Come September 10th we’ll be celebrating the new incarnations of some of our favorite disbanded bands at Columbia City Theater. Taking the stage will be The Hounds of the Wild Hunt (formerly the Whore Moans), Hobosexual (featuring members of Vindaloo and Iceage Cobra) and Baltic Cousins (featuring members of Black Eyes & Neckties and The Russians). Bring your ear plugs, because it’s going to be a loud night of rock’n'roll you won’t want to miss.

Pre-Purchase Tickets HERE
RSVP for the Event on Facebook

Much thanks to Bradley Lockhart for another gorgeous poster. You can share your appreciation for Brad’s work when he takes the stage as the frontman for Baltic Cousins.

The Head and The Heart ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

We can’t really review Friday night’s sold-out show at Columbia City Theater with The Head and The Heart and Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground. It would be like asking us to judge our own baby in a cute contest, it is impossible to have the objectivity to do so. What we can do, is say thank you.

Thank you to everyone who came out to the show, it sold out by The Head and The Heart’s second to last song. Thank you to The Head and The Heart and Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground for not just playing, but playing with inspiration and beauty. Thank you to Columbia City Theater for having us put on nights like this, where we get to watch our dreams unfold in a manner so big and beautiful that there aren’t words to express the pride and happiness they make us feel. Thank you to Kevin Sur who trusted my judgment enough to let me book a band back in early April that had never gotten an inch of press. Thank you to Josiah and all of you who cheered when my Mom and Dad were shouted out as members of the audience. And thank you to all of you who sang along to The Head and The Heart, hearing your sweet choir accompany the band made me feel like I was witnessing, and that I have been a part of something supremely special.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

See More Photos from the Evening on Our Flickr

Ben Harwood of Hobosexual ::: photo by Abbey Simmons

When we started the blog we never considered the heart break we’d feel, multiple times a year, when our favorite bands decided to part ways and stop playing music together. But then again, we never realized the excitement we’d feel when the members of those dearly departed bands started new projects to fall in love with. Our September Sound on the Sound presents bill at Columbia City Theater seeks to celebrate some of our favorite new bands birthed out of the demise of some of our favorite former local bands: The Whore Moans, Vindaloo, Black Eyes & Neckties and Iceage Cobra.

On September 10th Sound on the Sound is pleased to present:
Baltic Cousins (featuring members of BENT and Russians)
Hobosexual (featuring members of Vindaloo and Iceage Cobra)
Hounds of the Wild Hunt (formerly known as The Whore Moans)

You can purchase tickets for $8 via Brown Paper Tickets!

Baltic Cousins ::: photo by Abbey Simmons

The Whore Moans ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

Even if we hadn’t booked this show, there is nowhere in Seattle we’d rather be this Friday than seeing Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground and The Head and The Heart at the Columbia City Theater. It promises to be a beautiful night of local music with two of our very favorite bands at one of our very favorite venues. It’s a night not to be missed. (And KEXP agrees with us …)

Thanks to our partners at Columbia City Theater, we’ve got a pair of tickets to this dream local line up! Just drop your name in the comments (with your real email so we can notify you if you win!) and we’ll chose a winner at random on Thursday at 9am PST. If you win, your name will be on the guest list with a plus one!

And because there will only be one winner, don’t forget that you can pre-purchase tickets through Brown Paper Tickets. If you don’t win, we recommend you do … this show already looks like it’s going to sell out.

We just got back the beautiful poster for our August 6th Sound on the Sound presents show at Columbia City Theater with Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground and The Head and the Heart. We commissioned local artist Jill Labieniec to do the poster and even though we’ve been fans of her work for years, we think she out-delighted herself (and us) with this one.

You can purchase tickets for the show at Brown Paper Tickets and we do recommend you get them before the day of the show, we expect the show to sell out and we definitely don’t want you to miss it.

The Columbia City Theater ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

If you build it, will they come? This was the question that no one was quite sure of going into the grand opening weekends at the Columbia City Theater. Our last (and only other) Sound on the Sound Presents show to happen at the Theater, over a year ago with the yet to be discovered Local Natives, was a flop. Though it’s a straight shot from downtown and Capitol Hill to Columbia City down Rainier Avenue, it had become the neighborhood that live music fans forgot, and hardly a place that might enter into any nightlife plans.

From the beginning though, Friday night was different. At 9:15 as I arrived at the door, just as my ID is being checked, the owner walks up to say the place is already basically at capacity. What?! At 9:15? I’ve got friends who are behind me leaving a rainy BBQ session who are now going to be shut out. Yikes! Thankfully they took my sheepish text messages like champs, because they realized this meant success beyond our expectations. How times have changed! Before the show had even started, this showing had provided the most emphatic answer to our question yet. If you build it, they will most definitely come. In a line down the block and around the corner.

