Thu September 15, 2016
Travis Hayes / M. Lockwood Porter (Album Release) / Vandella (Single Release) @ The Independent
SEE EVENT DETAILS
Travis Hayes
Travis Hayes isn’t the type to wear emotions on his sleeve. He saves that for his songs- brutally honest most of the time, and endearingly heartfelt all the time. Hayes continues the timeless tradition of soul-bearing songwriting to interpret our shared human experience into music.
Love, heartbreak, fading friendships, fraught relationships – they’re all expressed achingly through his impassioned voice and melodic guitar lines. Hayes echoes the earnestness of Springsteen, the pop sensibility of Petty, and the raw emotion of Ryan Adams.
July 2014 marked the release of Hayes’s debut album Young Daze. The album received critical acclaim from print and online media alike. The Deli Magazine praised Hayes’s ability to “…blend quintessential American music styles that nod to artists like Tom Petty and John Cougar Mellencamp, while creating his own spin on his ballads, bringing a fresh and modern sound…” Infectious Magazine declared, “Travis Hayes’s Young Daze will entrance you and prove to be the refreshing, crisp sound you’ve been looking for.”
March 2015 brought a new feel for Hayes with the release of his acoustic EP Love Songs, featuring Emily Whitehurst (Tsunami Bomb / Survival Guide). SF Weekly dubbed the release “a heartfelt EP of acoustic folk-pop.” San Francisco TV and print contributor Broke Ass Stuart suggested, “If you want your girlfriend to miss you while she’s on vacation send her Love Songs, sung by a vocal duo whose harmony sounds as natural together as it is brutal on the ol’ heart strings.”
While Young Daze was a coming-of-age tale, and Love Songs touched on matters of the heart, Travis Hayes’s sophomore LP Sleepless explores a darker reality. Hayes delves into the challenges that inevitably come with growing older- themes that keep him awake at night. Now accompanied by a full-time backing band, Hayes’s sonic arrangements are grander, his vision is greater, and his words don’t just ring now, they soar.
In his career, Hayes has shared the stage with acts such as Nathaniel Rateliff, Langhorne Slim and Chuck Ragan. In addition, he’s made appearances at San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival, SXSW, Ocean Beach Music and Art Festival and embarked on many extensive tours around the United States. Simply put by Music Junkie Press, “If you are from the Bay Area and haven’t been to a Travis Hayes show, then you are missing out.”
M. Lockwood Porter
The Berkeley, California-based singer-songwriter M. Lockwood Porter is part of a promising crop of up-and-coming Americana singer-songwriters. In the past three years, he has released two critically-acclaimed albums and performed all over the US, sharing the stage with acts like American Aquarium, David Wax Museum, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, Water Liars, Samantha Crain, David Ramirez, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and John Moreland. He has performed at festivals like Outside Lands, Noise Pop, Norman Music Festival, and CMJ. No Depression called Porter’s 2014 album 27 “a solid album worth your time, attention, and money." In a review of 27, Americana UK said, "Take care with M. Lockwood Porter. He is an important singer-songwriter.”
Porter, who got his start in music playing in punk bands in Tulsa, Oklahoma when he was in high school, is resistant to simple categorization, though. Like Conor Oberst or Jeff Tweedy, his songs are equal parts traditional songcraft and indie rock attitude. “I get called an Americana singer, and I get why. But it’s a narrow label. I still have this punk rock point of view that, whenever I’m around a bunch of people that are doing something similar, makes me want to take a left turn.”
How To Dream Again – tracked live in three days with minimal overdubs – is one of those left turns. While Porter dabbled in lush country-rock and expansive power pop on 27, How To Dream Again sounds tougher and leaves more space. The band – consisting of Porter, Peter Labberton, Bevan Herbekian, and Jeff Hashfield, and John Calvin Abney – sounds tight and heavy, like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers if they’d cut their teeth at CBGB. The acoustic songs are raw and haunting, recalling Springsteen’s Nebraska.
The heartbreak and existential crises of 27 have been replaced with boldness, wisdom, and a deeper level of self-examination. “I’m in love, in a very healthy, serious relationship, and I’m happier with where I’m at in terms of my music, but with being further along in my personal life come new questions like “How do you maintain what’s good about a relationship? How do you keep it from going stale?” “Burn Away”, “Bright Star”, and “Strong Enough”, all ostensibly love songs, are really about the uncertainty inherent in love – that there is no guarantee that it will last forever.
