FOK Rock::A Musical Benefit for the Bicycle Kitchen

For Immediate Release
September 8, 2011
Contact: Kelly Martin, Operations Facilitator
Phone: (323) 662-2776
E-mail: kelly@bicyclekitchen.com | www.bicyclekitchen.com

The Bicycle Kitchen, an all-volunteer run nonprofit bicycle repair education space, is pleased to announce a unique fundraising event called FOK Rock. It’s a musical benefit launching the start of our strategic plan to raise funds to build a permanent home for our operations within the next two years.

The Bicycle Kitchen celebrates the musical talents of its Cooks and Supporters a.k.a. Friends of Kitchen (FOKs) with a two part benefit:

First, FOK Rock is a name-your-price album for download only at bandcamp. Available for download on September 21st at www.fokrock.bandcamp.com.

The album includes tracks from the Ditty Bops, LaMuff, The Cooling Time, Telematique, Psychic Weather, Triple Chicken Foot, Mikki and the Mauses, Slumgum, Glassell Park Three, Lethal Apes, McDougall and Aarrrón! The musical genres span jazz, old time, post-rock, punk rock, dance, ragtime, corridos, folk and the theme for our favorite Midnight Ride. Second, we mark the album release with an evening generously hosted by The Echo on September 21st. There will be a concert featuring short performances from bands on the compilation as well as FOK Rockers--Jeremiah and the Red Eyes, Danger Bees, Common Decency & the State Law and Cárcelas. MC-ed by the Bicycle Kitchen’s very own Jonny Green and in between DJ sets by Cook, DJ Evan C there will also be a raffle and other surprises.

Promotional Poster and Album artwork designed by Amanda Sutton.
Album mastered by Patrick Houston.

FOK Rock: A Musical Benefit for the Bicycle Kitchen
LOCATION: The Echo | 1822 W. Sunset Blvd., LA 90029
DATE: Wednesday, September 21st
TIME: 8:00 PM
COST: $10
Featuring Live:
The Cooling Time
Cárcelas
Common Decency & The State Law
Danger Bees
Jeremiah and the Red Eyes
LaMuff
Mikki and The Mauses
Telematique
Triple Chicken Foot
MC-ed by Jonny Green
DJ-ed by Evan C
AND

AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD at Bandcamp:
Name your price and download the album starting September 21st at
www.fokrock.bandcamp.com
Featuring:
Aarrón!
The Cooling Time
The Ditty Bops
GP3
LaMuff
Lethal Apes
McDougall
Mikki and the Mauses
Psychic Weather
Slumgum
Telematique
Triple Chicken Foot
_________________________
Individual Bios
The Ditty Bops
The Ditty Bops, also known as Amanda Barrett and Abby DeWald, have been writing and performing music together since 2003. They released two albums on Warner Bros Records and four independent records including their new album, "Love Letters", and the Grammy- Nominated "Summer Rains". In addition to their musical endeavors they recently published 3 short stories and held two public exhibitions of their paintings.

The Ditty Bops have recorded with a variety of artists from Bob Dylan to Natalie Merchant. They were named one of Billboard Magazine’s Top Ten Green Bands for completing a 5,000 mile bicycling music tour across the USA. They have been featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brian, The Late Late Show with Craig Fergusson, The L Word, Extra, NPR’s All Things Considered, and A Prairie Home Companion. Their music has appeared on Gray’s Anatomy, Men in Trees, Ellen and in numerous films and commercials.

Telematique
Telematique is Aurisha Smolarski and Somer Waters, a violin/cello duo who take their "classical players gone eclectic" styles to create an ambient yet provocative pop/chamber duet. They construct live loops of violin, cello, add melodic vocals, often sung in French, and energy from the audience to craft a captivating and unique sound. They perform at local music venues, museums and multi-media events around LA. They have done short European tours where they played in Paris, France as well as in Poznan, Poland. They performed and composed music for dance performances and collaborative multi-media projects at venues such as The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Highways Performance Dance Space, Municipal Art Galley in Barnsdall Park, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

