First thing we did was google the radio show, and we were astounded to find very little information about it online. We found a Youtube video with gospel singers with the similar title and we both gulped, and wondered what we’d gotten ourselves signed up for. Turns out, Voices from the DMV is a very new local radio show produced by Antonio Villaronga. The show airs on WERA-LP 96.7 FM in Arlington, VA every Friday at noon. Each week, Antonio invites a new local artist to showcase their talent. The show is pre-recorded live in the Audio Production Suite at Arlington Independent Media, although some folks play pre-recorded music.

The Arlington Independent Media building is in Clarendon, right around the corner from Galaxy Hut and Iota Club. That means its geographically close to some neighborhoods with very good taste in music. Josh used to live a few blocks away from this building and jogged past it thousands of times (okay, okay, jogged by it a few times). Each time Josh ran by, he thought it was a place that sold tickets to music events for some reason. I guess the giant satellites on top of the building just weren’t enough of a clue, but it leads to a nifty fact: This building actually broadcasts on a local FM station. It’s the only local station that actually gets picked up at the FCC’s headquarters across the pond in DC. Noice.

We learned all this when we met our new best friend Antonio. We walked into the studio and found it to be remarkably posh. This place has state of the art recording equipment that’s available to rent at shockingly low prices to Arlington County residents. So if you’re local – look into it.

When it became time for us to use the studio, we all got to work. Antonio setup mics, stands, and other recording equipment that was needed. We got our instruments out of cases and into working order. First things first, Antonio asked us to do some self-interviews, where he’d ask us to describe our music, our influences, and the local music scene – and we’d ramble an answer his way. We’re not sure how, but we ended up talking to ourselves for like an hour, and thankfully Antonio chopped this down to a few minutes. After we got done talking – it was time to make some noise!

We came prepared to play 2 songs. Turns out… Dan had played like 6. So we were already behind. But whatever, we setup our video camera, pushed play and did a few takes. Antonio ended up mixing and mashing a few takes together via his workstation to get the best outcome. He was really cool about all of it and we had a great time playing. We’ll admit we were a little nervous at first, but Antonio cheered us on and we got into the swing of things. As we were all packing up, Antonio said that we could’ve played a few covers if we were worried about it being a short show… D’oh! Since we didn’t have a lot of original material to offer, we followed up afterwards with our home recorded track Sequestered Together to help make our set a little longer.

With everything packed up, we left the studio, and headed over to Galaxy Hut for some camaraderie. A few days later, Antonio got back in touch with us after doing a little bit of mixing, and voila! We had finished tracks. The results were astounding. The Voices From the DMV setup is amazing and the quality is just as good as professionally recorded live albums released by big name acts. Do yourself a favor and be prepared to feature the best originals from your catalog. Listen to our show below.

Once the show aired we asked if we could put the tracks on Soundcloud and YouTube. We took a still from the video and used it to create some simple album artwork. The album was called Live on WERA 96.7 FM. We hated not using Voices From the DMV in the album name, but we thought it was useful from a marketing standpoint to show that we had played live on the radio. In our Youtube videos we made sure to feature ‘Voices From the DMV’ loud and proud.

If you get the call to be on this radio show, we really recommend that everyone come ready to play LOTS of songs, bring a video camera to turn it into a Youtube video, and offer up some desserts to Antonio for his time. He’s a great guy doing a wonderful service for the local music community. He’s also got a huge sweet tooth. He informed us his favorite dessert is apple pie. Bring that too.

See below for us playing Spec, VA, which is hosted on our Youtube channel.

Here’s the Soundcloud album, and both tracks are downloadable!

JTT: Y’all wanna make some noise? Sehkraft Brewing. 2/23.
TCH: You know we always down.

Sehkraft is a new brewery in Arlington. And it’s lovely. When it was time to play, we had a friend drive us to the brewery. But honestly, we prolly coulda walked since it’s so close to KTL’s place, right off the orange line near Clarendon. (A helpful reminder for anyone looking to stalk Kenny.) Readers beware: Google Maps confusingly brings you to the side of the building, so you’ll have to walk ~500 ft to the other side of the entrance. There’s a reasonably priced parking deck attached to the brewery that we were able to use. But honestly, don’t drive to the brewery. And even more honestly, you shouldn’t be taking life lessons from us. Anyway, walking in, you get that feeling when you put on a new pair of jeans for the very first time. That smell of yeast you’ll find at any brewery is in the air, for sure, but there’s also the smell of dreams, hope, and permanently high BACs.

Now everyone knows about the 9 songwriter series, but just in case… it’s a cool idea: 9 different musicians, playing 3 songs a piece, and everyone interweaves their performances with each other. If 9 different musicians can each sell 25 tickets, then it’s much easier for everyone to play at a nice venue, since overall there’s a large number of tickets being sold. It’s good for the fans as well, since there’s typically a better sound system, sound mixing engineer, drink mixing engineer, and food. The line up for this particular evening was:

• Sal Rourke
• Brian Farrow
• CaSh & Earle
• Natalie York
• Rorie
• Justin Trawick
• Leigh Cramer
• Chase Willet

First off we had to setup. The instruments (and cases!) for 9 musicians all onstage at the same time can easily become a hassle, with people accidentally knocking down bass guitars and stepping on ukes, which inevitably leads to tears and bloodshed. But thankfully the stage was quite sizable. The only real issue was instrument cases, but eventually we figured it out by tucking ours around a conspicuous corner. Here’s JTT coordinating the pre-show below.

There’s always waaaay too much happening on these evenings to accurately note what really went down. We’ve tried to write some detailed We Are the 9 blogposts, but they get so big and unwieldy. Therefore, here’s some thoughts we jotted down:

• Sal went up first, and she was a great way to kick off the evening with 2 wonderful songs! She came by after her performance and we both chatted with her, and she had some wonderful stories.
• Brian Farrow went up next with a completely dope lookin’ guitar with electronics and wires hangin’ out the side of the instrument. We didn’t take a picture, but we thought we did, making us sad pandas. We were excited to hear him play, ’cause maybe we’d hear crazy homemade sounds, but his instrument malfunctioned. KTL helped him out and handed his instrument to Brian to keep it going. Brian’s cover later that evening was absolutely killer.
• We played with Natalie York again! We all shared the stage for the The 9’s Christmas Show at Iota Club. She’d done a version of Go Tell It On The Mountain that stuck with us. This evening she played a few originals and got everyone onstage with her, and it was easily the most successful performance of the evening See below

• Kenny was able to play boxdrum with Chase. This may or may not have been a good idea. Side-note: if you haven’t played boxdrum or any other percussion instrument you play with your hands… It really makes the blood rush to your hands in a way that doesn’t fix itself for an hour.. So.. be prepared for that.
• We played a couple of tunes with an absolutely wonderful violinist named Mariam. We were just like “it’s in Dm” and she was like “whatever I boss-it-up quite frequently.” And she did.
• We caught a couple views of CaSh & Earle from a different angle. They were fantastic as always.

