B-Sides

Steve Drizos may not be a household name but once he gets behind the drumkit for Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, he's easily identifiable You may also remember him as the drummer for 1700 gigs in ten years with Charlie Orlando as Dexter Grove, where their stripped down sound and Drizo’s conga carried them across the United States back forth more times than they probably care to remember.  Times have certainly changed for Drizos.

Vandaveer is the alt-folk song-singing/record making/globetrotting project penned and put forth by DC-by-way-of-Kentucky tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. Vandaveer’s debut album, Grace & Speed, a mostly live, stripped down affair, swiftly entered this great big dusty world in the spring of 2007. Touring continually on both sides of the Atlantic ever since, Vandaveer has played 250+ shows, sharing stages with a host of artists including Bon Iver, Vetiver, Alela Diane, Alejandro Escovedo, Vashti Bunyan, Bill Callahan and Fleet Foxes.  Vandaveer’s sophomore effort, Divide & Conquer, touches upon similar themes found in its elder sibling, winding timeworn themes of love & death, malice & goodwill, sin & perseverance into (mostly) four-minute vignettes.

As we all know, it’s damn near impossible to blow up on the jamband scene, so don’t let Steez fool you. After releasing their first feature length debut this past August, Creepfunk Crusade, the funky Madison kids did crack their first issue of Relix; get named New Groove of the Month on Jambands, receive a nod as one of the ten most influential Madison bands of the decade; and are currently in the running studio album of the year on the Homegrown Music Network, but that all comes after six years of pounding the pavement

Tours, art and boys aside, this Southern California band wants to chill in your living room. When I met Nick Schutz last year, I never knew he was in a band.  The night before our date, he was en route to the Knitting Factory in Hollywood for business matters. I asked him what his band sounded like.

LA based trio, Crash Kings, are putting their own unique spin on the three-man-band concept.  Fusing keyboard-born compositions with agressive layers of rock, their crafty tunes are accomplished without the hint of a guitar.  Incorporating a clavinet (a keyboard with guitar strings) outfitted through a distortion pedal, the result is an arsenal of innovative and rich sound.