Fans of the fuzzier side of things should make themselves aware of Loglady Records, a new label that’s serving up some primo shoegaze and synthy works from a few Bay area bands.

The Loglady folks sent us a couple of releases from a pair of artists in San Francisco: Permanent Collection’s debut release, called Delirium, and a 7-inch single from Part Time.

The label is a joint venture between graphic designer Lauren LoPrete and musician Jason Hendardy (who’s also the man behind Permanent Collection).

Permanent Collection started as a solo project (Jason built up PC after leaving his post as guitarist in Young Prisms) but it’s now a full, working band. The tracks on Delirium are all reverb and woozy bliss. It’s dense and complex, with a lot of layers to work your way through as a listener. But underneath, the melodies and grooves are pretty effortless. Yes, it’s dreamy and druggy and all the things you’d expect from a good shoegaze record, but there’s also a subtle menace to it thanks to the cold, persistent ticking of the drum machines, the relentless loops, and the disembodied, unintelligible vocals. Even though all five of the songs on the EP touch on the synth-and-drum-machine aesthetic, it’s not some throwback thing. It’s thoroughly modern, and it works very well.

Here’s Kevin Luna’s video for “Shoot the Shit,” one of the tracks on the EP.

The band is playing some shows this month up and down the west coast (the SF date is Saturday May 19 at Thee Parkside, with Melted Toys, the Memories and Creepers) and there’s a full-length Permanent Collection LP in the bag. It was recorded with the entire band, and it should be out in August.

Part Time is a different beast. The A-side, “Visions of the Future,” is like some mutant 80s synth-schmaltz lollipop that’s been spiked with DMT. I positively love this song — the Brit-affected slacker vocals, the heavy bass line, the hand claps and “woop woop” mouth noises, the faux-glockenspiel melody at the end. Color me confused and amused.

Here’s the video:

The B-side is equally good and comes with its own goofy video.

Part Time is a bedroom project helmed by David Speck. All the guy’s songs are like this, check out his YouTube channel for more videos. I don’t know where he pulls this stuff from but I like it. He put out a full length on Mexican Summer in 2011.

Other acts on Loglady include Terry Malts, who released a cassette last year and have a split 7-inch with Dead Angle shipping in June, the early-punk-flavored Grandma’s Boyfriend, and the shoegaze act Moonbell, who have a self-titled LP out now.

I’m actually quite smitten with Moonbell. So far, it seems the Loglady can do no wrong.

Given the name, you’d expect the trippiness to be cranked to eleven. That’s wasn’t as much the case in the 2011 edition as it was in years past. The music was certainly mind-expanding, but the lineup swung closer to edgy hard rock and blues than astral-traveling psychedelia. Sure, there were diversions into outer bongolia — the perplexing Pod Blotz, who performed in the afternoon, and show closers Imajinary Friends, for example — but for the most part, the Freakout was more ear-melting than mind-melting. Fierce and well-executed rock ruled the day.

Harderships and Carlton Melton shredded, Wicked Mace and Joy gave us some intese and twisted blues, and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound (shown above) showed off its hot-rodding skills, blowing the doors clean off the joint near the end of the night.

Some highlights:

Early comers were treated to Electric Shepherd, a local trio from the Sunset district. They played tight and well-structured garage rock songs, sort of in the vein of 60′s west coast stuff. The best parts of their set were the diversions into group improv. Their tunes are busy and complicated, but the band always seemed to be operating on solid footing. Look for their new EP.

Also playing in the afternoon was Pod Blotz, a project that’s as much a visual feast as a musical oddity. Oakland resident Suzy Poling (above) plays organ and flute while singing and manipulating various effects, drenching everything in a wall of gauze. Accompanying her was a guy on an electric banjo of sorts (with his own bank of effects pedals) and a mysterious, masked guru at the back of the stage wearing a mirrored pyramid on his/her head, dinging away randomly at a set of Tibetan bells. It was musique concrète, a celebration of tonal free verse. I liked it in the same way I liked Finnegans Wake.

We were out on the back patio listening to the DJs when we heard what we thought was side two of Band of Gypsys coming from the main room. We ran in and — nope, it was Joy, a San Diego trio.

The first tune had its bluesy Hendrix-leanings, but the band soon switched gears and drove things into spacier terrain. I really liked them. They manage to do that finger-twisting prog-rock stuff while holding down a heavy, solid groove. Too many bands forget about the groove.

