The Jayhawks

One of the most enduring and beloved groups of the last thirty years, The Jayhawks first emerged from Minneapolis in the mid-1980’s, though their commercial and critical breakthrough didn’t arrive until the release of their 1992 masterpiece, Hollywood Town Hall. Over the ensuing decades, the band would go on to record a series of highly influential albums and tour the world countless times over, sharing stages with everyone from Bob Dylan and Tom Petty to Lucinda Williams and Wilco along the way. Following an extended hiatus in the mid-2000’s, Louris and his long-time bandmates—bassist Marc Perlman, drummer Tim O’Reagan, and keyboardist Karen Grotberg—returned to the studio, most recently releasing the acclaimed Paging Mr. Proust and Back Roads and Abandoned Motels in 2016 and 2018, respectively.

The 11th Jayhawks studio album XOXO was released on July 10, 2020 through Sham/Thirty Tigers. Recorded in late 2019 at Pachyderm and Flowers Studios in Minnesota, XOXO represents a bold step forward. For the first time, all four members contribute writing and lead vocal duties. XOXO is the most diverse and wide-ranging in the group’s storied history. Rather than marking a sonic departure, though, the collection signals a sharpening of focus for the band, an elevation in understanding of who they are and what they do best. In classic Jayhawks fashion, the songs here mix the influence of American roots music with British invasion and jangly power-pop, but there’s a newfound vitality at play, as well, an invigoration of confidence and energy that could only come with the injection of fresh blood. The result is an album that, much like the band’s lush harmonies, brings multiple distinctive voices together into a singular whole, a collection that, ironically enough, finds unity in individuality and identity in reinvention.

Michael Oberman

Author and Photographer

Michael Oberman’s photographs are on permanent display in U.S. National Parks including Steigerwald and Modoc and in museums including the Utah Museum of Natural History and the Ontario Science Centre (Toronto).

Six photos are on a five year tour of U.S. and Canadian museums in an exhibit called “Imaginate”…under the auspices of the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto (where the same six photos are on permanent display).

Before photography, he spent his life in the “music business.” Michael started as a music columnist for the Washington Star and a six year period interviewed more than 300 major recording artists…including David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, James Brown…the list is too long for this page. He later worked for a record company and managed artists. Now he is back to his true love: Photography.

In 2019, Oberman was signed to a publishing contract for a book about his life in the music business. He spent eight months writing “Fast Forward, Play, and Rewind.” It will be out on October 15, 2020 in the U.S. and December 1 in Great Britain. (adapted from web site)

Lake Street Dive

Lake Street Dive is a multigenre band that was founded in 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts. The band’s original members are Rachael Price (lead vocals), Mike “McDuck” Olson (trumpet, guitar), Bridget Kearney (upright bass), and Mike Calabrese (drums). Akie Bermiss (keyboards) joined the band on tour in 2017 and is on their 2018 album. Lake Street Dive started at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.^[1] The band was named after a street with many dive bars in Olson’s hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The band tours in North America, Australia, and Europe from their base in Brooklyn.

Trigger Hippy

The group was initially formed as a casual collaboration between Govrik, Gorman and other Nashville musicians. Trigger Hippy made its live debut on February 2, 2009, at the Cox Capitol Theatre in Macon, Georgia.

The band played shows in 2011 and 2012, with a rotating cast of band members. A consistent lineup featuring Govrik and Gorman along with Joan Osborne, Jackie Greene, and Tom Bukovac came together and announced plans to record an album in the fall of 2012.

Trigger Hippy released their first EP on Record Store Day’s Back to Black Friday on November 29, 2013.[1]

Trigger Hippy released a full length album on September 30, 2014. In the summer of 2015, the band announced a lengthy break.

A new four piece lineup featuring Jurdi and Woodhouse was announced June 19, 2019.

Bandhouse Gigs

BandHouse Gigs, founded in 2004 by local Bethesda, Maryland musicians Ronnie Newmyer and Chuck Sullivan, and later joined by David Sless, Greg Hardin, and Danny Schwartz, is the D.C. area’s premier producer of one-of-a-kind tribute concerts for iconic artists and influential musical movements. Over the past 13 years BandHouse has produced 25 sold out shows at The Warner Theater, The Music Center at Strathmore, The Fillmore Silver Spring, Wolf Trap, Rams Head On Stage, and The Hamilton Live.

They collaborate with professionals willing to donate their services, including writers, graphic artists, videographers, photographers, make-up artists, lighting designers, marketing professionals, and audio engineers. Together they are the BandHouse Team.

Bandhouse Gigs on Facebook

Eric Brace

Eric Brace (and Last Train Home)

Eric Brace runs Red Beet Records and makes music on his own, with Last Train Home and as a trio with Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz. In 2003, he founded the label and he and his band, Last Train Home moved to East Nashville from the Washington DC area. Brace had been a journalist at the Washington Post and had run the Top Records label.

Eric returns to the DC area with some frequency, playing clubs where he built his loyal following and participating, as in the embedded video, in numerous BandhouseGigs productions, including the recent live stream “From BandHouse to Your House.”

Eric Scott

Washington, D.C. soul/pop artist and bassist Eric Scott has enjoyed a varied and interesting musical journey. As an artist and sideman, he has toured internationally, sharing the stage with artists as diverse as Deanna Bogart, Aaron Neville, Mavis Staples, Ray Charles, Roger Waters, Tom Morello, Little Feat, and Billy Corgan, His original songs have appeared on ABC-TV, Showtime, Starz Network, Cinemax, the WB, as well as several major and indie motion pictures. He has also lent his singing voice to ad campaigns for HGTV, DC Lottery, and Nat Geo, Ford, Chevy, Jeep, Chrysler, and many more. He is a 15-time Wammie winner, as awarded by the Washington Area Music Association (WAMA).

