club cafe

In a contemporary independent music scene inundated with up and coming bands, it takes a unique outfit to break through that noise. A truly exceptional group must exhibit authenticity, raw talent, and electrifying chemistry. This, of course, means there are very few of them. Motherfolk, formed in 2013, is certainly one of those most unique and dynamic acts.

Motherfolk began as a collaborative effort between Nathan Dickerson and Bobby Paver, two college friends with a penchant for writing songs with one another. In the first year of the project, the two songwriters made frequent trips to Nashville to record their first endeavor. In 2014, their eponymous debut album showcased the duo’s musical prowess through a genre-bending collection of elegantly crafted songs.

Since then, Joel Call, Ethan Wescott, Karlie Dickerson, and Clayton Allender have joined Motherfolk’s ranks, and the band has made a name for themselves touring all across the nation. The outfit’s high-energy live performances have won over audiences from coast to coast, and their infectious musical persona has become one of the most exciting rising success stories in the indie scene.

In 2016, Motherfolk released their highly anticipated sophomore effort, Fold. Clocking in with eleven compelling tracks, the album further defines the band as an act that effortlessly melds a slew of influences together to manifest their sound into a splendidly cohesive, original pursuit. From surreal, introspective jaunts to foot-stomping, anthemic rock and roll, Fold stood as tall as one of the most exciting records of 2016 and 2017.
“Motherfolk finds its way through a blend of genres by holding tight to their raw talents.” – Billboard

"[M]emorable, hauntingly gorgeous…the band has never been stronger." - Ghettoblaster

Building on the strength of their radio, press, and touring campaign in 2017, Motherfolk will continue to play dates around the US before hitting the studio to work on what’s to come in 2018!

On Stage Together!

Roots music legends, Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, have been friends for 30 years, but only recently realized they had never played music with each other before. So in 2017, Grammy winner Alvin and Grammy nominee Gilmore, decided to hit the highway to swap songs, tell stories, and share their life experiences.

Though Texas born Gilmore was twice named Country Artist of the Year by Rolling Stone, and California native Alvin first came to fame in the hard rocking rhythm and blues band The Blasters, they discovered that their musical roots in old blues and folk music are exactly the same. In these spontaneous shows, audiences enjoyed classic original compositions from the two, and also songs from a wide spectrum of songwriters and styles - from Merle Haggard to Sam Cooke to the Young Bloods.

Mutually energized and inspired by these performances, Dave and Jimmie agreed to hit the road again in 2018…this time with a full band and some new stories to share.

Tracyanne & Danny is a new collaborative project between singer-songwriters Tracyanne Campbell (Camera Obscura) and Danny Coughlan (Crybaby).

Tracyanne hails from Glasgow, Scotland. London-born Danny is based in Bristol, England.

Their paths first crossed in 2013 when introduced by mutual music industry pals. Tracyanne dug Danny’s Crybaby album (released on Helium Records) and invited him to open some Camera Obscura shows in the UK.

Mutual artistic respect led to the swapping of song ideas, but tentative plans to work together were set aside while Camera Obscura wrote, recorded, released, and promoted their fifth album Desire Lines.

Following the death of Camera Obscura’s Carey Lander, all band activity stopped. Time passed.

Tracyanne and Danny revisited the idea of collaborating.

A pool of songs were honed and crafted. On the suggestion of their manager (and Teenage Fanclub drummer) Francis Macdonald, they recorded at Clashnarrow, a studio in Helmsdale in the highlands of Scotland owned by the esteemed Edwyn Collins.

Sessions took place throughout 2016 and 2017. Edwyn co-produced along with engineer and multi-instrumentalist Sean Read (Dexys).

They had the use of Edwyn’s vintage gear (including the guitar pedal which features on his global hit “A Girl Like You”) as they invoked a range of shared influences: The Roches, Dion, Lou Reed, The Flamingos, Serge Gainsbourg, Santo & Johnny, and The Style Council.

Edywn pops up with a guest vocal on first single “Alabama,” an intentionally “joyous” tribute to Tracyanne’s late friend and band mate Carey Lander.

Tracyanne & Danny is not a diverting curio or a wee stop on the road to someplace else. It is a shared artistic aesthetic, forged over time. They have figured out how to fit round each other and work together, creating a rewarding musical synergy. There will be more songs.

