Wild Hare this week, East Coast tour on the horizon

We retrieved our bus this last weekend from the post WestCoast tour storage in Colorado after performing at the Carbondale Mountain Fair–a truly awesome time for the band.  It’s getting harder to leave these western states, but we still like coming back to Chicago after these jaunts.  No worries for the homies.

We’re performing Tuesday night (July 29th) at a fundraiser for One World Africa along with Zeleke and Funkadesi at the Wild Hare in Wrigleyville.  Starting around 11pm ourselves, but don’t miss these other guys either.  We have a few guests joining us including local hip hop artist Antar.  Don’t miss it folks!

The Valley-Journal: “37th Mountain Fair delivers musical flair”

This article originally appeared in The Valley-Journal on 07/24/08.

From high school rockers, gypsy jammers and Gospel singers to Chicago funk, Columbian Vallenatto and Boulder folk, the 37th annual Carbondale Mountain Fair has it all when it comes to musical entertainment.

Best yet, it’s all free in Sopris Park starting Friday evening, July 25, and continuing through Sunday, July 27. Here’s a sampling of the weekend’s offerings.

For a full schedule of music and other Fair happenings, see the official Mountain Fair Guide inside this edition of The Valley Journal, or pick up a copy at the park entrances.

At 5 p.m. Friday things get rocking and rolling in a big way with the up-and-coming Aspen trio Slightly White. These high schoolers, multi-year winners of the local Battle of the Bands contest, have been playing since before middle school, and have opened for the likes of the Dave Mason Band, Joe Cocker and Little Feat.

Two band members, Obadiah Jones and Cooper Means, have been playing together since they were 6, and performing live since they were 7, when they won the Carbondale Talent Show with an original song called “Time.”

The trio, which now includes Miles Phillips, has been together since 2003. Learn more about them at www.slightlywhite.com.

After that, it’s Latin, American style, as Cerronato takes the stage at 7 p.m. Friday.

Cerronato takes its inspiration from the Vallenato tradition of coastal Colombia. Interspersing various Vallenato approaches with cumbia, the Texas quintet’s debut album “De Músico, Poeta, y Loco” was met with rave reviews. More about them at www.cerronato.com.

The funky sounds of Chicago are going to be prominent on the stage this weekend with two bands in particular — Bumpus (Saturday, 7 p.m.), described as an unusually groovy sound for central Colorado (www.bumpusweb.com); and the Chicago AfroBeat Project (Sunday, 5 p.m.) The band tours using used veggie oil and other green methods to minimize their carbon footprint, too. More about them at www.chicagoafrobeatproject.com.

The Fishtank Ensemble (Saturday, 2 p.m.) brings a mix of traditional and original songs. They’re described as “the rompin’, stompin’ leaders of cross-pollinated Gypsy music.” More about them atwww.fishtankensemble.com.

At 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Lipbone Redding shakes things up with his New Orleans-style dance-hall music and ’70s soul.

Boulder singer-songwriter Kort McCumber leads the folk-bluegrass band McCumberland Gap (Sunday, 1 p.m.). A classically trained pianist & cellist (he learned from his mom, Joy Myers, who played for the Jacksonville Symphony for more than two decades) McCumber now plays guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, piano, bouzouki, cello and more. He writes, plays and sings Americana — equal parts folk, country, blues and bluegrass (www.kortmusic.com).

The sound will switch to rock and roll after that, when Nelson Oldham’s local band, the Redtones, take over at 5 p.m. Owner .of Dos Gringos Burritos in Carbondale, Oldham is both a friend and fan of the Band of Heathens, a group that performed last year at Mountain Fair. And, while the same band is never booked twice for the event, the Heathens will be in town and performing at Steve’s Guitars on Sunday night. But, they may just pop by the gazebo to play with the Redtones. Might want to be there for that one.

Continuing in the folk-bluegrass vein, The Clumsy Lovers (Sunday, 7 p.m.) come from the Pacific Northwest to close out the fair, which is traditionally one of the highlights of the entire weekend. More about this band atwww.clumsylovers.com

Back from the West

Our big summer tour has brought us safely back to Chicago with a lot of crazy tales to tell.  We put about 5500 miles behind us with stops all over the western US along the way.  There was a string of festival dates to kick things off with a few club stops scattered here and there.  Our Salt Lake City arts festival gig was completely off the hook, to name one, but our shows in MIchigan, Idaho, Montana, and southern Utah (Cedar City) were also super memorable on the way out west.  The weather was basically perfect the entire time save for the haze and smoke created by the extensive forest fires in California.  We spent four days at the High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, CA with two performances–a late night set and an afternoon slot on the main stage.

At High Sierra we had a few impromptu jams with some of the members of Gamelan X and Sambada at the bus camp as well as a slew of percussion jams sitting on the back of our gear trailer.  Other stops in California included a great show at Yoshi’s in San Fran where we loaded up on Sushi and a little waste veggie oil fuel for the bus, and stops at Temple Bar in LA where Jason Thor (trombonist virtuoso) joined us, and a show at Winstons in Oean Beach, San Diego.  The band also stopped in for a show at a great venue in Crystal Bay, Nevada on Lake Tahoe at the Crystal Bay Casino.  We rendezvous’ed with our good friends from Chicago-based 56 Hope Road in Denver at Cervantes Ballroom before playing a great ‘finale’ show at one of our favorite clubs to play anywhere–the Fox Theater in Boulder, CO.

A lot of hard work went into keeping us rolling along, much of which revolved around the many ‘Veggie Quests’ we emparked upon, i.e. trolling alleys for sources of veggie oil fuel for our bus.  We scored over 500 gallons worth of essentially free, low emission, low socio-political-environmental impact ‘recycled’ fuel.  And we’re looking for someone to design our band veggie oil fueling team suits, so drop us a line if you have any ideas.  I’m thinking rubber shirts / pants (or jumpsuits) with our logo on them and some clear plastic tubes wound around them  maybe with oil permanently trapped inside (but I’ve been on the road for while and can’t trust my own thoughts).

We have a show at Duffy’s on Tuesday July 15th that is free, and (get THIS) giving away free draft beer from 7 to 9pm before we hit at 10pm.  Duffy’s is in Lincoln Park in Chicago at Sheridan and Diversey St.  In a few weeks, we’re back to Colorado to get our bus and play in Carbondale, Colorado.

Thanks again to our Western States fans for a great summer tour.