Music – Page 7

Powder The Moon & The Rungs at Felicia’s

And now for a little recap of our show at Felicia’s, opening up for Gabriel Tavares and Powder the Moon.

Every Sunday night, Felicia’s hosts free music from 7pm to 9pm. The popular local acts and small touring bands that are drawn to this delicious cocktail bar always ensure good quality, consistent Sunday night entertainment.

It is one of those cozy small venues that has a nice warm vibe no matter how many people are in the audience. A good turnout really packs the place and it is quite the squeeze to make it to the bar or a comfy lounge seat across the room. We were lucky to have a moderately squeezy kind of night 🙂 and intimate type of show, (the first set of seats are only a couple of feet from the mic stands!)

Recently having left my day job due to a repetitive motion injury, (I haven’t written much about that because it is no fun 😦 music is way better and has been the most therapeutic activity, hence our catch phrase, ‘music is the best medicine’ !!! 🙂 ) I was just tickled to see friends from work in the audience. How nice of them to come out and support the band!

We also wore matching shirts that night, from our friends at House of Thoughts clothing company in the United Kingdom. Great shirts and we felt so pro with the matched look.

What made this particular show even more special was that it was the release of a live CD that Gabe had recorded in 2005 when he was invited down to New York city to share a gig with the band Faith at CBGB’s 313 Gallery. The show was one of a series of farewell shows that were scheduled when the legendary Bowery club lost their lease. Aptly named, ‘Live at CBGBs 313 Gallery’, the cd has a great raw roomy feel to it and you can almost make out Gabe hitting the strings of the guitar, just like at the live show. Powder The Moon is a male female duo with Gabe on guitar and Laura Penman on the upright bass. At the show Sunday night, they performed songs off the album and new originals. I love the addition of the upright bass and female vocal touch to Gabe’s solo sound! (Hopefully Powder the Moon will release a live cd someday tooo 🙂 )

Speaking of CD releases, we’re working on that one! It’ll happen soon, but for now, help share our music on soundcloud and youtube

We greatly appreciate the support!

Music

Photoreal / The Rungs / DJ Diwas at The Gates

So many overdue updates!!

We’ll have to begin where I left off, the Photoreal show at The Gates in Ithaca’s college town, all the way back on the weekend before Thanksgiving. It was definitely a cold night, something in-between rain and snow was coming down and icing the ground. Still, despite the unpleasant weather, a great group of friends came out to support the bands. Photoreal is Diwas’s main musical project with his good friend Dan. These guys have been playing music for years together, touring and recording with the former psychedelic rock band Ayurveda. Since the band split ways, they’ve been redeveloping their sound and live show as Photoreal! It is electronic, poppy, and straight rockin’, something like Chromeo meets Skrillex with intricate live guitar throughout.

It was our first time opening for them, so of course I was super excited! Photoreal uses these bright floor lights that change colors throughout the set, and since we were right before them, the lights were set up for our set too. This was my first time playing in front of such bright floor lights, and boy I was just like a little kid staring into the sun. Every time I looked down, my eyes locked right into the lights in a weird trance. I completely forget where we were at mid song a couple of times! Oh stage lights and your trickery!

Following The Rungs, Photoreal put on a great show, and Diwas, after already pulling a double by playing in two bands in a row, made it a triple and performed a DJ set for the last hour of the night!

Music

The Gates

The Gates is a new-ish, (okay I still consider it new even though it has been over a year!) bar and venue located in Cornell University’s college town. They’ve got a cool upscale interior design, a nice decent sized stage, and a great sound system. My favorite thing about the place is that they serve kombucha on tap! This Friday we will be opening for Diwas’s other band, Photoreal at The Gates!

http://photoreal.co/

http://www.thegatesithaca.com/

Music

A Halloween Haunting

This will be my most memorable Halloween yet!

When All Hallows’ Eve rolls around, the local rock shows get spooky.

