club cafe

The experiential music of City of the Sun is the sound you didn’t know you were missing. New York City’s powerhouse trio flip the perception of instrumental music, attracting a whole new generation to the genre.

Formed in 2011, City of the Sun features guitarists John Pita, Avi Snow, and percussionist Zach Para. The band’s sound has an array of influences including indie rock, American folk, flamenco, and blues; it’s been called worldly, cinematic, a mix between Rodrigo y Gabriela and Explosions in the Sky.

COS has since been established as significant players in the post-rock sphere. They’ve sold out New York’s top indie venues Brooklyn Steel, Irving Plaza, Bowery Ballroom and Gramercy Theater; toured with Peter Bjorn & John, G.Love, STS9, and Thievery Corporation; were featured emerging artists at Panorama NYC, Billboard’s Hot 100, Firefly, Bottle Rock Napa music festivals; and scored “The C Word” documentary soundtrack (directed by Meghan O’Hara and narrated by Morgan Freeman).

After completing two European tours including major sold-out shows in Athens, Greece, the band released UNTITLED EP. Lead track “Perfect Instance” has gained 18 million Spotify streams to date, contributing to over 70 million plays on the platform overall.

Elephant Wrecking Ball is an instrumental, electronic, trombone-led power trio that successfully weaves a variety of influences from jazz, hip hop, electro and the avant-garde. Coupling a grounded sense of discipline with exuberant musical exploration, they are dedicated to making music that is unlike any other, constantly striving for a memorable, new sound.

Comprised of Scott Flynn on the trombone, Dan Africano on Bass, and Neal “Fro!” Evans on the drums, the three musicians have an extensive list of musical credentials, having performed and recorded with the likes of John Brown’s Body, Dopapod, Turkuaz, Pretty Lights, Ghost Light, Big Daddy Kane, Odesza, Break Science, and many others.

This show has been postponed to April 8. All tickets purchased will be honored for the new date, or can be returned to your point of purchase for a refund.

If you were to trace the sonic contour of Velvet Negroni’s debut album, NEON BROWN (out 30th August 2019 on 4AD), you might end up with something resembling a map to his island of one. It’s a singular place, with the squeak and thrum of guitar strings looped over drum machine beats accented by steely marimbas, all creating a pocket for one of the most authentic and original artistic voices ever committed to tape.



You follow his voice as it rhymes in double time, or hiccups and la-las through a break, or croons from a room down the hall, as it unfolds into another story of lost love, or another joke about lost drugs, as it tries to make sense of a life spent in the (sometimes harrowing) pursuit of communion. On NEON BROWN, Velvet Negroni is a griot relaying the life and times of his own island—we’re listening to him attempt to make emotional contact with the rest of us.



Turns out what sounds like a lonely island is in fact the city of Minneapolis. Velvet Negroni grew up in an outer suburb of the Twin Cities as Jeremy Nutzman, a black kid adopted into a white evangelical Christian family. His fundamentalist missionary of a mother drove him to virtuosity, both as a classically trained concert pianist and a competitive figure skater, but he had to climb out his bedroom window to play guitar in his first band. When he finally made it out of the church and into Minneapolis’ music community, he acted out, becoming a full on enfant terrible. Before he was Velvet Negroni, he performed under a schizophrenic rotation of various aliases, consciously trying to freak out the city’s over-conscious backpacker rap scene. He spent years getting kicked out of clubs, living in squatter’s apartments and practice spaces, crashing on couches on cold three season porches, hustling to get by, whether selling his own ink drawings or someone else’s dime bags. Through his extended delinquency he became the coolest dude on the scene: He developed an inimitable fashion of derelict chic, and always found a place to hang, even if he had to literally sing for his supper.



As the tumult and momentum grew, in 2016 Nutzman finally landed on a persona that he felt he could be proud of, getting as close as he could to a version of himself that he could really be. It was in a fancy cocktail bar in Austin, Texas that he hatched this last iteration, a more evolved, more lived in, yet still somewhat droll persona, Velvet Negroni. And through his musical talent and his voice, he inevitably made connections, later that year collaborating with Tickle Torture on “Full Court Press,” his homage to his hometown hero, Prince (and the video finally gave him the opportunity to showcase his competitive skating talent). Then in 2017, he was hooked up with an opening slot on Bon Iver’s tour, and that connection led to another, culminating in a writing credit on Kid Cudi and Kanye West’s “Feel the Love” off their 2018 album Kids See Ghosts. That same year, he released his first singles on b4, “First Time” and “Crybaby.” But all these successes felt too random, and he nursed anxieties that they were random enough that they would prove to be short lived. And living and performing without his own space, using whatever he found in his pockets in a fruitless and exhausting attempt at maximizing his creative output, inevitably was: In the winter of 2018, Velvet Negroni found himself in the hospital.



