Upcoming Concerts

I was raised a military brat and saw the world at an early age. The lifestyle must have stuck because, after dropping out of college which I found far too regimented, I really drifted around. I hiked the Amazon and the Andes, pruned apple trees in the Catskills, drove combine in the wheat fields of Washington, painted houses in Key West, drove truck in New York City, and used my early background in biology to land a job training sea lions at the Pittsburgh Zoo. You might say I worked my way through the alphabet, but it was more like I was a songwriter moonlighting as an apple pruner or zookeeper than the other way around.

I was a founding member of the band Sandoz which was signed to Relix Records in New York and played a ton of gigs mostly in the Pittsburgh area. Since then I’ve been doing more traveling, particularly out west, and that led to a lot of the songs that are going to be on my new CD, Out from Nowhere.

A lot of what I write about are real people and things I witness while I travel—I shoot for authenticity and to make the songs bigger than me. My roots are in folk and blues, and my influences include singer songwriters such as Dylan, Tom Waits, Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, and Jackson Browne, but everything I listen to finds its way into my music.

Since leaving his day job in 2016, Nick Barilla has been inspiring audiences all over the country with his heartfelt melodies and honest lyric writing. In 2018, Barilla won the Pittsburgh City Paper Battle of the Bands competition. His original music has been heard on radio outlets both locally and nationally, including featured placements on Songtradr.com and AT&T Sports (Pittsburgh Pirates) Barilla has performed extensively at: Colleges, Concert Venues, Wineries, Hotels, Bars, and Backyards over the past three years. He has toured with names such as: Howie Day, Aaron Carter, Kate Voegele (One Tree Hill), Kina Grannis (Crazy Rich Asians), Indie Christian band Cloverton (Hallelujah Christmas), Kris Allen, Lee Dewyze (American Idol) and more! His third studio album, 'Moments', is scheduled to be released in summer 2019, and promises listeners a fresh new sound, with relatable lyrics pertaining to many of life's biggest moments.

Ryan Gustafson remembers very little about the origins of the ten songs on Unsung Passage, his profound new reflection on the emotional architecture of love, loneliness, and life at large.

He mostly knows that the songs were written during quick spans scattered between various tours of the last two years—as a supporting guitarist for his kindred North Carolina spirits Hiss Golden Messenger and Phil Cook’s Guitarheels and as the leader of his own long-evolving vehicle for a beautifully fractured vision of folk, country, blues, and cosmic American rock, The Dead Tongues. Gustafson’s third and best album under that name, Unsung Passage depends more on the songs themselves than the sounds around them. It is a first-person reckoning with the things Gustafson, a chronically peripatetic adventurer, has seen enough to sing about. “Every turn, every changing that occurs,” Gustafson offers during “The Broken Side of People Everywhere,” his voice sweetly yearning for whatever it is that might come next. “There’s a string attached, with a promise at the end.”

Indeed, funneling the lessons of the road into songs isn’t new for Gustafson; during the last two decades, it has become his standard practice. When he was twenty, he left North Carolina for the first of many backpacking trips across Europe, little but a sense of adventure and wonder to his name. He has hitchhiked from Oregon to New Orleans with a banjo and a bag and lived in and rebuilt an aging school bus, meant for an extended trek across the continent (that is, until the cost of gas proved prohibitive). After several years in a commune in the western woods of Asheville, North Carolina, he now lives in a nearby camper, at least when he’s off the road long enough to call anything home. “When I’m traveling, it’s like walking into these different windows. I’m a witness, with my mouth shut,” Gustafson says. “The people you meet, the way the landscape speaks to you, how a desert is different than a mountain: It has the potential to bring out something you didn’t know was there.”

The ten remarkable songs of Unsung Passage are long-distance distillations of such experiences, of events lived and places seen and pondered and ultimately poured into reflective anthems for our harried times. During “Like a Dream,” a gentle gallop of grinning harmonica and trickling guitar, Gustafson explores the balance of existence from a hillside vantage. He sees the curve of the earth while pondering his need for a paycheck, a moment that eternally pits the banal against the beautiful. “The Broken Side of People Everywhere” is a gorgeous love song written with the wisdom of someone who knows that nothing is forever or perfect, that there’s no real risk in a life where everything ends, anyway. There are meditations on mortality and devotion (the flute-laced dream “My Other”), on money and temporality (the banjo trot “The Giver”), and on impermanence and acceptance (the achingly gorgeous “Pale November Dew.”) This isn’t Gustafson’s idle speculation about life and the world; these are the realizations of a restless mind, of a songwriter who sings “this old town ain’t gonna watch me die” and means it.

