Formed in Central Texas in 2013, Rock Bottom String Band coalesced from a series of backyard jams and carport hangouts. Driven by DIY work ethic and an inclination toward the rowdier side of the genre, this indy, 5 piece, non-traditional bluegrass outfit has carved out a sound of it’s own they like to call “Boozegrass”. They have toured all across the United States, and bit in Mexico, with a live performance that leaves a lasting impression some have described as “the Beastie Boys of Bluegrass” or “Hee-Haw on acid”. Over the course of their time together the band has recorded 2 full length albums of original material, with a third forthcoming, and opend for notable acts from Emmylou Harris to the Dead Kennedys. With three singer/songwriters and multitude of musical influences, Rock Bottom String Band is connecting with wide ranging audiences from concert halls to bar room brawls, with no signs of slowing. Always forward. Never straight. RBSB til we die!
Grinding to various degrees since 2009. Have put out many records and toured many places thanks to the help of many good friends. Curse ignorance, commit to the Void. Long live friendship.
Though the band has generally flown under the radar, Gavle, Sweden’s GADGET has roots that trace back to 1997. The band havealways included influences from every genre they’ve been fond of, like doom, sludge, hardcore punk, death metal, black metal and more, never letting genre boundaries stand in their way. GADGET have proven themselves to be a relentless force live as well as on record.
This Pine Box was founded in spring of 2016 by Jake Knight (vocals/guitar).The band recorded and released their self titled EP, recorded by Phil Mehaffey at CyberTecknics in Dayton, Ohio. The EP gained traction when late radio station, WNKU featured tracks from the EP into rotation. In January 2017, This Pine Box was selected to be “Artist of the Month” by WNKU. During this time, the band added lead guitarist, Joe Tellmann and started recording their debut album. The band stayed busy, and performed multiple shows including Fountain Sqaure Concert Series, Uptown Music in Oxford, Ohio, and closing the inaugural Belleweather Festival following the performance by the Flaming Lips. The band released their debut album, “The Way Out,” in November 2018 with vinyl under Soul Step Records. The current lineup consists of Jake Knight (vocal/guitar), Joe Tellmann (guitar), Kevin Patrick (bass), and JP Demmel (drums).
“Disparager are from Brooklyn, New York and play metal or hardcore, or post-rock, or whatever you want to call it. Above all else though, Disparager are fucking badass. ” – Pure Grain Audio
Cara Dawn is a Chicago native who has been singing since she was a child. After touring the United States, including an overseas USO tour, she returned to the states and began performing locally. She was a rising voice in the Chicago music scene when she stepped off stage to focus her time on raising her son. In 2011 Cara realized that she could no longer go without music in her life. She began studying with Gillian Kelly to find her voice again.
Her return to the stage has been well received, performing at various venues and events around the city. Cara has been working with a core group of musicians regularly for the last year and performs with them when not doing her solo projects or guest spots. She has been honing her songwriting skills and is currently working on her first solo album due out by the end of this year. Cara Dawn sings from her soul in every performance crafting a truly unique experience for the listener. Listen to her original song Free and look out for more Music and Events to come.
VREID were formed in 2004. The Norwegian metal brigade rose from the ashes of WINDIR after the tragic perishing of the “Sognametal” legends with the declared mission of exploring new musical paths.
The Norsemen proved true to their words and have delivered 7 albums and one DVD, which each received high praise from critics and fans alike. VREID chose a course of constant evolution that is marked by thematically denoted phases regarding their often historically inspired lyrics.
This became particularly clear with albums number 3 and 4, ‘I Krig’ and ‘Milorg’, which both revolved around concepts dealing with resistance and liberation of Norway during World War II. With their following three records, VREID returned to their Norse roots, of which particularly their latest full-length, ‘Sólverv’ received highest critical acclaim.
VREID have hammered out their success partly by being a heavily touring band. The four-piece performed more than 500 shows in 25 countries so far. Their everlasting march to conquer new territories has led the Norwegians to headline tours in Europe, North America, Japan, and India.