When he got out that spring, Velvet knew the engine of his creative life, a reliable machine fueled by the short term urgency of various chemicals and the violent deadline of TONIGHT WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO FINISH THIS SONG—well, he realized that ride just wasn’t going to work for him anymore. But he didn’t have or know of any other way to coax his muse out of its cave. It was during this summer of discontent that he relied on his friends, the producer Psymun (Future, Young Thug, Dua Saleh) and Tickle Torture, to get him to the studio every day, to help him build a new creative structure, song by song. Together with his friends, Velvet Negroni rebuilt his sonic palette, and in time, over weeks and then months, he found his voice, and was able to compose the stories on NEON BROWN, stories he’s been waiting a lifetime to tell.

Bill Toms
“Bill Toms is a poet, a soul-shouter and guitar slinger with one foot in the gutter and an eye on the heavens above. And man, does he front a great rock n' soul band!” - Will Kimbrough/

While it’s hard to put a finger on any one sound that defines “American music,” the compositions of Bill Toms are as close a template as any. The Pittsburgh native, along with his band Hard Rain, delivers a sound that takes the greatest of America’s most beloved genres and melds them into a poetic representation of the best the country has to offer.

With his ninth full-length studio release, Good For My Soul (street date October 27), Toms channels a foot-stomping, wall-shaking blend of soul, blues, gospel, and rock vibes, all brought together with his lyrical specialty -- stories of everyday men and women doing their best to stay ahead while still managing to keep a dream or two in their heads.

Soaring horns, gritty licks, toe-tapping rhythms, and Toms’ own rough-hewn vocals will draw listeners in, as well as well-deserved comparisons to the greats such as Dr. John, Little Feat, Springsteen, Joe Tex, The Blasters, Otis Redding, and Rufus Thomas.

“The idea of a horn section behind my songs has been something I’ve thought about for a while,” explains Toms. “Albert King, and all the Stax artists come to mind when I think of what true rhythm and blues can do. I wanted a piece of that; creating dynamics, and drama within the song; and fostering the deep emotion that a great horn section can give. The words also needed this place-- in order to be fully interpreted as the representation of ‘my America,’ and the people who make up my small part of this world.”

Good For My Soul was recorded in February 2017 by Oscar-winning composer Rick Witkowski, who also co-produced the set with Will Kimbrough (Rodney Crowell, Todd Snider). Both artists have collaborated with Toms frequently on parts of his earlier catalog.

Toms launched his musical career in 1987 as lead guitarist of Pittsburgh’s legendary band Joe Grushecky and The Houserockers, During that period, he opened for and played with such legendary names as The Band, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Little Feat, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. While playing guitar, co-writing, and adding backup vocals for the Houserockers, Toms and the band recorded six studio albums and one live concert album. In 1995, The Houserockers released American Babylon, which was recorded and produced by Springsteen himself.

As a solo artist, Toms has opened for the likes of Buddy Guy, Levon Helm, Marshall Crenshaw, The Kennedys, Steve Forbert, and Ellis Paul. He’s plotting a string of regional east coast dates to support Good For My Soul, as well as a full European tour in 2018.
For more information and tour dates, please visit www.billtoms.com

Publicity: Mike Farley/Michael J. Media Group/608-848-9707/ mike@michaeljmedia.com

DISCOGRAPHY

With Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers:
“Rock and Real” - Rounder Records, 1989
“Swimming with the Sharks” - Rounder Records, 1991
“End of the Century” - Razor and Tie, 1992
“American Babylon”- Razor and Tie, 1995
“Coming Home” - Big Star, 1997
“Down the Road Apiece, Live” - Schoolhouse Records, 1999
“True Companion” – Schoolhouse Records, 2003

With Bill Toms and Hard Rain:
“Paradise Avenue” - Schoolhouse Records, 1997
“My Own Eyes” - Moondog Records, 1999
“This Old World” - Moondog/Schoolhouse Records, 2001
“The West End Kid” – Moondog Records, 2005
“Spirits, Chaos, and a Troubadour Soul’ – AmeriSon Records, 2008
“Live at Moondogs: Another Moonlight Mystery” – AmeriSon Records, 2009
"Memphis" - Terraplane Records, 2011
"Deep In The Shadows" - Terraplane Records, 2015