Porter – who has degrees in English and American History from Yale University and taught English at an inner-city middle school for four years – has also rediscovered an interest in social justice and activism. “I started teaching because I wanted to help make the world a better place. When I quit teaching to do music full-time, I shut off that part of my brain. As an independent musician, you spend so much time thinking about your career that it can be hard to make room for anything else. At one point last year, I realized that I had no idea what was going on in the world anymore. I felt like I had run out of things to talk about, and I needed to refill my brain.”
The result was a year of re-education. Porter read extensively – progressive writers like Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Thomas Piketty – and took time to rethink what he wanted to write about. “I strive for 100% honesty in my songwriting, and that means I write about what’s on my mind and in my heart. I spent most of 2015 thinking about how I should respond to what's happening in the world, so that ended up being a major theme on the record."
Porter also immersed himself in the works of topical songwriters – some obvious influences (Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan) and others less so (Joe Strummer, Public Enemy’s Chuck D). In the process, he learned about Joe Hill – the protest singer and IWW labor organizer who was executed on highly questionable charges almost exactly 100 years ago. “I went to this Joe Hill tribute at a small café in Oakland on the 100th anniversary of his death in November. I didn’t know very much about him when I went, but I came away really inspired.” So inspired, in fact, that Porter wrote the song “Joe Hill’s Dream” shortly afterwards – at once an examination of Hill’s legacy and a critical look at the recent history of politically-engaged songwriting.
“American Dreams Denied” and “The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be” are anthems of millennial post-recession frustration. “Sad/Satisfied” and “Dream Again” trace Porter’s evolution from a navel-gazing songwriter into a more thoughtful, outward-looking artist. “Charleston” was inspired by the horrific June 2015 mass shooting at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The album’s centerpiece, though, is “Reach The Top”, a five-and-a-half minute dissertation critiquing the philosophy underpinning the American Dream, tying together its myriad consequences – isolation, materialism, depression, suicide, drug use, destruction of unions, college debt, gentrification, police brutality, media distortion, and American imperialism – using nothing but his voice, a guitar, and a harmonica. This song alone is a strong case that this California-based Okie transplant may be Guthrie’s closest modern heir.
On How To Dream Again, M. Lockwood Porter blends the personal and political in a way that is courageous, moving, and representative of this historical moment. “I can’t have a conversation with anyone my age right now without talking about things like inequality, gentrification, racial injustice, student debt, or climate change. I wanted to make a piece of art that captures this time, where daily life is political.” Yet at its core, this album is a very personal statement from a thoughtful, daring young artist.
Vandella
SF’s Vandella is a lovechild of rock & roll, roots & soul, helmed by two enigmatic frontpeople and distinct songwriters. A modern-day Buckingham-Nicks, vocalist Tracey Holland and guitarist Chris Tye mix up a potent potion of sexy, sweaty 70s-era rock & roll. A package of Rolling Stones rock-meets-Alabama Shakes soul, the two met while both studying music in LA and spent the subsequent years traveling up and down the West Coast, honing their individual signatures and tying them together to form Vandella. Garnering comparisons to Stevie Nicks and Janis Joplin, Holland is a powerhouse of a frontwoman, whose vocal prowess is matched only by her insistent command of the stage. As writers, Holland is at times intense and bewitching; tempered by the understated, perennially-cool air of her counterpart in Tye. The result is a sound that feels both exciting yet effortlessly vibey - evocative of that hazy sheen of their native California.
Vandella’s 2009 debut EP, V, saw the band move 2,000 copies independently, and in May 2012, with several West Coast tours completed, they released the full-length Fire in the Desert. For their 2014 follow-up, the band teamed up with SF producer Scott McDowell at his Hyde Street Studio C and released a 12-inch, 4-song EP titled Shine You Up. Shine You Up captured the basement-party, Exile On Main Street-esque style that the band has come to be known for in live shows, and established Vandella as a fixture on SF’s indie-rock/soul scene. Vandella’s newest EP, Strange Calls, was released on April 28th, 2016, with the first single, A Feeling I’d Forgotten, premiered on the Huffington Post They will be celebrating the release of their newest single, "Couldn't Quit It" at The Independent in San Franc
show less
Travis Hayes isn’t the type to wear emotions on his sleeve. He saves that for his songs- brutally honest most of the time, and endearingly heartfelt all the time. Hayes continues the timeless tradition of soul-bearing songwriting to interpret our shared human experience into music.
