I don’t know what I like more about being in a band, playing shows, writing music, recording songs… I love it all! Recently we’ve been playing more shows than anything else. The show a few weeks ago at Rockwood was a lot of fun and we had the pleasure of meeting up with some of our out-of-town friends who happened to be in NYC that night.
Last weekend we returned to the lower east side to play a gig at Leftfield joined by our friends Beloved Binge on tour from North Carolina. They are another guy girl duo and like us, they are married! They had such a powerful energy in their performance of songs about their own personal life experiences, the aging of relatives, eating a vegan diet, and funny life lessons. Find their music here: http://belovedbinge.bandcamp.com/album/pockets-2
Every new venue we play here has its own charm. Getting to experience that is something I love about shows and I really like the crazy music filled lower east side. We’re trying to stick to one show a month right now, but finding it hard to resist playing more! I was not able to get video from the past two, but we do have pictures! ( thank you friends for taking these 🙂 )
So many artists came together to rock Motown songs Thursday night at The Bitter End! The Leave a Lasting Mark event raised over $1900 for the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America and was sponsored by Noble Steed Music and Funkadelic Studios.
The ladies of the night really made this event special for me. With so many beautiful and talented female musicians there was definitely some strong girl power in the air! Performing covers of Motown’s girl groups, like the Marvelettes and the Supremes, you gotta bring the GP!
Here are some shots from the practice the night before the show. I want to introduce you to some of these lovely ladies and their music!
From left to right
– Amy Rivard Singer/Songwriter, she has performed on Broadway and in over 30 countries with shows like Celtic Woman, Riverdance and The Roy Orbison Story.
– Ebonee Reigne New York based singer and model with a voice that dazzled everyone at the show!
– Jenn Summers Singer-songwriter with the indie record label Noble Steed Music, she brings a feel good beach vibe with her upbeat songs and has a cd release show coming up 6/18 at Rockwood Music Hall.
– Jenni Alpert Pop songstress with haunting, powerful, and sultry voice. She has independently performed in over 14 countries and her music has been featured on many major Network Television shows.
– Kate Steinberg She is a composer, performer, songwriter, session singer, music supervisor, vocal and piano instructor, musical theater enthusiast, and multi-instrumentalist based out of New York.
– and who is that last weirdo all the way on the right?? hehe 🙂
Now above we have Jonatha Brooke here on the right. She has been writing songs, making records and touring since her early days in Boston with her band The Story on Elektra Records. She currently has three musicals in development: Quadroon, with legendary jazz pianist Joe Sample; Hopper, and Death and Venice, both with playwright Anton Dudley.
And on the left is Michele Zayla, an amazing vocalist who has performed with Pink Floyd cover band The Machine. Her vocals will mesmerize you, whatever ‘it’ is, she’s got it!
I didn’t get photos of them, but Wendy LaManque is another talented vocalist who nailed her Supremes cover. And Annie Halo rocked the bass! She is also a sound engineer based in New York.
(PS: to all the guys, you rocked too!)
Now how could I not have an awesome night in the presence of all this talent?! I’m looking forward to the upcoming Leave a Lasting Mark events. There will be a Motown encore in Central Park on July 10th and back to The Bitter End on August 11th!
Oh and last but not least, there is video of each song on Leave a Lasting Mark you tube channel!
Here we (the rungs) are with our ‘Please Mr Postman’ cover!
We played our first radio show! Before the gig last Sunday night, we were kindly invited to the new show, ‘Live from Studio B,’ which features local bands every Sunday from 5:30pm to 7pm on our local WRFI (88.1 Ithaca, 91.9 Watkins Glen) station. We performed two 30 minute sets before and after a 20 minute interview, hosted by strong local music supporter Jonathan Hochberg.
It wasn’t Diwas’s first time playing on the radio, but it was a first for The Rungs, and a first for me! Most of our songs are still unrecorded, so the only chance our friends have to hear them is by seeing or listening to live performances. It was great to play these songs to new listeners, a handful of which made it out to our show that evening after hearing us on the radio!
WRFI is a listener-supported non-commercial radio station run by volunteers. We love the goals of this station, that include promoting peace, justice, sustainability, and freedom of expression. The volunteers share so much more than music! Local news topics, education programs, and promotion of community events are just a few of the things that WRFI covers and we’re so thankful we were invited to be a part of it!
We invited our friends Linus in the Sapphire from Philadelphia to come up to Ithaca and join us this past weekend for the Chapter House’s Sunday night music series, free live music every week 7-9 pm. The timing was perfect, as it worked out to be the last stop on their one-week winter tour. Since they are also a male-female duo, we decided to make it a night of duos and invited two pals, Zac & Elly, to join the bill as well. A night of duos!!
It was great to get some friends from out of town up to Ithaca. Even in the winter, this is still such a cute place to visit and I love hosting! The local music scene always benefits from bringing in new sounds and Linus in the Sapphire are an awesome psychedelic audio chameleon. We first met them at an Elephant Talk Indie music festival in Atlantic City back in May and we’ve been talking about getting them up here ever since.
Little did I know that I would also be blown away by Zac & Elly’s performance. Elly’s voice, with no exaggeration here, is comparable to Christina Aguilara. She is a total diva! Her voice just shined through the room and immediately captured everyone’s attention. Amazing. Her and Zach are currently forming a full band in Ithaca with a bass player and a drummer. They plan to get out and start performing by the summer and I can’t wait!
The Rungs, Linus in the Sapphire, Zac & Elly
So yeah, February was kind of a crazy month and I didn’t really get a chance to update the blog 😦 but the show last weekend brought us together with such good friends and such a good time! It made up for all of the craziness of February 🙂
Uges Limbu, a Nepali songwriter based out of NY, has released a new song featuring Diwas, called Hami Nepali! The guys put a nice music video together set in a practice studio and out and about in New York City. Hami Nepali means ‘We are Nepali’
Music videos seem to be the theme of January. Maybe its because I’ve been so under the weather that laying in bed watching music videos while drinking hot tea is a very tempting way to spend my time 🙂
It seems that I am now playing double bills every show! On January 25th, The Rungs will play a benefit for Educate the Children, a not for profit organization that provides education and skill development programs to women and children in Nepal. The benefit will be held from 4-8pm at Lot 10 in Ithaca. Immediately afterwards, I will head over to another venue, The Haunt in Ithaca, to sing with my fav band, The Sutras! What are the odds of both shows happening in the same night? Lets just hope my crazy cold goes away by then!
Seems like I’m still pretty knocked out with this cold. Nothing to do but drink hot tea and make lyric videos! Since I can’t really sing at the moment, (finally getting my voice back after losing it a few days ago), I might as well make it easier for others to sing my songs instead!
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!
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?!
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.
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.
therungsband.com 