Currently, the veterans are working on new material and will record their eighth opus this autumn. Composer and mastermind, Hváll has already announced that “…it will be one hell of an album. After more than 20 years of playing together our spirit is stronger than ever and we can hardly wait to get in studio again to give birth to our new creations”.
VREID’s style is often referred to as “black’n’roll” and Metal Hammer UK described their music as “a unique time travel in metal” as elements of 70’s rock, 80’s classic metal, and Norwegian black metal are all clearly audible.”
VREID will release their forthcoming album in 2018 via Season of Mist.
Cloud Cruiser is an alien and cryptozoology concept stoner rock band from Chicago,IL. We build worlds through stories and riffs. Bang your head and take a ride with us
Tandaleria is a singer, songwriter, producer, and event coordinator from the westside of Chicago. Tandaleria has been writing music since she was in the 4th grade, and has been coordinating indie events since 2012. Tandaleria has been taking vocal lessons and has been classically trained vocally since 2006. In 2016, she created an online music series, entitled “Sessions With Tandaleria” where she has been inviting up and coming indie artists to perform songs live in the studio written and produced by herself, accompanied by a group of local musicians who she entitled “The Sessions Band”.
Caster Volor is a regionally touring Minneapolis, MN based shock rock band that performs a one of a kind over-the-top bombastic performance of hard rock & heavy metal through their unique industrial theater stage production featuring giant metallic wings, steel light pillars, light infused steel drum risers, metal smoke/confetti cannons, anthemic choruses, and high energy athletic maneuvers. Caster Volor embodies your favorite hard rock & heavy metal desires into one. The original hard rock quartet also performs the biggest hits from the 80’s-90’s hard rock era including Motley Crue, KISS, AC/DC, Billy Idol, WASP, Rob Zombie, Judas Priest, Rammstein, etc.
From Heavy Metal to Funk to AOR and Pop, Jeff Scott Soto is a name that is hailed throughout the music industry as one of the most influential artists of the 21st Century!JSS began his professional musical life with Swedish guitar sensation Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s ‘Rising Force’ in 1984 at the age of 18 and has not stopped since; building a name for himself through many acts and projects that have culminated in his own successful solo career.
Rhett has garnered over 30 million views on his videos and received press inquiries/features from top publications including the Boston Globe, Cosmopolitan, Huffington Post and NY Post. With an ever-expanding social media following of over 250k, he has shared the stage and/or opened for such big names as T-Pain, Young Thug, Machine Gun Kelly, Aaron Carter and Dropkick Murphy’s to name a few. Rhett’s fresh sound and energetic performance are undeniable and leave a lasting impression everywhere his violin is heard. As a result, he has been sought out to perform events for, among others, TEDx, Matt Damon, Cheryl Tiegs and Tom Brady.
Greg Essig is musician from Chicago, Illinois who is dedicated to perfecting his craft. Essig was born in 1990 and grew up in Plainfield Il. He attended Northern Illinois University for music performance. There he studied percussion and was fortunate to perform with some of the top ensembles there, including the NIU Steel Band and Jazz Ensemble. Upon graduation, he began performing regularly in Chicago playing with various artists spanning many different genres. In 2014 he became a member of the fusion group Marbin and toured extensively with them around the states. During this time Marbin opened for legendary guitarists Allan Holdsworth and Scott Henderson. Upon leaving the group Greg toured and performed with other artists such as The Jonathan Scales Fourchestra, and Sidewalk Chalk. In between tours, he keeps a busy schedule playing in his home town of Chicago performing with other local artists and corporate gigs. Greg is constantly on a mission to better his abilities as a musician and drummer. This is very evident in his performances, he clearly shows no signs of slowing down!
