn told me via e-mail that “I think everyone has a sense that we’ve accomplished a lot and want to go in our own directions for awhile. You put some pressure on yourself (at least we did) as a band and I think for me personally, I just think it’s time to see what the next chapter holds for each of us.” Williams noted more succinctly, “our muses weren’t musing.”
Friday Mile at Doe Bay Fest 2009
Krause explained “I think Good Luck Studio was so ambitious that it slowed us down in a way. We spent a lot of time on it; time not spent working on new stuff. By the time we were ready to put out the album, it felt like the songs were old already. Then the mechanisms we used for making new songs weren’t happening like before, and other ways felt too forced, which started to make things less fun.”
Each of the members of Friday Mile will continue to make music. Hannah Williams has another band with three of her brothers called Youth Rescue Mission and she said they plan to record their debut album next month at the Columbia City Theater with producer Gary Mula. Phil O’Sullivan said “I’ll be doing a run of solo dates with a big band of some of my favorite musicians in August. Paul Christensen of Wienland, Jay Beaman of Blood Cells, Andrew VanZandt and Ben Roth will join me. We’ll be trying out new songs and causing trouble between here and Idaho. Paul and I have an ever growing pile of songs that we’ll record at some point and I’ll continue to harvest songs and play out by myself from time to time”.
"Funny Thing" recorded live and filmed by Tyler Kalberg
The remaining members of Friday Mile, Chad Clibborn, Jace Krause and bassist Jake Rohr (who is also in the promising band Goldfinch) are working on a new project that’s an as-of-yet unnamed power trio. Clibborn said, “Jace, Jake and I are working on some new tunes. The goal being to step back and work on stuff with no expectations and let them evolve organically. They’re sounding really cool and there’s some booty shakers in there for sure…and that’s the goal. We’re not sure yet what we’re going to call our new project, but we’re going to record in batches and release small pieces rather than go the full length route. I’m pretty stoked to get some of these songs going in the studio.”
When Friday Mile takes the stage on Friday at Columbia City Theater, likely for the last time, their press release says “we plan on playing every song we know, until they kick us off the stage. We’ll have a few guests to join us. We’re going to do this right.”
Although Friday Mile is splitting up and they had issues in the band (as everyone does), they do seem to have a genuine fondness for one another. Clibborn said “I absolutely love everyone in this band and will be best friends with them forever and I really wanted to have a night to celebrate with them on stage.” O’Sullivan noted “we all love each other (really) too much to try to force anything. That would be lame.” And then he jokingly added “also, Jake was sleeping with everyone in the band, causing lots of unnecessary riffs. He’s pretty much the cause for all of this.”
Special thanks to contributing writer, Chris Burlingame. You can read more wonderful stories by Mr Burlingame at anotherrainysaturday.com
Luke Burbank gives a video tour of our theater as he prepares for this weekend’s back to back shows that feature the likes of: The Long Winters, Blue Scholars, Lonely Forest, Rachel Flotard, Ken Jennings (Jeopardy Champ), Sir Mix-a-Lot, and more.
We’re very excited to be hosting the lovely and amazing Abbey Simmons from Seattle’s Sound on the Sound Blog this Thursday in the Bourbon Bar. Abbey will be given the chance to take part in our weekly “Spin Class” series in which we highlight people behind the scenes in the local music industry that are really making a difference.
Abbey was kind enough to come by the theater this week and have a sit down behind the piano with our own, Kevin Sur.
