Sunday June 20th, 2010

Presale Tickets Available

In my short lived “pre-music” days I was a footballer. I played center for the Conshohocken Golden Bears. I weighed in at 68lbs and I sucked hard. Once we played “East Falls” on the frozen dirt field across the street from “Pat’s Steaks” in South Philadelphia. I’m guessing we lost. Mostly I remember “East Falls” hitting their thigh pads and clapping their hands to the Queen “We Will Rock You” beat and chanting “Put ‘em in the Graveyard ooh ah” over and over. It was terrifying.

In the past our band never played many new songs before records were “officially” released. We always felt new albums/new songs were best absorbed as complete thoughts…records had sequence and rhythm, each song made more sense propped up by its fellow jams, and as the final guitars or bagpipes rang out you could feel like you’d been on a kinda rock & roll journey. We still feel that way. But…

Considering it’s been such a long time since we shared a song and dance together we wanna put this out there for y’all…something new to enjoy and discuss while we wait for the other shoe to drop. We also promise that your $contribution will not be blown in some smoky pub but will aid us greatly in bringing a lot more “unreleased” Marah music into the world this year. Think of the mix tape possibilities.

“Put ‘em in the Graveyard” is not a “single” in the “Love is a Battlefield”, “Shock The Monkey” kinda way, but merely a new song we are quietly and independently “making available” now due to the timely Halloweenish connotation of its title. Get it?

In 2010 we are gonna play in Syracuse and Serbia. We will spill buckets of sweat on SXSW in Texas and The Basque Country and hopefully Green Bay too. We’re gonna need to work real hard but It’s exciting, we’re gonna do it. We’re still in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So have fun everybody and please remember to sign up for our mailing list. Much album news and tour dates comin’ round the mountain.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Yours Truly, David Bielanko and MARAH

Tonight – doors at 9PM

opener at 10PM

Tallest Man on Earth @ 11PM

SOLD OUT – ticket holders and presale will calls only

Thursday May 27th, 2010

Tallest Man on Earth (Sweden)

Nathaniel Rateliff

10pm

$10 tickets

Pitchfork Album Review
The Wild Hunt
The Tallest Man on Earth
[Dead Oceans; 2010]
8.5

Pesky comparisons to Bob Dylan have dogged Kristian Matsson throughout his short career as the Tallest Man on Earth. In 2006, his self-titled EP introduced a singer with that familiar croak, a songwriter with a folk-revival revival sensibility, and a guitar player with an impressively agile fingerpicking style. The next year, his full-length debut, Shallow Grave, expanded nicely on those ideas, buffing away some of the rougher edges but emphasizing fully realized and beautifully evocative songs. The Wild Hunt, the second Tallest Man on Earth album and first for Dead Oceans, makes a few specific nods to Dylan at his most earnest and bare– including a reference to “boots of Spanish leather” on “King of Spain”. Ultimately, though, Matsson interprets Dylan, just as Dylan himself interpreted Guthrie. More to the point, Matsson translates him into the Scandinavian countryside, where he sings about changing seasons and quiet, lonely places far from cities. His lyrics are rough and often ragged, more concerned with evoking aching emotions than with making explicit sense. But that coded aspect only makes him sound more urgent, as if he’s trying to convince you of something he couldn’t possibly put into words.

As with previous albums, The Wild Hunt features mainly voice and guitar, and in this intimate, austere setting– where the banjo on the title track sounds like an indulgence– Matsson coaxes a wide range of colors from that limited palette, whether it’s the testiness of “You’re Going Back” or the exuberance of “King of Spain”. His grounding in American Southern traditions is apparent: While not a blues musician per se, Matsson draws important lessons from the likes of Mississippi John Hurt and Bukka White by realizing that his guitar speaks as loudly and as clearly as he does.

Click here to view the embedded video.

His playing is sophisticated but never showy, alternating between spry picking and forceful strumming. Whether due to his tunings or his crisp production, there’s something bright and expectant about his songs, so that even at his most forlorn, as on “Love Is All” or “The Drying of the Law ns”, Matsson’s heraldic guitar playing generates a certain major-key hopefulness that softly shades the songs. When he switches to an old and battered piano on the teen anthem “Kids on the Run”, the effect is not diminished but amplified, as the instrument reverberates uneasily. It’s an unexpected moment that colors everything that came before it and paints Matsson as a distinctive and singular artist.

As a singer, he has become much more confident and capable, using that wily, deceptively limited croak with greater nuance and subtlety. The hiccup hook on “Love Is All” sounds like a joyful noise despite the song’s tentative tone, and the rawness of his vocals lends gravity to the accusations of “You’re Going Back”. On the other hand, Matsson sounds warmly generous on “Troubles Will Be Gone” when he sings, “The day is never done, still there’s a light on where you sleep, so I hope someday your troubles will be gone.” Matsson is both a romantic and a realist, and on The Wild Hunt, he uses the barest of pop-folk settings to give mundane moments– another break-up, another tour, another change of season, another Dylan comparison– a grandeur so disproportional that it’s difficult not to identify and sympathize with him.

Nathaniel Rateliff Conjures The Ghost Of Johnny Cash On “You Should Have Seen The Other Guy”

Debut Album ‘In Memory Of Loss’ Out May 4 On Rounder Records

In a recent review Vanity Fair said Nathaniel Rateliff’s voice is “fit only for a silent cathedral” though on the album cut “You Should Have Seen The Other Guy” a rowdy barroom is the setting. The drunken tale is one of the most lyrically powerful tracks on Nathaniel Rateliff’s debut album ‘In Memory of Loss,’ (May 4) a collection of world-weary songs chronicling the life of the Denver-by-way-of-Missouri songwriter.