While the Rungs did not have a Halloween show, I did get a chance to be a part of one with The Sutras! They are the only band in town that rocks out with a theremin, the instrument behind the creepy flesh tingling whistling sound featured in countless sci-fi and horror movie soundtracks.

The instrument was invented by Leon Theremin in Russia in the 1920s, after he worked as a radio engineer for the Red Army and developed a specialized antenna to serve as a motion detector. He noticed that when he moved his hand around, the pitch produced by the ‘Radio Watchman’ changed, and it could be used to play songs!

For The Sutras, the theremin’s quivering notes are the perfect addition to their complex, psychedelic arrangements, adding a haunting touch to the high energy jams that the audience gets lost in.

On this particular night, creepy and unexplainable things began to happen when the theremin’s blood chilling sound filled the air. Diwas was in the audience and managed to capture a photo of the madness that ensued…

We also managed to sneak my ipod in for a video, before the creatures came out of the woodwork!

Music

Ithaca Porchfest 2013

Porchfest is a neighborhood festival where bands use porches as stages. It takes place each year in September for a full day of music and dance through the streets of Ithaca’s fall creek neighborhood. This year, over 100 bands spread out on porches across the neighborhood and rocked out as audiences walked, biked, and danced up and down the streets and sidewalks. From classical to roots rock to country to pop to reggae to punk rock and from Appalachian to Brazilian to Irish to Swedish to Zimbabwean, porchfest celebrates all types of music.

We played on a particularly special porch. It was the house that we first lived in together when I moved to Ithaca and the house that we started playing music in together! Coincidentally, at the very time that we moved out, one of our friends moved in. So, when Porchfest rolled around, our friend was kind enough to open the porch up to our music.

The weather was sunny and cool, our friends filled the street in front of the porch, and we blasted our tunes through three little amps. Porchfest is something I look forward every year as the summer ends. It is a sign of fall, a chance to share our music with new listeners, meet new people, discover new bands, and play on a porch! Who doesn’t want to rock out on a porch?!

Porchfest is catching on in other towns! See if your town is one of them or learn how to start one in your neighborhood! http://www.porchfest.org/porchfests-elsewhere/

Music

Great Vibes at The Nines!

Saturday night we played at one of our favorite venues, The Nines, in Ithaca NY. It is actually the very place where we met, about 5 years ago. (I think it was 5…maybe 6? this is too much math already 🙂 )

Anywhoo, a band called Schooner from Durham NC had contacted us about playing a show together on their ‘Neighborhood Veins’ album release tour. After checking out their music and digging it, we were psyched to share a bill with them.

at the nines sept 2013

We hadn’t been making it up to The Nines very much over the past year, so we thought, ‘Lets play there! Don’t you miss that place?’

It turned out to be the perfect location for Schooner and us to tear it up! I’ve never been to a show there that didn’t have a great vibe. Not sure what it is. The people? The Pizza? (You must try the deep dish if you are ever in Ithaca!) It’s funny how some spaces and locations just don’t work. No matter how much people try to doctor a place up and re-brand, there is just something about it that is off. Then there are places that for no explainable reason just work. Something is special about them. The Nines is like that, it just feels good to be in that place. We will definitely be playing there again!

Here is a clip of our Feist cover from the show, My Moon My Man.

Music

Making Time for Music

Hello Blog! I am sorry to have left you unattended for so long!

Since my last post, we’ve recorded two songs that we’ve been slowly but surely taking our time on. I didn’t expect us to take this much time, but I’m afraid I’ve spread myself so thin over too many other projects. Most of these are extra assignments at work, home improvements, a few family gatherings, and then those little ongoing obligatory chores.

And now, here I am. Almost an entire month later, with a couple of incomplete songs and a neglected blog! Which brings me to the point of this post.

I often meet musicians and artists who struggle to make time for their craft. (guilty here!) Months can turn into years that go by as creative endeavors sit on the side, waiting for attention. As the ideas keep collecting in our heads, our desire to see them develop into visible or audible form grows. It grows!