Employing a dazzling mix of glam rock, hard rock, and progressive rock, Angel’s outrageous, white-satin-heavy image and equally over-the-top stage shows, made them one of the more colorful arena rock bands of the mid-’70s and early ’80s. Discovered by Kiss bass player Gene Simmons, the group issued their eponymous debut album in 1975, which hewed closer to prog rock than the glam pop that would inform future endeavors like On Earth as It Is in Heaven (1977) and Sinful (1979). The group went their separate ways in 1981, but re-formed in the late ’90s with a new lineup, and released two studio albums (1999’s In the Beginning and 2019’s Risen) and numerous compilations.
Formed in Washington, D.C., the group’s self-titled 1975 debut was recorded for the flamboyant Casablanca Records label — home to Kiss — with a line-up comprising Frank DiMino (vocals), Punky Meadows (guitar, ex-BUX), Gregg Giuffria (keyboards), Mickie Jones (bass, ex-BUX), and Barry Brandt (drums). A heady slab of heavy pomp rock with lengthy songs swathed in Giuffria’s atmospheric keyboards and featuring the longtime stage favorite “Tower,” it was followed in 1976 by Helluva Band, which continued in a similar vein, with the group’s famous white satin stage clothing making its debut on the album sleeve. On Earth as It Is in Heaven saw a distinct change in musical direction, as the band adopted a a more pop/rock-oriented sound, and introduced a clever logo that read identically when upside down.
1978’s White Hot, with Felix Robinson replacing Jones, was helped by Eddie Leonetti’s sympathetic production, and produced minor U.S. hits in “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” and “The Winter Song.” Leonetti subsequently produced Sinful and the in-concert set Live Without a Net. Angel’s record sales never quite reflected their popularity as a live act, and a legal dispute with PolyGram prompted the band’s breakup in 1981. Giuffria attempted to revive the band in 1984, but the abortive reunion led to the formation of the more successful House of Lords. Robinson, meanwhile, appeared in an early White Lion line-up and played with 707. Brandt and DiMino re-formed Angel in the late ’90s to record In the Beginning, with the help of guitarist and songwriter Richard Marcello. They staged an Angel reunion of sorts by persuading former colleagues Robinson and Meadows to play on the track “Set Me Free.”
The group performed on and off during the early 2000s and issued a handful of compilation albums. In 2015 Frank DiMino released his first solo album, Old Habits Die Hard in which Punky Meadows guested on the track “Never Again”. Then in 2016 Punky Meadows with the help of Danny Farrow released his first solo album, Fallen Angel, in which Frank DiMino appeared on the track “Lost and Lonely”. In 2018, Meadows and DiMino toured under the name Punky Meadows & Frank DiMino of Angel which inevitably lead to the reformation of Angel now joined by Danny Farrow, Charlie Calv, Steve E. Ojane, and Billy Orrico. The newly reactivated Angel released their seventh studio effort, Risen, in October 2019, to rave reviews and landed them on numerous Billboard charts. The band has also just recorded a brand new studio album Once Upon A Time scheduled for release in April of 2023.
