Tag Archives: Night Life
10/21 | “Emergence” CD Release Show w/ Invisible Guy Trio (SF)
Sat, 10/21 | No Cover 630-930p @ The Mason Lounge
416 S Park St, Madison, WI
INVISIBLE GUY TRIO (SF)
BRENNAN CONNORS & STRAY PASSAGE (Mad)
↑ CD Release via setola di maiale (Italy)
Brennan Connors & Stray Passage have a new CD “Emergence” coming out this October on Italian label, setola di maile!
http://www.setoladimaiale.net/catalogue/view/SM3300
“Their sets embrace plenty of sinuous melody and conversational interplay,
but can just as easily dive into minimalism and dissonance.” ~ Tone Madison
Experimental Jazz trio Brennan Connors & Stray Passage has been performing in Madison for the past 5 years, exciting listeners with a range of sonic capabilities. Their improvised music is directly linked to the atmosphere in the room and energy of the audience. The listener is such a crucial element in shaping the band’s sound that they recorded this album in front of a live studio audience – expertly captured by master engineer Steve Gotcher at Audio for the Arts. Listeners will experience a jazz trio that embraces both free and structured improvisation, original compositions, groove based experiments, and sound exploration. The breadth of a performance ranges from focused minimalism to fiery high energy music, all while maintaining a sense of narrative organization and compelling ensemble interplay.
The group is led by Brennan Connors on tenor and soprano saxophones. Geoff Brady orchestrates drum and percussion textures, while Brian Grimm rounds out the trio bowing cello, contra-cello, and electric bass.
We are ecstatic and grateful to setola di maiale records in Italy for officially releasing our first album!
We’ll be joined by a fantastic drummer & friend of mine, Hamir Atwal (San Francisco), with his trio Invisible Guy. The group features Michael Coleman on keyboard & Ben Goldberg on clarinet. We are very glad to share our CD release show bill with another trio that explores the dynamics of free-improv in full range!
“Mr. Goldberg is a clarinetist of range and curiosity.” – The New York Times
Ben Goldberg’s Bay Area-based trio looks forward and backward at the same time, creating both nostalgic reveries and modern statements. Goldberg is known for drawing on his Jewish roots and radical versions of Klezmer music and his clarinet work is always focused with an endearing lyrical quality. Pianist Michael Coleman leaps between stride riffs and electronic splatter. Drummer Hamir Atwall provides everything from a swinging undercurrent to a clattery rush.
As a trio, Ben, Michael, and Hamir are in strict pursuit of beautiful melody. Michael Coleman says: “Melody is the knife that cuts through to truth. Then there is the importance of breath, and personal expression.” Reviewing a 2014 concert, Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune said the group is “an unusually focused ensemble inventing a musical syntax for itself.”
From 1992, when his group New Klezmer Trio released Masks and Faces and “kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music” (SF Chronicle) to 2013’s simultaneous release of Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues (featuring Joshua Redman) and Unfold Ordinary Mind (featuring Nels Cline), which the New York Times noted for “a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising,” clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg has shaped a career through relentless pursuit of musical truth across many genres and styles, resulting in the Downbeat Critics’ Poll naming him the #1 Rising Star Clarinetist in both 2011 and 2013. In 2015 Ben released a recording of his songcycle Orphic Machine , sung by Carla Kihlstedt and performed by an allstar nine piece band including Nels Cline, Greg Cohen, and Ches Smith. The LA Times called Orphic Machine “knotted and occasionally spooky composition marked by dazzling interplay.” All Music Guide says “Orphic Machine is wildly ambitious and sophisticated, but also graceful, emotionally honest, and accessible. It makes the profound embraceable and, as a result, is a masterpiece.” Ben currently composes for and leads the following groups:
Unfold Ordinary Mind ; Go Home ; Ben Goldberg School ; and Ben Goldberg Trio with Greg Cohen and Kenny Wollesen.
Drummer/Percussionist Hamir Atwal is a Berklee College of Music graduate who
has taught at Music Academy International, and the Stanford Jazz Workshop. Hamir is an active endorser of DREAM Cymbals. Hamir has played with saxophonists Joe Lovano, Greg Osby, and Grant Stewart; Bassist/Producer Bill Laswell; and clarinetist Ben Goldberg.
