In Billboard’s monthly indie spotlight, the stalwarts discuss their rich history and new album, ‘The Window.’

[Billboard]

By Eric Renner Brown 

The Album

The Window, out August 25 on Topshelf

The Origin

For Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan, college started paying off before taking a single class. “Dave and I met during freshman orientation” at Notre Dame, Steiner tells Billboard. “We were both music nerds in a sea of – in a student body that isn’t full of music nerds. We showed up to college and neither of us had plans to start a band or to seek out people to play music with. We just kind of found each other really quickly.”

Before long, Steiner and Sagan were posting their recordings online and playing regional DIY shows. “The first community that we found ourselves in was in the south suburbs of Chicago, which is where Dave and [bassist] Sean [Neumann] grew up,” Steiner says. “I immediately got welcomed into this community of bands and music freaks down there that loved every type of music and were really passionate about having house shows with a million different types of bands.”

In the mid-’10s, Ratboys went from Chicago upstarts to Windy City rock fixtures, cementing their reputation with Topshelf releases AOID in 2015 and GN in 2017. That year, the quartet solidified its current lineup with the additions of Nuemann and drummer Marcus Nuccio; all four played on Printer’s Devil, Ratboys’ critical breakthrough that arrived just before the pandemic in early 2020.

Years ago, Steiner referred to Ratboys as “post-country” – riffing on an inside joke with Sagan about the vagueness of terms like “post-hardcore” and “post-rock” – and the descriptor has followed the project, thanks to its vivid lyricism and natural fusion of sounds. Sagan’s description today is more direct: “We’re like Tom Petty,” he says. “We’re just a tight rock band.” (Steiner chimes in, “How humble of you, Dave!”)

Tongue-in-cheek or not, Steiner’s description has proven prescient for both Ratboys and their peers. “I think you were kind of ahead of your time there a little, Julia,” Nuccio says. “I mean, look at the landscape of indie-rock right now. So many bands, like Big Thief and Wednesday and Florry and all amazing bands, it kind of is like post-country, right? In the way that post-rock or post-hardcore is taking a genre and then adding a little modern twist to it.”

“Some of the tunes that we make are within – or at least paying homage to – that country tradition,” Steiner concludes.

The Record

While on tour with Foxing in 2018, Ratboys met Chris Walla, who had produced their tourmates’ acclaimed album Nearer My God out of his Seattle recording studio. In 2021, with a stable of new songs penned in quarantine, Ratboys cold-called Walla, best known for his time in Death Cab For Cutie, to helm the boards for what would become The Window.

When a tour later that year took Ratboys through Seattle, the band met with Walla; he asked them about their vision for their next album during on a walk back from a grocery store in the pouring rain. “We immediately dove into the details as if we’d known each other forever,” Steiner says. “He’s just a very easy person to spend time with.”

Soon, the band was sending demos to Walla for creative guidance, and in early 2022, Ratboys returned to Seattle to for a month to record, marking their first sessions outside of Chicago. Neumann says Ratboys cherished the opportunity to immerse and “make a record without thinking about the outside world,” comparing the sessions to staying over at a friend’s house. “There was one couch in there, and everybody had their preferred spot on the couch,” Sagan adds. “By the end of it, everybody had their own, like, perfectly formed butt groove.” (“That was the provisional title of the record, actually,” Steiner quips.)

Walla helped the band record live-to-tape for the first time, and also proved an empathetic sounding board for The Window‘s lyrical content. “I told him, ‘A lot of the songs are more personal, more real, more honest than some of the things we’ve made before – like, I just want it to be very real, unflinchingly so,’” Steiner recalls. “He was game for that. We really looked at everything in the face and [were] full-steam ahead with some of these ideas.”

The Breakthrough

In January 2020, Ratboys received an unlikely boost. Organizers for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign contacted the band to open for one of the senator’s Iowa rallies, and Steiner and Sagan braved a blizzard to play the gig. When Sanders took the stage for his speech, he thanked Ratboys – but Steiner’s phone died as she tried to film the moment for posterity.

“I was like, ‘Well, bummer, I guess I’ll never get to share that with anyone,’” she says. Luckily, a friend captured the moment – and endearing footage of Sanders saying “Let me thank the Ratboys for their music” went viral.

The episode dovetailed with the rollout for Printer’s Devil, Ratboys’ most accomplished set of songs yet, which arrived that February to rave reviews. The pandemic disrupted the band’s planned headline tour, which was to begin March 14, 2020, but Ratboys made lemonade from lemons, diving into livestreaming and writing. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Ratboys re-recorded several early songs – and a new one, the instant quarantine classic “Go Outside” – for the 2021 full-length Happy Birthday, Ratboy!; the project coincided with Ratboys’ first overtures to Walla.

Two years after Happy Birthday, Ratboys returned with the longest song of its career, the eight-and-half-minute “Black Earth, WI.” The expansive rocker – along with other new singles “It’s Alive!,” “The Window,” “Crossed That Line,” and “Morning Zoo” (out today) – flashed the band’s recent lyrical and musical growth.

The Future

Ratboys co-headlined a tour with Wild Pink in 2021, but the band is excited to finally make good on its nixed 2020 touring plans and head out on a headline run of its own next month. “We’ve never had the opportunity to do a real, ticketed headline tour,” Steiner says with excitement. “It’s finally happening!”

The Piece of Studio Equipment They Cannot Live Without

Steiner: “A roll of gaffe tape. Very useful to have around, not just for cymbal-dampening purposes – which I know nothing about, that’s like black magic to me – but I found a very, very important lesson while vocal tracking on this record: sometimes in order to unlock the best vocal performance, you need some sort of physical object to interact with while you’re singing. At one point, I grabbed this heavy-ass roll of gaffe tape that we had and just the weight of it in my hands, I was able to sing better. That was indispensable to me throughout the session.”

The Artist They Believe Deserves More Attention

Neumann cites Chicago pal Nnamdï, and Nuccio teases “a secret Nnamdï surprise coming in the Ratboys world, for any of the vinyl heads out there” who buy The Window on wax.

The Advice Every Indie Artist Needs to Hear

Sagan: “Play a show before you start thinking about any Spotify listeners. Don’t worry about how people receive your music – just play it first.”