Love, heartbreak, fading friendships, fraught relationships – they’re all expressed achingly through his impassioned voice and melodic guitar lines. Hayes echoes the earnestness of Springsteen, the pop sensibility of Petty, and the raw emotion of Ryan Adams.
July 2014 marked the release of Hayes’s debut album Young Daze. The album received critical acclaim from print and online media alike. The Deli Magazine praised Hayes’s ability to “…blend quintessential American music styles that nod to artists like Tom Petty and John Cougar Mellencamp, while creating his own spin on his ballads, bringing a fresh and modern sound…” Infectious Magazine declared, “Travis Hayes’s Young Daze will entrance you and prove to be the refreshing, crisp sound you’ve been looking for.”
March 2015 brought a new feel for Hayes with the release of his acoustic EP Love Songs, featuring Emily Whitehurst (Tsunami Bomb / Survival Guide). SF Weekly dubbed the release “a heartfelt EP of acoustic folk-pop.” San Francisco TV and print contributor Broke Ass Stuart suggested, “If you want your girlfriend to miss you while she’s on vacation send her Love Songs, sung by a vocal duo whose harmony sounds as natural together as it is brutal on the ol’ heart strings.”
While Young Daze was a coming-of-age tale, and Love Songs touched on matters of the heart, Travis Hayes’s sophomore LP Sleepless explores a darker reality. Hayes delves into the challenges that inevitably come with growing older- themes that keep him awake at night. Now accompanied by a full-time backing band, Hayes’s sonic arrangements are grander, his vision is greater, and his words don’t just ring now, they soar.
In his career, Hayes has shared the stage with acts such as Nathaniel Rateliff, Langhorne Slim and Chuck Ragan. In addition, he’s made appearances at San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival, SXSW, Ocean Beach Music and Art Festival and embarked on many extensive tours around the United States. Simply put by Music Junkie Press, “If you are from the Bay Area and haven’t been to a Travis Hayes show, then you are missing out.”
M. Lockwood Porter
The Berkeley, California-based singer-songwriter M. Lockwood Porter is part of a promising crop of up-and-coming Americana singer-songwriters. In the past three years, he has released two critically-acclaimed albums and performed all over the US, sharing the stage with acts like American Aquarium, David Wax Museum, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, Water Liars, Samantha Crain, David Ramirez, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and John Moreland. He has performed at festivals like Outside Lands, Noise Pop, Norman Music Festival, and CMJ. No Depression called Porter’s 2014 album 27 “a solid album worth your time, attention, and money." In a review of 27, Americana UK said, "Take care with M. Lockwood Porter. He is an important singer-songwriter.”
Porter, who got his start in music playing in punk bands in Tulsa, Oklahoma when he was in high school, is resistant to simple categorization, though. Like Conor Oberst or Jeff Tweedy, his songs are equal parts traditional songcraft and indie rock attitude. “I get called an Americana singer, and I get why. But it’s a narrow label. I still have this punk rock point of view that, whenever I’m around a bunch of people that are doing something similar, makes me want to take a left turn.”
How To Dream Again – tracked live in three days with minimal overdubs – is one of those left turns. While Porter dabbled in lush country-rock and expansive power pop on 27, How To Dream Again sounds tougher and leaves more space. The band – consisting of Porter, Peter Labberton, Bevan Herbekian, and Jeff Hashfield, and John Calvin Abney – sounds tight and heavy, like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers if they’d cut their teeth at CBGB. The acoustic songs are raw and haunting, recalling Springsteen’s Nebraska.
The heartbreak and existential crises of 27 have been replaced with boldness, wisdom, and a deeper level of self-examination. “I’m in love, in a very healthy, serious relationship, and I’m happier with where I’m at in terms of my music, but with being further along in my personal life come new questions like “How do you maintain what’s good about a relationship? How do you keep it from going stale?” “Burn Away”, “Bright Star”, and “Strong Enough”, all ostensibly love songs, are really about the uncertainty inherent in love – that there is no guarantee that it will last forever.