The journey continues in 2019 with the release of the EP THE CHARM CITY SESSIONS and the full-length CD PEACE BOMB, both on his own Itzall Goode Music label. His ‘Modern Soul’ sound continues to evolve, yet remains funky, upbeat, socially aware, and ever soulful. Pop tunes and hooks meld seamlessly with groovy new school RnB, nasty funk, and the introspective lyrical approach of a singer/songwriter that examines relationships, the world we live in, and being true to one’s self. Scott’s gospel drenched voice always remains front and center. A passionate and energetic performer, his show is funky, thoughtful, and uplifting…and not to be missed!

Scott frequently participates in the musical collaborations of BandhouseGigs, including the recent live stream

“From BandHouse to Your House.”

Peter Himmelman

is a man of many talents and accomplishments who is known to those who have heard of him, but haven’t heard him, as Bob Dylan’s son-in-law. He has been playing in and with bands since sixth grade in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. (Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, Sen. Al Franken, and New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman are also SLP natives.) He has released a dozen rock albums since 1986�the first half dozen on major corporate record labels, others on smaller indies, others self-released�all of which have received love from critics and none of which have sold well. The only Billboard chart on which he has ever appeared is the Heatseekers chart, limited to artists who have never had an album in the top 200. But the quality of his work has never flagged, and lately he has released some of his finest work, including Imperfect World (2005) and The Mystery and the Hum (2010). There is also an intentional oddity called Flimsy (2011), a collection of spoken-word songs ranging from the absurd to the heartbreaking. His new album, The Boat That Carries Us, now available on his own Himmelsongs label, is about motion, or being in motion, by air (“33K Feet”), by car (“Green Mexican Dreams”), or in spirit (“Angels Die”). (Read more at peterhimmelman.com)

Marcia Ball

“Fifty years have passed in a flash,” says Texas-born, Louisiana-raised pianist, songwriter and vocalist Marcia Ball of her long and storied career. Ball, the 2018 Texas State Musician Of The Year, has won worldwide fame and countless fans for her ability to ignite a full-scale roadhouse rhythm and blues party every time she takes the stage. Her rollicking Texas boogies, swampy New Orleans ballads and groove-laden Gulf Coast blues have made her a one-of-a-kind favorite with music lovers all over the world. With each new release, her reputation as a profoundly soulful singer, a boundlessly talented pianist and a courageous, inventive songwriter continues to grow. Her love of the road has led to years of soul-satisfying performances at festivals, concert halls and clubs.

The New York Times says, “Marcia Ball plays two-fisted New Orleans barrelhouse piano and sings in a husky, knowing voice about all the trouble men and women can get into on the way to a good time.”

The Houston Chronicle says simply, “She’s as perfect as an artist can be.”

(Big) Al Anderson

Al Anderson

Listed as one of the top 100 guitar players of the 20th century by Musician Magazine and with over 900 cuts internationally, Big Al’s music career was destined. Raised by his piano teacher mother and a radio that would get WWVA in Wheeling West Virginia late at night, he would devour all genres of music from Hank Williams, The Everly Brothers, The Ventures, Chet Atkins, Elvis, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Motown and Stax paving the way for what would be a giant life in music.

NRBQ years

His first band “The Sixpacks” became “The Wildweeds,” recording a regional hit “No Good To Cry” that went on to chart nationally. With a change in record labels (from Chess to Vanguard) and a change in musical direction, Al caught the attention of the members of NRBQ. In 1971, Al left Connecticut for New York’s to enroll at the “University of Q” — a 22 year planetary course in all things musical. Al’s exposure to a evener wider range of musical genres served him well in the “Q.” His mind and string-bending guitar playing coupled with his giant stage presence had become legendary, and in the course of recording over a dozen albums with them, he had written some of the band’s most memorable songs — ‘Ridin in My Car’, ‘Never Take The Place of You,’ It Was An Accident,’ ‘Comes to Me Naturally,’ ‘What a Nice Way to Go,’ ‘Feel You around Me,’ and many more.

After over two decades of hard touring, hard living and encyclopedic musical knowledge, Al was ready to change his already prodigious song writing talent into a full-time venture.

Two years before he left NRBQ, he wrote a song with Carlene Carter, “Every Little Thing” that she took to top 5 all over the world. That song, and meeting music publisher Pat Daniel McMurry (Escott), were the turning points in Al’s career and life. With the support, guidance and belief that Pat provided, Al became unstoppable. At the same time that Al signed with Pat, he decided to quit drinking and suddenly became one of the most prolific writers in Nashville. “I went from 3 songs a year to writing sometimes 3 a day”.

The parade of hits is long and include singles and cuts by Vince Gill, Bonnie Raitt, Trisha Yearwood, Jimmy Buffett, Martina McBride, Patty Loveless, George Jones, Sheryl Crow, Leann Rimes, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascall Flatts, Zac Brown, Anthony Hamilton, Harry Connick Jr and many others.

He latest love is Music City’s premier rock band “The World Famous Headliners” rounded out with top tier penmen/artists/musicians extraordinaire Pat McLaughlin, Shawn Camp, Michael Rhodes and Greg Morrow

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