music festival

Stage Bouncing at Ithaca Festival 2014

The Rungs at Ithaca Festival 2014 - photo by Yuko — The Rungs at Ithaca Festival 2014 – photo by Yuko

A clear sky, warm sun and cool breeze combined to form the perfect weather for this year’s Ithaca Festival. The annual summer celebration is notoriously hit with downpours, but that never stops the town from enjoying the festivities. With our set scheduled for 2 PM on Saturday, I was thrilled to see such a positive forecast! No rain boots needed?? Yay!!

So many friends came out. Some folks I haven’t seen in a while and even some from out of town! It was mega fun to see everyone. I always get a little tickle of happiness to look up after singing a song and see someone smiling.

Diwas had an exceptionally busy day. Right before our set, he joined Luke G & The Candy Hearts to play guitar. Luke is known around town for his performances of classic doo wop songs. He is such an energetic performer and the addition of a full band to back him up took the catchy doo-wop renditions to the next level. The crowd was a’dancin left and right!

After our set, Diwas raced over to the beer garden stage to join Gabe Taveras and Sisu Powder the Moon. He played the madal, a tradition Nepalese drum. The specific sounds he can get out of it blend well with Gabe’s unique folk guitar style.

While Diwas ran around the stages swapping instruments, I ran back to help my sister and good friend move out of their apartment. Music day plus moving day. And that it is only part one of our Saturday! Part two was all the way back down in Brooklyn for a launch party at the Greenpoint Gallery, which I’ll cover in my next post 🙂

Music

Ithaca Festival is Here

What do the residents of Ithaca NY do after the Cornell students leave? Celebrate!! With an annual weekend festival featuring a lively parade, lots of live music, dance, delicious food, craft vendors, and summer craziness. Our set is Saturday May 31st 2:10pm at the Cayuga St Stage. Lots of other great musicians on the schedule this year! Check it out:

Diwas will also be playing with Gabe Tavares and Sisu Powder The Moon at 4pm on the MLK Junior St Stage. Then, it is straight back down to Brooklyn for the Launch Party 🙂 (see previous post)

Two gigs in one day? OH YES!

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

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!

Live

More Grassroots Festival Recap

Grassroots Festival recap continues… (oh yes, there is more!)

Soooo as if playing late night Saturday night with the Sutras wasn’t enough, (see my last post if you missed this!) I played again on Sunday with ‘Diwas Gurung’! Diwas, (who is the other 50% of The Rungs) also plays in other projects, including his own solo Nepalese venture, titled, ‘Diwas Gurung’. You can listen to it at his bandcamp if you are curious 🙂 http://diwas.bandcamp.com/album/adhunique

Anywhooo, his Sunday set included a mix of Nepalese folk songs, originals, and we even threw in a Rungs song, Missed Connections! The band included members of a previous band he was in, his current bandmate in his other indie-electro-pop duo ‘Photoreal’ annnnnnd me! It was quite the musical reunion. I played a mix of synth parts, electronic drum hits, guitar, and vocals. Many thanks to those guys for letting me join them!

Most importantly, check out my loud pants, compliments of Diwas 🙂 videos on the way!

Live

Festival of Music and Dance!

Well I’ve slacked a little this month on my posts, but I’m back! I’ve been busy gearing up for the 23rd annual Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance that took place this weekend in Trumansburg NY.

I’ve been a regular Grassroots go-er since 2005, but this year was the best yet. The Sutras, an awesome indie-psychedelic-pop rock band from Ithaca NY invited me to sing with them! These guys are true rockers and some of the most talented musicians I’ve met, so you can imagine how psyched I was to perform with them. After two weeks of fun practices, we hit the stage around 1am on Saturday night, ready to rock the late night crowd! It was a completely different experience than what I’m used to with The Rungs. My only job was to sing certain parts of the songs, (and let me just say that EVERY song by The Sutras is super fun to sing), so I had no guitar or keys to hide behind, just me and my voice, loud and proud (or at least trying to be 🙂 ).

The entire set was a blast. I had a funny little moment to myself when I took a look at the set list and realized we were getting towards the end, I thought,”noooo this is so much fun, not ready for it to end yet!!!!” but as the universe rules, everything must start and end. So now I am ready for the next show. Where is it at? Lets go! More music!

Diwas was there too, not performing, but manning our newest purchase, a Cannon T2i. We decided to treat ourselves to the new gadget last week and it was a great choice! Every time I looked up he was like a little spiderman getting cool angles of videos and photos. Soooo hopefully we’ll have a video from the night to share soon! In the meantime, checkout The Sutras! http://thesutras.bandcamp.com/

Music

Elephants for Autism, Thank You!

Elephants for Autism Music Festival in Atlantic City was a blast!

We arrived at the Boneyard venue just in time for our set after getting stuck in traffic, borrowed an amp from our new friends, the Red Hill Ramblers, and played to a super friendly crowd of new faces. Jerry Ryan, the organizer of the Festival, was a very cool dude to meet and it was immediately apparent why so many musicians love working with him. He is a true supporter of music for all! At this Festival, he brought together an awesome and diverse group of bands to help raise funds for providing autistic children with music lessons. How sweet is that?!

After our set (our first out-of-town set that is!) we enjoyed meeting and rocking out to the other acts; Wrath of Typhon, Empty November, Linus in the Sapphire, and Purple Suns to name a few! And of course, being in Atlantic City for the first time, we did have to sneak away to take a stroll on the boardwalk and slip into a Casino to try our hands at gambling. The damage: five dollars lost to the slot machine! Oh we’ll, we didn’t hit it big on the slots so looks like we’ll stick to music! Especially music for a good cause 🙂

Live

Music for a good cause

This weekend, we will be heading out to Atlantic City to play at the Elephants for Autism Music Festival! It will be our first out-of-town gig, first time playing at a music event in support of an important cause, and first time in Atlantic City! I am already excited to see some of the other bands at the Festival and feel very thankful to Jerry Ryan, the organizer of the event, for all of his dedication and hard work!

Any readers out there in Atlantic City? Here is an article with more information:

http://m.acweekly.com/20060/show/de7e737152c3775c44d83639d80a8cc9

Hope to see you there 🙂