Porter – who has degrees in English and American History from Yale University and taught English at an inner-city middle school for four years – has also rediscovered an interest in social justice and activism. “I started teaching because I wanted to help make the world a better place. When I quit teaching to do music full-time, I shut off that part of my brain. As an independent musician, you spend so much time thinking about your career that it can be hard to make room for anything else. At one point last year, I realized that I had no idea what was going on in the world anymore. I felt like I had run out of things to talk about, and I needed to refill my brain.”
The result was a year of re-education. Porter read extensively – progressive writers like Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Thomas Piketty – and took time to rethink what he wanted to write about. “I strive for 100% honesty in my songwriting, and that means I write about what’s on my mind and in my heart. I spent most of 2015 thinking about how I should respond to what's happening in the world, so that ended up being a major theme on the record."
Porter also immersed himself in the works of topical songwriters – some obvious influences (Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan) and others less so (Joe Strummer, Public Enemy’s Chuck D). In the process, he learned about Joe Hill – the protest singer and IWW labor organizer who was executed on highly questionable charges almost exactly 100 years ago. “I went to this Joe Hill tribute at a small café in Oakland on the 100th anniversary of his death in November. I didn’t know very much about him when I went, but I came away really inspired.” So inspired, in fact, that Porter wrote the song “Joe Hill’s Dream” shortly afterwards – at once an examination of Hill’s legacy and a critical look at the recent history of politically-engaged songwriting.
“American Dreams Denied” and “The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be” are anthems of millennial post-recession frustration. “Sad/Satisfied” and “Dream Again” trace Porter’s evolution from a navel-gazing songwriter into a more thoughtful, outward-looking artist. “Charleston” was inspired by the horrific June 2015 mass shooting at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The album’s centerpiece, though, is “Reach The Top”, a five-and-a-half minute dissertation critiquing the philosophy underpinning the American Dream, tying together its myriad consequences – isolation, materialism, depression, suicide, drug use, destruction of unions, college debt, gentrification, police brutality, media distortion, and American imperialism – using nothing but his voice, a guitar, and a harmonica. This song alone is a strong case that this California-based Okie transplant may be Guthrie’s closest modern heir.
On How To Dream Again, M. Lockwood Porter blends the personal and political in a way that is courageous, moving, and representative of this historical moment. “I can’t have a conversation with anyone my age right now without talking about things like inequality, gentrification, racial injustice, student debt, or climate change. I wanted to make a piece of art that captures this time, where daily life is political.” Yet at its core, this album is a very personal statement from a thoughtful, daring young artist.
Vandella
SF’s Vandella is a lovechild of rock & roll, roots & soul, helmed by two enigmatic frontpeople and distinct songwriters. A modern-day Buckingham-Nicks, vocalist Tracey Holland and guitarist Chris Tye mix up a potent potion of sexy, sweaty 70s-era rock & roll. A package of Rolling Stones rock-meets-Alabama Shakes soul, the two met while both studying music in LA and spent the subsequent years traveling up and down the West Coast, honing their individual signatures and tying them together to form Vandella. Garnering comparisons to Stevie Nicks and Janis Joplin, Holland is a powerhouse of a frontwoman, whose vocal prowess is matched only by her insistent command of the stage. As writers, Holland is at times intense and bewitching; tempered by the understated, perennially-cool air of her counterpart in Tye. The result is a sound that feels both exciting yet effortlessly vibey - evocative of that hazy sheen of their native California.
Vandella’s 2009 debut EP, V, saw the band move 2,000 copies independently, and in May 2012, with several West Coast tours completed, they released the full-length Fire in the Desert. For their 2014 follow-up, the band teamed up with SF producer Scott McDowell at his Hyde Street Studio C and released a 12-inch, 4-song EP titled Shine You Up. Shine You Up captured the basement-party, Exile On Main Street-esque style that the band has come to be known for in live shows, and established Vandella as a fixture on SF’s indie-rock/soul scene. Vandella’s newest EP, Strange Calls, was released on April 28th, 2016, with the first single, A Feeling I’d Forgotten, premiered on the Huffington Post They will be celebrating the release of their newest single, "Couldn't Quit It" at The Independent in San Franc
Travis Hayes
Travis Hayes isn’t the type to wear emotions on his sleeve. He saves that for his songs- brutally honest most of the time, and endearingly heartfelt all the time. Hayes continues the timeless tradition of soul-bearing songwriting to interpret our shared human experience into music.
