We’ve been trying to get Ellen Cook (AKA Ellen the Felon) to come do a session for a while and as you can see she finally relented to our requests. She’s one of the newer musicians that’s been making waves in St. Louis in the last year.
It took us awhile to finally decide to shoot this session on the lovely roof of City Museum with Mattronome‘s drum kit set up at the bottom of the giant slide there.
Here Ellen performs two songs, ‘Where the Heart is’ and ‘Oh Timmothy’ and you can keep up with her via her website here.
You might recognize the Paper Dolls keyboardist here as Jenn Malzone from our session with Tight Pants Syndrome. Well this is her other band, one of two other bands actually. So she keeps busy. She told me about the Paper Dolls at the TPS session so when we got a chance we booked this one too. They play three songs here ‘Sparks’, ‘I Was Too Obvious’ and ‘Trash & Suicide’ and you can listen and buy their album ‘Sparks’ here.
Some nice folks from Nebraska came through town last weekend, they’re traveling cross country making these videos of local bands. The videos are similar to the videos I’ve been making for my Lo-Fi Sessions project and their project is part of an effort to promote Nebraska music via a website called Hear Nebraska. This video was produced by Lovedrunk Studios. My son Travis can be seen at the beginning of this video performing duties with a clapboard. .Cassie Morgan can be found here.
Our intern Trent Hover went out and produced this piece on the anual celebration of record stores in St. Louis. We’re blessed for a city of our size to still have as many options as we do for buying vinyl or any kind of physical media. We visited Euclid Records, Vintage Vinyl and Apop Records for this piece but there are even more options than those in the St. Louis area. And remember you don’t have to wait forRecord Store Dayto go and check out your local record store. Music for this video: Stellar Day by the Phonocaptors.
Here is one of our favorite local acts trying out some new material at the Firebird last month. The Blind Eyes are due to have a new album out in June so we look forward to that. This video was entirely produced by our intern Trent Hover. We think he did a nice job. Let him know what you think of his work in the comments!
So a few months ago we got an email from a young musician named André with a link to some videos that he had posted on Youtube. Normally we ignore unsolicited contacts like this but there was something about this guys video that really made us take a second look–he had great energy and enthusiasm if not some musical chops. So we sent him a message to see if he was interested in doing a session for Lo-Fi Saint Louis.
After a bit of back and forth for a few months working out some scheduling bugs we finally got together on a really nice warm evening at City Museum. We were mistakenly under the impression that this was a solo act but André brought a four piece band with him–a project he calls Dear Genre. Since the weather was so nice we made our way up to the very top of the roof near the giant praying mantis sculpture.
This really is a first for us, bringing a relatively unknown and very new band in for a session, and that’s not a bad thing. We love to discover new talent when we can–which is not something that’s so easily done believe it or not. And if André keeps up his work ethic and enthusiasm he should have a bright career ahead of him. Dear Genre on Facebook and on MySpace.
I caught this act at Stag Night last month at El Leñador on Cherokee St. I didn’t know anything about this band before this performance. It’s just random luck that I was able to capture this performance by two members of what is normally a four piece group. Loved them I hope they make it back to St. Louis. They’re from San Francisco and they just happened to be passing through on their way to the True False Film Festival in Columbia Missouri. Sour Mash Hug Band on MySpace.
For this session we returned to the Architecture Hall at City Museum with the power pop collective known as Tight Pants Syndromewho have been on my short list for a while for a session. And finally after several scheduling snafu’s we finally got it together to shoot this session.
If you are familiar with Tight Pants Syndrome you know that they make wonderfully slick poppy rock-n-roll that’s not quite sweet enough to fall into the bubble gum category but really fun and lively none the less. Their music has been featured in the soundtrack of A. (Anonymous) by Daniel Bowers and they have garnered several awards and accolades over the year for their delivery of tight pop hooks.
This was one of the quickest sessions we have shot yet, the band set up and started cranking out song after song we mostly had to just pick a moment and start recording. They perform acoustic versions of three original songs in this video: Calling Panther Lake, Your Buzz is Safe with Me Tonight, and Telephone. If you like these tracks be sure to check out their most recent release Fully Active (itunes link) or one of their earlier releases. Also thanks to our intern Trent Hover for doing the booking on this session.
Kid Congo Powers has been doing this rock’n'roll thing for quite some time. He started out as the president of The Ramones Fan Club and eventually formed a band that was to become The Gun Club. That led to a stint as guitarist for The Cramps. The Pink Monkey Birds is his latest project and they’re touring like crazy. This is their second stop in St. Louis in the last year (the first being an impromptu show at CBGB’s last spring). This show at Off Broadway was a blast, we hope we captured a little of the fun on video for you.
About four years ago we had a chance to interview the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Since then you probably have heard them on NPR’s Fresh Air, or from one of their return visits to St. Louis in the last four years. I was able to see them at B.B.’s Jazz Blues and Soupsin mid 2007 which was only a about a year after they first met each other at theFirst Annual Black Banjo Festival. They’ve since gone on to make a nice career for themselves and to win a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album this year. So I gotta say that this is a first in the history of this site, that we were one of the first to cover an act that has gone on to win a Grammy. So in honor of this we thought we would reprise the Carolina Chocolate Drops interview we did way back when in a slightly new format, and that is as a single episode instead of the episodic two parter we did originally and has always been available in the site archives since it was first published (I don’t know what we were thinking with two part thing to be honest). It’s about thirteen minutes long and it includes performances and interviews with CCD. Be sure to catch Rhiannon Giddens performance of Another Man Done Gone somewhere in the middle of this video … it’s just stunning.