Wicked Mace is the newest outfit from Ethan Miller and Noel Harmonson, best known as two of the core members of Comets on Fire. The line-up is unconventional — just drums and three guitars — with Miller’s shredding axe work and gospel-inspired vocals at the fore. The short, 20-odd-minute set hit its peak with the last song, a slow, two-chord blues that gave Miller all the room he needed to crank the intensity levels as high as they would go, both with his playing and his singing. Can’t wait to hear the record.

As the day grew dark and the crowds started to get a little thicker, Harderships took the stage to play a smooth, well-received set. Most of the songs were tunes they’ve been playing since coming together about a year ago, but there was at least one new song in the mix at the Freakout.

They’re a supergroup of the California psych scene, featuring members of Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Earthless and Zen Guerrilla — although the “supergroup” thing is sort of a lazy description since they’re still an excellent band when judged on their own merits. Guitarist Isaiah Mitchell, bassist Carl Horne and keys player Camilla Saufley all share vocal duties, singing confidently atop melodic, 70s-inspired heavy rock. It’s simply a great time. And of course, plenty of shit-hot guitar solos from Isaiah.

The Save KUSF crew was on hand, and paintings from Creativity Explored were displayed on Thee Parkside’s patio wall. Also, the local culture and arts magazine DRIFT had a small table filled with their publications.

The revelation this year’s Freakout: Orange County outfit Dahga Bloom. It’s tough to describe these guys, but their stage setup was something else. Two small keyboards at the front, a overflowing rack of guitars, basses and percussion in the back by the drums. Four of the six members play multiple instruments (all except the drummer and the lead singer/keyboardist), with as many as three guitars — or, at another point in the set, three basses — going at once. The set kicked off with an upbeat, west-African-sounding number with intertwining guitar licks over a pop groove and dense layers percussion. The crowd, which had swelled close to capacity at this point, immediately started dancing and pogoing. The band kept it up, each song as infectious and inventive as the last. A taste of north Africa here, southeast Asia creeping in there. Firmly within the orbit of the current indie-meets-world zeitgeist, Dahga Bloom do it in a way that’s wholly original and doesn’t come off as derivative. They also lay on the psychedelia pretty thick — especially with the twisted vocals and the whining, buzzing keyboards — so their sound is as mind-altering as it is danceable. Great stuff.

Local boys Carlton Melton gave the crowd a mix of thick, syrupy drones and stomping, unrelenting heavy riffage. The highlight of the set came at the very end when Isaiah Mitchell hopped back up onto the stage with his guitar and Nash Whalen from Wooden Shjips climbed behind the keyboard. Together, they bashed through the near-forgotten early Pink Floyd gem, “When You’re In,” which Carlton Melton has reverently absorbed as a standard bit of repertoire.

Riding that high, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound showed themselves to be in fine form. The quartet popped their heads up a couple of months ago at the Hemlock, but otherwise the band has spent the bulk 2011 in absentia, preferring to concentrate on a new full-length album due next year. I’d also wager AHISS has been practicing — their set at the Freakout was tight, dirty and completely raging. Everything great rock and roll should be.

Playing last was The Imajinary Friends, a group of musical hermits we haven’t heard much from since the mid-1990s. The psych journeymen pulled a four-piece version of the band together for their Freakout set. It was mellow, dominated by a thick low end, mostly chanted vocals, and glissando washes and E-bow work from the guitarist. Rambling snatches of tunes floated in and out of the soup. It was more free-association than composition, like the washes of introspection encountered at the end of a long, strange trip.

Hightower

First up was Hightower. The SF locals played a set of instrumental, heavy prog as the crowd of about 200 made their way onto the patio.

Hightower has been around for a number of years, and they still impress. They’ve been evolving, too — their music is as churning and heavy as it’s always been, but the songs have a more playful feel to them that was missing the early days. An improvement on an already solid formula.

This is Jake from Hightower, who drives the band through fast and tight changes with his intricate rhythm work. How can you tell he’s a pro? That’s a B.C. Rich guitar.