Love, heartbreak, fading friendships, fraught relationships – they’re all expressed achingly through his impassioned voice and melodic guitar lines. Hayes echoes the earnestness of Springsteen, the pop sensibility of Petty, and the raw emotion of Ryan Adams.
July 2014 marked the release of Hayes’s debut album Young Daze. The album received critical acclaim from print and online media alike. The Deli Magazine praised Hayes’s ability to “…blend quintessential American music styles that nod to artists like Tom Petty and John Cougar Mellencamp, while creating his own spin on his ballads, bringing a fresh and modern sound…” Infectious Magazine declared, “Travis Hayes’s Young Daze will entrance you and prove to be the refreshing, crisp sound you’ve been looking for.”
March 2015 brought a new feel for Hayes with the release of his acoustic EP Love Songs, featuring Emily Whitehurst (Tsunami Bomb / Survival Guide). SF Weekly dubbed the release “a heartfelt EP of acoustic folk-pop.” San Francisco TV and print contributor Broke Ass Stuart suggested, “If you want your girlfriend to miss you while she’s on vacation send her Love Songs, sung by a vocal duo whose harmony sounds as natural together as it is brutal on the ol’ heart strings.”
While Young Daze was a coming-of-age tale, and Love Songs touched on matters of the heart, Travis Hayes’s sophomore LP Sleepless explores a darker reality. Hayes delves into the challenges that inevitably come with growing older- themes that keep him awake at night. Now accompanied by a full-time backing band, Hayes’s sonic arrangements are grander, his vision is greater, and his words don’t just ring now, they soar.
In his career, Hayes has shared the stage with acts such as Nathaniel Rateliff, Langhorne Slim and Chuck Ragan. In addition, he’s made appearances at San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival, SXSW, Ocean Beach Music and Art Festival and embarked on many extensive tours around the United States. Simply put by Music Junkie Press, “If you are from the Bay Area and haven’t been to a Travis Hayes show, then you are missing out.”
M. Lockwood Porter
The Berkeley, California-based singer-songwriter M. Lockwood Porter is part of a promising crop of up-and-coming Americana singer-songwriters. In the past three years, he has released two critically-acclaimed albums and performed all over the US, sharing the stage with acts like American Aquarium, David Wax Museum, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, Water Liars, Samantha Crain, David Ramirez, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and John Moreland. He has performed at festivals like Outside Lands, Noise Pop, Norman Music Festival, and CMJ. No Depression called Porter’s 2014 album 27 “a solid album worth your time, attention, and money." In a review of 27, Americana UK said, "Take care with M. Lockwood Porter. He is an important singer-songwriter.”
Porter, who got his start in music playing in punk bands in Tulsa, Oklahoma when he was in high school, is resistant to simple categorization, though. Like Conor Oberst or Jeff Tweedy, his songs are equal parts traditional songcraft and indie rock attitude. “I get called an Americana singer, and I get why. But it’s a narrow label. I still have this punk rock point of view that, whenever I’m around a bunch of people that are doing something similar, makes me want to take a left turn.”
How To Dream Again – tracked live in three days with minimal overdubs – is one of those left turns. While Porter dabbled in lush country-rock and expansive power pop on 27, How To Dream Again sounds tougher and leaves more space. The band – consisting of Porter, Peter Labberton, Bevan Herbekian, and Jeff Hashfield, and John Calvin Abney – sounds tight and heavy, like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers if they’d cut their teeth at CBGB. The acoustic songs are raw and haunting, recalling Springsteen’s Nebraska.
The heartbreak and existential crises of 27 have been replaced with boldness, wisdom, and a deeper level of self-examination. “I’m in love, in a very healthy, serious relationship, and I’m happier with where I’m at in terms of my music, but with being further along in my personal life come new questions like “How do you maintain what’s good about a relationship? How do you keep it from going stale?” “Burn Away”, “Bright Star”, and “Strong Enough”, all ostensibly love songs, are really about the uncertainty inherent in love – that there is no guarantee that it will last forever.
