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$1 per ticket to support Artist charity.

Please note there’s an 8 ticket limit for this show. Patrons exceeding the ticket limit will have their order cancelled automatically & without notice. No refunds or exchanges.

ATTN: Parking at MPP has Changed! Everyone MUST pre-select parking (or decline parking) once tickets have been bought. Once you’ve completed your ticket transaction, you’ll receive a link to select your FREE parking. Please do so in advance before arriving at the show.

Note to ridesharers, walkers, bussers & cyclists: If you have made other transportation arrangements, you don’t have to select parking.

Sometimes, we rise to the occasion. Other times, the occasion rises to us. Both could be
said about Dispatch, one of the country’s most successful independent bands, and their
forthcoming album, America, Location 12. Built on tales of struggling immigrants, forgotten
veterans and children cast aside, Dispatch (Brad Corrigan, Chad Stokes and Pete Francis) has
crafted a set of songs that tap into the peace and plight of the human condition, chiseling a spot
in our culture that has perhaps never been quite so vital. Their sixth full-length LP, America,
Location 12, marks a return to form – and a path to the future – for the trio whose music has
always made us take stock of our place in the world, and forced us to remember that the first
pillar of social responsibility is to be kind and decent to one another. And, beneath it all, to find
moments of joy and inspiration that sometimes only music can provide.
It’s impossible to deny that few bands – at any level – have been able to achieve what
Dispatch has: three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden to raise funds for Zimbabwean
humanitarian efforts, world tours and a 2004 concert in Boston that drew 110,000 fans. But
Dispatch never felt bound by their success, and over the past decade they have focused as
equally on solo projects and non-profit work as what they could create as a trio. America,
Location 12 comprises eleven songs that show a Dispatch here for the long and messy haul,
oozing with their signature energy and a new urgency in a time when a moment wasted is a
moment too long.
“It’s been like a part-time job, moonlighting with each other,” says Stokes about the
band’s status up until a year and a half ago, when they decided to go from occasional tours to a
new kind of commitment. “If we’re going to be in this band together, let’s really do it. We have a
lot more appreciation for each other as a trio now. And we saw an opportunity to sing songs
about issues that were of a real concern to us socially.” Corrigan agrees. “We didn’t want to turn
into a nostalgic band that just plays every now and then,” he says. “We really wanted to
reconnect with our fans.”
To make America, Location 12, the band enlisted John Dragonetti (The Submarines) as
producer and Mike Sawitzke (Eels) as engineer and decamped to a mythical setting in Northern
California: Stinson Beach’s Panoramic House, a studio isolated by miles of winding roads and
packed with found objects and ethereal beauty. “We were recording as the surrealism of the
election hit,” says Corrigan. “Despite the circus of it all, we were still holding on to hope with
candidates who prioritized caring for refugees, the environment, and dealing with social justice
issues head on. But when that hope ended up eclipsed by the divisiveness of the election, we
threw ourselves even more fully into the songs to embed our hope and anguish there. The energy
inside and outside the studio was just so surreal in that window, but I do think ultimately it helped
us create an album rife with urgency, honesty and self-reflection.”
“It’s always been important to us as a band to take a stand on social and political
concerns,” says Francis. “Now, it felt like this sense of activism seeped into the songs in ways
they never had before. We couldn’t ignore everything that was bubbling around us.”
But in true Dispatch fashion, they made sure to release a first single, “Only The Wild
Ones,” that is focused not on fight, but on freedom. Set to a rhythmic, African-inspired groove, it’s
a song with a nod to one of Jack Kerouac’s signature passages from On the Road and praises
those who barrel through each day with an unbounded quest for joy and truth. Stokes was singing
about two men from his college days who could hop a freight train one moment and cavort
around New York City the next, but it’s really a reminder that the best life is lived off in the world,
not online.
Like “Only The Wild Ones,” much of America, Location 12’s inspiration came from
Stokes’ vast internal catalogue of literature and art, and his uncanny ability to meld details from
the past and present of his own life – and the world at large – to make unforgettable stories that
hit at the heart. Knowing that the time had come for a new Dispatch album, their first since 2012’s
Circle Around the Sun and perhaps their most “deliberate” in over a decade, Stokes decamped to
a small cottage in the middle of winter with not much more than a wood stove and endless
inspiration, from 14th century poetry, to a magazine donning Bob Dylan on the cover to
newspapers reflecting the rise of a terrifying new populist sense of power. It was there he wrote,
as material poured into the songs – songs that were then shaped into the final product with the
help of his bandmates. As a result, America, Location 12 is both imaginative, tearful and topical,
and almost startlingly cogent at times. “The songs are more focused,” says Francis. “They’re
laser-beamed.”
Adds Stokes, “There are all sorts of parallels, and it makes sense it is happening now.
For whatever reason, it felt like some of those issues that I wrote about are now really intense
issues. Everything feels like it’s coming to a head. If we can be a band in today’s climate that
brings these issues up in a non-traditional way, then that’s really fulfilling for us.”
The results range from gorgeous, heartbreaking odes to children in Central America who
must flee from gang violence in search of a better life (the Beatles-tinged “Rice Water”); to the fire
and fury of the album’s opener “Be Gone,” written about the plight of Native Americans who are
often forced to the fringes; to the tender “Curse and Crush,” about a family member who passed
away and how we must center on the most basic palate of life that we all share. “We fight and we
fuck and we make up,” they sing in soft harmony to a locomotive beat. And then there are tracks
like the thunderous “Skin The Rabbit,” full of ponderings about a world in disarray that builds to
deep, rallying cry.
“For us, it’s always been best to be for something rather than against something else,”
says Corrigan. “When you make statements that are for things, then people can really rally
around it. Strength in numbers still wins.”
Dispatch has been known, since the band’s inception in 1996 in Boston, as being more
than just about the music – they’ve constantly directed their energy to causes and campaigns
along the way. Apart from their work as a trio, Stokes also created a non-profit, Calling All Crows,
that joins bands and fans together in collective activism that’s raised more than a half a million
dollars, and Corrigan has been at work on Love Light Melody to amplify the stories of children
who live in extreme poverty. As they tour to support America, Location 12, beginning in June at
Red Rocks in Colorado, Dispatch is sure to find new ways to engage their fan base in the issues
that matter most.
Dispatch heads into the era of America, Location 12 with both the passion and vigor of a
band in their infancy and the knowledge and power of one together for twenty years and counting.
In a world where hope is in short supply, fear runs rampant and alternative facts blare louder than
the truth, we need, more than ever, music that is honest. And Dispatch is rising to the occasion.
“I think what we are most excited about for our band is the commitment we made.
Because the best art is still yet to come,” says Corrigan. “It’s fun to get back on the ship together.
Hopefully we are a stronger band than ever before.”