Slumgum
slum•gum (slŭm’gŭm) n. 1. A term used in beekeeping, slumgum is the impure residue, consisting of cocoons, propolis, etc., remaining after the wax is extracted from honeycombs. 2. “An outstanding risk-taking jazz quartet from Los Angeles” –(Gabe Meline, North Bay Bohemian)
Slumgum is a perpetually inventive quartet of adventurous musicians. The band’s unique voice is shaped by unbridled imagination and diverse influences that include jazz, free improvisation, world music, and modern classical music. They collaborate with a facility and playfulness that is rare for an ensemble, giving their musical curiosity room to explode and yielding daring results. All of these qualities find a home in the band’s innovative and colorful compositions. Performing live, Slumgum delivers their original music with spontaneity and a blend of grit and finesse. For the audience, Slumgum’s exhilarating music projects their sheer joy in playing together.
___________________________________________
Slumgum is:
Jon Armstrong: Tenor Sax
Rory Cowal: Piano
Dave Tranchina: Bass
Trevor Anderies: Drums.
The Cooling Time
Organic may seem like a foreign term when it comes to speaking about music today. Between bands whose ranks barely fit on stage to artists who are oddly interested in making old sounds with new technology, natural songwriting structures are rarely the end product. L.A.’s The Cooling Time is a nice reminder that rock music can have a solid foundation of heavy melodies and dynamic chord progression without any frills but still maintain musical relevance. Chris Hostetler, Michael Deragon, Eric Potter, Dave Ramirez and Steve Kim formed the band over two years ago, and they still haven’t given in to unnecessary glitz. With Hostetler’s gripping vocals and Potter’s riveting guitar riffs, songs such as “Paper Thin” already offer an earful of the good stuff.

McDougall
Portland based one man band “McDougall” announces his fifth full length album “Our New Histories,” on Sonata Cantata records, along with November 2010 tour dates opening for Hillstomp.

Scott McDougall is a noble little grizzly with precious old timey wisdom. His songs of travel, discovery, and perseverance will purify your every day lifestyle and ring adventure when driving home from another day at the office. As the bush bearded road wrenched McDougall quietly sits down at his humble set up of: kick drum, high hat, harmonica and simple stringed instruments, the fans making up his growing national following begin taking turns shouting “McDougall!” Once the banjo begins . . . everyone moves. I’ll bet a hundred bucks you can’t stand still through
a McDougall set, seriously. His toe tapping, punk infused old time songs bring fury to the dance floor, and poetry to your record player. Don’t fight it . . . this is the way.

Triple Chicken Foot
Triple Chicken Foot is an Old Time trio playing early American fiddle and banjo tunes and songs. With Ben Guzmán on fiddle/mandolin, Mike Heinle on banjo and Kelly Marie Martin on guitar and all three singing, they have found their voice with foot stomping dance tunes, beautiful duets and intense three part harmony acapella ballads. This music’s tradition is a social one, so in addition to performing, they host monthly old time jams at neighborhood bars and have been throwing square dances in all kinds of nooks and crannies around LA with callers Susan Michaels and Cory Marie Podielski. They also produce the yearly festival, The Los Angeles Old Time Social. Bust down, it’s a Squarevolution!

LaMuff
LaMuff is a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter. Her vocal-driven music ranges from dry-witted synth rap to layered, orchestral pop.

Playing the Los Angeles cabaret scene since 2008, LaMuff’s performances have been called “astounding” by the LA Weekly. Her live shows border on performance art—complete with wigs, costume changes and prop-wielding backup singer/dancers—bringing to the forefront her visual, physical and lyrical persona.

The artist behind LaMuff is Monica Howe, a studied vocalist and graduate of Art Center College of Design. Her influences include Hollywood musicals, West Hollywood drag queens, 1950s crooners and 1980s pop. Her songs are produced by composer and sound designer Joshua Fielstra.

LaMuff released her single and video “Come on, Taste my Rainbow” in 2011. She plans to release a four-song EP and new video for the underground hit “Gold Lamé” later this year.

Lethal Apes
Lethal Apes is an ongoing music project featuring producer / song writers Too Tall Jahmal and James Morris. Morris and Jahmal were first united as teenagers via Social Justice, a late 80's politically conscious hardcore group that had ties to the Heliotrope / Melrose intersection through gigs at the now legendary and defunct Macondo Club in the early 90's. Morris and Jahmal have maintained ties through graffiti art, music production, skateboard culture, cycling and beer ever since and have collaborated on projects including 50mm Los Angeles, Downset, Very Special People and a variety of other endeavors rooted in hip hop and hardcore culture.