Porter – who has degrees in English and American History from Yale University and taught English at an inner-city middle school for four years – has also rediscovered an interest in social justice and activism. “I started teaching because I wanted to help make the world a better place. When I quit teaching to do music full-time, I shut off that part of my brain. As an independent musician, you spend so much time thinking about your career that it can be hard to make room for anything else. At one point last year, I realized that I had no idea what was going on in the world anymore. I felt like I had run out of things to talk about, and I needed to refill my brain.”
The result was a year of re-education. Porter read extensively – progressive writers like Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Thomas Piketty – and took time to rethink what he wanted to write about. “I strive for 100% honesty in my songwriting, and that means I write about what’s on my mind and in my heart. I spent most of 2015 thinking about how I should respond to what's happening in the world, so that ended up being a major theme on the record."
Porter also immersed himself in the works of topical songwriters – some obvious influences (Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan) and others less so (Joe Strummer, Public Enemy’s Chuck D). In the process, he learned about Joe Hill – the protest singer and IWW labor organizer who was executed on highly questionable charges almost exactly 100 years ago. “I went to this Joe Hill tribute at a small café in Oakland on the 100th anniversary of his death in November. I didn’t know very much about him when I went, but I came away really inspired.” So inspired, in fact, that Porter wrote the song “Joe Hill’s Dream” shortly afterwards – at once an examination of Hill’s legacy and a critical look at the recent history of politically-engaged songwriting.
“American Dreams Denied” and “The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be” are anthems of millennial post-recession frustration. “Sad/Satisfied” and “Dream Again” trace Porter’s evolution from a navel-gazing songwriter into a more thoughtful, outward-looking artist. “Charleston” was inspired by the horrific June 2015 mass shooting at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The album’s centerpiece, though, is “Reach The Top”, a five-and-a-half minute dissertation critiquing the philosophy underpinning the American Dream, tying together its myriad consequences – isolation, materialism, depression, suicide, drug use, destruction of unions, college debt, gentrification, police brutality, media distortion, and American imperialism – using nothing but his voice, a guitar, and a harmonica. This song alone is a strong case that this California-based Okie transplant may be Guthrie’s closest modern heir.
On How To Dream Again, M. Lockwood Porter blends the personal and political in a way that is courageous, moving, and representative of this historical moment. “I can’t have a conversation with anyone my age right now without talking about things like inequality, gentrification, racial injustice, student debt, or climate change. I wanted to make a piece of art that captures this time, where daily life is political.” Yet at its core, this album is a very personal statement from a thoughtful, daring young artist.
Vandella
SF’s Vandella is a lovechild of rock & roll, roots & soul, helmed by two enigmatic frontpeople and distinct songwriters. A modern-day Buckingham-Nicks, vocalist Tracey Holland and guitarist Chris Tye mix up a potent potion of sexy, sweaty 70s-era rock & roll. A package of Rolling Stones rock-meets-Alabama Shakes soul, the two met while both studying music in LA and spent the subsequent years traveling up and down the West Coast, honing their individual signatures and tying them together to form Vandella. Garnering comparisons to Stevie Nicks and Janis Joplin, Holland is a powerhouse of a frontwoman, whose vocal prowess is matched only by her insistent command of the stage. As writers, Holland is at times intense and bewitching; tempered by the understated, perennially-cool air of her counterpart in Tye. The result is a sound that feels both exciting yet effortlessly vibey - evocative of that hazy sheen of their native California.
Vandella’s 2009 debut EP, V, saw the band move 2,000 copies independently, and in May 2012, with several West Coast tours completed, they released the full-length Fire in the Desert. For their 2014 follow-up, the band teamed up with SF producer Scott McDowell at his Hyde Street Studio C and released a 12-inch, 4-song EP titled Shine You Up. Shine You Up captured the basement-party, Exile On Main Street-esque style that the band has come to be known for in live shows, and established Vandella as a fixture on SF’s indie-rock/soul scene. Vandella’s newest EP, Strange Calls, was released on April 28th, 2016, with the first single, A Feeling I’d Forgotten, premiered on the Huffington Post They will be celebrating the release of their newest single, "Couldn't Quit It" at The Independent in San Franc
read more
Travis Hayes isn’t the type to wear emotions on his sleeve. He saves that for his songs- brutally honest most of the time, and endearingly heartfelt all the time. Hayes continues the timeless tradition of soul-bearing songwriting to interpret our shared human experience into music.