The Thing That Needs to Change in the Music Industry

Steiner: “The music industry today kind of treats music like a public utility, and I really fear that there’s no way to go back from that entirely. The value of a song, the value of an artistic idea has kind of been washed away. If there’s some way that we could reframe the way we look at music… honestly, we’ve talked about this in the band: Spotify should be $100 a month. It’s so cheap. It’s just a matter of finding that tipping point where people will agree that this has value and be willing to pay more for it.”

Photo Credit: Mary Ellen Matthews

TRAFFIC FICTION OUT OCTOBER 6 VIA OH BOY RECORDS 

North American Tour Kicks Off October, Joins Wilco on European Tour

Past Praise for Tré Burt

“A master storyteller”NPR 

“Tre Burt uses his storytelling prowess to tell the stories of the moment”  Grammy.com

“Burt’s lyrics take on the personal and political. He brings them to life with evocative imagery and little details that suck you in and offer a clear portrait of each song’s subject matter and tone” No Depression

“piercing new folk polemic” – Rolling Stone on “Under the Devil’s Knee”

“Sacramento based Tré Burt’s has a voice that envelopes you, embraces you like a weathered rustic novel told to you as an impressionable youngster by a loved one who is older and more wise.” – American Pancake 

Singer-songwriter Tré Burt has shared the title-track off his forthcoming new album, Traffic Fiction, which is being released on October 6 via Oh Boy Records. The album marks a musical reinvention and is deeply influenced by the soul music he listened to with his grandfather as a child. His Grandfather, Tommy Burt passed away as he was writing this album, but their relationship is preserved via the 14 tracks found on Traffic Fiction.  Of today’s single Tré shares, “’Traffic Fiction’ was originally a poem I wrote in a bar in Calgary called ‘A Poem Written in a Calgary Bar.’ I probably read some headline about impending war that day and thought ‘why is that my problem?’ and got to writing this poem over a beer and spliff in the early hours of morning. The words ‘Traffic Fiction’ seemed a good way to describe the way media, world leaders and governments exploit our fear of death in order to corroborate us in their own self interests, holding us all hostage on their sinking ship (and in a microcosmic sense how we everyday neighbors do the same to each other) and figured it make for a good song.”  The video for the song was directed by Josh Shoemaker.  Listen/share “Traffic Fiction” here and watch the clip here: 

Tré previously teased the album with lead-single with the jubilant “Santiago” which saw support from No Depression, MXDWN, and Brooklyn Vegan, among others. Pre-order Traffic Fiction here. 

On October 6 and 7 Tré will perform at The Los Angeles Folk Festival taking place at The Fold. The shows kick off his North American tour which also hits Brooklyn on October 7, Toronto on October 18 and Nashville on November 2 before concluding in Atlanta the following night, November 3. All dates are listed below and tickets are available HERE. 

Traffic Fiction is the follow up to 2021’s You, Yeah, You, his sophomore album and one where bits of his roots and compositional ambitions began to emerge. On Traffic Fiction, they are in full bloom, from the sweet country-soul surrealism of the title track to the skywriting rock of “2 For Tha Show,” Burt as urgent and commanding as he’s ever been. Traffic Fiction is the sound of Burt confidently bending a sentimental past to his present will.

To get to this new alchemy of soul, dub, and more than a little punk, Burt returned to the basics—self-recording in sequestered silence. During a Canadian tour, he set aside a few days to stay in a friend’s spare apartment and write, renting enough instruments from the affordable gear emporium Long & McQuade to build a makeshift studio for his GarageBand demos. The title track soon emerged, its effortless magnetism prompted by a poem he’d written about stupid city congestion and a piece by saxophonist and singer Gary Bartz. 

Burt recognized he had found the sound of the next album, so he booked another rural cabin in Canada for 9 days and rented more guitars, basses, and the same keyboard he’d bought during the You, Yeah, You sessions. For the better part of a lifetime, Burt had told himself he didn’t have the chops to sing like those childhood heroes from the Cadillac days. But now, as he built his one-man-band demos before returning to Nashville’s The Bomb Shelter to work with a trusted band of pals and esteemed producer Andrija Tokic, his versions of those sounds poured out in circumspect love songs and joyous tunes of existential reckoning. His grandfather was dying. The world was struggling with a pandemic and the specter of a third world war. But Burt gave himself permission to have fun and be funny, to let these songs lift him and, eventually, maybe others, too. Traffic Fiction indeed feels like a buoy amid these turbulent times, something that pulls us above the wreckage. 

At three points during Traffic Fiction, Burt interweaves bits of recorded conversations with his late grandfather, Tommy. They talk about Stevie Wonder, Burt’s career and the fatigue it can bring, and, finally, the sense that he’s carrying on a family tradition through these records. It’s a reminder not only of what Burt experienced while making Traffic Fiction but also of what he overcame. He found strength in the soul of his youth, and, for that, he’s never sounded stronger.

Tracklisting 

1. Play Stevie Wonder

2.Traffic Fiction

3. Kids in tha Yard

4.Piece of Me

5. Win My Heart

6. I’m Aight Pops, Just Tired

7. All Things Right 

8. To Be a River

9. Told Ya Then

10. Wings for a Butterfly

11. Santiago

12. 2 For Tha Show

13. Yo Face

14. BNB Maintenance, Inc

[Consequence]

The first taste of the songwriter’s upcoming album

By Jonah Krueger and Consequence Staff

Song of the Week delves into the fresh songs we just can’t get out of our heads. Find these tracks and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist, and for our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Mitski returns with the low-key, acoustic “Bug Like an Angel.”

Just over a year removed from her last album, Laurel Hell, and sparking discourse over concert etiquette on her subsequent tour, indie’s crowned queen of cathartic, I’m-not-okay anthems is set to return with a brand new, full-length album, the depressingly-named The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. “Bug Like an Angel” comes as the first taste of the upcoming project, and the track proves that Mitski can mine emotionality out of even her most low-key, stripped-back tunes.

Despite coming from an album bearing a name fit for a death metal project, “Bug Like an Angel” is Mitski at her quietest. A majority of the track finds her alone with an acoustic guitar, softly strumming a four-chord pattern, over which she sings of looking for company at the bottom of a liquor bottle.

Though very few other instruments are added into the mix, a lush choir enters to drive home the juxtaposition of community and isolation. “Sometimes a drink feels like family,” Mitski begins alone before a host of heavenly voices join in to underscore the opportune word of the phrase, “family.”