Gustafson recorded these songs much as they were written—during short summer sojourns away from the road, when he and a quartet of friends could gather in the Chapel Hill studio The Rubber Room for two-day sessions. Longtime North Carolina confidants and collaborators James Wallace, Jeff Crawford, and Casey Toll form the rhythm section, while Mountain Man’s Molly Sarlé harmonizes softly and adds a filigree of unexpected flute. Other friends offer fiddle and percussion, cello and extra guitar, softly padding songs that stand as statements unto themselves. “Sitting down with an acoustic instrument and making a song, singing, and playing it was the idea,” says Gustafson. “I’ll follow a song to wherever it goes, but I tried to keep this one in the room. This sounds like what we played, what you’re hearing.” These ten songs are snapshots in time, then, glimpses at the sorts of emotional upheavals and adjustments we’re all forced to face as we move from day to day and, as in Gustafson’s way, place to place. The familiar sounds of Unsung Passage, a reflection of Americana bedrock, present a comforting score for some of life’s most uncomfortable situations. But they will pass. “Ain’t it all right?” Gustafson demands at one point. “Ain’t it all like a dream?” After all that living, it surely is.

On Ramonda Hammer's searing debut LP "I Never Wanted Company," frontwoman Devin Davis takes a hard look at her struggle between despairing loneliness and embracing independence. The Los Angeles quartet’s blistering guitars and Davis’s paint-peeling vocals – recalling past greats like Hole and likeminded contemporaries like Mannequin Pussy – form support for lyrics that grapple with two years of emotional upheaval for Davis.
Since the band released their 2017 EP Destroyers, a release that cemented Ramonda Hammer as a tentpole act in LA’s surging community of woman- and queer-fronted bands, Davis struggled to come to terms with her codependency, fought against her own overwhelming over-analysis, and got into her first queer relationship. The result is an album that’s bruising, cathartic, searching, and ultimately therapeutic. Featuring production by Alex Newport (At The Drive In, Bloc Party), I Never Wanted Company is a powerful and triumphant return for the quartet – including Justin Geter on guitar, Andy Hengl on bass, and Mark Edwards on drums.
“No one is coming! No one!” Davis wails at the end of lead single “Hoax”. On its face, it’s a bleak and almost nihilistic statement – but for her, it’s a call to independence. Davis hopes the album will help people who want to take better control over their own lives and emotions. “I’m an anxious person,” she says. “It helps me to play loud rock music with gritty sounds and brash lyrics. Sometimes you need to scream to wake up.”

Big Freedia, known as the Queen of Bounce, is a New Orleans-based rapper and ambassador of Bounce music. After dominating the New Orleans club scene for over a decade, Big Freedia is now bringing the Bounce movement to a world-wide stage with her hit reality show, Big Freedia Bounces Back on Fuse TV. The weekly docu-series, now in its sixth season, follows the life of a choirboy turned Bounce rapper and remains the highest rated original series on the network.

In 2016, Freedia was featured on Beyonce’s Grammy-winning single, “Formation.”

Freedia’s first LP, “Just Be Free” was named one of the ‘best electronic releases’ by Rolling Stone and was critically acclaimed in outlets such as Pitchfork , SPIN , USA Today , and Consequence of Sound . Big Freedia has collaborated with artists ranging from Sia, Elliphant, The Postal Service, Matt & Kim, and Mannie Fresh, and Sylvan Esso.

Big Freedia continues to tour over a hundred dates a year with her legendary shake team, who are bring Bounce moves like “the twerk” (popularized by Miley Cyrus in 2013), “the shake” “the wiggle,” “the bend ova,” the “hands on the ground,” to audiences worldwide. Big Freedia is a consistent festival favorite, known to steal the show at Outside Lands, Fun Fun Fun Fest, Bonnaroo, FYF and many more.

In 2015, Big Freedia penned her first memoir, Big Freedia: God Save the Queen Diva! on Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster. The book was hailed in the press by outlets from Rolling Stone and Pitchfork to Out and Bust.

