Bret and Jemaine first met in 1996 at Victoria University Wellington. Jemaine vividly remembers the first time he met Bret; “he was wearing a hat”. Bret doesn’t remember meeting Jemaine, but says it was unforgettable.

They were both acting in a University Drama Club production called Body Play. Bret and Jemaine were put in a group of five men to create a short theatrical piece about male body issues. The most memorable part of the show was the costumes. They wore nothing but skin coloured bike shorts giving the audience the illusion that they were naked. From that short vignette the group of five developed another pseudo nude show called So, You’re A Man. They performed to sell-out audiences in Wellington and Auckland, and were then invited to perform at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

They flew to Australia for a one month season at a Melbourne comedy club called The Last Laugh. The group couldn’t believe they were being paid to perform and Bret blew his entire first pay cheque on a pair of leather pants. Unfortunately the Australians didn’t appreciate the show like they had in New Zealand, and the season was cancelled after one week.

In 1998 Bret and Jemaine decided to start a band. With a combined knowledge of three chords on the guitar they set about jamming out. The first song was Foux Du FaFa, (two chords) and they called themselves Moustache. The four piece band had Bret on casio-tone, Jemaine on guitar, and their friends Toby Laing and Tim Jaray on trumpet and double bass. They performed their one song at the Wellington Fringe Festival late night club and members of the audience were said to have been “mildly impressed” by the act.

After the encouraging feedback the pair continued to write songs in their living room, subjecting their six flatmates to relentless three chord jams. After several weeks they knew four chords and Jemaine got them a gig to perform at the Thursday night Comedy Club. On the afternoon of the gig they realized they needed a band name. The initial list of names included Roxygen Supply, Albatrocity, and Tanfastic. But the final name was chanced upon in a series of events that went something like this: Jemaine went to the bathroom and noticed the flat toilet was called the Concorde, he returned from the bathroom to suggest the name Conchord, and Bret said “What about Flight of the Conchords”, and Jemaine said “okay”, and Bret said “okay “, and Jemaine said “okay then” and Bret said “We should go to the gig, we’re late”.

That night was their first performance as Flight of the Conchords. Bret and Jemaine were so nervous they couldn’t speak between songs. Despite their performance anxiety the crowd of eleven people enjoyed their gig and were heard clapping and talking amongst themselves.

Propelled on by the success of the gig, and the lack of other work in the city the band continued to perform every second Thursday for the next two years. These early songs included “Bowie’s in Space,” “Petrov, Yelyena and Me,” “Rock Beat,” “Lullaby,” “Albi the Racist Dragon,” “Leggy Blonde,” “The Washing Song,” and “Bus Driver.”

By 2000 they had written a dozen songs and decided to escape the New Zealand winter and perform at the Canadian Fringe Festival. The Calgary show was a success, mostly based on the fact that the Friday and Saturday night crowds sold out because the audience thought they were going to a different show.

In Vancouver they weren’t so lucky. The theatre was an abandoned basement hidden away on an alley off a back street, off of another back street. As they arrived at the venue the only sign that it was a theatre was a guy with a can of red paint writing the words ‘The Cavern’ across the garage door. The obscurity of the venue and the general disinterest in musical comedy meant the Conchords had trouble getting an audience and had to cancel many shows. Their smallest audience was just one woman. She had accidentally passed by the venue on her way home and had agreed to watch the show when Bret and Jemaine offered her a free ticket. It wasn’t until the lights came up at the end of the gig that they realised the woman had snuck out of the room during the performance and they’d been playing to an audience of none.

In 2002 they decided to again escape the New Zealand winter. This time traveling to Scotland to perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Their venue was an underground tunnel called The Cave. When it rained, which was most days in Edinburgh, the ceiling dripped onto the audience and a dank slime crept down the stone walls. Apparently in the 17th century the room had been used to quarantine plague victims. They performed every night for the month of August and won the Mervyn Stutter Spirit of the Fringe Award. By the time the left they had dozens of fans, and severe chest infections.

They continued to perform at the Wellington Thursday night comedy club, and also did a small number of corporate functions. One such gig was for a Wellington cricket club Christmas function. They performed in the corner of the bar as the cricket club finished their turkey dinner. Unfortunately the inferior sound system meant the lyrics were incomprehensible and Bret and Jemaine were mistaken for a bad covers band. Their song about “Bowie in Space” was heard as an unrecognizable rendition of Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Unexpectedly three women stormed the stage demanding they could do a better job themselves. Bret attempted to accompany their version of Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” while Jemaine packed up the gear. They both ran out the door leaving Wellington’s own Destiny’s Child singing a cappella.

It should also be noted that Bret was cast as an elf in the Lord of the Rings (which led to a recurring role in the trilogy as well as The Hobbit movies). While his character was unnamed, fans of the films named him “FIGWIT” (which was short for “Frodo is great… WHO IS THAT!?").

