By Denny Dyroff, Entertainment Editor, The Times
The world of rock music will always open its doors to welcome to a new, straight-up, hard-rocking, kickass band that can play at a really high level.
That statement is the cue for Budderside to make its entrance and to move to center stage.
Budderside — Patrick Stone, vocals; Colin Reid, guitar; Michael “Stoneman” Stone, bass; Rich Sacco, drums – plays powerful rock with a variety of influences and plays it with enough swagger and intensity to overwhelm listeners.
The Los Angeles-based band released its self-titled album last year via Motörhead Music and has been touring with L.A. Guns almost non-stop since. The tour brings them to the area for a show on February 24 at Reverb (1402 North Ninth Street, Reading, 610-743-3069, www.reverbconcerts.com).
“This has been a nine-month tour with those guys,” said Patrick Stone, during a phone interview Wednesday afternoon from a tour stop in Asheville, North Carolina. “This is the fourth leg. We finish with them on March 2. Then, we go home for a few days before we’re off to the U.K. for our own tour.”
Budderside formed and grew in an area ruled by debauchery – the drug-filled streets of late night Hollywood where anything goes where life is not sacred but no-one is scared – a realm of addiction and Hollywood’s underground.
“We met on the streets of Hollywood,” said Stone. “Stoneman was from New Hampshire, Rich from Buffalo, Colin from Vancouver and me from northern California.
“We started playing together and there was definite chemistry. Everything we’ve done, we’ve written together as Budderside. In addition to this band, we’ve all done other projects on our own.”
Stone has managed to survive – against the odds.
“I was heavy into drugs – you name it, I had it in my backpack,” said Stone. “At one point, everybody thought I was going to die – and so did I. It’s really a miracle that I survived.
“Then, about two-and-a-half years ago, a few things happened – like my father having a heart attack – and I decided to get sober.
“It was also about two-and-a-half years ago that I decided to stop singing other people’s music. I had always been in other people’s bands. I wanted a band of my own.”
That’s when Budderside was born.
The band’s first big break came when Lemmy Kilmister signed the band to Motörhead Music.
Then, Budderside went into Rosewood Strat Studio with producer Paul Inder Kilmister (son of Lemmy, Motörhead’s sadly-departed icon). After that, the hard-hitting band from L.A. toured Europe and played the prestigious Wacken Open Air (an annual metal music festival near Hamburg, Germany).
“Budderside was actually formed two-and-a-half years ago when we went in the studio with Paul,” said Stone. “At first, we met up with Lemmy and Phil (Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell). I’ve always looked up to Lemmy as a model.
“We started dabbling in the studio. Within a year, we were committed to doing the album with Paul. Right off the bat, good things started happening. We went to Europe and played Wacken. Then, the album dropped on September 23.”
Budderside is ready to keep taking it to higher levels.
“If you want new high energy rock ‘n’ roll, we’re what you need,” said Stone. “We’ve survived hell to live a life to die for, and we’re just getting started. We’re about ready to go in and record the second album. Most of all, we’re just going to keep kicking ass.”
Video link for Budderside — https://youtu.be/yp-dWq9Oazk.
The show at Reverb, which also features Timebomb, Red Halo, Ozmium 76 and headliner L.A. Guns, will start at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20.
The Oh Hellos
If you’re in the mood for softer music, you can head east instead of west – head into Philadelphia to catch a show by the Oh Hellos at Union Transfer (1026 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, 215-232-2100, www.utphilly.com).
Acclaimed brother-sister duo The Oh Hellos – Maggie and Tyler Heath — will be performing songs off their new EP, “Eurus” in the show at Union Transfer. They will also be focusing on songs from their recent EP, “Notos.”
“‘Notos’ was released on December 8, 2017,” said Tyler Heath, during a phone interview Wednesday from a tour stop in Washington, D.C. “Then, ‘Eurus’ was just released on February 9. The other two are in progress.”
“Notos” was the first EP in a series of four that will be released in the coming months. Each EP is named after one of the four Greek mythological wind deities that bring the seasons. Throughout the series, there’s an overarching question being asked – “Where did my ideas come from?”.
With each EP in the series and the “wind” it represents, Tyler and Maggie Heath are exploring the stages of answering that question.
“In this era of Netflix and binge watching, we wanted to try someth8ing with an episodic basis,” said Tyler. “We had ideas and music parts that fit well together. It was too much for an album and we didn’t want to make a double album. So, we decided to do four EPs and tie them to these gods from Greek mythology.”
Most of “Notos” is about the siblings reflecting on a time when they weren’t even aware there was a question to ask.
Musically, they wanted to recreate the feeling of the summers spent exploring the Pacific Northwest with their grandparents when they were kids as well as their experience growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast and dealing with the frequent threats of evacuations from hurricanes Because Notos is the wind that brought violent summer storms, they felt it was a good thematic parallel to the backfire effect you experience when you’re confronted with new information for the first time.
