Blastfest III is March 20th, 2010, 11AM-11PM, Cambridge YMCA theatre, 820 Massachusette Avenue, Central Square T stop, Red Line

CLICK HERE TO WATCH/HEAR/SEE THE ARTISTS OF BLASTFEST 3
Step right up, hear ye hear ye, All eyes on you!!!  The Whitehaus Family Record is gushingly pleased (and proud as pie to boot) to announce the annual Blastfest!!!  In our third annum, the lights will be brighter, the stages will be doubled,  the admission will be cheap, new friends will arrive, the tunes will send chills through your tired neck, spine, and soul.  We started with some folks just getting together to read poems and sing songs and open some doors.   Time has passed, you have evolved, we have eclipsed, and Blastfest has emerged as a realistic culture and a phenomena of entertainment, honesty, truth sharing, hugs, Americana, mind altering substrates, confetti, kisses, PB&J’s, culture shock, good times, homefeeling, hallowed walls and sacred halls, with a personal touch that just demands, just requires, just insists that you gotta come down and check it out.

Before I let you go let’s run down a few more points here.  In addition to the 22 or so bands we have lined up for the ol festival, The Whitehaus Family Record is super psyched to announce March 20th as the release date of our first ever vinyl mix tape, “The Whitehaus Family Record “Family Record”.  26 tracks.  The sound of the Whitehaus Family Record, according to March 20th 2010.  This is a document that expires the moment before it is enjoyed, and may even throw that switch that opens those doors that you mighta thought were walls that you mighta forgot at all…  ALL THE HITS! DEEP CUTS! LIMITED QUANTITIES!

The Zinesters.  So we got to thinking “Maybe it might be good to get some other folks involved in Blastfest to keep blowing the doors off the thoughts we usually think?”  Enter The Papercut Zine Library.  Dedicated to the proliferation and presentation and preservation of the zine.   Her ancestors include the broadside, the folio, and the pamphlet, but a zine is an idea that transforms communication beyond just the words on the page.  A zine can be loosely defined as an underground publication that is independently produced and self-published, typically photocopied. People make zines out if a desire to share stories, knowledge, thoughts, opinions, and experiences. Zines are made for love, not for profit.  Wow.  This is sick.  For one day only, The Papercut Zine Library has curated a killer collection of some of the best zinesters in New England to “table” their wares for the good of all mankind.  (focused especially on the folks who go to Blastfest 3, just sayin’).  Come for the zines, stay for the tunes.  Come for the tunes, stay for the zines.  Come for the zines and the tunes.  Sweet!

Other bonuses for attending…Comic jam on the wall…Free PB+J’z….Chance to be totally turned on…Tons of cool merch from all your favorite bands…Lenora is going to be there…What weird stage this time?…Participation is a musta busta!

The Performers

(Click the names to open a link in a new page with examples, you’ll love it!!! We promise)

Wolf Woolf

is the project of Kit Wallach, half of the angelic song crafters know to most as Gracious Calamity.  With a lyrical and poetic stage presence, tinkling ukulele, pipe organ voice, and a message of love and kindness, she is one of the sweetest chimes the Whitehaus has to offer.

JP’s

Woodrow Wilsons

(members of the hyper-prolific Whitehaus collective) are full of pleasant surprises. Their mix of horns, mandolins, and countrified harmony makes kicking the bucket sound like an absolute hoot.

Boston neo-psychedelic/indie rock trio

Apollo Sunshine

take conventional songs and filter them through a pop underground sound that’s reminiscent of Georgia’s Elephant 6 collective, Cheap Trick, andthe Flaming Lips. Comprised of vocalist/bassist/keyboardist Jesse Gallagher, guitarist/vocalist Sam Cohen, and drummer/percussionistJeremy Black, the group released its debut, Katonah, in 2003 on the Spin Art label, followed by an eponymous sophomore effort in 2005. Three years later, Apollo Sunshine returned with Shall Noise Upon, which was released on Headless Heroes.

Avi Jacob

is an old soul.  His songs fit square in the American tradition of the wobbly cry of Hank Williams, the holler of Leadbelly, the space of Van Morrison, and the time of Bob Dylan.  He is a man made to browse the New England shoreline, foraging for broken hearts and twisting heart-song melodies from them.  There is a true poet in our midst.  Avi Jacob & band(or whatever you wanna call it) are releasing their first album “Gone Mad” this month on the WFR. Recorded ELECTRIC! with Greg Sun on drums, Kate Lee on organ, and Debbie on bass, it’s an enigmatic set of original psychedelic tunes, ranging from gospel to rock&roll

“One of our sweetest, loudest songsters is

The Meadow-larks

…the plains air seems to give it a voice, and it will perch on the top of a bush or tree and sing for hours in rich, bubbling tones.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Despite what their name implies, these low-key rockers

Tulsa

hail from the East Coast, where they’ve caught the eyes and ears of the Boston music scene and several national media outlets, including Spin Magazine. Detailed guitar work, haunting vocals and lots of reverb set this pensive trio apart from the next up-and-coming band–that and the inherent polished nature of their rock songs.