For those who showed up early and did make it in, both of the night’s bands took the opportunity to showcase long sets of mostly new songs. Zoe Muth & Her Lost High Rollers had an album’s worth of vintage sounding country I hadn’t heard yet, with Muth mid-show revealing they were trying to head to the studio in October. The Maldives have practically a full record worth of new material themselves, which with the benefit of CCT’s top notch audio sounded very ready to lay to tape. Snuck amongst the unrecorded material was a rare move that could’ve been engineered entirely just to make my day: the band played both of their epic crowd-pleasers “Blood Relations” and “Walk Away.”

Sound on the Sound Presents shows at the Columbia City Theater on the first Friday of every month, and we can only hope each one is as packed and successful as last Friday. On August 6th we present Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground with the Head and the Heart opening (tickets are $12). Once that time rolls around and summer has truly arrived, the promise of a high-ceilinged, air-conditioned room with a Mint Julep cooling my hand will sound just about perfect.

Zoe Muth & Her Lost High Rollers ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

Zoe Muth & Her Lost High Rollers ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

The Maldives ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

The Maldives ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

The Maldives ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

Flickr: Sound on the Sound Presents: The Maldives, Zoe Muth & Her Lost High Rollers at the Columbia City Theater

Just had to share this beauty of a poster courtesy of Bradley James Lockhart for out first showcase at Columbia City Theater on July 2nd.

Hopefully you’ve already saved the date for us, The Maldives, Zoe Muth and Her Lost High Rollers and your new favorite local venue. It’s a free show, with some of our very favorite bands, so show up early to celebrate with us!

The Maldives at the Blue Moon ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

It’s fair to say we were tempting fate by trying to sneak The Maldives, one of the biggest bands in Seattle (both literally and figuratively), onto one of the city’s smallest and crustiest rock stages. Don Slack, host of KEXP’s Americana show, Swinging Doors dropped hints on his show heavily. Various other bloggers who were in-the-know made only lightly veiled references to a band that matched the secret headliner’s unmistakable description. Really all anyone really had to do was Google their alias “JD & the Schmidty Boys” and the answer would have been obvious. But we did it anyway. Come what may. And the night couldn’t have gone any better.

Opener People Eating People had her own contingent of super fans, ready to stand up at the very front of the stage and set the tone for the crowd from song one. Nouela Johnston sings as if pulling from a deep well of internal conflict and the sheer force of her emotion, accented by a piano she’s been playing for decades, can leave one feeling just as palpably overwhelmed as she must have been when committing these songs to paper. As soon as Nouela finished her set, a line of impressed audience members snaked to buy her debut CD.

If People Eating People is bold, Zoe Muth & the Lost High Rollers on the other hand, traffics in a more subtle expression of heartbreak and hardship. And the audience was enamored of  every moment, with plenty of appropriate (and some inappropriate) hooting and whistling in appreciation of her long set and her ace accompaniment on mandolin and pedal steel. Zoe took the opportunity to play a full hour and I don’t think a soul left the packed room while it was going on. Since the headliner was a secret, I’d venture to say most of the people who Sound on the Sound didn’t know personally were filling the very packed Blue Moon for Zoe Muth and her Lost High Rollers.

The Maldives didn’t get started until after midnight and, considering they were playing the next night in Portland (and the following night in Bellingham) and it was a set that they weren’t commanding their usual fee for, I fully expected it to be a short and sweet. Instead, they played until 1.45am on the demand of a still healthy crowd at last call.  Not a single solo opportunity was abbreviated or missed. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever seen that many people in the Blue Moon past 1am. Someone else perfectly described the night as having “a special ‘packed in and we don’t want to leave till the sun comes up’ feeling.” For the night’s show, The Maldives were an eight-piece (sans keyboard) and managed to fit on the stage with just enough room for guitarist Jesse Bonn to get some good follow-through with his Gibson whilst rocking out (though he did knock out lead singer Jason Dodson’s guitar cable mid-song). That these gentlemen decided to shut the bar down, playing our dream Maldives set list with huge smiles on their faces,  when nothing of the sort was expected of them, well, I felt the love. Big time.