“Bug Like an Angel” might not have you dancing like “Washing Machine Heart,” nor will it have you exercising all of your negative feelings via primal screams in the way “Drunk Walk Home” does, but it just might become a go-to warm blanket for times of loneliness. It’s an understated note to launch an album cycle on, but it’s also an introduction that’s beautiful, welcoming, and up to the high standards the songwriter has set for herself.

[Billings Gazette]

By Jake Iverson

James McMurtry remembers the first time he visited Montana. 

“It was in 1976,” he recalled. “My dad was doing some research for a screenplay. He said Montana at that time reminded him of Texas before World War II.”

James’ dad was Larry McMurtry, the iconic author whose work defined how people viewed the West for much of the 20th century. In 1985 he released “Lonesome Dove,” a massive 843-page novel that follows a pair of old cow hands who drive one last herd from Texas to Montana. The book won a Pulitzer Prize, and in 1989 it was adapted into a TV miniseries starring Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duval that netted 7 Emmys on 18 nominations and helped pave the way for the “Prestige TV” genre that still dominates the airwaves today. The elder McMurtry also won an Oscar for the “Brokeback Mountain” screenplay, and adaptations of his work like “The Last Picture Show” and “Terms of Endearment” helped usher in the New Hollywood era of American filmmaking. 

With a pedigree like that, it’s all the more remarkable that James has stepped out from his father’s inimitable shadow. The younger McMurtry is also a writer, but he uses his words in songs. And he uses them expertly, too. McMurtry has gained a sterling reputation as the consummate “songwriter’s songwriter.” Even if you’re not super familiar with his work, the folks you listen to almost certainly are. Since 1989, he’s released 10 records. 2021’s “The Horses and the Hounds” is his newest and one of his best, a good entry point for an artist with so many beloved songs it can feel tough to find an in.

James isn’t sure what his dad would make of Montana today. 

“It looks different to me,” he said. “There’s a lot more custom order log houses. That wasn’t going on much in the ’70s.”

That’s a perfectly James McMurtry-esque sentence. He’s a songwriter who notices tiny details like a great journalist, able to drill right into the essence of a place and breathe out a neatly succinct observation about it that goes way deeper than even the most practiced writers are able to get to. 

McMurtry will soon get a chance to see what Montana looks like right now in person. He’s at The Coop in Columbia Falls on Saturday, July 29, and then returns for a more dedicated run through Big Sky Country the first week in August, with a gig at the Rialto Theatre in Bozeman on Friday, Aug. 4, a slot at the Wildlands Festival in Big Sky on Saturday, Aug. 5 and a night in Billings on Sunday, Aug. 6 at the Pub Station.

With that in mind, the Gazette sat down with McMurtry to discuss his outspokenness about the drag bans being passed around the country (including Montana), his love of driving, and the controversy surrounding Jason Aldean’s new single. (This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity).

Are you paying attention to this controversy going on about this Jason Aldean song? [Aldean’s new single “Try That in a Small Town” has garnered criticism saying the song calls for vigilante violence and recycles racist stereotypes].

Yeah, sort of vaguely.

Why do you think so many country musicians feel this need to pander to audiences like this?

It’s their brand. And it’s been that way for a long time. Jason Aldean did not invent the violent redneck cheerleader genre. That’s been done for a long time. Hank Williams Jr. had “A Country Boy Can Survive.” It’s the same themes about self-reliant survivalists and also how small towns and rural America are somehow morally superior to urban America. Which is stupid. As if rural America doesn’t have fentanyl and meth and incest and murder and rape. It’s kinda sad because there was a time when Nashville had the best songwriters in the country. “Skip A Rope” [Henson Cargill’s 1967 hit that touched on abuse and racism] was cutting edge back then.

And now you’ve got all this rural life that’s just full of tragedy, which is terrible. But it makes good, interesting music. But they would rather rewrite “What have they done with the old home place?” and paint this pastoral, innocent rural America which does not exist. I don’t know if it ever did. 

Do you think there’s a way forward for mainstream country and Americana music to avoid some of these stereotypes? 

They’re not going to because it doesn’t sell. The myth always sells better than the reality. And it takes a lot of work to make something out of that reality. I’d rather do that. I’d rather have enough people to fill a club and really relate to my songs and sing along with it than sell it on the radio. 

But that’s easy for me to say. Nobody’s gonna believe that other stuff coming from me. I couldn’t get on mainstream radio to save my life, no matter what I say. Those of us that can’t be stars remain artists. And I don’t want to say that in a mean way. There’s nothing wrong with stars. There’s nothing wrong with people who can do that. It’s just a different thing. And it sells better.

Are you on social media at all?

Well, we have to, but I hire to have it done. I’m kind of a luddite. If anybody ever friends you saying they’re me, it’s not me. I don’t friend. Facebook is strictly for business. 

Social media is where a lot of the furor over the Aldean thing has bee happening. 

I just don’t understand why people are surprised by it. Because it’s been that way a long time. The only difference now is they’re wearing the racism on the outside. It’s always been there. 

You performed in drag recently in protest of the anti-drag bill in Tennessee. Did you see any material change come from that? 

We did three Tennessee shows, and for all of them I did the encore in drag. At the first on in Knoxville, one guy got real upset and went out on the street and flagged down a policeman and tried to get him to come arrest me. He just shrugged his shoulders and walked off. And I did it again in Texas a couple of times. And finally that Texas bill actually passed and it hasn’t been frozen by a federal judge like it did in Tennessee. I did one of my residency shows [at the Continental Club in Austin, Texas] all in drag, because we don’t really do an encore at those shows. 

In so many of your songs, like “Canola Fields” and “Lights of Cheyenne”, you talk about driving. Is it a meditative experience for you to get out on long drives? 

Yeah, I have to drive. When I get home, I get kind of weird. It’s strange, it’s just the motion addiction of specifically the wheel of a rented Chevy van. I can’t get in a car and do the same thing. It doesn’t work. 

Montana is like that. There’s a lot of place that take a long time to get to, and it gives you a lot of time to think.

For me, it’s not so much the space. I like traffic, too. I love driving the L.A. freeway. Very well constructed, well designed roads and people who know how to drive. You come around a corner at 75 miles an hour and suddenly there’s a wall of brake lights. Everybody stops. Nobody hits anything. You just kind of sway with the traffic like it’s a school of fish. It’s the motion as much as anything. Motion and math. Spatial relations. 