They returned to Edinburgh in 2003 and again performed in the same subterranean grotto. The show had developed to include a xylophone and a dancing toy flower. Their new songs included “If You’re Into it,” “Bret You’ve Got It Goin’ On,” “Sexy Flower,” and “Hiphopopotamus vs. The Rhymenocerous.”

Back in New Zealand Jemaine went shopping at a local pawn shop and discovered a strange digital guitar from the eighties. It was like a casio-tone keyboard but it was a guitar. He tested it out and found that the low-tech hybrid was a mongrel of an instrument definitely not worth $163. The next day Bret went shopping in the same local pawn shop unaware that Jemaine had been there the day before. Bret’s reaction to the strange instrument was quite different. That afternoon he arrived at band practice with the mongrel keytar in his hands. That day the DG20 casio-tone digital guitar begat the song “She’s So Hot Boom.”

In 2004 they returned to Edinburgh this time performing above ground. The sell-out show included the songs “Jenny,” “Business Time,” “Stana” and an unfinished love song called “The Scientist and the French Teacher.”

From their success in Edinburgh the BBC Light Entertainment Department commissioned the band to make a six part radio series. Bret and Jemaine moved to London in 2005 and spent five months writing and recording a mockumentary about the lives of a fictional version of themselves. The show was the first time they collaborated with NZ comedian Rhys Darby who played the character Brian Nesbitt, the fictional band’s manager.

Later that year Bret and Jemaine received an invitation to perform at the Aspen Comedy Festival, in Colorado, USA. Against tradition they left New Zealand’s summer to go to the northern hemisphere’s winter and were shocked by the snow when they stepped off the plane in t shirts and jandles. The HBO executives liked their act and asked them to film a half hour performance for a stand-up comedy show called One Night Stand.

Over the next four years they made a TV pilot, a sitcom, released an EP (The Distant Future) and a full length album (self-titled LP), toured North America, made a sandwich, filmed a second season of the sitcom, toured North America again, released a second album (I Told You I Was Freaky), and went back to New Zealand.

The HBO sitcom became a hit. This, along with the praise for the subsequent album releases (on Sub Pop Records) and the duo’s live show, was the comedic hat trick that catapulted Flight of the Conchords to international sensations.

The Conchords would also see major success individually. Jemaine lent his voice to the character Nigel the cockatoo in the Rio films (2011 and 2014). He was cast as “Boris The Animal” in Men in Black 3 (2012). Jemaine also wrote, produced and starred in a variety of projects including the acclaimed Vampire comedy film, What We Do In the Shadows and People Places Things. More recently, he joined the cast of The BFG, the new Steven Spielberg adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, as the giant named Fleshlumpeater.

Bret has also been hard at work writing and acting for various television and film projects. Most notably The Muppets (2011) and Muppets Most Wanted (2014), the former of which won him an Academy Award for “Best Original Song” for the power ballad “Man or Muppet”. In 2012 he starred in the New Zealand black comedy Two Little Boys and then in 2013 he was cast in Jerusha Hess’s romantic comedy Austenland. He is currently writing the screenplay and songs for a film adaption of Neil Gaiman’s book Fortunately the Milk as well as penning tunes for the upcoming Disney film Bob the Musical.

And somehow, between all of the film and TV work, the Conchords managed to co-headline the “Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival” alongside Dave Chappelle in 2013.

Jemaine and Bret will return to the U.S. for a summer headlining tour, which features new material exclusive to these shows.

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan needs little introduction. An American singer-songwriter, artist and writer. He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades.

Mavis Staples

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Mavis Staples is living, breathing history. She is an alchemist of American music, and has continuously crossed genre lines like no musician since Ray Charles. Weaving herself into the very fabric of gospel, soul, folk, pop, R&B, blues, rock— even hip hop—over the better part of the last 60 years, the iconic singer has seen and sung through so many changes, always rising up to meet every road unwaveringly.

Nada Surf: Having recorded five albums in 10 years and toured extensively in support of all of them, Nada Surf opted to follow 2012’s cracking The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy with a brief but well-earned hiatus. So in January 2015, when Caws informed Nada Surf’s vociferous Facebook following that a new record was just about done, the news was greeted with explosive enthusiasm. An accomplished alternative rock band with a member has won two Grammy Awards for his songs with Adele and the Dixie Chicks.

MOVING PANORAMAS are an all-gal dream gaze trio from Austin, TX. Singer/guitarist LESLIE SISSON, had been living in Brooklyn while playing in The Wooden Birds and came back to her home state of Texas to be closer to the band and her family. She took on a job teaching music at School of Rock where she met bassist ROZIE CASTOE, who was in an 80's show Leslie directed. Meanwhile, Leslie was subbing on bass in Black Forest Fire with drummer KAREN SKLOSS, a longtime friend and former film grad school classmate. The stars aligned when the three girls' primary projects had each run their course, so Leslie decided to combine forces with Rozie and Karen to try something new. Sharing influential gazey roots inspired audial expansion into something spacey but not alienating, loud yet still light, painting panoramic sound against a moving melodic backdrop. Thus became MOVING PANORAMAS, who finished their debut LP titled One, with Louie Lino at Resonate in Austin, releasing on October 2nd, 2015, on Modern Outsider Records.