Deafheaven is a California-based act that has garnered acclaim for their signature hybrid sound of black metal, shoegaze, and post-rock. On October 2 the band will release their next album New Bermuda on ANTI-.

George Clarke (vocals), Kerry McCoy (guitar), Dan Tracy (drums), Stephen Lee Clark (bass), and Shiv Mehra (guitar) recorded New Bermuda live to tape at 25th Street Recording in Oakland, CA and Atomic Garden Recording in East Palo Alto, CA in April 2015. It was produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered by Jack Shirley who has worked with the band on their previous releases. Clarke says that he came up with the idea of “New Bermuda” to describe a new destination in life, a nebulous point of arrival, and an unknown future where things get swallowed up and dragged into darkness. The album artwork for New Bermuda is an oil painting, dense in brush strokes of darker tones and deep blues, by Allison Schulnik. The layout was designed by art director Nick Steinhardt.

Formed in 2010 in San Francisco, California, the band has released two studio albums on Deathwish; Roads to Judah in 2011 and their lauded Sunbather in 2013. Sunbather received accolades from NPR on their Favorite Albums of 2013 list, a coveted Best New Music at Pitchfork, the Best Metal Album of 2013 per Rolling Stone, a 9/10 star review from Decibel Magazine, and it was the highest rated album of 2013 according to Metacritic. Deafheaven have spent the last two years touring extensively nationally and around the world with shows in Australia, Japan, Asia, Europe, Russia, the UK, and Canada with festival appearances at Pitchfork, Bonnaroo, Primavera, Roskilde, Fun Fun Fun, FYF Fest, SXSW, Basilica Sound Scape 14, Corona Capital, ATP Iceland, amongst others. Deafheaven will perform August 8 at Heavy Montreal in Canada. Details on a forthcoming North American tour are soon to be announced.

Catie Lazarus is a writer and talk show host. Gothamist named her “one of the finest live talk show hosts.” Lazarus has interviewed hundreds of distinguished folks including Bette Midler, Congressmen Al Franken and Barney Frank, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Gloria Steinem, and Miss Piggy. Lazarus was the first person to interview Jon Stewart after he announced his retirement from The Daily Show. Their interview went viral, as did her interview with former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson. A witty, whip-smart, and warm talk show host, comedian Lewis Black calls her “more brilliant than she’ll ever know,” and Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner says, “Catie Lazarus has the rare ability to be empathetic and hilarious at the same time.”

