Antifolk Night In The Cobblestone

johanson

Import Promotions Presents

AntiFolk
Monday 25th November
The Cobblestone
Smithfield
Dublin 7
Tel: (01) 8721799
Doors 8pm
Adm: € 10




Six of the main players from New York's Antifolk scene have joined together for a tour of Europe/UK/Ireland. The tour will feature Jeffrey Lewis, Kimya Dawson (of The Moldy Peaches), Toby Goodshank (who also plays with The Moldy Peaches), Dufus and Major Matt Mason USA .

Seventeen years, half a dozen different venues and a man named Lach (the acknowledged forefather of the scene) have combined in the formation of this unique musical community. Now based at two different venues, The Sidewalk Bar and The Raven, both in Manhattan's Lower East Side , the Antifolk scene has already been responsible over the years for spawning the likes of Beck, The Moldy Peaches, Hamell On Trial and Jeffrey Lewis.


KIMYA DAWSON

The problem with almost every contemporary female vocalist is that they're always pretending to be something that they're not. Sometimes it's a highly feminine sophisticated sexual, love-lost artist's with their heart on their sleeves. Always pretending that they actually feel something or maybe sing about a great love they never had. The Moldy Peaches co-founder and goddaughter of Antifolk, Kimya Dawson, succeeds by simply being true to her self. There is no empty space between her visions. There is no filler in her songs.

Kimya succeeds by being tender and vulnerable, silly and raw. She shows you what she feels and makes you want to feel it too. She shows you what she loves and makes you love it. She is the quintessential bohemian artist. She is what almost every smoky nightclub jazz chanteuse wishes she could be -- authentic. Kimya is the artist-poet skateboard girl. And, most importantly, she is a very delicate human sensing device. She is the only real human on a planet full of androids. What makes her and her music so unique and amazing is her undiluted humanity, comparable only with Richard Prior in the way she uses humor and sorrow combined as a personal healing device.

She was raised in her parents home day care center in Bedford Hills, New York, listening to
Sesame Street, Muppets and Raffi albums. Her parents encouraged her to go out and get dirty. They gave her a stack of 8-tracks in a shoebox. She loved Woody Guthrie, Buffy Saint- Marie, and Paul Simon. She studied theater with Antonio Fargis (Car Wash, Starsky and Hutch) and started collecting soundtracks of Broadway musicals. Self conscious about her voice and never quite fitting in, she sat alone in her bedroom singing songs from Annie, Cats, Oliver and The Wiz.

In 1991 she moved to Olympia, Washington. Olympia's indie music scene shocked and intrigued Kimya, who had never known any musicians other than the ones on the radio, in the school band or whose records her parents had. Her collection grew to include records by The Rickets, Unwound, Built to Spill, Love as Laughter, Modest Mouse, Heavens to Betsy and Tattletale. She still felt out of place. She got a typewriter and became an unstoppable writer. In 1994 she and Adam Green started creating and recording songs together as The Moldy Peaches. It wasn't until the band's first hiatus, in 99, back in New York, that she was given a guitar and started writing songs by herself.

Kimya has shared bills with the likes of Daniel Johnston and The Butchies. Recorded with Ben
Kweller on his album SHA SHA. She appeals to the young and the old, folkies and punks, and
everyone in between. She sits in a chair and hides behind her acoustic guitar but the way she grabs your heart is scary and unprecedented.



JEFFREY LEWIS

Raised on the Lower East Side, Jeffrey Lewis is primarily a brilliant comic book artist (check out his cover for The Moldy Peaches debut album or one of many comic books that Lewis sells at his shows) who discovered music at high school, firstly Syd Barrett, then the revelatory Daniel Johnston. Subsequent influences such as The Fugs, Skip Spence and Woody Guthrie led to his immersion in the thriving local Anti-Folk scene.

Released on Rough Trade Records in 2002, "Back When I Was 4’" is the recent single from comic book illustrator turned anti-folk troubadour Jeffrey Lewis. "Back When I was 4" is yet another surreal, observational gem to add to Lewis's back catalogue, recalling his semi-fictional life story from the age of 4 to 128. For the uninitiated, think the genial myth making of Kurt Vonnegut fused with the battered acoustics of early Donovan and your maybe halfway there. "Back When I Was 4" also comes backed with the beautiful, threadbare vignette 3/4 Moon’ and Lewis's idiosyncratic live take on label-mates The Strokes "The Modern Age". Lewis's debut album, "The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane And Other Favourites" was released last year to a critical fanfare and his legendary shows to promote it around the same time caused the NME to compare him to a new young Dylan.