Lecherous Gaze

Second was Oakland’s Lecherous Gaze, a heavy rock band I had never seen before, though I’m familiar with the previous project some of them were involved with, Annihilation Time. Lecherous Gaze was impressive — lots of dirty, punk-flavored tunes. The songs skewed toward the shorter side (a good thing for the genre) and had dashes of humor and complexity. Never boring. Great guitar work by Graham Clise, who is just a ridiculous shredder when he’s given some room to solo. Also, the vocalist Lakis is more than just a good singer, he’s a real “frontman.” He spent half the set prowling the floor and getting us worked up. They have an EP and a split 12″ with Earthless and Danava.

Hot Lunch

Batting third was SF’s own Hot Lunch. The band is one of the best things going in the city’s heavy rock scene, with tight, accessible songs and a finely-tuned group dynamic. A real classic in the making. They have a 7″ release out now, and there’s a full-length on the way soon.

Black Cobra

Finishing off the show just before sunset was Black Cobra. They’re a duo — Jason Landrian on guitars and vocals, and Rafa Martinez on drums — but they sound like a full band. A giant wall of sludge and doom, with pummeling metal rhythms, stratospheric solos and screamed vocals. They played non-stop for just short of an hour, and the violence just kept rolling the whole time. Frankly, I was amazed by their sound. Usually there’s something missing in a duo without a bassist, but Landrian’s got such a huge sound dialed in through his bank of speaker cabinets behind him, he not only covers the low end, but eliminates the need for a rhythm guitarist. And Rafa, the drummer, fills all the space he’s given, but keeps things tasteful. Watching them work is like witnessing black magic.

Black Cobra will be at The Uptown in Oakland with High on Fire on August 27, and they have a new record out this fall on Southern Lord.

More Pics

A few words about Beerspit. It’s a black and white zine created by Josie Ramondetta, mostly full-page photos, printed on semi-gloss. The fifth issue is filled with images from local shows just like this one — punk and metal and skate rock and doom. Not only the bands, but the people, the booze, the clothes and the dogs that surround them. Great zine, great party.

Guitarists Isaiah Mitchell and Phil Manley stopped by Aquarius Records, the best little record store in the bay area, this Sunday evening April 17 for an in-store performance.

The duo was celebrating the release of its limited edition vinyl debut, Norcal Values, which just came out on Thrill Jockey records. Only 1,000 copies of the LP were pressed, and it was made available exclusively through independent record stores for Record Store Day. Even though RSD was officially the day before (Saturday the 16th), Mitchell and Manley threw a fiesta anyway.

If you’re familiar with either of these two guitarists, then you can probably imagine what this collaboration sounds like. Mitchell is the guitarist from the mighty Earthless and the local outfit Harderships, and Manley is better known as the frontman of Trans Am, though his style here is closer to the Krautrock-inspired psych found on his most recent solo album, Life Coach. From what I could gather from the thirty or so friends and strangers in the shop, this was their first public performance together.

They played one song. It consisted entirely of Manley playing big drones and Mitchell throwing some intense, melodic, echo-drenched shredding on top. Basically, Manley lays down a big blanket of sound with an endless horizon — a Bonneville Salt Flat for Mitchell to tear up with his throttle wide open, going whatever direction he wanted. Most of the time, the playing was pretty restrained and tasteful, but every once in a while, Mitchell would lose himself, shut his eyes, and just start firing off endless runs of notes, as relentless and damaging as a belt-fed machine gun.

It’s like Fripp and Eno if they were a couple of flannel-clad metalheads instead of turtlenecked professorial types.

Here’s the obligatory crappy iPhone video:

It was pretty much that for about thirty minutes. The guys were obviously having a great time.

Oh yeah, and it was loud. Like, very fucking loud. Positively exfoliating. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could hear it all the way up on Sutro.

Mitchell and Manley play again at the Hemlock Tavern on Thursday, April 28th.

One of the best local releases of last year was the In a Cloud compilation on Secret Seven records. The vinyl-only release sold out in just a few weeks, and it’s been tough to find since. But Secret Seven is releasing the full 14-track long player on CD this week. You can find it in all the finest independent record stores or you can order it direct from the label’s website.

It’s stacked with great tracks from all the big names in San Francisco’s pop and garage scene. Sonny Smith, Ty Segall, Kelley Stoltz, Sandwitches, Paula Frazer, Fresh & Onlys and Thee Oh Sees, among others. Especially strong are the Trainwreck Rider’s stomper “World Gone Round,” Ty Segall’s totally blown-out “Hey Big Mouth,” Paula Frazer’s haunting and psychedelic “What Does it Take,” and Exray’s “Everything Goes,” a minor key, laid-back thing with a fuzzy pulse running throughout.