“We thought – how can we do a project inspired by the four seasons without doing what everybody else had done?,” said Maggie. “We dug into mythology. Our songwriting had already been aligned with folklore and mythology. For this project, we spent a lot of time researching mythology.”
Notos was the god of the south wind, one of the four directional Anemoi (Wind-Gods). He was the wet, storm-bringing wind of late summer and early autumn. The “Notos” EP came out in December.
Eurus was the god of the east wind, also one of the four directional Anemoi. He was associated with the season of autumn. The “Eurus” EP came out in February.
“The process of writing and recording didn’t match with the season,” said Tyler. “That wasn’t something that rewally concerned us.”
The Oh Hellos began in a cluttered bedroom, where siblings Maggie and Tyler Heath (born and raised in southern Texas) recorded their self-titled EP in 2011. In the fall of 2012, the duo released their debut full-length record Through the Deep, Dark Valley, an album full of regret and redemption, which they wrote, recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered themselves.
When the time came in early 2013 to bring the music to the stage, the Heaths reached out to friends both new and old and gathered together an ensemble of touring musicians the size of a circus.
“We still have a big touring band,” said Maggie. “There are eight of us on stage. It’s a big show – big sound, big band and a lot of emotion.”
Video link for the Oh Hellos – https://youtu.be/Ms-b3kYp1dQ.
The show at Union Transfer, which has Lowland Hum as the opening act, will start at 9 p.m. Tickets are $20.
Other upcoming shows at Union Transfer are Jonathan Richman on February 25 and Rhye on February 27.
SIMO
SIMO sounds like a band you might have heard playing on a multi-act bill at the Fillmore Auditorium or the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco in the late 1960s.
That vibe is definitely there on SIMO’s new album “Rise & Shine,” which was released in September 2017 on Provogue. SIMO will put that vibe on display on February 25 in a show at Sellersville Theater (24 West Temple Avenue, Sellersville, 215-257-5808, www.st94.com).
SIMO — singer, guitarist and frontman JD Simo; drummer Adam Abrashoff; and bassist Adam Bednarik — is based in Nashville and named for its founder.
“I grew up in Chicago’s North Side and moved to Nashville 10 years ago,” said Simo, during a phone interview Tuesday afternoon from a tour stop in New York City.
“I dropped out of high school when I was 15 to tour the world playing music and was in bands the rest of my teens. When I was in my 20s, I wanted to move to a place with better opportunities for music – either Austin or Nashville.
“Moving to Nashville was a cultural shock. It’s a place with the best of every small town and big town compressed into a tight music community. I’m very happy here.”
SIMO has been described as a psychedelic soul modern rock band that also incorporates extended improvisation into its live sets – a band with a sound filled with slow-smoked soul ballads, psychedelic desert-rock instrumentals, hard-edged, bluesy barn burners and Stax-worthy funk rockers.
“The band came together in a relatively slow manner,” said Simo. “It started six years ago as something to do for fun. I was a session musician. We met through the community and it’s grown from that. Two years ago, it got really serious. We signed a record contract and then went out for 300 dates.”
“Rise & Shine” finds the band stretching beyond preconceived notions and producing a nuanced record. It introduces SIMO’s elastic, expanded sound, which blurs the lines between genres and generations throughout the album’s 11 tracks.
IMO’s previous release, “Let Love Show the Way,” reflected the band’s rock-and-roll influences — full of big amplifiers,
vintage vibe, and plenty of volume. “Rise & Shine” honors those roots and pushes toward something new.
“This is our third album,” said Simo. “Our first album was self-made and self-financed. ‘Let Love Show the Way’ and ‘Rise & Shine’ are the two we made for record labels. Now, we’re almost done recording our next album. Lately, we’ve enjoyed writing at home in Nashville.”
Simo offered his description of “Rise & Shine”
The new album is a natural growth of where I am and where we are,” said Simo. “We had four months dedicated to recording. We produced the album themselves in Nashville’s House of Blues Studio D. In January 2017, we did pre-production. We recorded in February and spent March and April mixing and doing overdubs.
“It was the first time we had time to focus on making a record. In 2106, we spent 300 days on the road. In 2017, it was down to 120.
“We’re pretty avid listeners to a lot of different stuff. But, it’s difficult to incorporate a lot of different things you like. We’re trying to grow as much as possible. There is a lot of free form in what we do. Our goal is to keep it spontaneous.
“With our live shows, every night is different. We don’t write a set list. Lately, we’re doing a lot of stuff form ‘Rise & Shine’ because we enjoy it. We’re also doing a lot of stuff from our first two albums.”
Video link for SIMO – https://youtu.be/8fTq-KrvzVc.
The show at Sellersville Theater (24 West Temple Avenue, Sellersville, 215-257-5808, www.st94.com)
Other upcoming shows at the venue are Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band on February 24, Howard Jones and Rachael Sage on February 26 and Cherish the Ladies on February 27.