Love, heartbreak, fading friendships, fraught relationships – they’re all expressed achingly through his impassioned voice and melodic guitar lines. Hayes echoes the earnestness of Springsteen, the pop sensibility of Petty, and the raw emotion of Ryan Adams.
July 2014 marked the release of Hayes’s debut album Young Daze. The album received critical acclaim from print and online media alike. The Deli Magazine praised Hayes’s ability to “…blend quintessential American music styles that nod to artists like Tom Petty and John Cougar Mellencamp, while creating his own spin on his ballads, bringing a fresh and modern sound…” Infectious Magazine declared, “Travis Hayes’s Young Daze will entrance you and prove to be the refreshing, crisp sound you’ve been looking for.”
March 2015 brought a new feel for Hayes with the release of his acoustic EP Love Songs, featuring Emily Whitehurst (Tsunami Bomb / Survival Guide). SF Weekly dubbed the release “a heartfelt EP of acoustic folk-pop.” San Francisco TV and print contributor Broke Ass Stuart suggested, “If you want your girlfriend to miss you while she’s on vacation send her Love Songs, sung by a vocal duo whose harmony sounds as natural together as it is brutal on the ol’ heart strings.”
While Young Daze was a coming-of-age tale, and Love Songs touched on matters of the heart, Travis Hayes’s sophomore LP Sleepless explores a darker reality. Hayes delves into the challenges that inevitably come with growing older- themes that keep him awake at night. Now accompanied by a full-time backing band, Hayes’s sonic arrangements are grander, his vision is greater, and his words don’t just ring now, they soar.
In his career, Hayes has shared the stage with acts such as Nathaniel Rateliff, Langhorne Slim and Chuck Ragan. In addition, he’s made appearances at San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival, SXSW, Ocean Beach Music and Art Festival and embarked on many extensive tours around the United States. Simply put by Music Junkie Press, “If you are from the Bay Area and haven’t been to a Travis Hayes show, then you are missing out.”
M. Lockwood Porter
The Berkeley, California-based singer-songwriter M. Lockwood Porter is part of a promising crop of up-and-coming Americana singer-songwriters. In the past three years, he has released two critically-acclaimed albums and performed all over the US, sharing the stage with acts like American Aquarium, David Wax Museum, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, Water Liars, Samantha Crain, David Ramirez, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and John Moreland. He has performed at festivals like Outside Lands, Noise Pop, Norman Music Festival, and CMJ. No Depression called Porter’s 2014 album 27 “a solid album worth your time, attention, and money." In a review of 27, Americana UK said, "Take care with M. Lockwood Porter. He is an important singer-songwriter.”
Porter, who got his start in music playing in punk bands in Tulsa, Oklahoma when he was in high school, is resistant to simple categorization, though. Like Conor Oberst or Jeff Tweedy, his songs are equal parts traditional songcraft and indie rock attitude. “I get called an Americana singer, and I get why. But it’s a narrow label. I still have this punk rock point of view that, whenever I’m around a bunch of people that are doing something similar, makes me want to take a left turn.”
How To Dream Again – tracked live in three days with minimal overdubs – is one of those left turns. While Porter dabbled in lush country-rock and expansive power pop on 27, How To Dream Again sounds tougher and leaves more space. The band – consisting of Porter, Peter Labberton, Bevan Herbekian, and Jeff Hashfield, and John Calvin Abney – sounds tight and heavy, like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers if they’d cut their teeth at CBGB. The acoustic songs are raw and haunting, recalling Springsteen’s Nebraska.
The heartbreak and existential crises of 27 have been replaced with boldness, wisdom, and a deeper level of self-examination. “I’m in love, in a very healthy, serious relationship, and I’m happier with where I’m at in terms of my music, but with being further along in my personal life come new questions like “How do you maintain what’s good about a relationship? How do you keep it from going stale?” “Burn Away”, “Bright Star”, and “Strong Enough”, all ostensibly love songs, are really about the uncertainty inherent in love – that there is no guarantee that it will last forever.