"Good For My Soul" - Terraplane Records, 2017

Bill Toms Solo:
“One Lonesome Moment” - Out of the Rain Records, 2002

Join us for a special Happy Hour from 6pm - 7:30pm featuring $5 drafts/glasses of wine, $9 pizzas, and $7 signature cocktails. The show will begin at 8pm

Pete Correale is a professional stand up comedian originally from New York. His comedy is reflective of his life and the experiences he’s been through. Being married for almost twenty years and having a young daughter, Pete’s never at a loss for material. With a conversational delivery and disarming regular New York guy attitude, Pete makes you feel like you’re listening to the funniest guy at a party as opposed to just another comedian on a stage; combined with top notch writing skills, this has led Pete to the top of the stand up profession.

Pete has performed numerous times on The Tonight Show, Letterman and Conan. As well as filming two of his own one-hour television comedy specials. The first special - The Things We Do For Love aired on Comedy Central and was voted by Time Out Magazine as the #2 Comedy special of 2008. His second one-hour special debuted on Showtime in 2016, this one titled Let Me Tell Ya. It was filmed at the famous Vic theatre in Chicago, and Pete once again delivered a stellar performance. Pete has also released two comedy albums, Give It A Rest in 2010, and his second album Made For Radio which was released in June 2018 and quickly rose to number one on the iTunes comedy charts.

Aside from stand up, Pete has used his comedic skills in various other platforms throughout his career. As a writer he’s been hired for several projects, most recently as part of the staff on the CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait which he did for both seasons. He also made a few guest appearances the show playing Larry the Fish Guy.

Pete was also the co-host on a daily two-hour live comedy radio show on SiriusXM titled Unleashed. He did this show with comedian Jim Breuer for four years from 2008 to 2011. And In 2012 Pete began a podcast with comedian Sebastian Maniscalco titled simply enough The Pete and Sebastian Show. Starting off with a couple of microphones and an internet connection, Pete and Sebastian kept at it, and today the show airs every Friday afternoon on SiriusXM the Raw Dog channel before being released as a free podcast episode. Currently up to episode 353 and still going strong, the Pete and Sebastian Show is one of the most popular comedy podcasts on air today and the fans have been showing their support in full force most everywhere Pete headlines.

Though he grew up in the generally frozen landscape of Troy, New York, Sean Rowe spent many of his formative summers in DeLand, Florida — a small town between Orlando and Daytona Beach — where his father was a residential caretaker at a home for troubled youths. It was there, in a mercifully air-conditioned, mostly unused building filled with donated musical instruments, that Sean taught himself to play drums and then bass. For those who have wondered where his distinctly low and percussive approach to guitar playing comes from, I believe you now have your answer.

During those same years, when he wasn’t listening to heavy metal or building his early musical chops, Sean was in the woods exploring, foraging, and obsessively learning all that he could about the natural world around him. Since then, his fascination with the subject has only grown and through his new web-series, Can I Eat This?, he’s found a means of indulging two of his great passions: music and nature. In each of the forthcoming episodes of Can I Eat This?, Sean will guide a fellow musician on a foraging mission for all manner of wild foods. The two will use their harvest to prepare some tasty creation and end their adventure by performing a cover song together. Look for new episodes this summer!

This year started with a successfully-funded Kickstarter campaign to support the production of Sean’s new full-length album. For this record, he teamed up with longtime producer and friend Troy Pohl, who helmed production on the albums Magic, Madman, Her Songs, and various other EPs. The two traveled to Eau Claire, Wisconsin to team up with producer and multi-instrumentalist Shane Leonard and engineer Brian Joseph at Joseph’s famed Hive Studio. All involved have described the experience as something quite remarkable and Sean is eager to release the finished work later this year.

Over the course of his career, Sean Rowe has recorded five full-length albums and several EPs. His music has been used widely throughout film and television, with notable examples including NBC’s hit dramas The Blacklist and Parenthood. Rowe’s song “To Leave Something Behind” was one of two non-score tracks to be featured in Ben Affleck’s hit 2016 feature film, The Accountant. The song accompanied the film’s final scene and has since received nearly 4.5 million streams on Spotify alone. He tours nearly nonstop and later this year, he’ll return to Europe for two weeks with stops in the U.K., Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Germany.