That’s about all we had jotted down. Justin was giving away drink tickets, and we had some friends show up that were also looking to embrace the night, so we decided to ensure that the brewery was operating properly by trying their wares. Turns out – their alcohol switch hasn’t switched to the ON position yet. Since Sehkraft is less than a few months old, that makes sense. Fortunately, their alcohol list was more than just impressive, it was powerful. And it had strength. Oh my dayum. It took up all the space in your esophagus. We tried the Chai-Spiced Imperial Russian Stout. A lot. (I think the word “Try” doesn’t really apply here…) We’ll leave you to guess which half of the band loved it and which didn’t.

As for the venue itself, the stage was great. Their sound system was killer, and brand spanking new. Everything was mixed with great care by the house engineer, leading to a serious music listening evening. Musicians are gonna love this place once Sehkraft gets into the full swing of things. And already being a new venue, the evening had a full crowd in attendance. The experience was wonderful overall, and we’re excited to welcome Sehkraft to the Arlington / DMV area.

Toodles! (Kenny: Duuuude don’t say toodles)

Artist Info

Sal Rourke
Catch Sal at her facebook and homepage of www.salrourke.com.

Brian Farrow
Brian’s got a facebook and he can be seen singin’ on this Youtube video:

CaSh & Earle
They have a wonderful new webpage that everyone needs to check out at www.cashandearle.com! Hit up their facebook.

Natalie York
Natalie can be found at her homepage of www.natalieyork.com and her facebook.

Rorie
Rorie’s absolutely gorgeous website is roriemusic.com, but she’s got a facebook too!

Justin Trawick
Justin’s main page is justintrawick.com and he’s got a facebook page also. His podcast is A Circus Life, and his concert series is We Are the 9. All of which are worth checking out. Seriously. Stop reading. Go. Listen to his stuff. Go.

Leigh Cramer
Leigh can be found on facebook and Soundcloud only…at least that’s the only places we could find her. Check back for an update.

Chase Willet
Chase can be found on facebook and Reverb Nation.

There were more than a few bands showing up to compete that night:

• The Letter 6
• NOE
• The Capitol Heights
• Devin Clawson
• The Ballroom Crisis
• Existential
• Capital Offender
• Divine By Night
• Spit Dirty
• Fellowcraft

The battle actually took place in 2 distinct phases: preliminaries and finals. Winning prelims took you to the finals. Just like how we applied to the Band Battle, all the coordination between the venue and bands happened via email. Eventually, each band was allocated time to play about 3 songs (excluding stage setup). Now that’s a short time slot, but you can get a lot’ve work done in that timespan. The exact set times for each band didn’t seem to be decided until about a week before, which is pretty reasonable.

Day of the battle, we got to Vienna a little early hoping to grab some food at Pure Pasty. They sell what are essentially british empanadas, and some have curry in ’em! Unfortunately it was closed, nearly crushing our soul, our plans for dinner, and our collective self-worth. Not a good start to the evening. When we got to Jammin Java, there wasn’t quite enough room to place our equipment inside, even with the 10 bands arriving in a staggered fashion, so we had to leave our stuff out in the car until later that evening. Which was a little scary, since it was SUPER cold and our instruments are made of wood.

Jammin Java sells both food and drink so we opted to eat some nachos in lieu of “brittainadas” while we waited for the show to start. Good food mind you, but not Pure Pasty. While eating, Josh kept trying to chat and joke around with the judge before the show and get him to like us before we went on. It didn’t really work, so we had to rely on musicality and showmanship by everyone in attendance. But both of those qualities were had in spades that night. There were a lot of really good acts and we’ll touch on a few just due to time’s sake. The first band up was The Letter 6, seen below.

This band was a little hard rock, a little hardcore, channeling a sing-scream vibe with both male and female vocals, with the female vocals being mostly clean. Frankly, the interplay between the two vocalists really made the set. They had lots of energy and stage presence and definitely took us back to playing shows at The Warehouse in Kennesaw, GA.

The next band we’ll take about was just a good set of dudes called The Ballroom Crisis. Now I don’t know what happened at this alleged ballroom or why they need FEMA there ASAP, but we definitely enjoyed their set. They say that they’re an alternative rock band on their website, but we’re gonna have to mansplain them that they’re a little more toward the hard rock end of the spectrum. Here they are with a good crowd shot between songs.

By the time we got onstage we were a little bit nervous since it was apparent that we were the only band there with anything acoustic. But whatever – we were there to bring the noise. We played You and Me, Spec, VA, and All Things Go by Sufjan Stevens. Our set went pretty well, but in hindsight maybe we shouldn’t’ve played a cover song? Whatever, there was lots of energy and fun to be had. People seemed pretty receptive out there in the crowd. We legitimately thought we absolutely killed it. Here we are with a sweet pic taken by roXplosion.

Note: Photo credit roXplosion

So Devin Clawson is up next, but we have a confession! We didn’t see you play. WE ARE SORRY. We’ve checked out your Soundcloud and liked what we heard! We were busy trying to get in some extra practice for our stuff while you were on stage. We went out the back way to the smoker’s area to play, but the cold kept throwing our tuning off and we gave up. Besides, right before most performances, Josh tends to create inane fake emergencies on accident that Kenny has to solve, so there’s that. Anyway – although we were sad that we didn’t win, we are definitely / begrudgingly happy for you. You better beat everyone in finals so we can say we were beat by the champions!