That about does it for the questions. Anything else you’d like to add? 

I have a question, actually. I know there was a drag bill proposed in Montana. Did that go through?

It did. 

As I remember, there was some language in that bill that says something about flamboyant costumes and makeup. Would that not apply to rodeo clowns? I’ve seen rodeo clowns out there with skirt before. And they certainly have makeup and a flamboyance about them. So are they going to enforce that at a PBR event? Or a PRCA rodeo? Looks like that would put them in jeopardy, if you really want to enforce that. We should launch a complaint. 

Project revisits the more experimental leanings of classic 2000s LPs ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ and ‘A Ghost Is Born’

[Spin]

Written By Jonathan Cohen

In its first collaboration with an outside producer in nearly 20 years, Wilco has enlisted Welsh musician/producer Cate Le Bon to man the controls for its upcoming 13th studio album, Cousin. The musicians met at Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival in 2019 and began working on the LP last year at the band’s Chicago studio, the Loft. It will be released on Sept. 29 on Wilco’s own dBpm label.

Le Bon’s backing vocals (and production fingerprints) are immediately apparent on the first single, “Evicted,” a jaunty but regretful number flecked with saloon piano, bright electric 12-string arpeggios, Euan Hinshelwood’s saxophone, and the buzzing strum of acoustic guitars.

“I guess I was trying to write from the point of view of someone struggling to make an argument for themself in the face of overwhelming evidence that they deserve to be locked out of someoneʼs heart,” Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy says of the track. “Self-inflicted wounds still hurt and in my experience theyʼre almost impossible to fully recover from.”

Fans craving the more experimental side of Wilco’s sound, as best heard on 2001’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and its 2004 follow-up, A Ghost Is Born, will find a lot to love on Cousin, which is accented with vintage drum machines, guitars imported from Japan, unexpected melodic progressions, and ear-pleasing, texture-building production touches.

“The amazing thing about Wilco is they can be anything,” observes Le Bon, the first producer Wilco has made an album with since Jim O’Rourke worked with the band on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. “They’re so mercurial, and thereʼs this thread of authenticity that flows through everything they do, whatever the genre, whatever the feel of the record. There arenʼt many bands who are able to, this deep into a successful career, successfully change things up.”

Cousin also stands in marked sonic contrast to Wilco’s last album, 2022’s Cruel Country, an unabashed celebration of the band’s often obscured country leanings. “I’m cousin to the world,” Tweedy says. “I don’t feel like I’m a blood relation, but maybe I’m a cousin by marriage. It’s this feeling of being in it and out of it at the same time.”

Wilco is touring extensively this year both before and after the new album’s release. International dates resume Aug. 10 in Cochran, Belgium, while a North American leg will get underway Sept. 25 in Wichita, Ks., and run through Oct. 27 in Bentonville, Ar. The group’s long-running Sky Blue Sky destination festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico, will cap its 2023 roadwork on Dec. 2-6, with a lineup featuring Father John Misty, Sylvan Esso, Built to Spill, Lucinda Williams, Kevin Morby, and Waxahatchee.

Also forthcoming is Tweedy’s third book World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music. Out on Nov. 7 through Dutton, the tome is centered on more than 50 songs that have been core to the artist’s career. It follows 2020’s How To Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back and his 2018 memoir Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

Here is the track list for Wilco’s Cousin:

“Infinite Surprise”
“Ten Dead”
“Levee”
“Evicted”
“Sunlight Ends”
“A Bowl and a Pudding”
“Cousin”
“Pittsburgh”
“Soldier Child”
“Meant To Be”

After years in the Boston DIY scene, the duo of Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug decamped to Lawrence, Kansas and set up a home studio that honors their cavernous lo-fi sound

[Pitchfork]

By Grant Sharples

Lira Mondal is making cookies. More specifically, malted sweet corn and blueberry swirl cookies. They’re fresh out of the oven when I arrive at the home she shares with her partner Caufield Schnug, the cozy, book-filled house where they make catchy post-punk under the name Sweeping Promises. “I’m married to my taste buds in a way that is problematic but also really enriching,” says Mondal, a former pastry chef.

It is just shy of release week for the Lawrence, Kansas duo’s second album, the exhilarating Good Living Is Coming for You, and it seems fitting that there are homemade sweets on deck to discuss a record overflowing with food metaphors. “You’re filling up your cabinets/With spices and salts to cover up the bitter taste,” Mondal tersely declares on “Connoisseur of Salt,” over Schnug’s signature guitar stabs. “Petit Four” pays homage to the singer’s pastry talents, using a phrase like “It’s an unmentionable serving” to invoke a sense of Phantom Thread-like menace. Schnug has his own term for Mondal’s lyrical style, a merging of passions: “food surrealism.”

Though Sweeping Promises’ 2020 debut was named Hunger for a Way Out, Mondal and Schnug have taken to calling Good Living “the ravenous one.” Their sonic leveling-up is clear—thanks, in part, to this very home, which they purchased for its acoustics. The back of the ranch-style house transitions from a traditional living space into a recording studio, with a cavernous environment—formerly a nude painting studio—that creates plenty of natural reverb. Once Sweeping Promises signed to Sub Pop in 2021, they used their advance to buy the place. They looked at 10 houses in two days and even considered unconventional sites across the country, ranging from a church in rural Ohio to a gas station, before stumbling upon the property in Lawrence, just minutes from the University of Kansas campus.

Their investment has already paid off: In addition to making Good Living here, Schnug has recorded 40 bands, including Optic Sink, Soup Activists, and Wet Dip, in this studio within the last year. The duo has reached a moment of stability, after moving around and evolving through musical projects for more than a decade. They met in Conway, Arkansas, in 2008, where they were both studying at Hendrix College. Mondal, a vocal performance major, also played in a punk band. “A tall, blond, lanky kid appeared in the door during rehearsal,” recalls Mondal, “and the first words he utters are, ‘Are you in a band? Can I be in your band?’”

Mondal and Schnug bonded over artists like Television, Mazzy Star, and Beach House. “There weren’t many people with the selective affinities we had,” Schnug says. The two have been playing in bands together ever since: They made surf punk as Silkies, goth rock as Dee-Parts, and dream pop as Mini Dresses before establishing Sweeping Promises in October 2019 when they lived in Boston. “We had never received such a vigorous response before to our music,” Mondal says. “We played a ton in Boston, but the music scene there is balkanized.” Schnug clarifies: “We self-balkanized; we had like 10 bands.” Sweeping Promises was simply the one that took off.