“You Should Have Seen The Other Guy” is a true story about Nathaniel’s great-grandfather who was a bootlegger and froze to death drinking his own whiskey. On the song Rateliff’s deep, resonant Johnny-Cash-like-baritone layers over finger plucked guitar strings and a mournful harmonica.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Monday April 12th, 2010

Chainsmoking Records Presents:

The Devil Makes Three

$10 advance tickets available

9PM

poster by Andrea Harvey

Friday March 26th, 2010
The Cave Singers (Seattle WA)
Lee Miles & The Illegitimate Sons
10PM
$8

Spin Magazine’s Review of The Cave Singers

Hope burns bright on this Seattle-based trio’s enticing second album. Mumbly, scratchy-voiced Pete Quirk is more self-assured than on 2007’s Invitation Songs, championing optimism and determination in the face of trouble, powered by sharp folk and country-blues guitars, plus no-frills percussion. On the swaggering “In the Cut,” he proclaims, “I swear to be brave,” and rejects the “old sad dream” of death in the shimmering “Hen of the Woods.” Amid images of oceans and soaring birds, Quirk’s account of lawn dancing on “VV” is poignantly uplifting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thundolah
Lee Miles & The Philistines
Streetlamps for Spotlights
DJ Set by Bookhaus Boys
Castles

hosted by Sankofa

all proceeds go to the funding of the film

fortwaynerockdoc.com

$5

9PM (yes we mean it)

Beer special $1.00 cans of Pabst

About Harley Poe from Harley Poe:

Harley Poe loves you all in the most perverse way possible, so please love us too. Some of you may know that Harley Poe initially began as a side project of another well-established act and has since become the evil twin of that band. Forgive us. We enjoy the grotesque and monstrous, and we, as a band, celebrate those elements to the extreme. So, open your ears, squint your eyes, and lower your expectations. If you subscribe to the fantastic, if ketchup and pig intestines turn you on, if trashy movies get you wet, then you’ve found your heroes. Welcome to us.

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Saturday February 6th, 2010

Chainsmoking Records Presents:

The Two Man Gentlemen Band
End Times Spasm Band

Tom McSod

10pm

$6

poster by Anderson Design

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Hillgrass Bluebilly Presents:
.357 Stringband
Bob Wayne
10PM
$5

The .357 String Band has spent the last four years criss- crossing America and Europe in half broken down vans, playing in filthy rock and roll clubs and honky tonks, sleeping on floors and couches, or if neccessary underneath the stars.

Tightly written compositions and a surprising lyrical depth make The .357 String Band a force to be reckoned with.

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“The .357 String Band keep it raw, real and dirty, on and off the stage, and have only begun to show us what they have to offer.”
—Hank Williams III

“The .357 String Band give you the good kind of creeps…that oddly pleasent chill that comes whenever someone walks over your grave **shudder**”
— Col. JD Wilkes
Th’Legendary Shack*Shakers

“These boys come in with tattoos, piercings and long hair, and you think Grandpa’s gonna hate it. But guess what? Grandpa loves it, and so do I… The .357 String Band may have a punk rock style, but their musical heart is very traditional.”
—Rev. Peyton
Rev. Peyton and His Big Damn Band

“The .357 String Band are TRUE roots music. No revivalist bullshit, no “a-billy” crap. The real deal.”
—Jeff Clayton
ANTiSEEN

Bob Wayne is back in town with the .357 Stringband backing him up before doing their own set.

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Friday December 18th, 2009

About Dexter Romweber Duo
Dex Romweber is nothing less than an icon of the American music underground. The former frontman for the world famous psycho-surf-rockabilly-garage-punk combo Flat Duo Jets released his first of nine albums in 1990 to rave reviews worldwide. He starred alongside R.E.M. and The B-52s in the 1987 cult classic film “Athens, GA Inside Out”. His first national tour in 1990 was as opening act for The Cramps. He was showcased on MTV’s The Cutting Edge and 120 Minutes, starred in the Flat Duo Jets videos “Wild Wild Lover” and “Radioactive Man”, made a stunning performance on Late Night with David Letterman, and has shared the stage with dozens of other rock luminaries including Iggy Pop and the White Stripes.

The Dex Romweber Duo also features Dex’s celebrated sibling Sara Romweber (Mitch Easter, Lets Active, Snatches of Pink) on drums. Together they have been performing electrifying concerts all over the US and Europe, touring with Cat Power, Southern Culture On The Skids, Legendary Shack Shakers, Reverend Horton Heat, Neko Case and the White Stripes.

Dex is the subject of a new documentary movie, “Two-Headed Cow,” which chronicles his legendary career. The movie includes testimonials by Jack White, Neko Case, Cat Power and Exene Cervenka amongst others, all of whom cite Dex as a major personal influence.

The Dex Romweber Duo’s new CD “Ruins of Berlin” will be in stores February 10, 2009 on Bloodshot Records. The CD features guest appearences by Neko Case, Cat Power, Exene Cervenka and Rick Miller of Southern Culture on the Skids.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Saturday December 19th, 2009

with Erick Coleman’s band The Speed Knobs You should remember Erick from his other bands FAT ASS and THE BEAUTYS.

Also playing is Jinx & The Back Alley Cats
10PM
$4