Most of the tracks are exclusive to this comp — Kelley’s “Pinecone” was also released on his latest Sub Pop LP, but there’s a different mix represented here.

So if you missed out on the vinyl issue last year, which was pressed on funky clearish-green wax, Tuesday, March 29 the day to pick up this stellar snapshot of SF’s active garage-pop scene.

Label head Greg Gardner tells Signal and Noise he’s hoping to put out a second volume at some point in the future. But the next Secret Seven release is going to be a previously unissued Michael Hurley album from the early 1970s called Fatboy Spring. That’s going to be a split with Mississippi Records. Look for it later this year.

Mist Giant are one of those bands that sound too good to be from your city and still be new to you. And now they just released their new EP, Human Tree, at last week’s SXSW festival in Austin.

Given the slick production of the record, it’s surprising that Human Tree was recorded and mixed entirely at their house out in the Richmond district. Bassist Mark Pantoja and singer/drummer Dan Allen live together above an empty storefront, sandwiched by a garage and Korean restaurant. Somehow they’ve managed to score a rare apartment/studio combo in SF, which they call Ape Room Studios. The third member, who goes by Mike G, works at the Rainforest Action Network and is a contributor to the Wiretap Music blog. He plays guitar and works the sampler in the band.

Mist Giant – What With

The EP has an enormous sound which the band also manages to pull off live (check out this Wiretap video of a performance at their house). Mist Giant’s songs walk the line between pop melodies and worm hole openings into drony delirium. There are a few times on the record where this balancing act threatens to take a nosedive, but the band’s restraint and vision come through to keep things on the level, even making the downward pitch seem intentional.

From start to finish, Human Tree is a well-paced, cohesive effort. The band will have to push themselves to carry the quality level they’ve established into an LP, but I think they can pull it off.

The explosion of San Francisco’s psych scene over the last few years has given us a dozen or so compelling new bands to track on our radar. All of them are offering their own decidedly modern take on the groove-heavy, echo-drenched sounds of yesteryear.

One of the brightest blips on the screen is Skystone, a trio fronted by bassist Paula Frazer and guitarist Brock Galland and backed by drummer Royce Seader. Frazer and Galland, both of whom share vocal duties, are well-known to those who follow the movements within the Bay Area’s indie rock community. Paula has her own well-established solo career and guests with countless bands. Brock has handled guitars for The Dilettantes, among others.

Everyone came together during 2010, having been introduced by a mutual friend, and formed Skystone. Paula continues to record and perform as a solo act, but she got Skystone started because she was itching to play in “more of a rock band kinda thing,” she says.

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My first time seeing Skystone was at a January show at the Eagle Tavern, opening for East Bay Grease and Harderships. I knew Paula was an amazing singer, but I was surprised when Brock — whom I know primarily as just a guitarist — stepped up to the mic to sing lead vocals or harmonies on every song. He’s an excellent match for Paula’s voice, and together they achieve a certain drama.

“Sharing vocals, the dual-vocalist thing, that was Paula’s idea,” says Brock. “She’s such a great singer, and when she suggested that we share most of the vocal duties, it was kind of off-putting. Like, ‘Why? You’re so good.’ But she insisted on it.”

Paula jumps right in to praise her bandmate.

“The harmonies Brock can hit are so wonderful,” she says. “He has a really unique, distinct voice. I’ve seen him play with Kelley Stoltz and some other bands with a more metal edge, and I never knew he could sing. When I finally heard him sing, I was like, ‘Why aren’t you singing all the time?’”

Brock’s way of taking this compliment is to throw it right back at Paula: “Singing with this woman is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”

Over the course of our discussion, Brock continually gushes about Paula’s voice to the point where it sort of becomes a mantra. And with good reason — she’s an amazing singer, well above her peers when it comes to her technical chops, her confidence and her emotional depth.

“I’ve been singing all my life,” she says. “My dad was a minister, so I grew up singing in church. I’ve been singing since I was four years old. First in Georgia, then in Arkansas. I came to San Francisco when I was 18.”

Frazer has been involved in the Bay Area music scene as a solo artist, or as a bassist, guitarist and singer with various bands, since the early 1980s. She’s recorded with a rotating lineup of musicians under the name Tarnation since 1991. She’s also sang and played with Frightwig, the under-appreciated all-female SF punk outfit, among others.