After a stint in Austin, Mondal and Schnug relocated to the heartland mid-pandemic. In between tours, they’ve had the chance to finally settle into the college town and befriend its locals, two of whom include Rob and Ryan Pope of emo legends the Get Up Kids, who live just down the street. Mondal volunteers with the Lawrence All-Ages Noise Destination (LAAND), “the goal of which is to put on all-ages shows around town that are very site-specific, not your typical bar or venue,” she says. Mondal recently booked an on-campus show with the pop experimentalists Water From Your Eyes, though most of LAAND’s programming takes place, amazingly, in a one-room schoolhouse turned event space.

The couple feels fortunate to have found a community and carved out their own little corner in Lawrence, especially after witnessing intense gentrification in other cities. The most pointed song on Good Living, “Can’t Hide It,” chronicles the spread of uniform apartment buildingsacross the country, bland “luxury” living with retail space on the ground floor. “Five stories going up /Another big ol’ gray block,” Mondal sings. She wrote the song after reading a news story about how Middle East, the beloved Cambridge, Massachusetts venue, was being torn down to make a six-story hotel. “I just felt this immense heartbreak for this place we love that’s legendary,” she adds. “I sat down to write some words, and the song just poured out of me.”

Mondal’s writing sessions aren’t usually so spontaneous. There are many factors at play, she says: “the weather; if Mercury’s in retrograde; if I had anything to eat that day.” But when it comes to the group’s sound, it’s always an extemporaneous process. “You’re listening to improv whenever you hear us,” Schnug explains. “There are a lot of versions of songs, and we delete most of them.”

Despite how pop-informed the duo’s songs are, there’s a DIY sensibility that lends to their lived-in charm, like if Brian Wilson worked with the Raincoats. Even after signing to Sub Pop, Mondal and Schnug wanted to maintain their lo-fi style. They told the label upfront that they wanted to have full creative control over their work and simultaneously continue their partnership with Feel It Records, the small label that released Hunger for a Way Out. As a result, Good Livingmaintains the grungy milieu of Hunger while refining it. Mondal tried her hand at vocal harmonies, conjuring new-wave heroes like Blondie and the B-52’s. Schnug, meanwhile, applied some studio trickery he learned while recording and running sound for various Lawrence bands.

“I’ve been really into spatial projections,” he says, referring to a technique used by composer Alvin Lucier in “I Am Sitting in a Room.” As the piece unfolds over the course of roughly 45 minutes, Lucier’s narration takes on more harmonics and gradually grows unrecognizable as a human voice. Recording Good Living, Schnug became more enamored with the “character of a wall” and “extreme space.” Their studio’s natural environment is as central to the record’s sound as the tumbling drums and incendiary vocals. The title track’s stop-start rhythms accentuate the space between Mondal’s staccato bass plucks and Schnug’s quarter-note drum pattern, augmenting the uneasy omens of change hinted at in the lyrics.

Still, Schnug doesn’t identify as a “capital-E Engineer.” Schnug pursued a PhD at Harvard in Visual and Environmental Studies—academic speak for film and arts criticism—and he approaches recording like painting, adding layers and shades where he sees fit. “I’m not very gear-deterministic,” he adds.

Eventually, we leave their house and make our way to some of Mondal and Schnug’s favorite spots in downtown Lawrence. This includes a stationery shop with a purportedly haunted bathroom and a toy store with a human-sized Mario piñata in the front window. As they show me around town, it’s clear they’ve become bona fide locals. When we stop by Love Garden Sounds, a beloved record store on the city’s main drag, they chat with patrons and employees alike, all of whom they’ve evidently befriended since their move to the middle of the country. While I’m off browsing the crates at one end of the store, I spot Mondal at the cash register from afar, discussing the new shipment of Good Living vinyl that recently arrived. Her excitement, even from a distance, is palpable.

Later, at the Pope brothers-owned cocktail bar the Bourgeois Pig, the conversation turns to video games. More specifically, the cult-favorite farming life-sim Stardew Valley. Eric Barone, the game’s creator, is currently working on a game titled The Haunted Chocolatier, which the duo is eagerly awaiting the release of, though Schnug believes it’s “at least a few years out.” Mondal briefly worked at a chocolate shop while they lived in Boston, and in the initial throes of the pandemic she learned how to make homemade chocolates while immersing herself in Stardew Valley. “Maybe I manifested The Haunted Chocolatier,” she muses. Like Good Living Is Coming for You, it sounds like food surrealism at its zenith.

[Consequence of Sound]

An ode to friendship appearing on Mancari’s upcoming album, Left Hand

By Carys Anderson

Becca Mancari has shared “Don’t Even Worry,” another single from their upcoming album Left Hand that features Brittany Howard. Listen to the artists’ friendship anthem below.

Mancari and Howard are best friends and Bermuda Triangle bandmates, and “Don’t Even Worry” is about the love they (and any close friends) share. The track “started as two best friends hanging out, exploring what it would be like to write and produce a song together,” Mancari explained. “After a night of simply enjoying whatever flowed out, Brittany sent me a 1-minute instrumental track that I started building melodies and words over. As I sat with the music, I kept hearing this phrase, ‘Don’t even worry, I got you!’”

“This song, to me, is an anthem of the deep bond of friendship that Brittany and I have; she is my chosen family who has been with me every step of the way in my musical journey, but more importantly my life,” Mancari continued. “This song is about underrepresented people who literally say to each other: ‘Hey, I know that the world often says it’s not made for us, and I know that this weight can be too heavy sometimes, but when you’re down and feel lost I will carry you through it, and vice versa, because we don’t give up on each other, and I got you.’”

Howard offered an equally wholesome statement about Mancari. “Becca is my dearest friend (and 1/3 of our project Bermuda Triangle) and I’m so proud to see them shine in all of their glory,” she said. “This song is to all the friends we consider family. To our ride or dies! To the ones that see us, protect us, cry with us, laugh with us. To the ones who celebrate the highs and cushion the lows with us. To the ones who see us shining in the dark. To the friends that love us at our best and worst! I’m just so grateful I get to create music and throw it out into the world with you!”