We didn’t do our homework and check out the other bands first. Had we done that, we prolly would’ve seen that most of the bands range somewhere between the hard rock to metal spectrum, which may have mentally prepared us for this ordeal. But we’re not making excuses, whatever criteria Jammin used to accept bands to the show worked fairly well. None of the bands we played with that night were terrible. Every single one could make music and was comfortable with being onstage. That was great because we saw 9 bands in a single evening, and since we mostly hangout with the singer-songwriter crowd it was a nice change of pace to see real bands. And while we’re wrapping this thing up we feel the need to mention that we didn’t get the sense that this was a popularity contest, like some battle of the bands that we’ve played before. This definitely left us with some warm fuzzies about the whole situation.

Hrmmmm, what else do people need to know about this event and venue? The sound and mixing was wonderful even though we didn’t get a sound check beforehand. The parking situation was great, even with the combined effort of 10 bands bringing people. The house was nearly packed with a bustling crowd, which was a testament to the bands playing that we all could get a great crowd together on a weekday so close to New Years. And that’s about it! If anyone’s got any questions feel free to drop them below.

Artist Info

The Letter 6
The Letter 6 can be found on their reverb nation page and facebook. It seems as if they’re looking for a vocalist, so if you’re thinking about picking up that mic… get in contact with them!

The Ballroom Crisis
They have a facebook page and their twitter handle is @theballrmcrisis.

Devin Clawson
facebook page and bandcamp. An excerpt from his Soundcloud is below.

roXplosion
We definitely gotta thank roXplosion for the great pictures that evening! RoXplosion took superb pics of every band there! They are @roXplosion, they gots a facebook page, and finally the good ol’ homepage: www.roxplosion.com. Here’s the link to the amazing album of pics they took that night.

The Treehouse lounge is a music venue right off the H St. corridor, a few blocks away from the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel. Standing two stories tall, but only the second story is in use. The first floor is a slightly scary abyss that you can walk back into and meet those creepy feelings you get at night time after watching Insidious 3. The top level is a screaming rock ‘n’ roll venue where all types of bands and other musical acts come together to shake this giant tree’s trunk. There’s no food served here, only drinks, but it’s definitely not a food free zone. You can bring in anything that you want (hint hint Dangerously Delicious Pies).

We’ve played here before for Josh’s birthday back in August. And the owners decided to have us back, which is pretty sweet. Due to Josh’s birthday festivities and other “goings-on”, we couldn’t get all the necessary information to write a solid post about the venue, so here we are.

When we arrived this time, Pop Rox was in full swing. They are like a nine piece band (fact checking…fact checking…they actually have 8 members!) with a full drum kit, bass and electric guitars, multiple singers, and even a violin! They were booked for a full two hour set and they made great use of it. Pop Rox played mostly covers from a wonderful and varied catalogue. We heard everything from 70’s disco to Britney Spears, and their instrumentation allowed them to excel at each genre. They had a really large draw, and people were dancing almost the entire time to their set. Among other things, we were peanut butter and jealous about their giant banner with their name on it. I guess our version of their banner is our box drum, but we really loved this banner as their solution to displaying their name during sets. And get this – it was their debut show!

We played next for a slightly reduced set. Josh’s mandolin, which has constantly been giving us problems, decided not to output a signal at all. So the mandolin had to be mic’d with a vocal mic for the whole set, which was obviously less than optimal. Also, we had both got to the venue early, and we had kind of been shouting at each other for the last hour waiting for our spot to play. This blew out our voices. I know, I know – rookie mistake. We ended up playing mostly covers and some were quite a hit! Here’s a pic someone from the audience sent out way. It only includes 50% of the band, arguably the best 50%, but some of the Pop Rox folks got in the frame making it… overall more musical of a shot. (:

The Glass Pics played after us and were the final band of this musical evening. These guys hailed from Baltimore, played an exciting set of all originals, and two out of the three guys in the band were brothers. On top of all of that, they were kind, yet dapper gents, that were dope as fuck. We argued about their genre for about 10 minutes, first thinking pop rock, then mid-2000s indie rock. We eventually settled on them being similar in genre to The Cold War Kids (whatever genre that is). They had keys, electric attire, and a kit all reporting for duty. We intend to see if we can strong arm The Glass Picks into getting us a gig in Baltimore. We figure playing a folk show on the set of The Wire would be OG. Here they are in mid-psychedelic swoon:

The Glass Picks have been out there in the musical world, playing some big and serious shows. Their rock and roll stories were quite entertaining! They finished the evening by having the father of the 2 brothers come onstage with a bass and jam for a little while. They closed with a solo piano piece that was a wonderful nightcap.

The Treehouse Lounge is a solid music venue. If bands want to play at this spot, all they need to do is use the contact form or the email provided on their website. If you can bring out a crowd, they’ll happily pay you for your time.

Artist Info

Pop Rox DC
Pop Rox can be found at their facebook and Google+ profile.

The Glass Pics
They’ve got a facebook, twitter, and a Soundcloud. See below for the embed.

lib-er-tine.
1.) A free thinker, especially in religious matters.
2.) A person who is unrestrained by convention or morality.

We’re such libertines…except Kenny.

About 2 months ago, we played The Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan thanks to an invite from Len & J (now LATO). That show went well, but Josh forgot his glasses onstage. When going back off-hours to retrieve them, The Capitol Heights met the fabled owners of The Black Squirrel (Amy and Tom) in person. Turns out, they are nice folks, and they also own the Libertine. A few emails later we were put in contact with a gent named Anders who helps book music for a few venues in Admo, including The Black Squirrel and Libertine. Anders said we should take over booking for the Libertine for Adams Morgan Day 2015 and Len & J would take The Black Squirrel. Sounds like a plan and that’s what we did.

Basically this turned into a “best of” show for The Capitol Heights – featuring those who we’ve played with over the past year or so. We had a few of the folks we scheduled end up over on The Black Squirrel’s side, due to scheduling conflicts, and Len & J had the same thing happen at the Libertine. But we’re glad we hosted this event because we met some new folks and got exposed to new tunes. And we tried our hand at organization! Turns out organizing is harder than we thought but we didn’t mess things up too bad.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s tell the story. How did we get to the show? After we booked all the bands, Anders did a magnificent job of promoting the show with a killer website, graphics, and great social media engagement. Seriously – we can’t express enough of well of a job he did (and as a direct result we have more than 100 followers on Twitter now!) We’ve played the Libertine once before, and we knew they had a brand new PA. So the day of, we didn’t have to bring that much gear outside of our own equipment.