What’s different about the scene these days, I ask her.

“I enjoy the melodic stuff that’s going on now. All the punk and noise stuff is cool, but bands are using harmonies again. Good songwriting is back. Melody’s back. That makes me really happy.”

Skystone’s music follows that lead. The vocals are front and center. The instrumentation is fairly spare — the trio doesn’t play complicated arrangements. Instead, they prefer to keep the guitars, bass and drums delicate and understated most of the time by concentrating on execution and tone rather than pure volume or excitable energy.

Which isn’t to say they’re mellow — things can get pretty loud and huge. But the music is, overall, rather simple. Some songs are entirely bare-bones, like the drone exercise “Silence Song” or the fuzzed-out, single riff dirge of “Back in View.” Others, like “Mystery Ships,” an uptempo number that’s thick with vocal harmonies, have a little more going on. What makes the songs really inviting and accessible is the common retro warmth they all share. There’s a certain shape to the sound that’s a bit of a throwback to the birth of classic Bay Area psychedelia.

I mention this to Royce, the drummer.

“That’s the vibe that we’re going for. It stems from that crucial period of the late 60s and early 70s when people first starting creating what we know today as heavy music, and people first started really digging heavy music. I don’t mean heavy like today’s metal or heavy rock, but it’s more of that cerebral, psychedelic sound.”

I ask about songwriting. Paula and Brock insist that everything is democratic. They both contribute music and words — each singer will take the lead vocal on a song he or she has written — but about half of the dozen or so songs they’ve written together have sprung up from jam sessions.

So, how crucial is improvistaion, then?

“There’s always a passage or two in each of our songs that we leave open,” Royce says. “We like to let a song breathe, and we use that open space to explore. We know where it’s going, and we know where it’s going to land. But we try to give it wiggle room. It ends up being a bit of a white knuckle ride — what’s going to happen?”

For that to really work, you need to trust your fellow musicians. All three have been in bands their whole adult lives. They’re certainly experienced in the politics and struggles of working closely with other strong-willed artists. But the camaraderie and respect within the trio is obvious. Throughout the two hours we spent together, they frequently finished each other’s sentences and urged each other to tell this story or that story. They’ve shared many a laugh together, you can tell.

I ask Royce whether it’s always like this, or if, like in just about every other band, there are moments of tension.

“There’s a very genuine respect for what everyone brings to the table,” he says. “Every now and then, one of us will get a little bossy and tell one of the other members to step up their game. It’s not a bad thing — we all care and we all really give a shit about the music and about each other. But there’s never a crisis. We can all vibe off each other. We have a good time.”

The band has only played a handful of shows since debuting at the Hemlock Tavern last August. The show I saw at the Eagle in January was only their fifth performance, and they’ll play their seventh gig this weekend at The Starry Plough in Berkeley.

“We’re so new, we’re still getting it together,” Paula says.

Skystone has been dabbling in recording, putting some demos to tape. They’ve been tracking their finished songs at Paula’s house using her Tascam 8-track tape deck. The results are on their MySpace page, but that’s it for now. They want to take it slowly, and they don’t have plans to rush into a fancy studio just yet.

Paula says Skystone is still evolving.

“I think all musicians can relate to this,” she says, “You struggle really hard to get a song to come together. You finally get it there, and then there’s this period of time when you’re still a little insecure. Then once you’re at the point where you know it really well, there’s a brief window before you grow sick of it.”

“We’re still in the insecure phase, I think. We’re not totally confident, but we’re getting there.”

See them live at The Starry Plough Pub in Berkeley this Friday, March 4th. Skystone plays first, then Corner Laughers are in the middle slot. The Moore Brothers headline.

Photos: Keith Axline

“Black and white’s all right
Truth is better in color”

- Slowness

The new EP from San Francisco’s Slowness, Hopeless but Otherwise, is an intense trip beyond polar certainty and into a maze of melancholy. Truth is better in color, as the opening track “Black & White” declares, but it’s also messier that way: The band uses beautiful shoegaze guitar textures laid over ominous bass marches and driving drums to take the listener down some subconsious back alleys we all usually avoid.

Black and White

While the sonic scenery may be dark, the band never leaves the listener’s side, guiding the way with points of catharsis to reveal the beauty in discomfort. Lyrically, Slowness walk the line between the political and personal, with the words equally fitting to a relationship as they would be to a protest; anger mixing with sober reflection. They call for reshaping institutions and decry “evil scheming lies,” but then recommend a “reckoning and levity.”