Watch the Sophia Matinazad-directed music video for “Don’t Even Worry” below. Featuring previous single “Over and Over,” Left Hand arrives August 25th via Captured Tracks. Pre-orders are ongoing.

In September, Mancari will open for Joy Oladokun on a North American tour; grab tickets to a show here.

Photo by Bobby Kelly

[Pitchfork]

“I would like you to scream so loud that Governor Lee can hear you,” Julien Baker said

By Matthew Ismael Ruiz and Allison Hussey

Boygenius have added their voices to the masses speaking out against Tennessee’s recent anti-drag legislation. At the Nashville stop of the traveling Re:Set mini-festival, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker donned drag makeup and costumes in protest against the legislation, which Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, signed at the beginning of March. See photos from the concert below.

“Today, I’m so grateful for my life, not because I get to stand onstage with my best friends… but because I’m content with the person that I am,” said Baker, a Tennessee native, from the stage. “I have a lot of anger for the people that have made me feel small, and feel erased. And I’ve found it’s a really powerful and humiliating tool to make those people fuck off. I would like you to scream so loud that Governor Lee can hear you.” The trio then led the crowd in a “Fuck Bill Lee” chant.

The anti-drag bill, the first state law designed to place strict limits on drag shows, was ruled unconstitutional earlier this month by a federal judge. The bill has attracted heated criticism from many musicians. Yo La Tengo and singer-songwriter James McMurtryhave both worn drag on stage in recent months, after a massive benefit concert welcomed Sheryl Crow, Jason Isbell, Hayley Williams, and more to raise money for LGBTQ-oriented nonprofits back in March. At their show, Boygenius continued their bit by sharing their drag names: Queef Urban (Bridgers), Lucille Balls (Dacus), and Shanita Tums (Baker).

Boygenius recently played a cover of Dan Reeder’s “Stay Down, Man” during a SiriusXMU session. During their Coachella set in April, the group made a point to tell the crowd “trans lives matter, trans kids matter,” and “…abortion rocks. And fuck Ron DeSantis.”

[Paste Magazine]

By Miranda Wollen

Indie-rock three-piece Blonde Redhead are back with the latest single off their upcoming LP Sit Down for Dinner, out September 29 via section1. The hypnotically trippy “Melody Experiment” swirls and careens through a conversation between two interlocutors, one overly questioning and the other inching toward peace with their reality. Between the duo lies the deepening chasm of instrumentals which embrace the song ever more tightly as it flows onward.

“Melody Experiment” toes the line between lo-fi and urgency with a steady, expert hand. Sparkly guitars and wispy, insistent vocals complement each other calmly and confidently, building a rich sonic landscape.

Listen to “Melody Experiment” here.

More shows celebrating the 2002 album are coming this fall

[Consequence of Sound]

By Carys Anderson

If you missed Broken Social Scene on last year’s You Forgot It in People 20th anniversary tour, you’re in luck. The band is heading out on the road later this year to continue the celebration with 16 more shows.

This new run of tour dates begins September 18th in Oklahoma City. From there, Broken Social Scene will perform in Houston, Austin, New Orleans, and more — including a two-night stand at the Royale in Boston — before wrapping up at the Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville on October 6th.

A Spotify pre-sale begins Wednesday, June 14th at 10:00 a.m. local time (use code PACIFIC), while tickets open to the public on Friday, June 16th. Grab seats via Ticketmaster, or find deals over at StubHub, where orders are 100% guaranteed via StubHub’s FanProtect Program.

“We had such an incredible time celebrating the start of the 20th anniversary of You Forgot It in People last fall that we’ve decided to cap off the end of the anniversary by visiting some cities we weren’t able to make it to last year,” the band said in a statement. “We’ll be supported by the wonderful Hannah Georgas at each show.”

The expanded You Forgot It in People 20th anniversary tour is sure to be a good time; at a show last year, Broken Social Scene brought out Tracey Ullman and Meryl Streep (!) to perform “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl.” They also recently released a bootleg of an old show called Live at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, 2003.

Broken Social Scene 2023 Tour Dates:
06/21 — Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
07/01 — Surrey, BC @ Bill Reid Millennium Amphitheatre
07/14 — Whitehorse, YT @ Yukon Arts Centre
07/16 — Yellowknife, NT @ Folk On The Rocks Festival
09/16 — Fredericton, NB @ Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival
09/18 — Oklahoma City, OK @ Tower Theatre
09/19 — Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater
09/21 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
09/22 — New Orleans, LA @ Civic Theatre
09/23 — Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
09/24 — Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel
09/26 — Harrisburg, PA /@Harrisburg University at XL Live!
09/27 — Boston, MA @ Royale
09/28 — Boston, MA @ Royale
09/29 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
09/30 — Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom
10/02 — Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre
10/03 — Indianapolis, IN @ HI-FI Annex
10/04 — Louisville, KY @ Headiners Music Hall
10/05 — St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
10/06 — Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl

[Brooklyn Vegan]

Not many songwriters can boldly quote The Simpsons with a straight face, but Kate Stables is one of them. It’s right there in the chorus of “Inside Outside,” a song about longing, change and choice: “bite off as much as you can chew,” she sings before opening up Ralph Wiggum’s Valentine’s Day card. “I chew chew choose you.” Mastication is a key metaphor on Careful of Your Keepers, Stables’ sixth album as This is the Kit that examines relationships, who we choose to be with, how that all changes over time, and how big of a bite we allow ourselves to take. Stables’ always empathetic lyricism is at the center of This is The Kit, which she surrounds with sinewy, proggy folk. Her bandmates, including bassist Rozi Plain, guitarist Neil Smith, and drummer Jamie Whitby-Coles, are all highly skilled musicians capable of pulling off off these parts that, like Stables’ words, are complex but easily digestible. Careful feels just a bit bigger that previous albums, perhaps due to Gruff Rhys, who was tapped as producer and helps them add horns (flugelhorn, bassoon) and other elements to the mix. Arrangements on the gorgeous title track, “Scabby Head and Legs” (which references another cartoon, Bluey), and “Doomed Or More Doomed” are windswept and subtly spectacular, but lines like “this is your ‘how shit is it’ measuring stick” will stay with you long after the music fades.

Kate was nice enough to walk us through Careful Of Your Keepers track-by-track, and she brings her poetic style here, too. Read that, and listen to the album, below.