This day was particularly hairy because it was the day Kenny’s car battery decided to die. After frantically deciding what to do to fix it (thanks wives!), Kenny hopped in the proverbial Uber and made his way to meet Josh. Speaking of Uber – I feel like we should get a loyalty discount or something. I digress – We arrived in Admo to what can only be called utter and complete madness. Adams Morgan was packed! People everywhere, no parking, and no room on the sidewalks to drag equipment into the venue. Like that handshake your grandpa tried to teach you, we gently, but firmly, fought our way into the Libertine.

Once there, Anders had already set up everything. Good man! We reveled in our ability to chat with him in person versus using email, and one of the coolest things we found is that Anders actually designed the interior of the Libertine. Very. Cool. Eventually, we had to trek on over to The Black Squirrel to loot their store of cables and mics for some of the larger acts that we had scheduled for the day. But other than that no real equipment issues. We kicked off the show at 2 PM to a fairly packed house. We played for an hour and loved every second of it.

Our friend Colleen whom we met at Sauf Haus a while back was scheduled to play immediately after us. She brought her Ukelele and sang songs that escaped the bar area and drew in others from outside. She played Scare Away the Dark by Passenger, which is an AMAZING but not well known song. Josh had just heard it the week before and it was in that indefatigable phase of constantly playing in his head. (Josh recently read that word in Huxley’s A Brave New World and he really wanted to use it.) As usual, Colleen did a bang-up job made it rain at the Libertine.

You may remember Jeff Farias, who guest starred in our USO show and St. Elmos’s Cafe open mic. He’s like 6 foot forever tall, has a big presence, and plays music like a very determined and methodical madman. Well he’s got a wife. And she’s just as estimable. In fact, we’ve been trying to play a show with the both of ’em for some time, and lo and behold this was that day! We got them onstage to play some of their songs and it was such a treat. We were jealous of their giant songbook containing all originals, and they effortlessly pulled things from their back catalog for an hour. Tammy sang, and Jeff played his guitar and tried his resonator abit. It was worth the wait. They sounded wonderful and brought a sizable crowed. Maybe we’ll get them to abandon southern Maryland and join up with the DC music scene. We could use ’em. See below!

Our friend Jahnel, who’s been going on tours, blogging, and generally thundering around the east coast music scene came out to play mid-day. And for the first time ever, we saw her full band! She’s been playing off and on with a bassist named Pierce, who we hung out with and found to be a generally nice dude. Jahnel also had Chris Compton ripping the guitar for her. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pictures of all of them in their glory. And oh that they were glorious. Sadly, we had a cancellation following their performance. We asked Chris to sit in, and it was amazing. We’ve played with him any number of times, but that day, Chris had it what it is. His voice was crisp, fingers agile, and the crowd loved ’em! It was a fortuitous turn of events for all involved. Chris sang his favorite covers, and we’re loving some of his original country/folk songs like Sweet By and By and Highway Girl. See Chris go. Go Chris Go you music-playin’ hound.

Next up is Nardo Lilly. We had no idea who this was, since it was a Len & J pick. But when she showed up… we were like OOOOOOOHHHH it’s CUMBERBATCH! Why do we say that? She has an absolutely delightful song about Benedict Cumberbatch that was obviously memorable enough that we recognized her from an Iota Club open mic over a year ago. Now Nardo Lilly’s music is difficult to describe. Because she’s basically a lyrical genius. She’s basically like Steve Jobs writing a keynote speech, with every word having an appreciable impact that’s often delightfully funny – sometimes self-deprecatingly so. When we listened to her bandcamp, we were absolutely aghast that she has many of her great songs recorded (listen to hot Hot Park Ranger), Benedict Cumberbatch is not available! Ah, why is the world so cruel?! ** Edit ** – She’s informed us that it is available on iTunes and on Spotify! Here she is making the magic happen.

The cap in the evening was Cassie Urbany. When I hear the name Cassie, I think of the Animorphs character who turns into a wolf, like everyone else does I’m sure. Now I’m going to be thinking of a woman showing up STOKED about the Eagles in her war jersey ready to serve up a massive dose of country-rock-folk that’s a little bit dark, but a little uplifing at the same time. We ended the evening listening to her musical stories and sweet voice in the outside seating area of Libertine, and it was a great way to just have nighttime wash over us. Her music was a great soundtrack to our very tired bodies after hosting this event for over 8 hours. When Cassie’s last sonorous note concluded, we knew something important had come to a close, and we were excited to talk to her about her great music. Here she is before the curtain went down.

So that’s about it. We were hosting the event all day! There were a number of acts we didn’t hit in this post and we’re sorry to everyone we missed. It was a long day full of some wonderful music. Amy and Tom, owners of the establishment, were great to the musicians, offering free drinks and a cornucopia of food available in the back. Anders was wonderful in helping to get this whole event off the ground. The Liberine & Black Squirrel staff put up with us for an entire day, which mind you, is a tribulation in and of itself. Adams Morgan Day – we’ll see you next year!

Artist Info

Colleen McCracken
Since Colleen’s just gettin’ started, she ain’t got too much of a web presence, but you can check her out here.

Tammy Patrick Band
Tammy’s website is nice and easy: tammypatrick.com and a single is embedded below. Check it out!

Jahnel and her Band
Jahnel’s been mentioned here before but we’ll repeat her info because it’s super important! She’s got her music consultancy company Bearhawk Artist Management, a twitter account, and her facebook page!

Chris Compton
Chris Compton can be found on his reverb nation page and his newly designed homepage: chriscompton.org.

Nardo Lilly
You can find this woman’s facebook and bandcamp readily available. See below for an embed.

Cassie Urbany
Cassie’s main page is cassieurbanymusic.com, she also has a bandcamp and facebook page.

Here’s her album, make sure to take a look!

For those who aren’t privy to the location and layout of the Rock and Roll Hotel, we’ll start by engorging you with knowledge. The Rock and Roll hotel is located on the newly revitalized area on H street (between about 6^th and 14^th). More specifically 1353 H St Ne. The venue is located on the street level and if you go there specifically for a concert, you may not realize that there are two whole floors of food and beverage right above you! We’ve been on H street many-o-time and didn’t realize there was a bar on top of the venue so it seems important enough to share. Oh, and DANGEROUSLY DELICIOUS PIES IS RIGHT NEXT DOOR.