Concord Ballet Orchestra Players

Primitive oscillations, repetitive guitar figures and tribal grooves hover over your head like some airplane out of control. The rumor says that there might be a full-length album in the pipeline on a well-established Swedish underground label and I just hope that they have the ability to spread the gospel about what these guys do, because they truly deserve some more attention

Ducks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as loons or divers, grebes, gallinules, and coots. The word duck (from Anglo-Saxon duce), meaning the bird, came from the verb “to duck” (from Anglo-Saxon supposed *ducan) meaning “to bend down low as if to get under something” or “to dive”, because of the way many species in the dabbling duck group feed by upending (compare Dutch duiken, German tauchen = “to dive”).

Duck That

were once seen in the same room as Paul Whiteman, although they’d deny it if asked. Angela Sawyer, electronics and game calls, etc… Josh Jefferson, reeds and game calls, etc… Steve Norton, reeds and game calls, etc…

The

French Cops

are just the sort of pop driven psychedelic country rock blues stomp bash brigade with a Southern accent and prog-chops hyphenated with an indie slant dubbed down to tape and unearthed from Angus Young’s Volvo remixed by Don Henley that you have been looking for all your life.  If you read Guitar World in 1996, you are gonna like this band.

Rene

is one of the sickest Jams going.  Dude slams on the samplerstraightspastic beats all the while killing it on the drums.  Killing it.  Crazy Jams.  Rap Jack Ill.

Featuring three young up-and-comers (Andrew Sadoway, Jen Dowty, and Ben Potrykus) who have played in celebrated local acts like Mean Creek, Mmoss, and Christians & Lions,

Girlfriends

represents years of its members honing their skills in basements and clubs in Boston, around the country, and beyond. The band’s already-been-chewed bubblegum pop rips through layers of analog overdrive and feedback, awash in reverb, as if the 50s and 60s rock they were weaned on is being filtered through the gritty indie-cum-punk they lived through in the 90s. At times reminiscent of early Weezer, Floor, or Mudhoney, but clearly drawing heavily from the nascent garage and freakbeat sounds of bands like the Kinks, the Zombies, and the Sonics, Girlfriends are definitely a band to watch in 2010.

Manners

is a project of Gregory Beson, who has created a constantly evolving piece of sonic, visual and conceptual art. At the forefront of the Yes Wave movement, Manners is a furnace on cosmic industry: which manufactures information of secrets of the universe to share with kindred spirits. The music is a reflection of jazz-folk stylings interloped with classical melodies, electrified momentum, and a touch of soul. The sound poses powerful emotional questions about the calm and the violence of our shared inner world. The Atmospheric performances from Beson seem to come from within you, and extend back to him as he plays. The intoxicating groove of the songs is an testament to the nature of a young man with the intent of supremely elevating the spirits of anyone with open ears. -Brian S. Ellis

my name is

Greg Mullen

I make music with a guitar and hands and a mouth. Sometimes those hands and mouth and guitar are joined by trumpets and drums and friends. My first record, “The Hungry Ocean” will be coming out on vinyl in the winter of 2010. It is the culmination of twenty-four years of looking at light.

Woo! Whip! Bam! Croooooow! Blaaaack hooooole, wooooon’t you foooollow me hooome? Sing-a-longs, head bobbing, feet tappin’, hand at the side subtly keeping beat, eyelid lowering, aural pleasure producing. Bump bump bumpin’. Making thesounds that keep the fire lit and roaring, the bowls from never cooking, and the smiles growing are

The Great Valley

just one more of the loving sounds to pour out out the Boston area……

Boy Without God

is the solo project of 23 year old Boston native Gabriel Birnbaum, a jazz saxophonist turned literary and spiritual pop songwriter. Mixing the folk tradition of Leonard Cohen with the experimentalism of Akron/Family and the fiery improvisation of musicians like Albert Ayler, Birnbaum creates music with intelligent lyrics and screaming catharses.

James Lindsey

is a dude who rips poems.  End of ztory.

Debbie & The Bullets

- – from these shores, maps, family, the atlantic ocean, a bike, soul power, the snow, righteous harmonies, hindsight, blindside, new england. He was talking, talking like, “i need to roll a philly right before i get loose.” poor excuse, i get loose off of a bottle orange juice. i can do anything. we can do everything.

Needy Visions

Bouyant singalong melodies about being down-at-the-heels in the shitburbs around Boston, played loose & with the sincere verve that you only get hanging around those shitburbs in the first place. Run by local booker Dan Shea, & the best possible addition to that distinguished line of New England songwriters that includes Jonathan Richman, Barry & the Remains. -Weirdo Records

Casey Rocheteau

takes no prisoners. She thinks about words, writes them down, and then says them out loud in front of audiences. It’s been working out pretty well. Fusing the personal and political, her goal is to make you think. She also makes beats, and beets.

Shai Erlichman

is on a mission to make music. IT’S AN AWESOME MISSION! He has one record available. It is called “Home Recordings 2007″ and features every song he recorded in 2007. You can listen to it for free. More recordings coming soon.

In channeling something called Bueno Pues (don’t know what the heck this is) by wearing it like a plastic talisman or a toy cellphone

Turtle Ambulance

come out with super bubbly High Places style shit and sure it’s covered in ‘free hugs’ vibes but it’s kinetic and vibrant, creating skewed toyish worlds and dreaming about Caetono Veloso or just beaches. They look like super cuddly beardy bros as well which fits right in with these jumbly tropics.

Ambitious Tugboat