Meanwhile, they are looking forward to releasing and promoting the first fruits of their labors with live shows throughout UK, Europe, North America, and beyond.

DAVINA SOWERS AND THE VAGABONDS have created a stir on the national music scene with their high-energy live shows, level A musicianship, sharp-dressed professionalism, and Sowers’ commanding stage presence. With influences ranging from Fats Domino and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Aretha Franklin and Tom Waits, the band is converting audiences one show at a time, from Vancouver to Miami and across Europe. In 2011 Davina released her first full length, all original album Black Cloud . It was named one of the 10 best releases of the year by the Minneapolis Star & Tribune and awarded 4 ½ stars from Downbeat Magazine. Their next release in 2014, Sunshine, hit number 13 in the Billboard Blues Chart and led them to landing a performance on the hit BBC2 show, Later with Jools Holland.

DATV’s shows are filled with New Orleans charm, Memphis soul swagger, dark theatrical moments that evoke Kurt Weill, and tender gospel passages. Davina’s voice and stage presence defy category in a different way. Davina has been compared to Etta James, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday and Betty Boop, but comparisons don’t suffice: Sowers is a true original.

Bringing you 100 years of American music and Davina’s originals, which lend themselves to the American Songbook, the band brings edgy nostalgia to older generations and fresh new music to younger ears. This rollicking quintet is held together by Sowers’ keyboard playing, with acoustic bass, drums, and a spicy trumpet and trombone horn section. The group’s focused, clean sound and emphasis on acoustic instruments is novel to both blues and jazz worlds, and sets the show closer to New Orleans than to Chicago. This has set the Vagabonds apart at festivals in Thunder Bay, Ontario; Sighisoara, Romania; Sierre, Switzerland; Kemi, Finland; the 2012 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and 2013 Monterey Jazz Festival ( in 2014 was asked back to play their main stage in 2014, Vache de Blues in France, and North Sea Jazz Festival. Catch this one-of-a-kind live show while they are in town!

Veteran singer/songwriter guitarist Seth Tiven is spotlighting his talents with a new self-produced CD, fittingly titled Solitude. Purely by coincidence, Rykodisc recently released a collection of some of Dumptruck’s best music titled Haul of Fame, covering several decades of Tiven’s music career.

Co-founder of the ‘80s college radio darlings, Dumptruck, Tiven got his start playing music in the New Haven and Boston indie-rock scene. His first band, Saucers, included drummer Mark Mulcahy, who went on to be singer of the now-defunct Miracle Legion, and bass player, Craig Bell, who had previously been in the Cleveland proto-punk band Rocket From the Tombs, which spawned the legendary punk group the Dead Boys and art-punk pioneers Pere Ubu.

Tiven was born and raised in Connecticut. He received his bachelor’s of arts in music in 1980 from Wesleyan University in Middletown. In 1981 he moved to Boston, and in 1983 formed Dumptruck with Kirk Swan. Mulcahy was the band’s first drummer. Dumptruck performed and recorded in Boston for eight years, often featured on college radio stations and garnering favorable reviews. In 1984 the band released D is for Dumptruck. Positively Dumptruck followed in 1986. After a year of extensive touring in support of Positively Dumptruck, Swan left the band and moved to L.A. to pursue a solo career. The following year saw the release of the band’s bestselling effort, For the Country. While touring in support of the record, a bitter legal dispute between the band and its former record label began to brew. The band would later defeat the suit, but the litigation kept Dumptruck from signing a major label deal. Dumptruck was left idling until the band eventually fell apart in 1991.

That year, Tiven moved to Austin. “I got sick of winter,” he says. In Austin, Tiven and his ex-wife, violinist Amy Farris, played as a husband-wife duo. He also played in a variety of bands, including Blind Willie’s Johnson with singer/guitarist Mick Buck and Jean Caffeine’s All-Night Truckstop. In 1995, Tiven reconstituted Dumptruck from his Austin headquarters with a local lineup. The resurrected Dumptruck released three more albums. The first, Days of Fear, was originally recorded in 1991 in Boston, and was finally released in 1995 by Unclean Records. Meanwhile, Tiven subsidized his music career by working in the high-tech industry.