Employee of the Month is the longest running, critically-acclaimed talk show hosted by a female, not on TV. For now, enjoy the live show and/or the podcast. Either way, it is a fun, fascinating glimpse into the careers of super special snowflakes, like Jon Stewart, Zadie Smith, Lin-Manuel Miranda to The Guinness Book of World Record Holder for Most World Records.

Please note- there is a 4 ticket limit for pavilion tickets and an 8 ticket limit for lawn tickets for this show per person. No refunds or exchanges.

Attention: Parking at Merriweather for 2017 has Changed!  All ticketholders NEED to pre-select parking (or decline parking) once tickets have been purchased.  Once you’ve completed your ticket transaction, you’ll receive a confirmation email with link to select your FREE parking. Please do so in advance so you have a parking lot assignment and ticket when you arrive for the show.

Note to ridesharers, walkers, bussers, carpoolers and cyclists: If you have made other transportation arrangements, there is no need to select parking.

The words have failed them all. Since by the time you’ve read this far you’ve already read words that are intended to be touchstones but which do nothing but make it easier to not hear what should be all about hearing: their music.

So let’s dispense with “stoner” and “doom” and while “metal” is a good catch-all even that does what SLEEP does an injustice. What SLEEP does and has been doing since 1990. Since San Jose. Since vocalist and bassist Al Cisneros hinted darkly at his next act after Asbestosdeath. Make something that was like something you had never heard/felt before even if you had heard/felt it before. Like wind or the yawning subsonic expanse of an earthquake: something undeniably large.

And like ragas, the songs were not just songs but movements and the movements trended toward the eternal. Almost time-wise too with songs that lasted as long as some entire records, which is as long as it needs to be to get short-sighted labels to drop you. And beyond time, the weight was equally significant. Heavy, sublime and not even a little bit ridiculous and whether or not these were influenced by the sacramental consumption of weed really misses the point.

While there may have been a few like them before them, there were none like them really and certainly none of after them. And so in 2009 when they were reborn with Cisneros who’d been reframing the world with the band OM, Matt Pike doing double duty with this and his HIGH ON FIRE, and the estimable Jason Roeder doing the same with NEUROSIS, SLEEP did what it had done and what it had left to do. Largely and without pause, make music in tune with The Ages.

Best to be enjoyed? Live and living. See, hear, feel, do it. Well, beyond just music and well into the experiential joy of pure being. SLEEP. Undoubtedly.

The words have failed them all. Since by the time you’ve read this far you’ve already read words that are intended to be touchstones but which do nothing but make it easier to not hear what should be all about hearing: their music.

So let’s dispense with “stoner” and “doom” and while “metal” is a good catch-all even that does what SLEEP does an injustice. What SLEEP does and has been doing since 1990. Since San Jose. Since vocalist and bassist Al Cisneros hinted darkly at his next act after Asbestosdeath. Make something that was like something you had never heard/felt before even if you had heard/felt it before. Like wind or the yawning subsonic expanse of an earthquake: something undeniably large.

And like ragas, the songs were not just songs but movements and the movements trended toward the eternal. Almost time-wise too with songs that lasted as long as some entire records, which is as long as it needs to be to get short-sighted labels to drop you. And beyond time, the weight was equally significant. Heavy, sublime and not even a little bit ridiculous and whether or not these were influenced by the sacramental consumption of weed really misses the point.

While there may have been a few like them before them, there were none like them really and certainly none of after them. And so in 2009 when they were reborn with Cisneros who’d been reframing the world with the band OM, Matt Pike doing double duty with this and his HIGH ON FIRE, and the estimable Jason Roeder doing the same with NEUROSIS, SLEEP did what it had done and what it had left to do. Largely and without pause, make music in tune with The Ages.

Best to be enjoyed? Live and living. See, hear, feel, do it. Well, beyond just music and well into the experiential joy of pure being. SLEEP. Undoubtedly.

Heineken & Brightest Young Things Invite You To:
Heineken AfterWork: Rooftop Silent Disco Round 2!

So LAST SUMMER we threw a pretty awesome Heineken AfterWork on the roof of Embassy Row Hotel (check out all the pics) , and it was so fun we are doing it again! Get ready to join us for a CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE SILENT DISCO & HEINEKEN PARTY on top of DNV Rooftop.