Michael Coleman is a pianist, improviser and composer currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. He has had the pleasure of playing with many great musicians and recording with some of his favorite bands and people. Apart from leading his own groups (Beep!, CavityFang, Young Nudist), Michael has toured the world with Chris Cohen, tUnEyArDs,
Sean Hayes, Miles Kurosky and Jug Free America.
9/20 | Sh*tty Barn Session 172: Dosh // Lovely Socialite
BUY TICKETS!
Wed 9/20 | @ The Sh*tty Barn
506 E Madison St, Spring Green, WI 53588
$15 doors 6p / 7p music
Lovely Socialite // Dosh
Lovely Socialite is a Madison-based six-piece that combines the aesthetics of modern jazz with contemporary classical, driving rock, and hip hop. Lauded for their bold and intricate compositions, the group often draws comparisons to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The bands original music combines strict notation with moments of improvisation and maintains a healthy balance of dark and heavy rock grooves with quirky jazz obscurities.
While Lovely Socialites unusual mix of strings, traditional Chinese instruments, brass, and a jazz rhythm section suggest that the group might be a contemporary music ensemble, it is their use of stomp boxes, vocal processors, and other electronics that makes the group a suitable fit for any rock, hip-hop, or jazz bill. In fact, Lovely Socialite has been privileged to share the stage with such artists as Dessa, of Minneapolis hip-hop collective Doomtree, as well as performing live on the UW Madison Terrace with Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes.
This summer Lovely Socialite released their new Rock EP “DoubleShark”, come hear it live at The Shitty Barn!
DOSH (anticon)
There he was, this musically lucked child of a once-priest and a near-nun, 12 years old and piled high with a Radio Shack combo stereo, stacks of records, and pockets full of dubbed tapes. It was 1984 and Martin Dosh was orchestrating the soundtracks to his junior high school dances, playing only the choice cuts for the budding romantics and perspiring wallflowers: Run DMC, Prince, Devo, the Cars, New Order… At age 3, Marty had started harassing his folks to bone up for piano lessons (after three years of persistence, they gave in); that he’d developed considerable musical taste before hitting puberty should come as no real surprise.
Call him a one-man band, a virtuoso, a gifted collaborator or a family man, Martin, Marty, Dosh or Dad, our subject has gotten to now by what seems an uncanny path (perhaps call it fate). When they met, Dosh’s father was a Catholic priest with pile of degrees, and his mother was living in a convent in Minneapolis preparing herself for nunhood. They left the fold for marriage; subsequently the elder Dosh found himself blacklisted from local employment, and so they left Minnesota as well. Martin was born in the greater Los Angeles area, but at age 2, his health problems and the city’s endless sprawl delivered the family back into the musically nurturing arms of the Twin Cities.
Returning to the Midwest, Martin was enrolled in a Montessori school (and piano lessons). By comparison high school was, “academically, horseshit” so Dosh seized his destiny at 16 and moved east to study jazz and drums at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Massachusetts. What followed was a flurry of summer jobs, road trips to see the Grateful Dead, van living around various college outposts in Mass and NY, Zappa-esque noodling in his band Como Zoo, further schooling, the requisite amount of pot, and a little too much partying. But Dosh wanted more for his music and less for his student debt, so he swallowed his pride and returned (at 25) to his parents’ in Minneapolis.
He figured the move would be temporary — he’d save up money and practice drums until he became a self-sustaining virtuoso –but Dosh was going to shows every night and meeting more and more people in the local music-rich scene (a collision of avant jazz, freewheeling rock and progressive hip-hop), quickly realizing that what he needed had been there all along. And throughout his dedicated solo drum-and-keyboard sessions in mom and dad’s basement, he’d record, record, record, accumulating a massive library of sound. Soon he’d be a touring member of Andrew Broder’s Fog, and full-time player in their instrumental counterpart Lateduster.