In the making for three years, Solitude features old songs Dumptruck had tried, “but they didn’t fit the Dumptruck mold exactly,” Tiven says. Half way through recording the self-released Solitude, Tiven decided the project felt more like a solo recording than a band record. All basic tracks were done in the studio, but all overdubs were recorded by Tiven in different locations. The resulting songs have a more carefree quality without losing the edginess that defined Dumptruck. ‘Believe,’ ‘Salad Days’ and ‘Some Brighter Days’ were approached differently with fresh ideas. Swan sang backing vocals on those songs and on a lot of the new material. Old and new songs feature guest players on certain tracks. Ian McLagan of Faces/Small Faces fame plays piano and organ on three songs. Jimmy Ryan of Boston’s Blood Oranges added mandolin tracks to several songs. Tiven brought in Austin clarinetist Ben Saffer to bring a different flavor to several tracks. “I approached Solitude with less of a preconceived notion about what things should sound like,” Tiven says.

In 2004 a SXSW showcase brought Swan and Tiven together again. That led to another reunion gig with Swan in Lawrence, Kansas, the following year. When playing with Swan, Tiven says, he was reminded that the two create the essence of Dumptruck. The band lives on when Swan and Tiven collaborate. The two recorded basic tracks for a new CD in March 2007, and hope to finish it by the end of the year. “That lineup and dynamics is more of what Dumptruck is,” Tiven says.

Described by NPR Music as joyous folk pop, Kuinka "laces modern folk and Americana with an electronic jolt, waltzing along the grooved edges of dream-pop, synth-pop, and Brooklyn’s mid-aughts guitar-rock revival" (Vanyaland). Their genre-defying music features several different lead singers, four-part harmony, and eclectic instrumentation including cello, banjo, synthesizers, ukulele and electronic percussion. For all of their sonic experimentation, the Seattle quartet's songs and live shows are linked by an infectious energy that remains present in everything they do. Their new EP Stay Up Late is available now on Spotify, iTunes, and at www.kuinkatheband.com.

"Kuinka crafts songs that are engaging and original with a proper amount of established canon and innovation. Stories are laced through the lyrics, there are celebrations as well as lamentations—there is synth and cello! It is such a wonderful thing to hear a sound you've adored for so long ameliorated like this, with nothing missing, only new possibilities added to the mix." -Paste Music & Daytrotter

"Seraphic vocals bookended by ukulele, cello, and heavy percussion will leave you feeling giddy and glad to be alive." -The Stranger

The Rainbow Ends is an instrumental Guitar Trio Based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Nick Barilla
While social media numbers and blue verification check marks might define success for some; the pursuit of happiness and inspiring other’s to do what they love describe Nick Barilla’s blueprint for success in a constantly changing music industry. Since turning his passion for music into a career in 2016, his soulful-pop sounds and honest lyric writing have been positively influencing audiences all over the country. He has shared the stage with a list of artists that include: Aaron Carter, Howie Day, American Idol winners Kris Allen and Lee Dewyze, as well as Elliot Yamin, Kina Grannis and more! In addition, his original music has received commercial song placement on AT&T Sports Network in consecutive years for the Pittsburgh Pirates; as well as other radio stations and media outlets both locally and nationally. Never straying from his humble beginnings, his relatable stories and soulful sounds have continued to inspire people from all walks of life no matter what stage he is performing on!

Marie Miller
When Marie Miller writes a song, she does what all gifted writers do: She looks at her life and into her heart to make sure what she creates comes from real emotion and experience.
She also does something none of peers likely do: she searches through classic literature, whether it be Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or Homer. There, she finds parallels for what she wants to say, channels that inspiration into her lyrics and comes up with something unique: Music that’s immediate and timeless, driven by feelings all listeners can relate to yet infused with a perspective that transcends the present.

“I have a song called ‘Story’ on my new album,” she explains, referencing Letterbox, scheduled for release in the spring of 2017 on Curb Records. “It brings in a lot of epic characters: Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights, Hector’s wife Andromache from The Iliad. I’ve always loved epic stories — Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment — because they’re filled with relationships that are super serious and dramatic. Sometimes I feel like I’m right there in the midst of them.”