Leslie is known for her work on vocals/guitar in The Wooden Birds with Andrew Kenny of American Analog Set and as a solo artist. Her history includes time in Matt Pond PA, Western Keys, Black Lipstick, Black Forest Fire, Tanworth-in-Arden, and Aero Wave, with guest performances for American Analog Set, Windsor for the Derby, Rhythm of Black Lines, Mark Gardener of Ride, Dan Mangan, John Wesley Coleman, Snowden, and Broken Social Scene. She also toured as crew for Vampire Weekend, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, and Sons and Daughters.

Critically acclaimed singer-songwriter James McCartney has remained fiercely dedicated to his musical vision of melding smart hooks and feral alt-rock with the grandeur and spiritually centeredness of psychedelic music. Now, he issues the sharpest entry of his vision, the majestic The Blackberry Train engineered by Steve Albini (Nirvana, The Pixies and PJ Harvey).

"It's all been an evolution," James says. "This set of songs definitely has a harder edge, but it's a continuation of the last album. The main thing for me is to not conform or compromise."

James' panoramic artistry is inspired by such diverse musicians as Kurt Cobain, The Smiths, Radiohead, PJ Harvey, The Cure, The Beatles, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, and Hank Williams. His fingerprint aesthetic has earned him plaudits from Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Daily News. He's earned a strong following the old fashioned way, through tirelessly touring the US, Europe and the UK, and playing bigger and bigger shows with each go around.

The Blackberry Train is an epiphanic co-mingling of aesthetics. James sought out the distinct audio stylings of Steve Albini to conjure a grungier sensibility. He welcomed the engineer's gifts for capturing music with a raw clarity, and Steve Albini's reputation for not impinging on an artist's vision. The results make for an eclectic album with fastidiously crafted songs documented in the studio with glorious purity.

"I like the music to have elements of the avant garde, psychedelic, and be just a little against the grain," James reveals. "But in the end, it's about having as much emotion as possible for me, musically and lyrically. It's all about the music being cathartic, heartfelt and true."

The Blackberry Train manages to be both diverse and cohesive. The album opens invigoratingly with the jangling rocker, "Too Hard" and closes with the stately and aptly named folk song "Peace and Stillness." Between these bookends, highlights include the rough-edged and urgently melodic "Unicorn," the anthemic "Peyote Coyote," and the soulful ballad "Prayer." One very personal song is the winsome and reflective "Waterfall" which was inspired by memories of his mother.

This summer and fall James will embark on extensive tour dates in the U.S. Thinking ahead, James says: "I just want to keep on going, keep working, and improving as a songwriter. I'd love to feel that I realized my full potential both as a person, and as a songwriter. That feels like a great, fulfilling goal to shoot for. Making a lot of music, and striving for more depth artistically–those are my goals."

AURORA

After hearing her lithe, fairytale-reminiscent songs, perhaps it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that AURORA (born Aurora Aksnes) hails from a Norwegian city with a name translates to “Fjord of Lights.” Or that when she was six, the future singer/songwriter was disciplined for convincing classmates that their school was overrun with talking mice. Or even that her first brush with making music was discovering a toy piano, and she managed to keep her hobby a secret from her parents until well into her teen years.

Now nineteen and on the cusp of releasing her debut full-length, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, AURORA’s fantasies have only grown, inhabiting every corner of her music. A girl makes peace with her murderer and the inherit vulnerability of life in the haunting piano ballad “Murder Song (5,4,3,2,1).” A runaway fades away into the wonder of nature over the course of “Runaway,” her escape marked with harpsichord, live percussion, and an undeniable sense of wonder. And coupled with an anthemic swell of synths and AURORA’s triumphant vocal, “Running With the Wolves” makes tapping into one’s lupine side seem not only plausible but downright irresistible.

“When I was very young, younger than now, I could listen to songs by Cohen and Bob Dylan, not even knowing the English language yet, and still kind of understand what the song was about, and have a sense of emotion from the song without knowing the words,” AURORA reveals. “I always strive to be better and I always feel like everything I’m making can be better if I had more time. I’m very picky. But the most important thing is the emotion in the song, of course. So I hope that the emotions in my songs are clear enough that you don’t need to know what the words mean.”

Nowhere is that idea of overflowing visceral content more evident than her new single “Conqueror,” where, against a percussive wave, she sings of someone longing to be rescued from “Broken mornings/broken nights/broken days in between.” Written for fun one night in the studio with her bandmates (who she refers to as her “second family”) AURORA calls the anthem a personal reminder—in addition to being one of the most fun songs in her catalogue to perform live.