Listen here

THIS IS THE KIT – ‘CAREFUL OF YOUR KEEPERS’ TRACK-BY-TRACK

01 GOODBYE BITE
a presence you feel that is with you wherever you go.
Putting things in your mouth. Biting someone on the shins.
Deciding things are ok.
Deciding you’ll be ok whilst acknowledging that things are pretty bad.
Superstitions. Social norms. Other people’s expectations.
Dying and death.
It is a choice.
Choosing to see.
And to be honest about what you see and how you feel.
What is our frame of reference for when things aren’t ok?
What do we compare them to?
What do we use to gauge how unbearable a situation is?
How can we tell?
Raising an arm in solidarity with everyone else who is struggling.
Giving people a break because you never know what hard stuff they’re going through.
People are good at hiding it. we spend lifetimes learning how to hide how hard it is.

This song was at one point going to be called measuring stick. One of the recurring themes in this record is our tendency to measure and compare and quantify. When I started writing this song it was about more external topics. Politics, global torment. But then slowly it shrunk in to think more about more personal politics and internal climate change. Emotional change. As well as planetary/global worldwide human species induced political turmoil and change.
What do we use as the control test?
What tools do we have to measure how bad something is? A situation? Someone’s behaviour? A year?
But it’s also about living through the difficulties and letting go of the sharp edges.
The teeth. The painful bite.
Also, I liked the idea or a goodbye bite as in a goodbye kiss. Maybe how vampires say goodbye?

02 INSIDE OUTSIDE
what makes things happen? How much choice do we have?
Electricity and chemistry that is out of our control?
Chewing.
Choosing.
Internal forces or external ones?
Do we just behave the way people expect us to behave?
Or do they pre-empt what’s happening? Before it’s happened? Because they can see it in us before we know it ourselves?
Big change that has been brewing for longer than we realise.
Were we just ignoring it?
Was it so deeply buried? Or did we see it all along but chose to ignore it?
How much does anything change? Or is it just the way we see it that changes?
Oops more questions than answers there. But that’s pretty normal for my songs I think.

03 TAKE YOU TO SLEEP
when you know that someone just needs to sleep to rest to be in a safe place. and there’s nothing anyone can do to help them get there.
The feeling of just wanting to do whatever you can for someone for things to be better.
That it’s none of your business.
It’s none of their business.
None of the business of anyone except you and this one person.
Big letting go. Bigger than you’ve ever known.

04 MORE CHANGE
more it stays the same.
Sometimes it feels like everything has completely changed and then it just feels like it’s always been like that. And always will be like that.
the more things change the more they actually stay the same.
The one constant is change.
Change is the only thing we can be sure of.
Who is who.
The people that become important to us and the way they become important.
Phases that come and go? Or don’t go?
The friends we need. We need our friends. We need to remember to be in the world.
I love it when Gru says “lightbulb.”
Realising that things come and go and pass and are born and then die.
The good it does us to hold hands with someone.
The tearing in two of a person and a heart.

05 THIS IS WHEN THE SKY GETS BIG
there is a park near where I live that is one of my favourite places to go in Paris.
All sorts of people use the park for all sorts of things.
Human activity at its most beautiful and touching and sad and scary and heart-breaking.
And all under a really big amount of sky. Which is rare in Paris.
a rare place where the sky feels pretty big.
It’s right next to the train lines that go to and from the east.
One of the things I love about Paris is that you can get the train to so many places. No need to bother with airports or leaving the ground.
Looking at the sky from the ground.
Where people live and get on with their lives together and apart.

I originally wrote this song for a friend of mine called Aaron Sewards who does amazing watercolour paintings. He had asked me about the idea of a joint project where I would write some songs about some of my favourite places and then he would make an accompanying painting of the place. Still in the pipes!

I remember being in this park when Hollande was elected (replacing Sarkozy) and when it was announced the people living in the flats that overlooked the park all flung their windows open and started cheering and shouting. Then I walked home and everyone was high-fiving each other in the street.
It was an amazing moment of hope and optimism.

The people who use this park.
The big tables
The grass.
The fitness equipment.
The community snack hatch.

06 SCABBY HEAD AND LEGS
there was a pigeon last year who made its nest on one of the windows of our flat.
It laid two eggs but only one of them hatched.
The pigeon itself seemed actually to be in pretty good nick. Not very scabby at all.
I’m often pretty scabby though. And life gets scabby.
And pigeons in general are prone to be pretty scabby. Heads and legs.
I saw an episode of Bluey once where Bingo crawls under a bench after their dad had been playing a game that was a bit too rough and she’d got hurt. and it really struck a chord.
I’m prone to crawling under benches. There’s a really great Instagram account called ‘rate this bench’ by a guy who goes around sitting on and then rating benches in various different places.
I love it. I love benches. They’re a good symbol of socialism and public space and community but also solitude and time passing.
There’s a tree I think of when I sing this song that is on St. Catherine’s hill in Winchester., where I grew up. A good climber.
Usually everyone and no one is to blame. So there’s no point trying to work out who and what is to blame.
Things are how they are and they hurt and they break you and other people and what you shared.
You shouldn’t steal eggs from nests.
Ledges are dangerous places.
Carrying fragile things is dangerous.
Holding onto what you love is dangerous.
Letting go of what you love is dangerous. And hurts.
Choosing what to celebrate and remember.
Choosing to love and send people on with your blessings.
More Choices. More Choosing.
I also think of Scabby Head and Scabby Legs as being two different characters in this story.
Maybe one of them is the pigeon on a ledge in a very urban setting and the other one is in a next up a tree out in the country? Or maybe the tree leads up to the ledge. These are all things I think about when I sing this one.

07 CAREFUL OF YOUR KEEPERS
the things you keep. But also the people that keep you.
Careful as in look after but also careful as in be careful. Watch out for.
Stamina. How long you can put up with a struggle without any rest.
Treading water.
Rafts on water. The noises they make. They way they move.
Away from each other.
Or two the edges. If there are any edges?
The way a tree will envelop railings or a fence that was put up next to it. Long after it. And will be gobbled up eventually. Nature takes back.
Old age as a gift and also a burden.
The person that looks after you and holds you.
The roles that change. The carer becomes the cared for.
To keep swimming. To keep treading water.
The fragility of wooden structures that have been set loose on a huge body of water.
The “children of the open sea” chapter in ‘the farthest shore’ by ursula k leguin.
At the mercy of the elements.
The solidity of wooden structures that have been set loose on a huge body of water.
We do heal. And often it’s with the help of others.
We will heal.