Born on the streets of Los Angeles, Starcrawler is a band possessed by the spirit of its own hometown, every movement charged with a manic electricity. Since forming in 2015, vocalist Arrow de Wilde, guitarist/vocalist Henri Cash, bassist Tim Franco, and drummer Austin Smith have gone from bashing out songs in the garage to winning the love of such legendary artists as Shirley Manson and Elton John. They’ve also opened for the likes of Beck, Foo Fighters, Spoon, The Distillers, and MC5, bringing their unhinged energy to an already-fabled live show—a spectacle that’s simultaneously lurid and glorious and elegant as ballet. On their sophomore full-length Devour You, Starcrawler captures that dynamic with a whole new precision, revealing their rare ability to find a fragile beauty in even the greatest chaos.

Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, L7), Devour You takes the feral intensity of their 2018 self-titled debut and twists it into something grander and more gracefully composed. With its more elaborate and nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette, the album came to life at the famed Sunset Sound, where the band spent their downtime playing H-O-R-S-E at the basketball hoop and drinking lots of Mexican Cokes. Adorned with so many unexpected flourishes—choir-like backing vocals from a local Girl Scouts troop, tuba and trombone riffs courtesy of Cash (the band’s 18-year-old musical polymath)—the result is a selection of songs radiating both raw sensitivity and untamable power.

Heavy and swinging and brutally catchy, “Bet My Brains” shows the psychic kinship at the heart of Starcrawler’s songwriting. “That song came from thinking about the mole people in New York and Vegas and the Catacombs in France, and the underground village of people who live in the sewers of the L.A. River,” says de Wilde. “I was fascinated with the fact that there’s whole other world happening right under our feet.” Cash adds: “Arrow and I hadn’t even talked about it yet, but I’d already written something about the same thing—about how these people’s eyes adapt to pitch-blackness, and they end up going crazy from never seeing the sunlight.”

Elsewhere on Devour You, Starcrawler drifts from the dreamy piano lilt of “No More Pennies” to the rock-and-roll disco of “You Dig Yours” to the pure punk vitriol of “Toy Teenager” (a song about de Wilde’s refusal to be abused the fashion industry, and about how “people look at my body and just want to put me on a platter”). And on “Born Asleep” the band lets their love for country music shine, slipping into a modern-day murder ballad spiked with pieces of hazy poetry (sample lyric: “I remember when you cut your lip, sippin’ on a soda can/And the time when you fell and tripped, screaming at the ice cream man”).


Elsewhere on Devour You, Starcrawler drifts from the dreamy piano lilt of “No More Pennies” to the rock-and-roll disco of “You Dig Yours” to the pure punk vitriol of “Toy Teenager” (a song about de Wilde’s refusal to be abused by the fashion industry, and about how “people look at my body and just want to put me on a platter”). And on “Born Asleep” the band lets their love for country music shine, slipping into a modern-day murder ballad spiked with pieces of hazy poetry (sample lyric: “I remember when you cut your lip, sippin’ on a soda can/And the time when you fell and tripped, screaming at the ice cream man”).



All throughout the album, Starcrawler taps into the kinetic chemistry they discovered soon after forming—a process Smith describes as a “slow-burning candle of finding the right people to play with.” In assembling the band, de Wilde first contacted Smith after seeing a Facebook photo of him playing drums (“I hit him up and he came to my birthday party, and then he turned out to be a really good drummer,” she recalls. “Right away it was like, ‘Jackpot!’”) In searching for a guitarist, de Wilde next approached Cash, a fellow student at her performing-arts high school in downtown L.A. “I saw him one day and thought, ‘That guy looks cool,’” she says. “‘He’s carrying a tuba, he’s got long hair, I’ve seen him wearing Cramps T-shirts: he’s gotta know at least something on guitar.’” But while Cash has since emerged as a monster guitarist, her instincts were only partly right. “When I was younger I didn’t want to play guitar, I wanted to play the drums because my dad played guitar—although sometimes I’d take a broomstick and jam along to AC/DC live footage,” says Cash. “It wasn’t until Arrow hit me up that I realized it was meant to be.”