All together Starz recorded four studio albums, Starz, Violation, Attention Shoppers, and Colesium Rock and gathered critical acclaim with their ability to mesh the smooth with the hard. “We loved pop melodies,” admitted Ranno in retrospect, “and we also loved heavy guitars. We liked to combine hooks with a harder edge. Our singer Michael Lee Smith had a great sense of melody. In the course of four albums, we only used orchestrations or keyboards once, preferring to mix heavy rock productions with melodic overtones.” Their success has been documented in the historical chapters of hard rock and heavy metal. In Kerrang’s critical listing of the 100 greatest heavy metal albums of all time, Starz was listed at #94, with Violation at #84. In a similar poll in Hit Parader magazine, Violation was listed at #82. Starz’s greatest asset was their live performance and until a chance meeting between Metal Blade’s founder and Starz guitarist Richie Ranno, one of rock’s greatest secrets was buried in the archives. At the height of their career, Starz released a special “radio only” live record intended for broadcast, bot not liscenced for sale. It was called Live In Louisville and only a scant 2,000 copies were pressed. It was heralded by Kerrang as the greatest live record never released! “One day” Richie said, “out of the blue, I got a letter from Brian Slagel, who wrote that he was a big Starz fan and was interested in re-releasing the Starz albums for the first time on CD. He asked if I owned the liscenses to any of the records, and I told him I had the rights to the live record.” Starz Live In Action is a combination of the famous Live In Louisville performance recorded in 1978 with another concert taped in Cleveland in 1977. Together it is over sixty-five minutes of classic Starz music, covering songs from all four studio albums and the famous “Waitin On You/Colesium Rock” medley which includes a clever collection of the greatest rock guitar riffs of all time. “We always considered ourselves a live band,” Richie confessed. “In fact, we toured with Peter Frampton in major halls before we even had any product to sell! We felt confident that we could get any audience up on their feet and got encores wherever we played.” This same spirit is captured on Starz Live In Action. If you are a Starz fan, this special recording is a must for your collection. If you are unaware of this great band, consider these thoughts. Many of the Eighties most successful bands were influenced by Starz, from Cinderella and Poison to Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe. Tom Keifer said the first concert he ever went to was a Starz show… “They really kicked ass,” he remembered. Jon Bon Jovi met guitarist Richie Ranno backstage at a Bon Jovi concert in New Jersey and took the time to tell 30,000 screaming fans that when he was young, he looked up to Starz. They were the band he imitated when practicing in the garage. In Jon’s words, “What ever your dreams may be, always shoot for the Starz!”
NCS songs explore dark, bold, complex chords, incandescent melodies, delicate refrains, and languid, unexpected harmonies. In a review by the Chicago Doom Confederacy, their sound is described as “Noise and texture flutter, enticingly, beneath the all-consuming riff…If you like King Crimson and you like stoner rock, look no further.”
North Dakota-born and Georgia-raised singer, artist, and visionary ELHAE approaches R&B like a film director would, choosing every element carefully, ensuring an intricate level of cohesion, and building his own world. Since catching fire in 2015 on the independent Aura EP, he worked towards eventually architecting such a world. The follow-up All Have Fallen yielded fan favorites such as “Doesn’t Matter” [feat Kehlani] and “Needs,” which clocked 10 million-plus Spotify streams. In between, he garnered glowing praise from the likes of The Fader, Billboard, Vibe, The Source, and more as Sprite named him among its P.O.U.R. (Purveyors of Urban Reality) program. The 2017 sequel to Aura—Aura II EP—boasted “Drama,” “Something,” and the popular “Bang Your Line” [feat. Ty Dolla $ign]. The latter ignited 10.5 million Spotify streams and counting. Meanwhile, he lent his voice to high-profile collaborations with Lecrae, Eric Bellinger, and many others in addition to supporting blackbear on tour.
2018 saw him grace the stage of Coachella for the first time in front of 40,000 fans as he diligently worked on new tunes in Los Angeles, Miami, and Atlanta. Inspired by childhood favorite albums such as Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon: The End of Day, Childish Gambino’s Because the Internet, and Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, he developed an airtight vision with a detailed plotline for his next release. In 2019, the vision unfolds over the course of his twelve-track conceptual project, Trouble In Paradise [Atlantic Records], introduced by the intoxicating first single “Hennessy.” His sound is about to blow up on the biggest canvas
possible now.
Drummer, composer and arranger, Xavier Breaker has played with various artists throughout his career including Joe Sample, Randy Crawford, Howard Hewitt, Lalah Hathaway, Ernie Watts, Joey DeFrancesco, Bob Mintzer, Brad Leali, and Jonathan Scales. He has also played for some of Chicago’s finest including Corey Wilkes, Kahil El Zabar, Dee Alexander, Chicago Jazz Orchestra, Chicago Yestet, Sidewalk Chalk, and many others. The Xavier Breaker Coalition was formed in 2013 as an effort to design a group that can thrive in a variety of musical situations. The Coalition opened for many groups, including Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express and HBC (Scott Henderson, Jeff Berlin, Dennis Chambers). They have been featured in many festivals including the Chicago Jazz Festival and have been the firstcall house band for the Keilworth “Saxophone Idol” competition since 2013. The Coalition released their debut album, “Dreamology,” in 2015. Xavier endorses Paiste Cymbals.