Porter – who has degrees in English and American History from Yale University and taught English at an inner-city middle school for four years – has also rediscovered an interest in social justice and activism. “I started teaching because I wanted to help make the world a better place. When I quit teaching to do music full-time, I shut off that part of my brain. As an independent musician, you spend so much time thinking about your career that it can be hard to make room for anything else. At one point last year, I realized that I had no idea what was going on in the world anymore. I felt like I had run out of things to talk about, and I needed to refill my brain.”
The result was a year of re-education. Porter read extensively – progressive writers like Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Thomas Piketty – and took time to rethink what he wanted to write about. “I strive for 100% honesty in my songwriting, and that means I write about what’s on my mind and in my heart. I spent most of 2015 thinking about how I should respond to what's happening in the world, so that ended up being a major theme on the record."
Porter also immersed himself in the works of topical songwriters – some obvious influences (Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan) and others less so (Joe Strummer, Public Enemy’s Chuck D). In the process, he learned about Joe Hill – the protest singer and IWW labor organizer who was executed on highly questionable charges almost exactly 100 years ago. “I went to this Joe Hill tribute at a small café in Oakland on the 100th anniversary of his death in November. I didn’t know very much about him when I went, but I came away really inspired.” So inspired, in fact, that Porter wrote the song “Joe Hill’s Dream” shortly afterwards – at once an examination of Hill’s legacy and a critical look at the recent history of politically-engaged songwriting.
“American Dreams Denied” and “The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be” are anthems of millennial post-recession frustration. “Sad/Satisfied” and “Dream Again” trace Porter’s evolution from a navel-gazing songwriter into a more thoughtful, outward-looking artist. “Charleston” was inspired by the horrific June 2015 mass shooting at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The album’s centerpiece, though, is “Reach The Top”, a five-and-a-half minute dissertation critiquing the philosophy underpinning the American Dream, tying together its myriad consequences – isolation, materialism, depression, suicide, drug use, destruction of unions, college debt, gentrification, police brutality, media distortion, and American imperialism – using nothing but his voice, a guitar, and a harmonica. This song alone is a strong case that this California-based Okie transplant may be Guthrie’s closest modern heir.
On How To Dream Again, M. Lockwood Porter blends the personal and political in a way that is courageous, moving, and representative of this historical moment. “I can’t have a conversation with anyone my age right now without talking about things like inequality, gentrification, racial injustice, student debt, or climate change. I wanted to make a piece of art that captures this time, where daily life is political.” Yet at its core, this album is a very personal statement from a thoughtful, daring young artist.
Vandella
SF’s Vandella is a lovechild of rock & roll, roots & soul, helmed by two enigmatic frontpeople and distinct songwriters. A modern-day Buckingham-Nicks, vocalist Tracey Holland and guitarist Chris Tye mix up a potent potion of sexy, sweaty 70s-era rock & roll. A package of Rolling Stones rock-meets-Alabama Shakes soul, the two met while both studying music in LA and spent the subsequent years traveling up and down the West Coast, honing their individual signatures and tying them together to form Vandella. Garnering comparisons to Stevie Nicks and Janis Joplin, Holland is a powerhouse of a frontwoman, whose vocal prowess is matched only by her insistent command of the stage. As writers, Holland is at times intense and bewitching; tempered by the understated, perennially-cool air of her counterpart in Tye. The result is a sound that feels both exciting yet effortlessly vibey - evocative of that hazy sheen of their native California.
Vandella’s 2009 debut EP, V, saw the band move 2,000 copies independently, and in May 2012, with several West Coast tours completed, they released the full-length Fire in the Desert. For their 2014 follow-up, the band teamed up with SF producer Scott McDowell at his Hyde Street Studio C and released a 12-inch, 4-song EP titled Shine You Up. Shine You Up captured the basement-party, Exile On Main Street-esque style that the band has come to be known for in live shows, and established Vandella as a fixture on SF’s indie-rock/soul scene. Vandella’s newest EP, Strange Calls, was released on April 28th, 2016, with the first single, A Feeling I’d Forgotten, premiered on the Huffington Post They will be celebrating the release of their newest single, "Couldn't Quit It" at The Independent in San Franc
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