In 2012, Big Freedia made her television network debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live! She has also appeared on Last Call with Carson Daly, Watch What Happens Live, NPR’s All Things Considered, NPR’s Marketplace, Ridiculousness, and The Real. Her TV show received the
GLAAD Media Award in 2014 and was nominated again for the award in 2015.

Big Freedia continues to release new singles and released her sophomore album in 2018.

Bonneville is a 1970s era Rock-n-Roll tribute band. Its members are Paul Skowron (lead vocals, harp), Ron Marks (lead guitar, vocals), Paul Guzman (bass guitar, vocals) and Mark Allen (drums). Veteran musicians with international credentials, our lineup, are literally children of the '70s who cut their teeth performing rock music. Bonneville doesn't merely imitate this genre, but recreates the sonic passion that made 1970’s rock concerts so exciting and timeless.

Marks (who is a member of the metal band, Celtic Frost) grew up during the '70s listening to multiple music genres, but hard rock was (and still is) his favorite. “Collecting magazines featuring my favorite bands (pre-internet) and dreaming of going to concerts and actually seeing them onstage filled my hours.” Being a full-time musician has led Marks down many roads performing everything from Country, Death Metal, Goth, Industrial, and even a run with '60s 'peace and love' Pop music. It's always been 1970s hard rock tugging at his sleeve, which inspired Marks to form Bonneville.

“After a massive and lengthy search we've finally realized our live line up.” Marks recruited Paul Skowron, who has been in national acts including Noisy Mama (Atco), as well as numerous Pittsburgh/Youngstown based bands. With no digital enhancements, every note sung and played is authentic and passionate; and because of the professional standards set for this project, Bonneville, is motivated and capable of realizing its greater national potential.

Bonneville shows feature music from rock legends Aerosmith, Sweet, Montrose, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Faces, Nazareth, Uriah Heep, The Who, Foreigner, Van Halen, Mountain, Blackfoot, Ted Nugent, Queen, Elton John, Black Sabbath, Free, KISS, David Bowie, Steve Miller Band, AC/DC, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, Eagles, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Alice Cooper, Foghat, Creedence Clearwater Revival and more.

Spit from the heart of America's Rust Belt, arising from a night of flophouse violence. Drifting across the states, they cemented their sound in Portland, OR and later in Los Angeles, CA, where they lived in abandoned buildings, squatter camps, storage units and shoebox apartments.

In 2007, they left everything behind and spent the next 4 years living out of whatever vehicle would get them to the next town. Building upon their original sound of twanged-out, punk rock gutterbilly (Life of Sin 2004 and Gutterbillyblues 2007), they began picking up stray musicians along the way and adding to their sound; washboard, accordion, mandolin and banjo (Ghost of the Rails 2009 and 7 Devils 2011) creating a sound referred to as "hobocore", "gypsy-punk" or "americana-punk", while never being stuck in any one sound.

Enter 2018 and The Goddamn Gallows have reinvented themselves once again with The Trial. From rockabilly, psychobilly and punk rock, to bluegrass and metal, The Trial infuses disparate sounds into a new strange recipe of seamless genre bending profundities.

Chock full of impromptu antics of the shocking variety and hauntingly eclectic instrumentation, The Goddamn Gallows have made legions of fans with their legendary, live shows.

The Living Street is an indie-folk duo who goes outside the box, trickling their way into a variety of different genres like pop, rock, alt-country, etc. Nick and Edward have been writing and performing music together for over a decade!

LOUIE CASTLE & THE ROOKS
Jam pop funk soul
Lead by Louie Castle
Noelle McCormick on Drums
CHRIS VOLPINI ON BASS

Join Club Cafe for an evening of live local and regional indie music.

July 19th 2019 finds Rod Picott releasing his eleventh album, titled Tell The Truth & Shame The Devil. The new album is completely acoustic, featuring only guitar, harmonica and Picott’s weathered vocals. Many of the songs on Tell The Truth & Shame The Devil are influenced by a health scare that Picott endured in the winter of 2018. The condition was hunted down and solved but the weeks long incident of a freight train running through his chest played a profound role in the writing and recording of the album. Alone with his modest recording gear, Picott set about making an album as honest, raw and uncontrived as his spine would allow. Already known for the intimacy and vivid narratives of his previous work, Tell The Truth & Shame The Devil opens the door wider still. The songs are confessional and honest. The recording itself is unpolished and raw. Tell The Truth & Shame The Devil takes a small turn away from the blue collar anthems he’s been lauded for and finds Picott exploring his own inner life with the same deft and revealing hand he’s honed over the last nineteen years. Rod Picott’s health is now in check.