“I know that I’m very sensitive,” she admits. “In many ways I’m weak. But if you’re weak, you’re also very strong. Because you need to work a bit harder to survive as well…You have to find the conqueror in yourself at first, I think. That’s what I think about in the song. It’s just a person who hasn’t realized that yet. That person is still trying to find the conqueror in someone else. You have to find the conqueror in yourself to land on your own feet. You are the only one you need to survive. Then other people will make your life a good life as well. It’s important to be strong in yourself.”

However AURORA prefers to swap weakness and sorrow for happiness, punctuating even the heaviest of topics with laughs and thoughtful tangents. Even her album title, a metaphor for making peace with your past, hints at a chance for not only redemption, but also joy amidst the darkness.

“I don’t want to write sad songs only to make people sad,” she notes. “I’ll end up with lots of depressed fans.”

At that admission AURORA pauses, giggling as she admits she’s crying as she speaks, a byproduct of just reflecting on all the support she’s received so far.

“That’s not my goal at all,” she continues. “But I want to people to know that it’s not dangerous to cry or think of something sad for a while. It’s easier to think about it through a song, which can also be beautiful while being sad. It’s like taking medicine with a teaspoon of sugar. It’s important to have some hope.”

TOR MILLER

Native New Yorker Tor Miller is endearingly vague when asked to explain the source of his singing voice. He grew up, he says, with a dad "who was part of the Glee Club at university, and he'd sing all the time at home, all these old college drinking songs. But my mum can't sing to save her life. My parents always say that I would sing around the house all the time, too, but I don't remember that. I do know that they would go to parent evenings and ask my teachers about my participation in music, and the teachers would go: 'What? He never contributes.' I'd sing along to the radio, but I never thought anything of it." (one can easily lose count of the great singers who will give a similar answer when quizzed about their talent. How cool must it be to be able to shrug in explanation -oh, the singing? I never thought anything of it.)

As Tor tells it, it took a major upheaval in his life to kickstart his conviction and self-belief, and turn him from someone who would "sing around the house all the time" into an artist on a mission. When he was 12, his parents moved from Manhattan out to New Jersey and six months later, Tor enrolled in a new school. It was those six months, and the two years that followed, that would shape him both as a singer and as a songwriter. Each weekday he and his mother would do "a 90-minute commute. She would drop me off and I'd sit for about half an hour, waiting for school to open, listening to the music she had given me – Ziggy Stardust, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac. I listened to those records pretty much nonstop, up and back. And that was the point when I started writing my own songs."

As is so often the case, a great teacher proved another catalyst. "I had this piano teacher at the new school who would just let me play what I wanted to, so I'd play him these songs and sing along really quietly, and one lesson he said: 'You have a really good voice. Next week, instead of just working on the piano part, we'll learn the vocal as well. And the week after, we can try writing something.' So it was all thanks to that one teacher."

The music lessons aside, Tor's new school was, for a long time, not a place he was happy to attend. "I was a complete outcast; I didn't talk to anyone for about two years. But I was getting confident in my music, and wrote my first couple of songs, so I decided to perform at the eighth-grade talent show – and at that point, no one had really ever heard me even speak. I was so mad about moving schools and leaving all my friends, so I hadn't participated in anything, but I got up there and performed a song I had just written, and immediately after, people suddenly wanted to talk to me, I got all this attention – especially from girls! It propelled me to keep going, and I started booking shows, open-mic nights in places like The Stone Pony in Asbury Park. I went to high school, and joined a jazz band there, and some of the guys in that joined my band, and we just carried on playing shows. But it all came from that first performance in eighth grade."

The songs "began to pour out, most of them about isolation and loneliness," Tor says with a wry laugh. "I felt that I'd been taken out of the city and away from a life I loved, and thrown out on a horse farm in New Jersey. And here, suddenly, was something I liked – and I didn't like anything at the time." The bug had bitten him and, when he took up a place studying music at NYU, Tor dived right in. "The moment when it felt properly real was in my first semester at college, when I was writing all these songs. There was this room in the basement of my dorm building, next to the laundry room, it could reach 100 degrees in there, but I'd be in there three or four hours every day, writing away, skipping class, and I really felt that I was coming into my own. My attitude was, 'No, fuck the classes, you need to be working on your music'.

Glassnote Records – home to artists such as Mumford & Sons, Phoenix, Childish Gambino and CHVRCHES – picked up on the buzz about Tor, and last year, he signed to the label. Which led, he admits, to a slightly tense family summit with his mum and dad. "I'm supposed to be on this two-year leave from college at the moment, and I think my parents both fully expect that I'll be going back there at the end of it. It was an incredibly awkward conversation when the deal came about. I had to say: 'Because of this, I don't think I'll be going back to college next year.' That was pretty nerve-wracking."