I’ve found that making time for music and art is easy if you define to yourself what it is that you really want to achieve. I must remember to ask myself, ‘Okay, what projects do you want to see through?!?!’

Then, before signing up for everything from here to the moon, and saying yes to every invitation and favor that is asked, I must remember to ask myself ‘Do you really have time for this? What does your creative idea, the one that is burning a hole in your brain and crying for attention, have to say about this?!?!’

Here is what my little idea guy has been like for the past month:

“Seriously? What about me? I’m not asking for much here. You’ve gotta at least give me something.”

“Ten minutes a day? You can’t spare at least ten minutes a day? C’mon.”

“If you had to feed and walk me, like a real pet, I’d be dead dude. Lets get going on this.”

Soooooo, It’s time to give that patient little guy ( or girl 🙂 ) some love!

About us, Music

Eric Johnson at The Blue Note

Last weekend was the first weekend in a while that we didn’t have any shows booked, so we decided to get out of town for a little inspiration and catch Eric Johnson live at The Blue Note! We’ve been so busy lately running around with work and other projects, it was the perfect time to relax and go out for a band-date night.

At The Blue Note, we sank into our tightly packed seats and enjoyed superb music, tasty drinks and of course, each others company 🙂 It was just what we needed!

And we have a little list of guitar greats to see live that we’re slowly working on. Last year we saw Steve Vai in Rochester, and now we’ve got Eric Johnson checked off the list too. He laid down a great performance, accompanied by Mike Stern on guitar, Chris Maresh on bass, and Anton Fig on drums.

Exploring the things that inspire me to make music is teaching me so much about myself and how funny the mind works. Sometimes I just want to lock myself up in solitude and bust out songs that are piling up in my head, and other times I need a change of scenery to enjoy all of the beauty and art and music that surrounds me. Catching Eric Johnson live was a nice change of scenery, to take in and appreciate all of the amazing talent and experience and musical work of these guitar greats. Might I add, in this age of electronic music, DJs, etc (all stuff that I dooo love, but..) long live guitar! 🙂

Music

Elephant Talk Indie Music Festival 2013

Well it was another exciting weekend for us, and of course, it was filled with music! indie talk poster We made it down to Atlantic City for the 4th annual Elephant Talk Indie Music Festival. Elephant Talk Indie Music Magazine’s Jerry Ryan organizes the festival each year and brings indie bands together from NJ and surrounding areas to make some noise in two neighboring music venues, The Boneyard and Le Grand Fromage, just a block away from the shore. The thing I love about Elephant Talk Indie events is how supportive the bands are of each other. It was great to see so many musicians come together and connect!

Now we didn’t play our best set ever, in fact it was our worst yet. Just prior, Diwas had been out of town recording music for one of his other projects and I had been working over-time a bit. By the time we set up at the festival, we hadn’t even rehearsed a Rungs song for two weeks (pretty much since g-roots)! To add to that, our electronics didn’t make the sound system very happy. But regardless, all shows must go on right!? And on it did. We had fun, and the folks in the audience were just radiating with positive vibrations that sent our tiredness and frustrations far out into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere. It’s so great to be surrounded by people who are in it for the music 🙂 plus we got to sign the Elephant Talk Indie guitar!

Thank you Jerry Ryan and Elephant Talk Indie Music!

Music

For the love of music!

Yay for music blogging! I love the coming together of musicians from all around the world and the exchanges of creative and diverse music achieved through blogging.

Annnnd…

I am super excited to share that the UK based-music blog ‘The Sound of Confusion’ has included The Rungs on their ‘Daughters of Ether – The Heroines of Modern Dream-pop’ playlist! There are lots of great female musicians on here and I’m so happy to be included.

http://thesoundofconfusionblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/daughters-of-ether-heroines-of-modern.html

Enjoy that playlist and all of the great music out there!