This week brings the opening of the first annual WNY Refugee Film Festival (WNYRFF), a new series sponsored by Journey’s End Refugee Services, Buffalo’s only social services agency devoted solely to refugee resettlement. Runnign thourgh June 2019, the series will feature nine films focusing on the diversity of refugees’ life experiences in the U.S. and around the world.
[INDIE] It’s the dawn of another autumn in Buffalo. For some of us, these first wafts of sweater weather awaken the slumbering dog of deepest feeling, breathing inspiration and new life into our warm blood. We are the harvest celebrators; the red, brown, and golden souls whose eternal spring is the narrow passage between sunlit mania and the aching malaise of brutal hibernation.
[BLUEGRASS] From the edge of Yellowstone National Park comes bluegrass quartet, Kitchen Dwellers. The Bozeman, Montana-based folk band delivers a brand of funky, psychedelic bluegrass music they call “Galaxy Grass” and they’re is touring in support of their second record, Ghost in the Bottle, which features Mihali Savoulidis of Twiddle and more. Light up some of your own Galaxy Grass and head over to Buffalo Iron Works for this one on Thursday, September 13.
[TRIBUTE] Maryland-based funk band, Litz, returns to Buffalo for a special tribute to Daft Punk this weekend. The four-piece funk band will deliver one set of Daft Punk covers and one set of originals at Neitzsche’s this Friday, September 14. They’ll be joined by indie rock band Ponder.
[TRIBUTE] This Prince show is different than any other Prince tribute you’ll find on the market today. First of all, it happens with a full orchestra and second, the promoters like to tout that it’s the only “estate approved symphonic presentation of Prince’s music.” The show is also “curated” by drummer, artist, and avid prince fan, Questlove, which means that he picks out what the symphony orchestra plays, from the biggest hits to the deepest cuts.
[INDIE] A former member of the alt-country collective, The Guthries, Canadian indie singer-songwriter Matt Mays struck a chord with critics and listeners alike when his album Coyote took home the Juno Award for Rock Album of the Year in 2014. On Saturday, September 15, he’ll perform at the Leopard Lounge in Town Ballroom to support his latest, last year’s Once Upon a Hell of a Time, an album that chronicles an intense breakup, the death of a colleague, and several years of hard living.
[ROCK] First they were in American Bang, then they became The Cadillac Black, now they’re known as The Cadillac Three. This southern rock trio makes gritty-enough tunes that straddle the lines between modern country and the music of their Allman elders, complete with a dedicated steel guitar player. And there’s definitely something to be said for clever songwriting: lead vocalist Jaren Johnston is a talented lyricist, and Keith Urban, Tim McGraw and Jake Owen have all recorded tunes he penned over the years.
[PUNK] Given their 1995 “hit,” “Disconnected,” which broke through to some mainstream airplay thanks to being included on the soundtracks for Tank Girl and National Lampoon’s Senior Trip, Face to Face are often thought of as being early purveyors of punk-pop. But really, that’s not fair.
[JAZZ] As a longtime member of Elton John’s touring band, it seems an odd coincidence that guitarist John Jorgenson would be playing a Buffalo gig in the wake of his former employer, but Jorgenson comes to town on a different sort of errand, playing “gypsy jazz” with his quintet.
[POP] “Maybe you’ll get a replacement/There’s plenty like me to be found,” Elton John sings on the title track to one of his most celebrated works, 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. He couldn’t possibly have known how ironic it’d seem some 45 years later as he begins a farewell tour that comes to Buffalo on Saturday, September 15. The fact is that John remains a singular entity among fellow singer-songwriters, and there is no replacing him.
[POP] In case you’re wondering, SYML is pronounced kind of how you think it would be—like “simmel.” And “Simmel,” means “simple” in welsh, so unlike its intuitive pronunciation, it’s not an acronym, as it appears to be.
[FILM] Famed actor John Cusack is revisiting his cult classic comedy/drama, Say Anything, in a series of tour dates which will bring him to the UB Center for the Arts on Friday, September 14. A screening of the 1989 romance comedy will be followed by a live conversation regarding the 52-year-old actor’s career and the film that launched it.
[ROCK] In an interview last year with The Public, Charlie Starr, vocalist and guitarist of rock band Blackberry Smoke, talked about the band’s approach to making new music.
[METAL] Sludge metal band EYEHATEGOD are now a four-piece. The New Orleans-based band, who has been making dark, metallic, punk-inspired music since the early 1990s, announced this summer that long time guitarist Brian Patton was leaving the group. Rather than replace Patton, the band has chosen to move forward as a four-piece rather than a five-piece.
Mark Wilson (a.k.a. Marquil) is an editorial cartoonist, illustrator and writer, observing New York State politics and culture from his home and studio in New York’s beautiful Adirondack Park. Have a look at his work: empirewire.com.
The Brett Kavanaugh Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding his nomination by Donald Trump for the Supreme Court were on many of our television sets this past week.
Today we are pleased to present a first-hand account of what it was like to be at the hearings, to be a protester, and to get arrested there -from local Buffalo activist Heather Connor.
First, Here are some background links to the events surrounding the hearings the first week in September, 2018
You know the minute you step into the huge Robert Indiana show at the Albright-Knox—from the first items you encounter—you’re in for a voyage. American epic voyage even. American odyssey. The first items you encounter are in explicit reference to the great American epic novel, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Sculptural works made of mast segments of sailing ships not unlike the Pequod, the vessel Ismael, the narrator, and his bosom companion Queequeg, sign onto as crew for a whaling expedition.