Headlights, the title track of Tor's EP released in February 2015, includes Hold the Phone, a song from Tor's dorm-basement days that he recorded on his i-Phone, and which first gained traction when Zane Lowe named it as the Next Hype on his R1 show and Now and Again which has a swagger Ziggy would have approved of, and a sonic eclecticism that recalls Lindsay Buckingham's multilayered production mastery. But it is Midnight that most captures Tor's impassioned musicianship – and his abiding, imperishable love for the city he was forced to abandon temporarily as a teen.

In the midst of the release of his new single Carter & Cash, Tor is working to complete his debut album at London's Eastcote studios with the producer Eliot James (Noah and the Whale, Two Door Cinema Club, Plan B, Bloc Party). Tor describes the recording environment as "a bit dilapidated, which is exactly how I like it. And Eliot is a producer who really drives the recordings, and captures the grit in a song. It's a huge relief to finally find the right match." He's determined not to play it safe, he says, or smooth off the rough edges in his songs. "Risk-taking is rare in music. When I wrote some of these songs, I'd listen to some of the lyrics and think, 'Fuck – do I really want to be saying that? Do I really want to let everyone know how I feel?' But I think that's something you have to do if you want to produce work that is honest."

The key moment in Midnight is when with the backing vocals rising to a tumult behind him, Tor sings "Calling out, calling out for something true." The most thrilling thing about Tor Miller – though he may not have realized this yet – is that he's found it.

It had been seven years since Ben Harper last played a show with the Innocent Criminals, so when the time came to reunite for a live tour in 2015, the band—percussionist Leon Mobley, bassist Juan Nelson, drummer Oliver Charles, keyboardist Jason Yates, and guitarist Michael Ward—quickly discovered that Harper had more in mind than simply revisiting the group's prodigious collection of hits. In fact, Harper had been quietly amassing material for a new record, Call It What It Is, and the first recording sessions were scheduled to begin even before the rehearsals for their triumphant four-night sold-out reunion run at the Fillmore in San Francisco.

"I thought we would be more energized and revitalized by thinking outside the box and starting with new material in the studio before we dug into the old stuff," explains Harper. "It was meant to be a signpost that we're here to forge new ground musically and personally. Because of that, the older material started to sound brand new too.”

Beginning with his 1994 debut, Welcome To The Cruel World, Harper released a string of eight studio albums over a decade and a half. This extraordinary run, featuring contributions from the Innocent Criminals, established him as a singularly powerful songwriter and performer with range across multiple genres and an unmatched ability to blend the personal and political. The accolades poured in—Rolling Stone hailed his "jewels of unique and exquisitely tender rock & roll,” while Entertainment Weekly praised his "casual profundity," and Billboard said his music "reminds us of the power and beauty of simplicity." Massive, international sold-out tours, Top 10 debuts in the US, Gold and Platinum certifications overseas, and a slew of TV appearances cemented Harper and the band's status as genuine global stars.

"The process of working outside of my comfort zone is really important to my growth," explains Harper. "The situations I've put myself in have pushed me further than I could go in any familiar setting, and that's what's brought me back full circle to the Innocent Criminals now. Everybody went out and grew in their own ways during our time apart, and that's brought this heightened level of appreciation for each other and what we do."

“Each member brings a wealth of knowledge and different styles of music,” said Nelson. “What makes us unique is that we come from different places musically and we seem to complement each other because of the different styles that we play."

"Playing with the Innocent Criminals again is like riding a bike," adds Charles, "but that bike has gotten tons of upgrades and modifications since the last time. There was a feeling I had missed for so long that you can only get from playing together."

From the opening minutes of Call It What It Is, it's clear that that feeling has never been more powerful or exhilarating. The album kicks off with "When Sex Was Dirty," a song that Harper had earmarked for the Innocent Criminals from the moment he wrote it. It's all classic rock and roll bravado, full of electric guitar swagger, driving percussion, and seductive energy. Harper follows it up by demonstrating that his range is wider than ever with the utterly vulnerable "Deeper and Deeper," a near-whispered acoustic moment of introspection co-written with Ward, who says that despite the time apart, or perhaps because of it, the band is now "closer than ever as musicians and as human beings."

The new album is Harper’s second release for Stax Records. Perhaps most associated with icons like Booker T & The MGs, Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes, Stax is a seamless fit for Call It What It Is, due to its rich Civil Rights-era legacy and its dedication to spreading soul music in all its most powerful forms. Harper speaks reverently of the label, describing the honor and the privilege of calling it his home, and it's clear the history holds a special place in his heart as both a fan and an artist.

As serious and solemn as Call It What It Is can get, though, it's also one of Harper's most joyous records. "Shine" grooves with blissful passion, while "Pink Balloon" shows off a lyrical mischievousness that surprised even Harper himself. Like so many of the other tracks, it only fully revealed itself over time and through a free-flowing collaboration with those closest to him.