Not that you can really hear the words. The ethereal, male/female harmonies by bassist Julie Lynn and guitarist Geoffrey Scott are more an additional texture than mouthpiece. (Erik Gross plays drums on the record but the band has since found a new drummer, Scott Putnam.)

The overall impression of this complex EP is that the band is just beginning. In some ways they’ve barely started on what promises to be an epic journey into drones unknown. I highly recommend spending some quality time with the songs and checking Slowness out next time they play. They are a gleaming jewel in San Francisco’s indie tiara.

You can see Slowness at the Retox Lounge on March 19th with Gosta Berling, Odes and Tied to the Branches. Connect with them on SlownessMusic.com (where you can download the EP for free during March), MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

Second photo: Julie Lynn and Geoffrey Scott by Brad Wise.

See, Shea follows the muse through several different kingdoms and down many corridors — he’s also the singer in the agro, acid-blown skate punk band Hot Lunch, a decade ago he was in the country-rock group Mover, somewhere in between he was singing atop the fuzzy sludge of Parchman Farm. If his musical activities and influences are a patchwork quilt, the thread sewing it all together is Gram Parsons.

That’s the deal with Sweet Chariot — Shea gets to flex his Parsons muscles a bit in this new band. Not to say it’s derivative of country-rock’s greatest innovator. It’s not, but they’re both in the same orbit. The Chariot throws off a vibe that would slot perfectly into a scene from a lost Sam Peckinpah film when the two heros ride up to the biker bar and slip into the back room to hand a briefcase full of cash to the coke dealer.

There was a seasoned storyteller’s lilt to all the songs the band played Sunday night. Each one was delivered as a fairly straight narrative. The set was well-paced and smooth. The playing — line-up: pedal steel, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass and drums, with three of the five signing — was more about execution and groove than the showmanship too many country-leaning bands adopt. In short, Sweet Chariot are a tight little rock band with some tight country-flavored songs. Great music, great vibe, all delivered tastefully.

One key highlight was drummer Rob Alper. He’s also the drummer in Hot Lunch (also The Fells and The Sermon), where he plays with ferocious abandon. He does double duty in Sweet Chariot, and while any other drummer would reel in the flailing a good deal to play behind a combo that’s heavy on the beer-soaked twang, it’s not so with Alper. He plays just as heavily and loudly here as he does behind Hot Lunch’s doom-filled riffs. Rather than coming off as unbalanced, it makes Sweet Chariot’s songs much more exciting to take in, not to mention giving the band a huge swinging pair.

Conspiring forces left me without a photo for the evening, so I wrote Shea an e-mail asking him to provide a publicity shot. The beauty slice of Photoshop above will score your eyeballs if you’re not careful.

The band kicked off their show last night at Cafe Du Nord with a new untitled song. It starts with singer/guitarist Evan Jewett bent over in a wide stance with one foot on an effects pedal, making a monstrous racket with his guitar. At only a few feet away and having just lost my earplugs to the darkness of the floor, it was a visceral experience.

As the song built, the crowd’s anticipation was palpable, like the cranking of a rollercoaster’s chain on a steep incline. And once the song peaked, the rest of the show was all adrenaline and descent.

Evan spent most of his time before the show worrying if people were going to show up but by the time they took the stage it was packed.

“I’ve played so many shows in front of nobody over the years that I think i’ve developed some weird anti-fetish for it,” he says, “Thankfully the turnout was great in the end and as usual the stress was for nothing.”

Believe it or not, this is what an enthusiastic crowd looks like in San Francisco.

The band played a few other new songs throughout that set that I enjoyed as much, if not more, than the songs off Tangler. Those, plus as yet unwritten songs, should be showing up on their new LP this year.

After the show the band’s van overheated on the way back to San Jose. They pulled over to buy some coolant and snacks.

“I had Kettle Sea Salt and Vinegar chips,” says Evan. “Someone had Skittles. Andy bought Rolos and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Gordon had a large Arrowhead water which I took a few sips from. A great night all in all.”

My apologies to Damien and Gordon for not getting them in any good shots. I had already been to the Eagle that night and my brain wasn’t working properly. They both killed it.

Also be sure to check out our profile of Worker Bee if you haven’t already.