The opening song, “Ghost” reveals Picott’s inner voice announcing itself with introspection, openness and poetic revelation.

I lost a couple of high notes from the top of my voice
From moaning too hard but I guess that was my choice
I drink myself to sleep at night can’t tell myself I don’t
Crawling through the minefield of passing time and losing hope

Hard as nails thin as hope
I’m the punchline of my own joke
And I’m broken as a bone
Going up in smoke
I’m a ghost

One of the songs, “Mama’s Boy” was written with Picott’s long-time co-writing partner Slaid Cleaves. The song asks questions of masculinity and self identification in a world that can be so often cruel and limited. Picott’s own working class childhood is explored nakedly.

They hung a clothesline up to make a ring
Drinking Mickey's Big Mouth the first day of spring
His uncle was a boxer his grandfather too
His father fought a couple times in 62
So they tied the gloves on his shaky hands
Gonna turn that boy into a man

A wasp will sting and flowers grow
Learn to make a fist and when to throw
In his dirty shirt and his corduroys
He wasn’t tough enough he was a mama's boy

Now in his fifties, Rod Picott has garnered a cult audience across the U.S. and Europe. He tours tirelessly and continues to garner rave reviews for both his songwriting skills and darkly humorous, compelling live show. A prolific writer, Picott has recently turned his hand to poetry (God In His Slippers, Murmmeration – Mezcalita Press) short fiction (Out Past The Wires – Working Title Farm) and has a novel in the works titled A Bony Right Fist. Born in the small mill town of South Berwick Maine and residing in Nashville TN since 1994 Tell The Truth & Shame The Devil is the latest release from former construction worker Rod Picott. Tour dates can be viewed at www.rodpicott.com

“Great writing is all about story, and Rod is a so damn good at story.” – Mary Gauthier
“Mesmerizing” – Rolling Stone.com
“Songs like Raymond Carver short stories” – Houston Chronicle 
“A truly great songwriter” – 3rd Coast Music
“Seriously gifted” – No Depression

A distance of approximately 2,042 miles separates the California Coast from Nashville, TN. Hop on the I-10 East from the Pacific Coast Highway, drive straight through, and you’ll be a stone’s throw from the Grand Ole Opry and strolling down“Music Row”no more than 32 hours later. Fairground Saints literally and creatively made such a trek

Like a montage out of a movie, the California-bred trio—Elijah Edwards, Meg McAllister, and Mason Van Valin—met by way of various social networks and Craiglist postings, locked into a once-in-a-lifetime groove, sold everything, packed up, and headed to Nashville. Within two weeks of relocating, they drummed up a palpable buzz and landed a deal with Sony Music Nashville.

They had already earned acclaim from NPR, Huffington Post, and more as early recordings “Can’t Control The Weather” and “Turn This Car Around” amassed millions of streams. Moreover, they toured alongside everyone from Brothers Osborne and Sara Evans to Scotty McCreery and Kip Moore—who after hearing them for the first time invited them to open for him. Touting a striking singular sound, they pave a musical highway between Laurel Canyon and Music City, finding a shortcut to universal bliss by way of country, pop, and rock. These three lifelong musicians transmit real stories through real instrumentation and make a real connection.

Based out of Fort Worth, Texas, The Unlikely Candidates are an indie rock band initially formed as an acoustic duo by childhood friends Kyle Morris and Cole Male in 2008. Eventually expanding the lineup to include guitarist Brenton Carney, bassist Jared Hornbeek, and drummer Kevin Goddard, the band was also able to expand its sound in bigger, more sweeping directions. In 2013, the band signed on with major-label Atlantic and released their debut EP, Follow My Feet. In early 2016, the Unlikely Candidates returned with a hooky new single in “You Love Could Start a War,” which made a strong showing on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart.

Virgil's live set consists of material spanning the most recent of his 6 solo records, focusing on his newest album Ruination. His backing band is comprised of Brazilian sensations André Nieri - Guitar, Junior Braguinha - Bass, and Chris Clark (Brand-X) - Keyboards

Known for his fast and highly technical drummer skills, Virgil is widely recognized as one of the most dedicated and technically advanced drummers of all time, with a lengthy career both solo and involvement with groups Planet X, Icefish, With Ring Of Fire and more .