"The time we took with this record has let me look it straight in the eyes and say that I gave everything I could to it and that it's exactly the way we intended it to be. To be able to say that we've left no stone unturned just feels great."

For the legions of Ben Harper fans that have been waiting eight years for a new album with the Innocent Criminals, it feels even better.

Christopher Paul Stelling

“It takes a lot of work to stay on the road,” he says. “You learn to rely on your songs as a sort of resting place amidst all of the unfamiliarity. You fill your head full of places, and sounds, and ideas — and it all comes spilling out. When the things around you change constantly, you change too. And the things that stay the same become who you are. It’s nurtured my songwriting, knowing that the inspiration is all around you. If you aren't seeing it, then look harder, and if you still don't see it, then turn the corner, and if you still don't see it then look at things differently, because it's right there in front of you.”

The Grammy Award winning, Platinum-album selling, New Jersey super-group, Naughty By Nature, has nearly a twenty-year track record of creating the hits and party anthems that have become the soundtrack to our lives. Their music has smashed through mainstream barriers all while remaining true to the sound, message and grit of
 the hood. And now, these three kings of the HipHop anthem have formally claimed their titles and named their forthcoming reunion album, "Anthem Inc." in celebration.

 Life is good. Treach, Vin Rock and DJ Kay Gee are back in the studio, doing what they do best: creating undeniably classic, hand-raising, life-affirming, HipHop music. "We wouldn't have reunited if we didn't think we could give people that authentic Naughty feeling," says the group's master lyricist Treach. "This new album is definitely gonna take you back, but just like we always did, we've invented a new sound, a bunch of new flows and after being
 without an album for so long, we've gotta lotta things to say."

 Few groups in music can boast a near twenty-year career that has been both consistent and history making.  Naughty By Nature, the Grammy and American Music Award winning rap trio, initially called "New Style", began
 performing at talent shows and were discovered by fellow New Jersey native and then-emerging HipHop artist,  Queen Latifah. Eventually signing the group to her management company "Flavor Unit Management", Latifah  helped them land a deal with Tommy Boy Records.

 Naughty By Nature's self-titled debut album was released in 1991 and quickly assaulted the music charts with the  instant classic #1 hit "O.P.P.". The group quickly became crossover stars, while maintaining their ghetto sensibility.  To date, their success and longevity as a HipHop group has been unparalleled. These three "Kings of The HipHop
 Anthem" went on to produce their follow-up albums that have become part of America's HipHop legacy: "19  Naughty III", "Poverty's Paradise" and "Nature's Fury".

 Inevitably, a break-up in 1999 would lead to the group members each following different, yet equally successful, personal endeavors. As a producer, Kay Gee went onto produce award winning music with artists including: Luther Vandross, Notorious B.I.G, Jaheim, Next and Zhane. As an actor, Treach found success in film and television offering critically acclaimed performances in HBO's original series "The Sopranos" and "OZ", along with "Jason's Lyric", "Soul Food", the HipHop cult-classic "Juice" and several other films.

 As the marketing genius behind the group, Vin Rock developed Naughty Gear, one of the first HipHop inspired clothing lines. When he got a hold of the worldwide web, he mastered it with www.NaughtyByNature.com, further  developing and expanding the reach of the Naughty brand. Throughout this time, Treach and Vin Rock continued to tour and perform around the world. In 2002, the duo struck a deal with TVT Records and produced their last album, IIcons.

Fast forward to 2008… After years of steady touring and itching to get back in the studio, both Treach and Vin agreed, that in order for the next album to have that authentic sound and feel of Naughty By Nature,they must reunite with DJ Kay Gee. At this same time, VH1 bestowed their coveted "HipHop Honor" to the group as innovators of our culture. Joining the ranks of Big Daddy Kane, Rakim and Eazy E., the group received their "HipHop Honors" in October of 2008.

 The group continues to tour globally, ripping stages from Australia to Canada and New Jersey to South Africa.  Naughty By Nature is on their A-game and have no plans to stop anytime soon.

Alicia Olatuja w/ Jon Cowherd, piano; David Rosenthal, guitar; Michael Olatuja, bass; Otis Brown III, drums

Once Alicia Olatuja moved to New York her reputation as a supreme jazz vocalist began to take shape. The New York media lauded her performances with her husband, bassist Michael Olatuja, as well as her performance at the 2013 presidential inauguration. On her debut album, Timeless, Olatuja was joined by a brilliant ensemble of players including Christian McBride, Jon Cowherd, Christian Sands, Ulysses Owens Jr. and Michael Olatuja, which speaks volumes to her versatile vocal style. When not performing, she is a voice educator at Brooklyn Arts Council. She was featured at the 2015 Festival with Billy Childs and the Laura Nyro project.