In 2003 Anticon proudly released Dosh’s virtuoso debut, Dosh, a loop-building collage of shimmering Rhodes, atypical drumming grounded in groove, field recordings and spontaneous performance (much of the album was pieced together using the 100-plus hours of tape he’d recorded at his parents’). By then he’d developed his untouchable live one-man show (swiveling on his drum stool between a kit, his modified Rhodes piano, a few pots and pans, and a simple looping pedal with a 12-second recording limit), and took to the road. Back in Minneapolis, the city he’d finally recognized as home, Dosh had been teaching drum lessons to children and falling in love on the side. He formed a family with his wife Erin (who he’d wooed by handing her a copy a song called “I Think I’m Getting Married”) and her 6-year-old son Tadhg. Soon he’d be composing a track titled “Building a Strange Child,” and so they would. Dosh’s second full-length, Pure Trash was inspired by his life’s most pleasant turns, and though the album was instrumental (minus cameos by Erin, Tadhg, the newborn Naoise, and his students), it emoted all the warmth and anticipation, fear and relief that comes with building a family.
Dosh’s third album, The Lost Take, showcases the man’s unique approach to sound with an expanded musicality and growing guest-list including Andrew Bird and members of Tapes ‘N Tapes.
His Fourth record, Wolves And Wishes, adds to the ever-impressing oeuvre with the explorative wonderment of a debut album. To date Dosh has recorded with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie, Fog, Jel, Odd Nosdam, Neotropic, Andrew Bird, Redstart, Vicious Vicious, Poor Line Condition, Lateduster, Why?, the Interferents, members of Tapes ‘N Tapes, and just about any Twin Cities band with a collective ear for good taste and experimentation. He has shared the stage with Andrew Bird, Wilco, WHY?, Damo Suzuki, Gary Wilson, Golden Smog, Sole, My Morning Jacket, Tapes ‘n Tapes, cLOUDDEAD, Sage Francis, Devendra Banhart, Kid Dakota, Alias, Themselves, Peanut Butter Wolf, P.O.S., Happy Apple, Joseph Arthur, Pizza Boys, the Bad Plus, The Jayhawks, Atmosphere, DJ Vadim and many more.
7/15 | Lovely Socialite and Left Field Quartet double release show @ Art In
DOUBLE RELEASE SHOW
Sat, 7/15 | @ ART IN 1444 E Washington ST, Madison, WI
730p doors // 800p music
$10 gets you into the show
OR $15 gets you in + both CDs!
1st AND ILLUSIONS
2nd LEFT FIELD QUARTET – Please Take Us Seriously release
3rd LOVELY SOCIALITE – DoubleShark EP release

Lovely Socialite performing at The Shitty Barn in 2016. Photo by Connie Ward (c) In The Rushes Photogaphy
🔗 Tone Madison Podcast: Lovely Socialite get leaner and louder
Lovely Socialite (lovelysocialitemusic.com) “DoubleShark” ep release
Lovely Socialite, formerly Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps, is a Milwaukee/Madison-based six-piece that combines the aesthetics of modern jazz with contemporary classical, driving rock, and hip hop. Lauded for their bold and intricate compositions, the group often draws comparisons to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The band’s original music combines strict notation with moments of improvisation and maintains a healthy balance of dark and heavy rock grooves with quirky jazz obscurities.

Left Field Quartet at UW Madison, where they met and cut their teeth together on Jazz.
🔗 Tone Madison premieres Left Field Track “Straight Ahead F Blues”
Left Field Quartet “Please Take Us Seriously” album release
Left Field Quartet is a collaborative group of Midwest-raised musicians specializing in eclectic, original music. With a unique and versatile tone, the group has scored plays and politically-charged events in the local community. What makes Left Field work so cohesively together is their adventurous desire for creativity in all of its multifaceted forms. “Please Take Us Seriously” is the band’s first official album release which combines gritty and fiery grooves with a personal touch and a playful sound.
And Illusions
And Illusions is a collaboration of local experimental musicians Emili Earhart and Michael Groome. With a focus on the psychedelic and long patient song structures, And Illusions occupies a wonderful space somewhere between noise music and kraut rock. It is at once meditative and soothing, a balancing act of angular and rounded tones.