Yet Letterbox is no droning lecture on literature. It’s a celebration of freedom. Miller has paid plenty of dues to get to the point where she feels she can write what she wants how she wants to, and sing without constraint. Still young, she has survived years in the music business. She impacted initially with the infectious, “You’re Not Alone.” More than 115,000 downloaded that single on Amazon. ABC’s Dancing with the Stars featured her second single, “6’2,” in 2014.

That’s a success story for sure, one that Miller is grateful to have had. Still, she realized that this was only the first of many steps she needed to take to achieve her goals.

Much more than literature feeds into Miller’s unfettered performance on Letterbox. First and most enduring is the foundation she received from being born into a family that loved and performed music. They gravitated toward bluegrass and cultivated Marie’s obvious talent through lessons with banjo virtuoso Murphy Henry. Around age 12 she began singing with her family and later with her sister as a duo, appearing at churches, festivals, community picnics and, every Saturday, on the porch of the winery her father and a partner had opened in rural Virginia, across the road from the Miller family home.

Miller also began writing songs when she was about 12 years old. “The first one I started performing was an original melody and lyrics based on a poem I’d read in Lord of the Rings,” she says, with a grin. “I was really into American music at the time — the kind of music you’d hear in a Ken Burns documentary, the people’s music, the storytelling of bluegrass and Irish music. I was attracted initially to the New Grass artists, like Nickel Creek and Alison Krauss and mainly Chris Thile. She pauses and then laughs, a little embarrassed. “I was actually 100 percent certain when I was 14 that Chris Thile and I were going to get married someday.” Miller then found herself diving into the lyrics and melodies from the likes of The Eagles to Stevie Wonder to modern hitmaker Sara Bareilles. This wide range of influences impacted her music making when she signed with Curb Records in Nashville at the age of 16 where she fulfilled her dream to write songs. “I began my life as a traveling musician then,” she says. “I love performing, but it was so uncomfortable to be 16 or 17 and have everybody telling me what to do. I remember one time five people criticized what I was wearing. When you’re 17 years old you’re uncomfortable with yourself already, so to have a bunch of old people talk to you about your clothes, it was just really weird.”

Discouraged, Miller returned to Virginia. She took time off from music, went to college for a while, but kept practicing and writing. With a new confidence, she eventually went back to Nashville. Before long she had made her mark in music. And from there, we come to this pivotal moment in her story.

Working with producers Eric Rosse (Sara Bareillis, Tory Amos) and Chad Copelin, Miller moved decisively into a new creative milieu with Letterbox. Begin with the title. “It’s from the Beatles’ song ‘Across the Universe,’” she points out, and then sings the John Lennon lyric: “Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox.”

Why do these words speak to her? “I still write letters to my friends and to my grandparents and to my boyfriends … when I have them,” she says, smiling. “I’ve discovered that sometimes, when you want to say something, you just can’t. It’s too awkward. So Letterbox is about how I love to write letters but it’s also radically relational, about friendships, parents, a child or romance. It’s about how we affect each other as people.”

Miller describes the songs on Letterbox as “almost literal letters to people in my life. ‘Glitter Gold,’ ‘Boardwalk’ and ‘Angeline’ are like letters you leave on someone’s doorstep — teenage, broken-heart messages. ‘More’ is a letter that you never sent. ’Stones You Throw’ is about how the world feels ripples from every little thing we say or do, whether we like it or not. We live constantly in the ripples of other people’s actions, whether they’re from love or hatred.”

The album’s exultant first single, “This Side of Paradise,” which Miller describes as “hopeful and daring” … the promise to wait, in the language of many a folk song, for “the day that I see my own true love again” on “Lonely Ends” … compelling imagery, vocals that whisper and soar, from a lover “Lost at Sea” … Every moment on Letterbox rings true and lingers afterwards, like a memory or a passage from a favorite book.

This is the true Marie Miller, breathing in all that life has to offer and crafting it with her own sense of hope, wonder and enchantment.

And, in case you’re wondering, “Now, if people tell me what to wear or what to say, I just totally ignore them.”

She laughs out loud. It feels good to be free. It feels good to share that freedom through music. With Letterbox, we savor it all, as if delivered to us alone, from a friend not so far away.