One program note: Rhiannon was present in the interview but she was off camera nursing a cold and a sore throat so that’s why you only see Justin Robinsonand Dom Flemmons in the interview. portion.
We’re a little late getting this one up. But it’s our favorite Philly band Mondo Topless performing at the Beat ‘N Soul fest from last fall. Great show, great band, good times ‘nuf said.
Our good friends at Mad Art Gallery(our favorite art gallery in an 1930′s art deco Police Station) threw a huge party to celebrate 10 Years of being in business (see the video we made about the place a couple of years ago here). And because hosting wedding receptions have played a large part in keeping them in business they decided to throw a wedding themed party. Guests were encouraged to dress in their favorite wedding attire. It was certainly one of the best wedding bashes we’ve ever attended! Here’s to at least another 10 years! (we have video of this party coming soon too–stay tuned)
If you didn’t already know about the Fleshtones you are in for a treat. This band was founded in the mid 1970′s by Keith Streng who was later joined by current member Peter Zaremba. The Fleshtones came up in the legendary NYC punk scene of that era. Unlike many of their contemporaries like the Cramps or the Ramones they never really acheived broad notoriety. But they have cultivated a loyal underground following none the less.
This performance at the Beat ‘n Soul fest at Off Broadway marked their first show in St. Louis in over 20 years.
I wasn’t expecting the Brothers Lazaroff to play jazz infused rock on this session, I thought they would play more of the alt country flavored stuff you’d hear on their MySpace page. They pushed some boundaries with their amps and electric bass, but it all came together and sounded fantastic gathered around the vintage Wulitzer Pipe Organ at City Museum.
These are songs you can hear on the Brothers Lazaroff’s new self released CD Give ‘Em What They Need. Which is available both online and in stores around town. Or you can come to their CD release party at Lola this Friday and buy a copy directly from the band themselves.
Here are some photos from the night two of the Beat’n'Soul fest at Off Broadway last night. Unfortunately we weren’t able to attend night one. Videos to come within the next week or so …
Here are some photos we took at the big Halloween Show at Off Broadway last night with The Monads, Strawfootand Kentucky Knife Fight. This also happened to be The Monads very last show. The place was packed, fun was had, costumes were worn. This was a blast!
Enjoy the photos below this video I slapped together:
Theodore is a band that I’ve been wanting to get for a session for a long time now. I had them in mind since the first batch I put together a couple of years ago. For some reason it never worked out.
This one was recorded later than most of the other sessions. We met at the museum around nine pm and we didn’t leave until after midnight. And in case you can’t tell, this video was recorded in City Museum’s Enchanted Caves. The first time we’ve shot there since theIrene Allen session.
Theodore is definately a ‘Lo-Fi’ band in the most literal sense. They rolled in with a bunch of toy instruments and some circuit bent gadgets. I’m not even sure they got to play them all. I’m not sure how much they even plan which instruments they’re going to play. I got the feeling from the short time we were together that they kind of thrive on playing right at the edge of chaos.
This video is long, over 15 minutes. I hope you can stay and watch the whole thing. I think it’s worth it. They play three songs here, Butcherbird and a combo of Daisies Never Tell/Death’s Head.
Also we have been getting a lot of questions about the sound on these sessions. For that all credit goes to Matt Giant for the great job he does on the sound. This particular video is exceptional in that regard.
When we met Sleepy Kitty at City Museum last week we were surprised to find out that they had already sort of choreographed their Lo-Fi Session performance the day before when they scouted out the museum for locations. The choreography eventually required some modification due to the way we record audio but they’re still the first band that actually planned how they would perform their session.
Sleepy Kitty is a transplanted band from Chicago, whose members Paige Brubeck and Evan Sult, now make their home on Cherokee Street. They aren’t just a band but also a screen printing shop and design firm. In the short two years they’ve been here they’ve won the hearts of and have been fully welcomed into the St. Louis music scene. The Riverfont Times awarded them Best New Band this year, and they’ve recently signed to local label Euclid Records for their first release.
They performed two songs for us; Dykula and NYC really has it all. We didn’t ask, but we suspect that these are new compositions and a preview of their future release.
Below is a little clip of the behind the scenes live stream:
LO-FI SAINT LOUIS is an Internet video program and blog, produced and created by Bill Streeter featuring live music and features about interesting people places and things in the St. Louis area. The story of how this got started and who is behind it is probably not all that interesting but if you're really curious you can read more about it here. You can get LO-FI SAINT LOUIS in you favorite video player including iTunes (click to subscribe) and Miro. Our RSS feeds are here.
We’ve been trying to get Ellen Cook (AKA Ellen the Felon) to come do a session for a while and as you can see she finally relented to our requests. She’s one of the newer musicians that’s been making waves in St. Louis in the last year.