08 DOOMED OR MORE DOOMED
this feels like the choice we’re all being faced with at the moment. Doomed? Or more doomed?
Trying to work out which is the lesser of two evils?
The least damaging method of destruction?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions?
What we take with us? What is travelling light? What is being prepared?
How much should/do we take on/take with us?
Before the buckeroo spring is triggered and everything gets lobbed all over the place and we have to start stacking it up to carry again, if we’re lucky enough to get another go.

09 STUCK IN A ROOM
we all get stuck. And it’s hard to get unstuck.
When I sing this song I often think of certain bits from ‘Masters of Atlantis’ by Charles Portis.
Behavioural patterns. Nervous ticks. Stuck in society’s expectations and social norm standards.
Those of us to have a room are lucky to even have a room. But we need to be careful how we use it and how it serves us. The need for a healthy relationship with the different rooms we inhabit.
It’s good for us to exists in different rooms, not just the one.
Getting out. Getting back into the world. Deciding to ignore what other people want you to do or ways they think you should behave.

10 DIBS
We don’t own people.
And we don’t know what’s going to happen.
But loving people means letting them grow and go with our blessing.
Getting a shock so shocking that it restarts your heart.
You can feel your extremities again.
But with the feeling coming back comes feeling pain.
How do you look after someone who is leaving and loosing. How do you help each other.
How do you do the honourable and right thing whilst hurting as few people as possible.
How many is as few as possible?
Looking back at what you’ve built and acknowledging that it is enormous and beautiful and bigger than the sum of its parts.
And that we don’t own each other’s hearts.
We just want the people we love to be ok. Better than ok.
To thrive and to fly.
We don’t own things or people.
An attempt at a peace offering.

—

This Is the Kit will be on tour this fall beginning in NYC at Le Poisson Rouge on 10/11.

[Brooklyn Vegan]

Becca Mancari has announced their new LP Left Hand, due August 25 via Captured Tracks. Becca produced the album alongside Juan Solorzano, with additional contributions by Brittany Howard, Julien Baker, and Paramore’s Zac Farro. The album’s title is derived from the Mancari family crest in Calabria, Italy (a left hand with a dagger), as well as Becca’s own journey to self acceptance, as they explain, “In many cultures children born with a dominant left hand were taught not to use that hand, and were told that using the right hand was ‘normal’ and ‘correct.’ Similarly, queer children are often times told that it’s not ‘normal’ for them to love who they love and that they need to ‘change.’” Check out the artwork and tracklist for Left Hand below.

The first single off the album is “Over And Over,” a guitar-heavy, sunwashed indie track featuring backing vocals by Julien Baker. It comes with an equally summer-ready music video directed by Min Soo Park. “I wanted to write a queer pop song that has meat on its bones,” Becca says. Listen to “Over And Over” below.

Becca will be on the road supporting Joy Oladokun throughout September. Tickets are available now, and all dates are listed below.

Tracklist
01. Don’t Even Worry (ft. Brittany Howard)
02. Homesick Honeybee
03. Over And Over
04. Don’t Close Your Eyes
05. Mexican Queen
06. Left Hand
07. It’s Too Late
08. Eternity
09. I Had A Dream
10. I Needed You
11. You Don’t Scare Me
12. To Love The Earth

Becca Mancari — 2023 Tour Dates
09/10 – Denver, CO – Summit Music Hall*
09/12 – Kansas City, MO – The Truman*
09/13 – St. Louis, MO – Delmar Hall*
09/19 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel*
09/20 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle*
09/22 – Charlotte, NC – The Underground*
09/23 – Charlottesville, VA – Jefferson Theater*
09/24 – Washington, DC – The Howard*
*supporting Joy Oladokun

If we are fortunate, there are folks with whom we work, who we end up knowing well, that make the world a better place, and George is one of them. His music will last forever and always be a reminder to those who knew him…this was a fantastic human being who had a profoundly positive effect on all of us. We here at High Road are proud to have been a small part of his life and career. – Frank Riley

* * *

It was an honor and privilege to work with George Winston. His light will forever shine. – Dina Dusko

* * *

We are deeply saddened to share the news that George Winston has passed away after a 10-year battle with cancer. George quietly and painlessly left this world while asleep on Sunday, June 4, 2023. George courageously managed serious cancers, including having a successful bone marrow transplant for Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) in 2013 at City of Hope, in Duarte, California, that gratefully extended his life by 10 years. Throughout his cancer treatments, George continued to write and record new music, and he stayed true to his greatest passion: performing for live audiences while raising funds for Feeding America to help fight the national hunger crisis along with donating proceeds from each of his concerts to local food banks. Across an illustrious career spanning more than 50 years, George’s music first became known and loved by his fans with the release of his two most iconic albums, Autumn (1980) and December (1982). George’s recordings evolved with the times while garnering a GRAMMY Award for Forest (plus five GRAMMY nominations) and selling over 15 million albums. George touched the hearts of generations with his acclaimed solo acoustic piano compositions. From his early days in Montana, Mississippi and Florida, to his later life living in the San Francisco Bay Area and touring to cities worldwide, America’s beautiful landscapes and natural seasons shaped his singular instrumental folk piano. With 16 solo piano albums to his name, George recorded brilliant piano music, which includes tribute recordings for Vince Guaraldi, The Doors, a Hurricane Katrina relief benefit, Gulf Coast and Louisiana Wetlands benefits, September 11 benefit, a cancer research benefit for City of Hope, the Peanuts episode “This Is America Charlie Brown: The Birth Of The Constitution,” among others. George’s legacy includes his beloved catalog as well as an archive of his own acoustic guitar and harmonica recordings, and albums by an array of Hawaiian slack key artists on his own record label, Dancing Cat Records. George is pre-deceased by his parents, George and Mary Winston, and is survived by his sister, niece and nephew.

The family of George Winston will hold a private memorial service. For donations in memory of George Winston, please visit:

Feeding America:
https://tinyurl.com/GeorgeWinstonFeedingAmerica

City Of Hope Cancer Center:
https://tinyurl.com/GeorgeWinstonCityOfHope

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center:
https://tinyurl.com/GeorgeWinstonSloanKettering