Jeremiah and the Red Eyes
Los Angeles based artist Jeremiah (Sammartano) and the Red Eyes sprang out of the Southern California coffeehouses and bars, picking up sounds and ideas here and there and mixed it all up to make an intoxicating brew of sounds . What came out was a blend of the Delta blues and old folk songs, Tom Waits and the Replacements, some Willie Nelson twang, some good old garage rock and roll - and a whole lot of other things - Delta blues and twangy grooves.
2004 saw the release of Red Eyed and Restless on Bull Stud Records which had songs played on various U.S. stations including the syndicated show, "Altville", and Chris Morris' “Watusi Rodeo” out of LA, and across Europe. Over the years they have been well supported by the Americana scene in Los Angeles and have shared the stage with Southern Culture On The Skids, Dead Rock West, and Mike Stinson - to name a few - and also David Olney and Tommy Womack in Nashville, where Jeremiah relocated for a spell from 2008 to 2009.

In 2010, Jeremiah and the Red Eyes, filled out by Nashville singer/songwriter Lauren Austin on vocals, mandolin, banjo, and other various instruments, hit the road in support of a new CD, Under Your Spell, and covered a good 40k miles starting with LA and then onto Phoenix, Denver, Austin, St. Louis, Nashville, Chicago, San Francisco, and various cities in between making some good connections in each town.

2011 is off to a good start - 11.5K miles have already been covered for a Spring Tour, including a stop in Austin for SXSW, a spot on The Blue Plate Special Radio show on WDVX out of Knoxville, TN, a set on the Live@Lunch radio show on KRFC out of Fort Collins, CO., and recently picking up an Emmy nomination for music written for the documentary, Prison Through Tomorrow's Eyes. A late Spring into Summer tour where 9K miles were traveled has been completed and now plans are to step off the road for a while and concentrate on writing and recording.

Psychic Weather

Psychic Weather is the vehicle for Matthew Thornton's musical meanderings.

Mikki and the Mauses

Glassell Park 3
Glassell Park is one of Los Angeles's older neighborhoods, having been developed in the late 19th century along the Los Angeles Railway track that formerly ran in the median of Eagle Rock Boulevard and the adjoining hills. It is a quiet, almost sleepy, largely residential district, with a large industrial corridor along San Fernando Road (which parallels Union Pacific railroad tracks) and low-rise commercial buildings along Eagle Rock Boulevard. Today it is largely working class, Latino, white, Filipino and Asian.

It was here that the Glassell Park 3 began sometime in 2002, hidden away in a small industrial/ living space, affectionately known as The Mule. This space is no longer in the hands of any gp3 member, but it still stands as a testimony to all the good times had by friends, family members and bands that have passed through it's metal gated door and into it's cement belly.

One night when Uncle John and Scotty, of the Foothill Music band The Barren Foothill Breakdown, were hanging around The Mule they decided to play some music with the box n snare (uncle j's instrument of choice) and the guit-jo (scotty's choice) and what they ended up playing that night became the beginning of gp3. As more or less a joke, they played a made-up garage-style rock n' roll tune with these totally accoustic instruments and it struck them as being
"kinda crazy." They later played it for fellow members of the BFB and were then encouraged by them that this kind of musical behavior should indeed continue. So Uncle J and Scotty commenced to "write" a slew of crazy accoustic punk, rock and blues songs in this vein while Scotty made up lyrics/mumblings as the songs were played. They played their first show in 2002 at the King-King in Hollywood and the crowds response was one of more confusion (and possible cringing) than anything else. This fanned the flames and gp3 moved forward to intensify their ruckus style of simple, raw, energetic music. They took it to the studio (The Mule, of course) and recorded their first release in this raw fashion, called "number 2." Their friends seemed to like it.

With experimentation being a driving force behind their music, Glassell Park 3 again decided to try something different one night. Although the all-accoustic sound was something they very much endeared, all the intensity that Scotty layed upon his 6 string banjo (guit-jo) could not compete with the rhythmic poundings of the blacksmith, Uncle John. They grabbed a nearby accoustic guitar pick-up, shoved it into the back of the guit-jo, plugged it into a nearby bass amp and turned it loud enough that it distorted...thus the gritty and powerful gp3 sound was born. At this point Scott started to write real lyrics and they recorded their second release, "Avenue 34." They continued to play this way until another experiment came to mind while talking to another bandmate from BFB, Gavin. They decided to try playing with Gavin improvising his way into the songs on bass. What they came up with was an even more intense sound, explosive at every turn. After playing a number of shows with lil' G (Gavin), they recorded their latest release with the help of Kelly Martin and her fabulous one-mic set-up, called "The Night Before." It is at this point that we find gp3's current state. They often play as the threesome, but it is not uncommon to see U.J and Scotty playing as the original twosome. Either way, the set is always filled with dancing, pounding, hollering, sweating and celebration, proclaiming that music is always successful when played while surrounded by those one cares about most - their friends, family and neighbors.