By your own musical adventure with three dj’s to choose from + first 50 people in the door get a free Heineken brew!

Then it’s $5 Heinekens all night long while you dance on top of the DNV Rooftop!

~~~ Croosh Deets ~~~
July 24th, 6:00pm
DNV Rooftop
1155 14th St NW
Washington, DC 20005
21+
#HeinekenAfterWork

~~RAIN DATE WILL BE July 31st~~

ABOUT DNV ROOFTOP

DNV Rooftop is a local bar favorite for live music, weekend brunch al fresco, and sweeping views of Washington, D.C. Lead bartender Justin Golash allows his cocktail creativity to run wild with summer imagination, providing guests with refreshing drinks for outdoor socializing. Tasty bar bites accompany these cocktails made with whimsical flair. Positioned on the top floor of the Kimpton Donovan Hotel, DNV Rooftop offers one of the best views of D.C.’s historic Thomas Circle. For more information, call 202-379-4366 or visitwww.zentanrestaurant.com/dnv-rooftop/the-roof. The bar is located at 1155 14^th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20005; is open seven days a week during the warmer months of the nation’s capital; and offers private-dining services. Follow DNV Rooftop on Facebook and Instagram.

Capacity is limited / RSVP required / RSVP does not guarantee admittance // Arrive early

The year is 1996. The setting: a snowy winter in Massachusetts. Inside a lodge, nestled around a fireplace, a guitarist plays some beautiful acoustic tunes, and a singer with an ethereal voice joins in. They play throughout the night, creating songs of myths and fantasy inspired by nature. All of this is occurring while the guitarist, none other than famed stringsmith Ritchie Blackmore, is working with his band Rainbow to record their last CD Stranger In Us All.

Here, in this moment miles away from it all, Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night are using their secluded time around the fire in the middle of winter to create, some beautiful music, a new genre, inspired by many melodies of the Renaissance period, and Blackmoreized into contemporary music. They call it Renaissance/Folk/Rock. This is the sound of Blackmore’s Night.

In 1997, Blackmore’s Night released their debut CD Shadow of the Moon, which immediately went gold in Japan and earned awards worldwide. Meanwhile, their ever-growing, devoted fan base is growing, as the band has created a genre of music for all ages. From grandparents to children, everyone is embracing their medieval mood music and gypsy dances. Clearly, the music of Blackmore’s Night connects with fans on a deep level, allowing them to experience an entirely different era of merriment.

At the helm is the dynamic husband and wife duo: celebrated guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who traverses between acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin, mandola, cello, and hurdy gurdy, and Candice Night, who not only contributes her unique, entrancing vocals, but deftly navigates seven medieval woodwinds, including bagpipe, chanters, shawms, corner music, pennywhistles, and recorders. Further enhancing the band’s inspired sound are keyboardist/back-up vocalist Bard David, violinist Scarlett Fiddler, back-up vocalist/shawm player Lady Lynn, bassist/rhythmic guitarist Earl Grey, and percussionist Troubadour of Aberdeen. With lyrics penned by Night, the collective embraces the aura of the old world inn, from madrigals and ballads to good old fashioned, Renaissance-inspired pub songs.

Additionally, every one of Blackmore’s Night’s studio CDs (10 in total) has debuted in the top five of the Billboard charts, many of which entered or remained at the number 1 spot. They have earned Awards such as “Best Album of the Year” or “Best Vocal Album of The Year” and their sold-out live concerts in castles and UNESCO sites worldwide are filled with thousands of fans dressed in Renaissance garb, dancing and singing as if time stood still. No clocks…no pressure…just the gaiety and camaraderie of a medieval pub. Everyone joins in and loses their stress in the music.

2017 marks the official 20th Anniversary of Blackmore’s Night.
Their latest release To The Moon And Back: 20 Years And Beyond… (due out on August 18) is a best-of compilation including the most-requested and beloved songs from their fans, all of which have been re-mastered. Alongside these classics, the album includes four re-recorded new versions of some of their favorites: “Moonlight Shadow”, “Somewhere Over The Sea”, “Coming Home”, and “Writing On The Wall”. Additionally, the set has a live version of “Home Again” and three brand new songs: “Ghost Of John” (which includes the vocal debut of Blackmore and Night’s 6-year-old daughter Autumn), Ritchie Blackmore’s new version of “Land of Hope and Glory” and Candice Night lending her vocals to a favored Rainbow tune “I Surrender”. The set is complete with a booklet boasting a collage of 20 years of memorabilia and a small unrehearsed video from a sound check, rewarding fans with an intimate glimpse behind the scenes.

Grab your tambourine or your tankard of ale, and sing and dance with Blackmore’s Night “Under A Violet Moon.” Join us To The Moon and Back: 20 Years And Beyond… for an amazing collection of music from Blackmore’s Night.