LA Luz

Seattle’s La Luz recorded their debut EP, Damp Face, in a small trailer on a hot August day. But barring the inevitable “no-AC-in-the-van” summer tour calamity, La Luz runs cool. Their brand of coolness isn’t about distance or affect; it’s a mood, and—sue me, but I’m about to totally rip off Zelda Fitzgerald: Something about this music vibrates to the dusky, dreamy smell of dying moons and shadows. So yeah, that kind of cool.

Still, La Luz’s live shows, more than most these days, are about connection. It’s evident that the four ridiculously talented ladies on stage are not only playing musicwith each other, but for each other. And they engage their audience as well. Like a proper punk band—which they are not— they give you shit for not dancing. They convey a gritty self-possession, a sense that they’ve been there and back again. And, like the expert, but seemingly effortless, surf licks and meandering bass lines that rise and fall throughout their songs, their mocking is playful and dreamy and disarming enough to get most of the crowd (and sometimes the keyboard player) dancing down the center line of a soul train.
But as any half-assed Freudian will tell you, there can be no meaningful connection without first weathering some dark and lonely times. Here comes the chilly part: What makes La Luz stand out—and stand out fast—the band has only been playing together for a year and people took notice almost immediately—is that this is a band that embodies that most elusive slant on the human condition: longing, and the fleeting relief that tags alongside deep desire.
In Spanish, La Luz means “light” and that’s the perfect thing to evoke when your songs give the illusion of veering in the opposite direction. But lift out most any lyric—which is a good excuse to give a closer listen to the delicate, four-part harmonies that are fast becoming the band’s signature—and you’ll find that the aches and pains of love and loss, of living in a world where no foothold is ever a promise—all this is delivered with a nuanced dose of perfectly timed exhilaration, like the whole thing might just be worth it in the end.
Last spring, La Luz returned to that steamy trailer park to record It’s Alive – the much-anticipated follow up to Damp Face – with their friend and engineer Johnny Goss. From the first get-psyched drum roll and eerie chords of “Sure As Spring”, the dinged-up pop gem that opens the album, the rest moves like a slow drive on a dangerous road, slinking and bending as the terrain shifts. On “What Good Am I?”, the lead vocals, and the swirl of harmonies that surround it, recall the Spartan haze of Mazzy Star’s misty-eyed super hit. Smack in the middle is the title track. “It’s Alive” is a jangly rocker with a spooky refrain, oodles of ooohs, and a marauding narrative that nails down the misty logic of the rest of the album. Two instrumentals, “Sunstroke” and “Phantom Feelings”, showcase the band’s beach jam surf chops, and fall perfectly between the chilled out heartache that surrounds them.

No Tides

From the womb of the dry desert of Las Vegas NV comes forth No Tides, with a particularly distinct sound from your average "surf garage band".

With a heavy, raunchy yet uplifting, groovy, feel to their jams, No Tides will be sure to get any party movin. The Four Piece band consist of front man and guitarist Roberto Moreno, Lead Guitarist and back up vocals Loops Rodriguez, bass slut John Gex and on the Kit Jessie Harris.
No Tides first came together in the spring of 2013. The guys went through a couple of lineup changes with a few hard decisions that had to be made in order for the band to gel.
Since then they've played some pretty rad shows with some awesome local studs such as Leather Lungs, The CGs, and The Musket vine not to mention Burger Bands and some Lolipop badasses! Already having played with some heavy hitters such as Guantanamo Baywatch, Santoros, Summer Twins, Cutty Flam, Ty Segall and La Luz, No Tides are eager to put out their first demo to the masses. Having already made some waves in the Las Vegas Valley the guys are looking to go beyond vegas and see how their tunes are received elsewhere. Booking No Tides will definitely be worth the while.

Yannick Ilunga doesn't dice words when he outlines the message woven through his debut album: "STAY POSITIVE." Yannick is half-Congolese, half-Angolan and was raised in South Africa. The 24-year-old artist known as Petite Noir still lives part-time in Cape Town, close to his family and his spiritual roots and that culture is immediately evident as it bleeds through his music. La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful, named after an uplifting 1987 Congolese film, is both a beacon and a vessel of inspiration, offering empowerment to those who need it. "

Though Petite Noir's musical background ranges from guitar metal to nu-disco, he has since developed into a confident, future-facing singer and songwriter with a wide palette. He discovered the work of Kanye West around the age of 16, and it quite literally changed his life, showing him the importance of breaking musical boundaries. You can hear that fearlessness: The King of Anxiety blended raw post-punk energy with sunny African rhythms and nuanced R&B touches in early 2015, and now La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful takes that sound to louder, more defiant places. But even as explosive pop songs like "Best" and "Just Breathe" delve into depths of frustration and discontent, they're underpinned with a restless joy. The combination is at once exhilarating and reassuring.