When we arrived to load-in our equipment, we were kindly given some drank tickets and pointed to our “room”. That’s right. We are so posh we can’t even be expected to buy our own drinks, so we get free alcohol and our own room. Well, not really our own room… We had to share it with 9 other poeple.. Geez.. Get your OWN ROOMS ALREADY! We tried to call “shotgun” and nobody listened. Anyways – they call it our “room”, but it’s actually one of three VIP sections located in the hotel you can rent out for parties, boxed socials, or other what nots. Maybe they are called rooms because, well you know, since it’s a “hotel” and all. All joking aside, the hospitality for the artists was superb and we received a generous discount on the delicious food!

After we got settled in, got some refreshments in our bellies (chicken and waffles like a boss), it was time for our sound check. When you do a sound check before a show, you know you’ve stumbled upon a different echelon of venue and the sound system and mixing at the Rock and Roll hotel was superb. Gypsy Sally’s was a close second, but this time we had such great vibes pumping out of their performance audio system. Justin had all of the performers take names out of a hat, and we drew 4th, which was a decent time to go on. Then the doors opened, Justin introduced the artists, and as gingerly scrolled past our name like… a LOT of people hooted, hollered, shouted, and made mouth noises. It was thrilling. That mark was meant to be exclamatory!

In the red room is where we first met Jason Ager, who we’d seen playing tuba alongside Justin Trawick for other We Are the 9 shows. Turns out, this guy isn’t just a brass player, he’s got mad sweet guitar touchin’ fingers, a jazzy voice, and sports a fedora that he actually pulls off, which ends up pissin’ everyone else off. (Josh: Let me wear a fedora onstage!! Kenny: NO!) Josh worked with Jason a bit to play a song or two on trumpet. Jason ended up giving the audience a choice in the matter, and they (unknowingly!) selected the song Josh hadn’t practiced with Jason, so the musical tryst didn’t pass. Either way, the crowd loved Jason and he seemed to send that love right back.

Carolyn played immediately after us and because we had to sit our equipment down we didn’t get to hear her for her first set. Once we got back in front of the stage all of out friends told us that she was phenomenal. Like, best voice up there. Therefore, we had to wait after our second set was finished before we actually got to hear her. We were glad we waited because her americana blended well with her clear voice and earnest sound. And after we heard her, we had to agree with all of her friends. Here she is wrapping up her second set.

Eli Staples may have been up next (we’ve lost track of performance order). He’s a serious contender for most valuable keyboard player and put on a hell of a set. I always hate saying who other artists sound like, but since we’re bad people we’re going to do just that right now. Hrmm..Eli’s voice was a mixture between Billy Joel and been Ben Folds? That’s not just because they all play piano! (Maybe it is? I dunno). The combination of Eli’s voice and keyboard took the crowd hostage. We love this pic of him!

Oh Justin, how little we know you and how much do you think that we want to mess with you? Maybe write ridiculous things about you that will stand the test of time on our blog? The answer is a lot. But after much debate we decided not to and figured we would be boring and just say nice things about you. But we are curious what you’re hiding under that hat it’s always on your head. And like is anyone else seen his monkey hands? We don’t know how he uses them to play such beautiful music (do you see what we did there?) Seriously though, we’ve seen Justin play about 6 or 7 times and he doesn’t get old and he doesn’t falter. At this point we were kind of hoping he would have a off night just to prove to everyone that he’s human, but he did what he always does, play like a warrior. Every. Damn. Day. Here he is wrapping up with Carolyn.

So how did the Capitol Heights’ set go? In my notes about the evening we just wrote “remember holding up the mandolin in the air like Highlander“. That’s how freaking well it went. We had a really “on” night. We had been playing a lot lately and the show rounded out a series of multiple shows for us. What you probably don’t know? Is that before most of these We Are The 9 shows, is that there’s “coordination emails”. We decided to use these to find out if anyone wanted to play on the song Chicago with us. We got Avi to play with us and he brought his melodica. We had never seen one of these in person before but not but in the next two weeks after the show we saw 3 of them. Avi played well and everything went peachy. And that ain’t just because we’re from Georgia. Avi also asked us to play on one of his songs which was truly great. Josh just faked it on mando, but Kenny got into it and was able to learn the whole thing beforehand. Goddamnit Avi stop being so good! Here’s a pic of The Capitol Heights, Avi on melodica, Justin beating on his trusty cajon, and Zia shakin’ it like polaroid picture.

Let’s talk about Karl and his copilot Steve for our last paragraph. We shared the stage with Karl and the Light Duty Hammers at Gypsy Sally’s, but we didn’t get any pics and we felt bad. So this time we made sure caught Karl in the middle of the act. The first time they went on stage, we were backstage practicing, and we heard someone playing and thought to ourselves “sonovabitch…are we onstage? … but like a better version of us?” We hurried downstairs only to find Karl and Steve(?) making sweet, sweet love to the crowd via their music. They were equipped with both guitar and banjo, and were harmonizing with each other beautifully, with their pitch as true as that time you were not “supposed” to shoot your little brother in the head with that paintball gun, but you aimed right for his pair of goggles anyway. We actually ended up spending a lot of time with Karl after the set, chit-chatting about this and that and he gave us some sagacious advice (that’s too good to share), and we just ended up thinking he was genuinely a cool dude. We ended up booking him for the Indie Adams Morgan 2015 show. Karl mentioned us during his set because we said something stupidly funny – that nobody could remember…

For our last We Are the 9 show, there was so much going on behind the scenes in the back room. But at this show, all the artists stayed out with the crowd, intermingled, and generally listened to each other which we think is a much better way of doing it but admittedly is a tad less fun. After all was said and done we went and got pie at DANGEROUSLY DELICIOUS PIES and we met Eli Staples there! There were enough of our friends there that we filled the whole restaurant. I love that thought, because it kinda means we had a peice of every single type of pie at the store that night. Which is what true dreams are made of.

Artist Info

We know, we know, we didn’t talk about everyone above. That’s mostly a function of us only featuring people that we have decent pictures of. We’re sorry to Zia and Rachel for leaving y’all out.

Jason Ager
You can find Jason on his facebook and main website: www.jasonager.com

Avi Wisnia
Avi can be found at www.aviwisnia.com. He actually JUST released a brand new song that everyone needs to go listen to. It’s called Sky Blue Sky and can be found on his bandcamp. See the embed below.