Dismalimerence is a Progressive/Atmospheric Black Metal band from Chicago, IL. Elijah Cirricione – Vocals & Guitar Alex Quiroz – Guitar Craig Hamburger – Bass Tim Preciado – Drums
Based out of the Chicago suburbs, beat-maker Swesdo is constantly striving to achieve a balance between dark/heavy and light/soulful work. Taking from a large range of influences including dub, drum & bass, hip-hop, funk and jazz Swesdo’s ever evolving sound can be summed up into four words: ‘Bass Full Space Soul’. ‘Swesdo’ is an amalgamation of his full legal name.
The legendary Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express has returned. The famed B3 and Hammond Organ keyboard player, has created a distinct voice that combines jazz, rock, soul and funk, that is clearly recognizable to his millions of fans. With over 20 albums to his name and lengthy stints on the RCA and Warner Bros. labels, Brian Auger has accumulated Grammy Nominations, 10 albums charting in Billboards Hot 100, a #1 single, and the title of “The Godfather of Acid Jazz”. Brian’s bands over the years have featured Rod Stewart, Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll and even Jimi Hendrix. In addition, Brian has recorded with great luminaries as The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Eric Burdon and Down To The Bone. The new incarnation of the Oblivion Express is a family affair featuring Karma Auger on drums and Ali Auger on vocals, who live up to the Auger name and make the Oblivion Express smoke. Rave reviews and demands for return engagements follow this artist wherever he goes.
The award-winning Star Wars Podcast, hosted by podcasting veterans Jason Swank and Jimmy Mac, Rebel Force Radio provides weekly news, commentary, celebrity interviews, & entertainment to a growing world-wide audience of Star Wars fans. The show is released FREE on Fridays for on-demand streaming and download. The award-winning Rebel Force Radio is an extension of the hosts passion and enthusiasm for the Star Wars franchise. As life-long fans, Swank and Mac have traveled all over the globe, from Tokyo, Japan to Skywalker Ranch itself, to provide the most comprehensive internet coverage of major Star Wars related events! Listeners have enjoyed the podcasters in action during live shows from the floors at Star Wars Celebrations IV-VI and Star Wars Fan Days. Swank and Mac also wrote and produced “The George Lucas Hip-Hop,” winner of the 2008 Star Wars Fan Film Awards for Best Animation and Fan’s Choice. At Star Wars Celebration V in August 2010, Lucasfilm’s Dave Filoni (Supervising Director, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) recognized Jason and Jimmy as the inaugural inductees to his “104th Wolf Pack” organization for their “outstanding fandom and support of Star Wars.” The two were also inducted as “Honorary Friends” of The 501st Legion, a worldwide Star Wars costuming organization known for their charitable work and frequent presence at official Lucasfilm events. Swank and Mac enjoyed similar honors by The Rebel Legion, another well-known Star Wars costuming group, and been profiled in Bloomberg Business, The Wall Street Journal,Star Wars Insider Magazine, LA Weekly, Entertainment Weekly and Chicago’s Daily Herald, among other publications and websites.
If someone asked you categorize The Northern Lights, one would be faced with quite the challenge. Fearlessly combining influences from all over the spectrum, the band has no trouble appealing to listeners across many different genres. With such a diverse approach to their music, it’s no surprise this Chicago based quartet has shared the stage with an array artists from Black Stone Cherry, Saliva and Saving Abel to artists like Chase Rice, Josh Thompson and Samantha Fish. On a mission to simply write music that is pure, The Northern Lights deliver a breath of originality to an era heavily saturated with the artificial and superficial.