Lewis has just come off tour with huge fans Cornershop. Expect a new album late on in the year.

"With his no-fi acoustic virtuosity dripping with Beat-scuffed reflection and wrapped in the deadpan drawl of vintage Lou Reed, Jeffrey Lewis is the electricity barrelling through New York's nervous system".

Uncut Magazine



TOBY GOODSHANK


Toby Goodshank is the jive-talkin' rootin'-tootin' intergalactic soccer-playin' heart-throb and post-technotronic gladiator/custodian who's ready to set your whole sense of perception ablaze with rag-tag high-flyin' mumbo-jumbo and his rustic sack full o' greasy schemes. Boo-Ya!


DUFAS

Dufus was made in hope, burning hope towards the death of monotony; destruction of the bondage restricting the limbs of humanity from genuine freedom. The sounds have been described as experimental, confusing, lopsided, clumsy, and newly original/refreshing to the dulled ear.

Dufus is a musician/artist collective based on a core group and rotating guest performer roster. Within the core exist 5 members (guitars, sampler, bass, drums, male and female vocalists). The outer level is composed of about 40 people who are members of one or more of these three groups: Fun Wearing Underwear, the Dorkestra and the Doofamily. These people are involved in a number of ways, some are dancers, choral singers, horns, orchstral instruments, visual artists (electro and organic). We have recently added information specialists who collect data concerning any number of subjects and disperse it in one way or another (projections and info packets) through the audience in an attempt to open channels of thought.

Each performance takes on a life of its own keeping its form nonetheless because the core group remains stable. There is a good deal of improvisation but also well orchestrated planned ideas and great songs of newness.

DORKESTRA
Sometimes Dufus will play with a number of orchestral instruments including violin, viola, cello, bass, clarinet, saxaphone, tuba, piano, flute, oboe, bassoon, percussion, etc.

DOOFAMILY
The Doofamily is made up of previous members of the band and others who are at times invited to be a part of the shows.

FUN WEARING UNDERWEAR (Seth's musical theater experiment) Fun Wearing Underwear is an abstrakt projekt in deleriousness and tom quackery where there's a wooden seed planted to a peach flavored pickle and a whole bunch of people acting real stupid just cuz it's fun to do.



MAJOR MATT MASON

Major Matt Mason U.S.A. is from Kansas. Draw your own conclusions. He spent his formative
years studying creative writing and shredding his electric guitar in various post-punk, math-rock, noise combos (see Dracomagnet and Magic Nose) that serviced the rather dynamic underground in the small college town of Lawrence.

After moving to New York for a girl who dumped him the first weeks he got here, Major Matt sold his amp for falafel money and began composing on a thirty dollar acoustic guitar that thankfully would not stay in tune. Recording on a cheap boom box, he found the acoustics in his Lower East Side closet ideal for creating a sort of intimate sound which would perfectly suit his newly inspired urban-folk songs, as well as his finances. With guitar in hand and hay still in his hair, Major Matt hit the streets.

Four years, two seven-inches, countless solo-acoustic-subway-dock & smoky-bar-gigs later, as well as an appearance on the Live at The Fort: Sidewalk Cafe compilation CD, Major Matt released his first full length, nationally distributed, solo album entitled "Me Me Me"on Olive Juice Music in conjunction with Fortified Records. And is now available in Europe on Shoeshine Records, owned and operated by Teenage Fan Club drummer Francis Macdonald!

"Me Me Me" is ...slowly carving out a hole for musicians and music appreciators, who are inspired by the energy of punk and indie forms, while also moved by the simplicity and profundity of great American folk artists.

passthesalt

Why has nobody freakin' replied to this thing??!!!
This is a freakin' amazing line-up!!!

Jeez, this thing deserves a little attention from the grapevine. Get talking. News of this gig should be spreadin' like syphilis.Speaking o' which i best get going or ill be late for my appointment at the clinic.

beretta

this is gonna be a truly great show. expect me there with all the trimmin's. whatever that means.

and passthesalt... i think you mean "spliffilous" not syphilis, if memory serves me. do the words "glastonbury" and "gimme that spliff ye baxtard" ring a bell? wheeee.... see you at the gig!

megameaty

I love you both very much. And I just took the best piss ever in a bush. And Anti-folk is the way of the future. Its a good day for big potatoes