Zia Hassan
Zia can be found at www.ziahassan.com. Two 3 letter first names in a row? You don’t see that often.

Eli Staples
Eli’s main page is www.elistaples.com. 3?!

Rachel Levitin
Here’s Rachel’s facebook and her main page is www.rachellevitin.com

Karl Straub and the Light Duty Hammers
The best place to find Karl is on his stupid goddamn music site. His words, not ours. Eh, a little ours.

Carolyn Crysdale
Carolyn has a bandcamp and facebook.

Justin Trawick
Justin’s main page is justintrawick.com. His podcast is A Circus Life, and his concert series is We Are the 9. All of which are worth checking out. Seriously. Stop reading. Go. Listen to his stuff. Go.

This open mic is every Tuesday at 8:00 PM. Signup starts at ~7:30 and that’s where we’ve had issues before. You see, this wasn’t the first time we tried to do this open mic. The first time we tried to play this place, we arrived at ~7:30, and the list was already full. And they allow the signup list to just keep growing! Had we stayed, we would’ve gone on around midnight, so that time we just left and played at Ireland’s Four Courts, which runs a competing open mic at the same time. Unfortunately people sometimes put down their names, leave, and then come back much later, which is very frustrating.

With all that in mind, this time we arrived early – at 6 PM just like it says on their website. And nobody was there! A barren wasteland. Well, except for this badass dude chilling out front named Batist. He welcomed us with open arms and said he was filling in for the normal host. He also told us that it’s happy hour all night for performing musicians, which was wonderful. We made sure everyone around us participated. While participating, we practiced in the side room until it was sign-up time, and we put our name down 5th, which meant we went on around 9. Everybody got to play 3 songs, which is actually really nice, and more than most open mics in the area. That was not the case with our first time here where they were talking about 1 song a piece. It truly was two totally different experiences.

Enough preamble, what about music? There was lots of that. There were singer songwriters everywhere playing folk, country, and coffeehouse rock. We heard songs dedicated to dead friends, plenty of songs about singers’ home states (e.g., Indiana, Georgia), and a cornucopia of home-grown originals. To top it all off, there’s a bottle holder built into the music stands onstage. How classy is that? The night was kicked off by the host of the open mic. He limited his set to a single song to give the rest of the artists extra time to play. He made his gesture more awesome by dedicating a song to the late bassist from YES! who recently passed away. We tip our hat to the host! What a gentleman. May Mr. Chris Squire rest in peace.

The next person we’ll talk about is Audra, better known as Gracious Me. We met her at the bar, and we told her we were a Brittany Spears cover band. She didn’t believe us, so we busted out an a capella version of Hit Me Baby One More Time by Brittany Spears that frankly, as unrehearsed as it was, sounded phenomenal. We’re not quite sure how she took that, but we ended up talking about our Open Mic Challenge, and SHE SAID SHE’S DOING THE SAME THING!

Ok, she might not be doing the exact same thing, but it’s quite close. She’s got a huge list of open mics and she’s hitting them back to back to back in quick succession. It’s impressive, and requires lots of chutzpah because that kind of schedule can be exhausting. We’ve had a week or two like that and it definitely wears on you if you’ve got a full time job (which she does). She’s given us her list of DC area open mics and we’re considering the addition of many of them to our list, but many of her open mics violate our rules by being outside the beltway. But what about her music? It’s folk country and she sang with a very practiced and beautiful voice – and she has stage presence. We couldn’t find any recordings of her online, but we’re very excited to update this line with a link to her future recordings because they will most assuredly be worth the wait.

As for our set – we had a damn good time. We played You and Me, and Spec, VA – both of which went fairly well. We didn’t bring our box drum, so we were just guitar, mando, and cornet since it’s much less gear to bring. The only real issue was that the music stand we setup was pretty low, so Josh couldn’t read the sheet music for his cornet solos. Whatever, lesson learned. He just improvised a bit and all was well. Here we are sharing an awkward glance:

Now let’s take a moment to talk about Josh’s neighbor Chris. While Josh was walking his glorious new puppies the afternoon of the open mic, Chris was also letting out his hounds. Both Josh, Chris, and the dogs chatted, and Chris decided to come on out to The Vinyl Lounge to play the open mic with Josh. Josh said he would sign Chris up…but he had a drink or two and forgot to do so. In recompense, The Capitol Heights volunteered one of their song slots to Chis. And Chris fuckin’ brought the noise. He only played one song, but it was probably the only reggae/rap inspired song of the whole evening, bringing some serious style. He played Molly by BLove, and everyone definitely took notice.

With that, we’ll wind down this post. We’d say that this open mic is a contender for the best in the DC area. The sound system is solid, performers are talented and respectful, it’s professionally run, and there’s lots of spots to practice and store your equipment. The age range and music stylings are similar to that of Iota Club. We’re not quite sure if The Vinyl Lounge > Iota Club, but many people attending the open mic that evening said that it was. We’ve a lot more experience playing Iota and we know everyone there, so we’ll have to head back to The Vinyl Lounge from time to time to get that same bond with the venue. The last thing we wanted to share with you is that there’s a hidden bathroom at the Vinyl Lounge. It’s in the back, and it’s never busy. If you gotta loose it, use it.

Edit: We said the wrong person died and we fixed it. Thanks to Chris Mendelis for reading and pointing out the error!

Arist Info

We can’t find Batist on the internet, so help us! What’s the digital equivalent of a milk carton?

Gracious Me
This wonderful woman can principally be found on her facebook page.

Chris Seikaly
In stalking Chris’ digital life, we’ve seen that he’s been involved in a number of musical projects. Here’s his current project – ABANDONTHESKIES – and make sure to take a listen and check him out on facebook and twitter.

This open mic occurs every Tuesday at 7:30, and is hosted by none other than Gary Ehlers. We met Gary a while back at Outta the Way Cafe, and we all chatted a few more times and viola! We got a Featured Artist spot at Branded ’72. It’s less that we’re good salesmen, and more that Gary’s just a nice dude. But we’ll take what we can get, so we put this show on the books and headed out to Rockville. Has anyone else noticed that Rockville has a suspiciously large amount of open mics?