Inspired by innovators like Mos Def and legends Fela Kuti and Tabu Ley, Noirwave encompasses a "new African aesthetic," plain and simple.

Bayonne

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Roger Sellers is a lot of things. He's a minimalist composer with a knack for making hypnotic, enveloping songs from a few repeated musical phrases. He's a gifted musician who is mostly self-taught, having abandoned formal study because it was draining the life from his work. He's a self-described disciple of Phil Collins. What he is not, however -- despite multiple press reports to the contrary -- is a DJ.

"I started developing a decent following in Austin," he says, "but most of the time when I would play, the press would say something like 'Local DJ Roger Sellers,' or 'Roger Sellers is playing a late-night DJ set.' I think it was maybe because my live set involves a table full of gear, a drum set and headphones, but the average person probably knows more about DJing than I do.'" To combat the misunderstanding, Sellers printed up stickers reading, "Roger Sellers is Not a DJ," and eventually adopted the alias Bayonne, changing his name without altering his approach.

And it's a good thing: Primitives, Sellers' debut as Bayonne, is a rich, complex work, the kind with no clear rock parallel. In its winding, maze-like structures are hints of both Steve Reich and Owen Pallett, each instrument working a single melodic pattern over and over and over, as Sellers threads his soft, reedy voice between them. On songs like "Appeals," the effect is hypnotic: notes from a piano crash down like spilled marbles from a bucket, as Sellers' ringing-bell vocals swing back and forth between them. The end result is spellbinding music, meticulously-crafted songs where each tiny piece locks into another, and hundreds of them joined together create a breathtaking whole -- like dots in a Seurat, or tiny bones in a dinosaur skeleton.

Sellers' journey to Bayonne began when he was two years old, situated in front of Eric Clapton Unplugged at his home in TK. "I'd just watch it over and over again," he laughs. "I would get paint cans and bang on them, trying to imitate what I saw in the video. My parents got me a drum set when I was 6 years old and I became obsessed. I wanted to be Phil Collins for so many years as a child. He was my hero. I feel like you can hear that a lot in Primitives, that big drum sound, because so much of the way I play was learned from Phil Collins." Though Sellers studied classical piano as a child and music theory in college, rather than developing his skill, he found both to be deadening. "It became homework," he says. "It made me come home and not want to write. That's not at all how I'd thought about music -- it had always been something fun -- almost like a kind of therapy. It was an escape, not a chore."

Instead, Sellers struck out on his own, buying a looper and slowly amassing a stockpile of tiny melodies. "I found out that I could make these songs really spontaneously and have this really good idea without having to get into the studio to capture it right away. Most of these songs came out of me just fucking around, hooking up keyboards and experimenting." The experiments cohered into music that is beautiful and densely layered. The composition of the individual musical phrases may have been spontaneous, but assembling them to create Primitives was anything but. Instead, Sellers constructed the songs from a collection of loops he'd built up over the course of six years. Some of those patterns were created on stage at his shows, where Sellers threads melodies together in real time, augmenting them with live drums and vocals. Others were written during downtime, improvising at home. Once he had the basic melodies, he had to figure out how they went together, and how to layer them meticulously to make songs that were rich in deep detail but still immediately engaging.

You can hear all of that in "Spectrolite"; taut apostrophes of guitar enter first, pinpricks of barely-there sound that blink like Christmas lights. Bone-dry snare enters next, but the guitars keep echoing their same hypnotic phrase; it's followed by grumbling bass and, finally, Sellers' airy, high-arcing voice; each piece follows their charted course again and again, but as the song goes on, it gets more engrossing -- it gives the effect of slipping slowly into warm water. "That one came from an older loop that I had," Sellers explains. "It was about a stone that my girlfriend at the time had brought me back from Australia, a spectrolite stone. We had some things happen between us during that time, so that stone meant a lot to me. I had it with me the entire time I made the record. It's a song about forgiveness, and keeping those people who matter most to you close around you, and caring for those that you love." In "Waves," surging piano replicates the sound of the ocean, lapping slowly forward and back. Giant tribal drums enter, filling the blank space, giving the song a soft, calming, see-sawing rhythm. "That's a song I basically wrote by performing it live," Sellers says. "That's one of my favorite songs that I've written because of the simplicity of it," he explains. "You feel like you're in the ocean or something." But as the song goes on, it skews darker. "I know that there's something else, something else, something else," Sellers sings, "And I know that you'd be there for me." As the song goes on, the object of his affection drifts away, like a boat toward the skyline. Like all of Sellers's songs, it centers carefully constructed music around the soft, glowing core of the human heart.

"That's all of it -- emotion," Sellers says. "I want the music to carry people in some way, and I want them to feel what I'm feeling. I want my music to be an emotive expression." On Primitives, Sellers creates music that's nuanced, layered, complicated and soothing -- easy to get lost in, impossible to ignore.

T.O.L.D.

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The Order of Life And Death

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