THE DEVIL’S CUT
The Devil’s Cut is Punk/Americana band from Lansing, Michigan. Born of the copper-stripped industrial wasteland of central Michigan, the six piece act plays driving roots rock from a working class punk perspective.
HIGHLONESOME
Highlonesome is a group of guys being as real as can be. They play loud fast music, described as Mountainbilly, a mix of true American roots mountain music mixed with rockabilly influences
THE PISS POOR PLAYERS
For the past 33 years The Piss Poor Players have been battling with the realism of demons. There aren’t many folks out there who have had to face the adversities that they have. They have struggled with alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, crazy women, hopelessness and the wildest twists and turns life can throw at one. They have looked death in the face on more occasions than one could count. Raised into a life of music they have deep roots in old school Country and Blues. Metal and Rock N Roll, Punk Rock, and East Coast Hip Hop. They don’t write songs that people want to hear. They write songs about the things they know about. The things they have seen and done, and the things that have happened to them. Day by day they deal with the struggles of life while maintaining steady focus on making real music for folks who give a shit about what is really going on. Being Piss Poor is a way of life they accepted a long time ago. Nothing has ever been given to them. Instead of laying down on... [read more]
For the past 33 years The Piss Poor Players have been battling with the realism of demons. There aren’t many folks out there who have had to face the adversities that they have. They have struggled with alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, crazy women, hopelessness and the wildest twists and turns life can throw at one. They have looked death in the face on more occasions than one could count. Raised into a life of music they have deep roots in old school Country and Blues. Metal and Rock N Roll, Punk Rock, and East Coast Hip Hop. They don’t write songs that people want to hear. They write songs about the things they know about. The things they have seen and done, and the things that have happened to them. Day by day they deal with the struggles of life while maintaining steady focus on making real music for folks who give a shit about what is really going on. Being Piss Poor is a way of life they accepted a long time ago. Nothing has ever been given to them. Instead of laying down on there backs and feeling sorry for themselves like so many have done. They have taken their life experiences, and turned them into works of art. There wouldn’t be The Piss Poor Players if their lives would have been easy. Piss Poor For Life!
[read less]BRYAN MCPHERSON
In 2012 Bryan released the critically-acclaimed album American Boy / American Girl on State Line Records. He then launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for a reliable tour vehicle and embarked on an extensive national tour, sleeping mostly in his van in the parking lots of oppressive department stores, and singing his gospel for the masses. He has performed alongside Amanda Palmer and Michael Moore at
the Occupy Oakland Encampment, with Steve Earle in San Francisco for Litquake’s Woody Guthrie Tribute Show, and appeared at an exclusive show in East London, playing to a capacity audience. He has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Boston Phoenix, Dig Boston, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
The following article appeared in The Boston Phoenix in April of 2012. By Barry Thompson
There’s no shame in baring your soul for the pleasant old folkees who haunt open mic nights at your favorite independent coffee shop. So, no offense... [read more]
In 2012 Bryan released the critically-acclaimed album American Boy / American Girl on State Line Records. He then launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for a reliable tour vehicle and embarked on an extensive national tour, sleeping mostly in his van in the parking lots of oppressive department stores, and singing his gospel for the masses. He has performed alongside Amanda Palmer and Michael Moore at
the Occupy Oakland Encampment, with Steve Earle in San Francisco for Litquake’s Woody Guthrie Tribute Show, and appeared at an exclusive show in East London, playing to a capacity audience. He has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Boston Phoenix, Dig Boston, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
The following article appeared in The Boston Phoenix in April of 2012. By Barry Thompson
There’s no shame in baring your soul for the pleasant old folkees who haunt open mic nights at your favorite independent coffee shop. So, no offense to singer/songwriters who present their folk in that genre’s traditional contexts — but, should the opportunity arise, those people should all try playing a club packed with tattooed toughs who’ve just been prompted, by an Agnostic Front side project, to jubilantly punch each other in the face for 40 minutes.
The first time he knocked my socks off, Bryan McPherson contended with precisely these conditions on a 2009 bill headlined by Street Dogs at the Paradise. And he’d later go on tour with the Dropkick Murphys, including gigs in Boston during St. Patrick’s Day week. By the time emulating Billy Bragg became fashionable, or anybody was self-applying the phrase “riot-folk,” the Dorchester-bred songsmith was an old hand at being the token folk guy playing the punk-rock show.
“Remember ska-punk? Same deal,” he says via phone, when asked about all the folk-punk bands that have been running around for a few years. Even coming from an artist who’s lumped into a notably unpretentious genre, that’s some impressive “cut the bullshit” candor. Then again, as the unfussy ballad of nuclear revenge he titled “Me, I Am Anger” reminds us, you can’t truly wear your heart on your sleeve while keeping its black spots hidden. A Boston release show for McPherson’s first album in five years, American Boy/American Girl(State Line), goes down tonight (Thursday) at T.T.’s in Cambridge.
Half a decade seems like a long time between albums, but something in McPherson’s head clicked once he soaked up a change of scenery. Not that there’s any “sunshine and surfin’ ” Best Coast–type shit on American, but his mostly for-the-fuck-of-it relocation from Boston to Berkeley 18 months ago provided an overdue muse.
“There are a couple of tunes on there about being somewhere where you don’t know too many people, and the experiences of going west: putting your shit out on a curb, getting on a plane, and ending up there,” he says, mid-jaunt somewhere in the vicinity of the mythic Oakland punk club 924 Gilman. “Sometimes you’ve got to wait for the right songs to come together to put something out.”
But as can be expected from someone who spends a lot of time at Occupy encampments, disgust with our generally shitty national condition inspired several of American’s trembling narratives. A forlorn harmonica heralds “Dangerous Friends,” a catchy-as-hell remembrance of Southie crime bosses and their murderous shenanigans. A jostling ditty called “Black Man” lists dilemmas that are routinely incurred by basically anyone who isn’t white, male, and unwaveringly heterosexual. The 2009 murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland provoked McPherson to pen
“I See a Flag.” Grant, unarmed and pinned to the ground at the time, was shot in the back by a public transportation police officer. “They said it was an accident, I guess,” muses McPherson. “If I shot a cop by accident, I think I’d be in jail for a very long time.”
[read less]LOUISE DISTRAS
“Dreams from The Factory Floor – the greatest British punk debut since ‘Nevermind The Bollocks!” REVOLUTION ROCK MAGAZINE
“The UK’s answer to Joan Jett!” KROQ
“Putting punk and protest back into the mainstream!” THE GUARDIAN
Bold, brainy and ballsy, “Louise Distras represents nothing less than the rebirth of British punk; reinvented for a new generation”. With true “outlaw spirit and renegade soul”, she’s taking the UK, Europe, Canada, Japan, and now the USA by storm, with the worldwide release of her debut album ‘Dreams from the Factory Floor’ released via Pirates Press Records on 5th May.