In a nutshell, this show set the bar for how we hope all Sound on the Sound Presents… shows can go. That we were able to bring onto a single bill three of Seattle’s most exciting up-and-coming  acts is a privilege and a something we’re continually striving for. We’re blessed to be so appreciated by those same bands we write about and for. We were beyond happy to just find them on our beloved historic Blue Moon stage,  but then the bands all went for broke and held nothing back, like they were headlining a sold-out Showbox.  Surrounded by friends, family and readers, embraced by our community and three of our favorite bands on stage… These moments remind us why we’re doing what we do and how worth all the time and effort we put forth is. I, at least, have got a bounce in my step because of last Friday night, and I suspect it’ll be there for a good while.

Thank you Maldives. Thank you Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers. And Thank you Nouela and Brian. I’ve got a feeling 2010 is going to be a big year for all of you. We can’t wait to share it with you and our readers.

People Eating People ::: Photo by Abbey Simmons

Zoe Muth ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

Country Dave ::: Photo by Abbey Simmons

The Maldives ::: Photo by Abbey Simmons

The Maldives ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

The Maldives ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

The Maldives ::: Photo by Abbey Simmons

Flickr: The Maldives, Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers, People Eating People at the Blue Moon Tavern, January 15th, 2010

Video: The Maldives, Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers, People Eating People at the Blue Moon Tavern, January 15th, 2010

The best part of getting older? For Sound on the Sound it is undoubtedly our Blue Moon birthday shows. For the past three birthdays we’ve been blessed to celebrate the occasion with sold out shows filled with friends, readers, and a few of our favorite bands singing on stage at our favorite dive. And this year, to celebrate Josh and my freakish same birthdays, and the last one before 30, we’ve rounded up a line-up that makes us a little weak in the knees. With the extreme kindness of a few of our favorite folks making music today, we’ve really outdone ourselves with this one.

January 15th at The Blue Moon Tavern - 21 + /5$
People Eating People
Zoe Muth & Her Lost High Rollers
& the pseudo-nymed: JD & The Schmidty Boys

We’ve booked a three band bill filled with headliners. Starting the night will be the bawdy and beautiful  People Eating People, who won us over in about 15 seconds with her clever heart-on-her-sleeve lyrics, fearless vocals, and piano wizardry, instantly becoming one of our favorite acts in Seattle today.  We suspect that Nouela Johnston won’t be Seattle’s little secret for much longer.

If any local artist is going to be covered by other musicians in 50 years, our vote is for the timeless country songs of Zoe Muth. The sweet voiced little darlin’ of Ballard’s vibrant Americana scene is writing tunes that you could easily pass off as standards from another time. Songs rueing the heartbreak of hard working women at the hand of a no good man with equal parts spunk and sadness. If you haven’t been enchanted by Zoe and her Lost High Rollers yet, the rough and tumble setting of the Blue Moon is a perfect place to start your love affair, it’s where we began ours with Zoe.

Last and certainly not least are JD & The Schmidty Boys, who you may (okay you definitely) know by another name. The band can’t use their “birth name” for the show but we can say without hyperbole, they are one of the best bands in Seattle today and that you may never have another chance to see the band in such an intimate setting.  The fact that all three of these wonderful bands have agreed to play for our birthday is the best present we’ll receive all year, no matter what our 29th year and 2010 may hold.

We hope you’ll join us to celebrate our birthday and another great year of local music ahead of us in 2010.  We look forward to sharing it all with you!

Special thanks to Terry Radjaw from Out for Stardom who we commissioned to create the perfect poster for our show — he nailed it.

Zoe Muth and The Lost High Rollers ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

Zoe Muth and her Lost High Rollers have come a ways since we  first got a glimpse of them before the band even had a name, some two and half years gone now. In that time Zoe’s grown into her music and her voice, now belting out her tunes with the presence of a sweet throated church-practiced not-so-southern belle. Not just her voice, but the whole package feels vintage country, Loretta Lynn circa Coal Miner’s Daughter. Given the timeless imagery of lead track from her debut album “You Only Believe Me When You’re Lying,” I don’t doubt people will be covering her songs in 50 years time alongside other the country classics.

As it happens both her confident performance and her new record beguiled us immediately, so much so that we eagerly asked her to play the Sound on the Sound Presents show on January 15th at the Blue Moon. And she accepted! (Do I sound like a giddy teen girl? I’m sorry.)

Not only that, but our latest obsession People Eating People has also agreed to be on the bill!

So just to spell it all out:

Sound on the Sound Presents:
Josh & Abbey’s 3rd Annual BDAY Show
Saturday, January 15th, 2010 at the Blue Moon

A SECRET HEADLINER we can’t mention
Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers
People Eating People

21+, 10pm, $5

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that once again this year we’ve managed convince a really great band to be our secret headliner. Other than to note that we may have outdone ourselves this time, I can say not a word more. As far as we’re concerned it’s one of January’s unmissable shows with just the two bands we can tell you about.