You might notice from the image above that it was a stormy evening, so we hauled ass into the venue carrying our instruments like the man-beasts we are. The inside of the restaurant is divided into two sections, one with a bar/stage area, the other with lots of booths for chowing down. We got there at around 7 and started putting our instruments and other equipment all the way in the back of the restaurant on the stage side. This place isn’t your average open mic, because there’s a drumset already on stage and everyone seems to be welcome to get up and jam. And that’s precisely what went down all night long! A lot of the night was improvisation from a couple of different folks – which kind of reminded us of DC’s Flashband phenomenon.

After some super small technical difficulties with the PA, Gary and crew kicked off the event with Gary on drums. We heard lots of classic rock favorites from them, and a few other songs we had to google to figure out, which is always good for expanding one’s music vocabulary. The venue’s sound was great and filled the space nicely, and the band was well balanced. They had a pretty tight sound and we LOVED the guitar solos and harmonies. Here is an up-close-and-personal pic of them in action:

Gary and company played for about 30 minutes before it was time for something else, which ended up being a real treat! Two younger dudes – one on guitar and one on bass – who were playing their first show ever on Branded ’72’s stage. Jacob and Ryan Seigal are students of the guitar player who just played with Gary (Samuel Biskin), and they got up and made a musical memory. They played a few covers, with our favorite being a hard-rock version of Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones. Dudes, we might steal this version from you. It was that good. What was badass is that a) they sounded great, and b) they remembered all the words to the song. It’s a hard song lyrically and the Rolling Stones wrote those B7 chords happening at odd times in the song (see the second verse) so we were impressed. Here they are in action:

After a few more songs from that duo, it was our turn. As you can see in some of the other pictures, there’s a lot of equipment onstage, which made it hard to find a spot for the boxdrum. We were unable to sit next to each other to share our music stand. This caused some difficulties in some of the covers we attempted. We played an original song or two, which went well, and then thought we’d have people in the audience try songswecanplay.com again. It worked well and people requested a bunch of songs and I think we ended up playing Hey Ya by Outkast and Under the Bridge by RHCP.

What kind of performance would it be without a broke string? We recently broke one at our showcase at Iota and then a while back at Republic. So of course it had to happen again! But this happened towards the end of the show, and Kenny thought he’d play a song or two with only 5 strings and it didn’t go that bad. In the end, we got some nice compliments and everyone said we were very physically attractive – or at least that we sounded fairly nice.

After our set, Gary jumped back on stage alongside a different cast of characters for another round of rock and blues. It was great watching them work, reacting to each other and listening even when not all of them knew the song they were playing. Very cool. The night ended with a singer songwriter, which is proof that this place is friendly to the more typical open mic crowd. But the best part of the evening’s end was Kenny jumping onstage to sing Last Dance With Mary Jane by Tom Petty. Here’s a pic:

One lesson was learned that night. No matter how well you know a song – it can go poorly when drinks are involved. So.. Take that into account next time you hit karaoke =].

Apparently, Branded ’72 has to comply with a noise ordinance, so the party shuts down around 11:00 PM, therefore you gotta get your kicks in before then, which is pretty reasonable all things considered. Some DC venues require the music to shut down at ~10 PM, so this isn’t that strange. All in all, if an open mic is what you need – Branded ’72’s got it. Especially if you’re a drummer because it’s not often that a drumset is provided for all to use! Open mics for drummers are hard to find, and the fact that the set is available onstage is absolutely badass.

Artist Info

There was lots of jamming and improv from various people, and there wasn’t a specific group we could easily latch onto here. At the very least we thought we’d call out Gary!

Gary Ehlers
An international man of mystery, Gary can be found on his facebook and you definitely want to follow him if you’re interested in music performance in the DC and Maryland areas. He’s also recently started up a new band called 3 Song Sadie!

Jacob Seigal & Ryan Seigal
We don’t have any links for these guys, but we LOVE what they did that night and wish them the best moving forward.

Gameday came and we hustled to Bossa for the doors to open at 7:00. We were supposed to go on at 7:30, but by showtime, very few people had shown up. With only 10 or so people in attendance, Alex decided to postpone by 30 minutes. Then we – the glorious and amazing Capitol Heights – figured we’d bestow a mighty gift upon those nice enough to show up. We bought vodka shots for everyone! It made everyone a little bit more loosey-goosey and the small group of us started to get to know one another. We didn’t want any Sharks & Jets situations going down between The Capitol Heights and Catscan! – and we narrowly avoided a murderous knife fight filled with copious amounts of well-timed finger snapping. We got rhythm, yo.

The second floor of Bossa is where this evening went down, and there’s actually 3 stages in total at this club. The PA for the evening was for vocals and backing tracks only. Or so we were told. Alex didn’t mind us using our DI box to plug-in our mando because he’s such a kind gent (and the mando is small and hard to hear, anyway). Since we mostly play acoustic nowadays, no sound issues for us, but Catscan! brought amps, and it sort of reminded us of our early days playing at small venues in Gerogia, except we were surrounded by DC class. Don’t take this as a bad thing – it made for a unique and intimate vibe where the crowd got really close to the performers. It’s not something we’ve really seen in the city yet.

Come 8:00 PM, we hopped on stage and did our thing. We actually sounded REALLY good this night – shit was just clicking – and we brought up our special guest – Jo Palmer! Jo is a longtime friend who jumped on stage at our recent show at the Black Squirrel so we’d figure we’d make her a Capitol Heights Deputy, alongside our friends Jahnel, Will, Jeff, and Chris. It’s a good gig if you can get it and we definitely improved her life drastically that evening. Jo sang Ho Hey, Jumper, Flagpole Sitta, and Chicago with us. It was a great time and she sounded great, exuding stage presence all over the place. We had to shower afterward. Once everything was over, we posed for some pics with Catscan! Here are two from the evening:

Catscan! took the stage shortly thereafter, and they were a wonderful act. There were definitely some similarities with how Catscan! and The Capitol Heights conduct ourselves onstage…so much so that it was a little odd. They played lots of geek and video game inspired music and our favorite was their song “Homework Sucks by Catscan!“. They used an iPhone to provide a backing track through the PA, which mixed with their electric guitars quite well. Since we live in folky-open-mic-singer-songwriter-land, electric guitars + amps + overdrive was a serious treat. About halfway through their set they took of their shirts for reasons known only to them. They also gave out ring pops like goddamn rock stars.