Starcrawler then finalized their lineup with the addition of Franco—an old friend whom de Wilde reached out to after a moment of strange serendipity (“I was in the car with my mom and stressing out about finding the right bass player, and then Tim and his brother turned out to be on their bikes right in front of us,” she says). With their early band practices mostly consisting of Runaways covers, the band quickly bonded over a shared love for L.A.’s most unglamorous spaces. “I’ve been obsessed with Hollywood Boulevard ever since I was little,” notes de Wilde. “People travel so far and spend so much money to see it ’cause it makes them think of Marilyn Monroe—when in reality it’s so disgusting, which is why I love it. But really a lot of the L.A. that I grew up with and reminisce about is kind of fading now.”

As an antidote to the toxic mildness overtaking so much of the city, Starcrawler’s live show has only become more outrageous over the years, an element strengthened by their increasingly telepathic connection. “We all know each other in a much deeper way now,” says Smith. “Like, Arrow knows exactly when I’m going to hit the crash cymbals, so she moves to match up with that. It’s completely changed how we play together.” Prone to spitting fake blood and slapping phones from the hands of crowd members, de Wilde has proven to be a once-in-a-lifetime performer, captivating enough to command a room with just the widening of her eyes. “We want to put on a real show and give people some kind of escape from all the shit going on in the world,” she says. “And with the album, I want people to put it on and feel excited, and hopefully get goosebumps. I always want there to be a dramatic response.”

Mike Doughty, the singer, songwriter, producer, author and founder of seminal 90’s band Soul
Coughing will be playing their debut LP Ruby Vroom in full across the U.S. in 2019.
Doughty will be joined by a full band on these special dates. While they will be performing Ruby
Vroom in its entirety, in the original sequence, what the audience experiences will be different
each night. “When I was looking for something to do between album cycles I decided to tour
Irresistible Bliss in full” explains Doughty. “It was incredibly fun forcing myself to work within that
structure. The decisions you make when putting together a set list are different from the ones
you make when sequencing a record. This is like performing a single, hour-long piece of music.”
Rather than an exact replication of the studio recording, Doughty plans to use a variety of cues
and hand signals to adjust the performance in real time. “Live we turn into a musical super-
organism. We’re basically doing a real-time remix of the record at each show” tells Doughty. “It
won’t not be a note-for-note performance. I’m very proud of the record we made; it’s the sonic
embodiment of lower Manhattan in the early 1990’s. Yet there’s a whole other version of this
record that lives in my head. I’m extremely excited to see how it evolves night after night.”
Doughty has released 11 solo albums in the 21st Century, including Haughty Melodic and Stellar
Motel, and a memoir, The Book of Drugs (he’s currently writing a second one). He makes
electro tracks under the names UUL and Dubious Luxury; his opera Revelation was staged in
conjunction with WNYC; he’s currently writing songs with Wayne Kramer from the MC5. He
recently posted his 100th weekly new song for his Patreon subscribers. And, finally, he has
three improvised-music bands in Memphis, where he lives: Moticos, Baby Men, and Spooky
Party.

Mike Doughty, the singer, songwriter, producer, author and founder of seminal 90’s band Soul
Coughing will be playing their debut LP Ruby Vroom in full across the U.S. in 2019.
Doughty will be joined by a full band on these special dates. While they will be performing Ruby
Vroom in its entirety, in the original sequence, what the audience experiences will be different
each night. “When I was looking for something to do between album cycles I decided to tour
Irresistible Bliss in full” explains Doughty. “It was incredibly fun forcing myself to work within that
structure. The decisions you make when putting together a set list are different from the ones
you make when sequencing a record. This is like performing a single, hour-long piece of music.”
Rather than an exact replication of the studio recording, Doughty plans to use a variety of cues
and hand signals to adjust the performance in real time. “Live we turn into a musical super-
organism. We’re basically doing a real-time remix of the record at each show” tells Doughty. “It
won’t not be a note-for-note performance. I’m very proud of the record we made; it’s the sonic
embodiment of lower Manhattan in the early 1990’s. Yet there’s a whole other version of this
record that lives in my head. I’m extremely excited to see how it evolves night after night.”
Doughty has released 11 solo albums in the 21st Century, including Haughty Melodic and Stellar
Motel, and a memoir, The Book of Drugs (he’s currently writing a second one). He makes
electro tracks under the names UUL and Dubious Luxury; his opera Revelation was staged in
conjunction with WNYC; he’s currently writing songs with Wayne Kramer from the MC5. He
recently posted his 100th weekly new song for his Patreon subscribers. And, finally, he has
three improvised-music bands in Memphis, where he lives: Moticos, Baby Men, and Spooky
Party.