Bossa was a great time and we actually got paid! The kicker of the evening was on the way out Catscan! knocked over a vase, shattering it into a million pieces with the expensive looking flowers going everywhere. It was awesome. After saying goodbye and laughing hard at their misfortune, we waited outside for our ride. Getting bored, we busted out the mando and started singing Sublime on 18th. Some girl off the street stopped and said we were awesome and gave us her Mellow Mushroom leftovers (Best. Tip. Ever.). Naturally this inspired the idea of The Capitol Heights and many concert goers finishing up the evening at Mellow Mushroom.

Arist Info

Jo Palmer
Jo Palmer is a jack of all trades…master of healthcare policy. When she’s not living out her Hollywood songstress dreams on stage, in the shower, or in the car during traffic, she and her husband blog about drinking in Washington. Check it out, please at www.barredindc.com and follow @barredindc.

Catscan!
Catscan! has a solid website with a facebook and a twitter handle of @catscanboys. Get ready for their Soundcloud!

Pilot Waves
Pilot Wave’s main page is www.pilotwaves.com and their twitter handle is @PilotWaves with a facebook as well. Episodes of their podcast are available in normal podcast locations like Pilot Waves on iTunes, but here’s their Soundcloud.

When we arrived, it was already gettin’ busy, and Rob greeted us by means of facehug – it was awesome. Immediately after the facehug, Jonathan Coulton’s RE: Your Brains song came on inside the restaurant and we knew we were finally at home. Surveying the location, there were board games as far as the eye could see. Naturally we attempted to play Scrabble using words that would do our mother’s shame, while we waited for our excellent food. While we waited, more and more people arrived, filling up the cafe. We ended up talking to the owner Brian, good chap ‘e is, who said the whole place was built and modeled with live music in mind, which assuredly shows from the layout and acoustics. BTW – this is a facehug:

Rob and crew went first and ilyAIMY flew like it always does – like a flock of geese all hopped up on meth goin’ south for the winter. I mean, how else can we describe their energy? But right in the middle of their first song Rob broke a string and I shit you not he plucked a hair from his head and replaced the string mid-song. Ok. That’s a lie. But he recovered well and got right back into it. They even thad those hand-clacker-things which really made their set distinctive. Speaking of distinctive, watch Rob’s guitar playing – those fingers just move. Yeah he’s got a great voice (Josh kinda thinks he sounds a little like himself), and they write serious songs, but those guitar chops… Watch him slap his guitar and strike the strings with his fingers covered in tape. We’ll drop a YouTube video here where you can watch for yourself!

There were a LOT of acts that followed. We are unable to write about them all. Why? Truthfully….well, because we were busy playing Scrabble. One of our favorite other acts was an a capella version of Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. Another was a gent in a Star Trek shirt that played a single 10 minute electronic song with one of those DJ button pads. There’s definitely some diversity in music here with even country being represented!

But one of our favorites for the evening was Nathan Tennyson, who played a coupl’a different tunes, all with a Maryland-flag laden guitar! Def deeelish. He could solo like mad and his fingers have the tone you can only dream of. He played To Be Alone by Hozier, which was absolutely wonderful! He sang the song down a few steps, which is crazy, because the song already starts out pretty low. People with low voices don’t get enough credit and this guy stole the show in that regard. Nathan played with the practiced fingers of a musician who loves his craft. He was seriously solo-ing like mad – recognize, son!

Here’s where we’ll take a moment to provide a little bit o’ backstory. Rob had told us that some folks from University of Maryland would be streaming this event and posting it to YouTube. Because of this, the use of profanity is severely discouraged. Rob had told us this information weeks before at our We Are the 9 show, but we had forgot! And then he reminded us in email also. Why is this important? A few reasons. We noticed that Rob was providing these really funny intros for each performer. We thought we’d be funny and ask him to read a hilarious, yet profanity-laden intro off the back of a napkin. We didn’t understand why he was changing some words, so we happily screamed the profanity for him to go for the assist (sports reference!). Then we played “What I Got” by Sublime, which has LOTS of…”adult themes”. By this time we remembered his very reasonable request, but it’s hard to censure over half the song so we just made up words. People seemed to laugh a bit.

In regards to our next song, a few days before this show, we decided we’d play Round Here by The Counting Crows. Kenny already knew it, so Josh just had to learn to play 3 different notes on the mandolin and we were set. Listen to the song – you’ll understand. We got off a bit, ever so slightly, but we don’t think anyone noticed. A point of order here is that the mando doesn’t seem to stay in tune that well when we’re playing higher up on the fretboard. But the song went great and people seemed more than genuinely impressed – Kenny sang the hell out of it. So why don’t we have any video of it? Well, our notes for the evening just say “camera explosion” because right near the beginning of our set the camera Rob had setup fell over and slammed into the ground causing a raucous calamity. Was it a conspiracy against us for cussing and ruining his event? YOU DECIDE. If it was… we deserved it and we’re really sorry Rob. : (

The next act we’ll cover here is Zach Parkman and company. Zach had a full band playing along with him, and Juels from The Republic was playing with ’em! Definitely cool to begin to see some of the same faces. We don’t think this was a “featured spot” for Board and Brew, but this band capped off the evening with a strong showing. Their original songs were great and reminded us of “sad and yet hipster as f*ck” country music. They probably gave the best performance of the evening, sounding just as majestic as lions look.

To summarize – this was a great open mic! It’s so good that you’re lucky if you get to go. It was well organized, on time, had great performers and a nice number of people of generally younger folks in attendance.

Artist Info

ilyAIMY
Rob runs a bunch of open mics that can be viewed on USTREAM. We really want to give these guys the full Capitol Heights’ treatment, so we’re placing their information here again even though we’ve written them up before. This dynamic trio is available at www.ilyaimy.com. Frankly that’s all you need, but they’ve got a facebook, YouTube, and on twitter with the handle @ilyaimy! In thanks, every should go visit the open mics that he graciously runs!

Nathan Tennyson
We contacted Nathan and he doesn’t seem to have anything to advertise. But he’s so damn good that he needs to share himself to the world. Therefore, we’re probably going to harass him until he puts up a music page or issues a restraining order against us. Our edict has been issued, Nathan.

Zach Parkman and Company
Zach has a facebook page and his twitter handle is @zachparkman. The music from his Reverb Nation page is below!

Juels Bland
Juels’ music can be found at his bandcamp page or via his Soundcloud, embedded below for your listening pleasure.