The xx has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket will go to local organizations in Washington DC bringing equity, dignity, and access to communities who need it.

In March 2014, The xx took their advanced pop experiment in fortified introspection to its most cripplingly self-conscious conclusion. At Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall they played a succession of dates that The New York Times headlined ‘The Rock Show, Inverted.’ Playing to an audience of just 45 people at each of the twenty five shows over ten days, Romy Madly Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith had to bow their heads in penance to avoid looking square in the eyes the effect of their music, at that moment gridlocked in a beautiful communion of the inner life of shy people. 

A new touchstone for pop intimacy, the show had been road-tested in the bowels of the city during the previous year’s Manchester International Festival. The xx debuted a new song at The Armory, Performance. Its chorus ran: “You’ll see me hurting/when my heart breaks/I’ll put on a performance/I’ll put on a brave face”, set only to barely audible sub-bass and the kind of intricate, spidery guitar motif that had by now become a signature to their sound. In retrospect, The Armory shows were a line-in-the-sand moment for The xx. They had reached the furthest limits of their experiments in the monochromatic. A hard won light was beginning to beckon. 

“The record sounds triumphant and celebratory,” says Jamie, of their third long-player, I See You, “but the journey we went on and what we had to go through to get to this point should be acknowledged.” I See You is the spoils of four hard years’ labour, a vertiginous new height scaled for the pop group. It is a record that sees them performing with optimum new nerve, transparency and clarity. Because it is made by The xx, its implicit boldness is sculpted from a tough and tender space, one which stretched its limits for expansion against the core musical aesthetic Romy and Oliver first found as 16-year-olds playing on a stage together. “What makes us sound like us isn’t intentional,” says Oliver. “What always surprises me,” says Jamie, “is when they just play the two instruments together they come up with things that I could never come up with, so simple that I wish I could. That particular guitar sound and Oliver’s bass playing will always create this mood which I love and which I can’t imagine ever getting bored of.”

I See You is marked by a tonal shift to something close to pure, crisp pop structure, adorned by unusual crescendos that echo a dextrous DJ inching their dancer toward climax without ever quite lifting the house lights. Its lyric sheet moves from the danger and hopelessness of love to its deliciousness and rapture; a move into a more outward looking proposition. I See You is recognisably still The xx but now powered by voluble ambition, of the three perfect counterweights to one another starting to not just realise but harness their full potential. You might even want to think of the decisive move from Joy Division to New Order here, too. The Armory shows turned out to be a double bluff. When they take their plum festival slots in 2017, armed with the ten most robust songs of their career The xx should prick the skin and touch gently the shoulder of an audience reaching to the back of the field. 

I See You is split in two down the middle by Performance, the most cognisant xx song of the suite. The metaphor at the centre of the ballad is pure Bacharach and David. The delivery is something else. Though shimmering resolutely from the half-light to the spot, it unleashes in Romy something confident and spacious. Since stepping tentatively onto stage barely out of childhood, Romy has had to learn to embrace her inner frontwoman. But then all of The xx have challenged themselves in the making of I See You. 

For Jamie, this manifested itself most pertinently in becoming a solo, if still xx-branded artist with his sensational club suite, In Colour. True to title, solo Jamie may yet turn out to be The xx’s Wizard of Oz moment, as Romy and Oliver witnessed vicariously what they might now look like in technicolour. “Jamie’s record had a big effect on me,” says Romy. “It was the sense of being outside of something you’d been involved in but then also being involved because Oliver and I are on the album. Observing it, I found, made me appreciate what I do a lot more. I did feel like I was missing something, too. I’m not ashamed to say that either, even though it was a weird feeling. There was so much pride and admiration in what Jamie had done but at the same time it could be weird to see him on stage at Alexandra Palace, with my voice playing through the speakers and I’m standing in the crowd. It was odd. But it also inspired a hunger. I wasn’t complacent. It was inspiring me to think OK, Jamie’s going to come back so let’s have some great songs for him. We’re not the most obvious front-people. We didn’t grow up dreaming about that. But I do really enjoy it.” Adds Oliver, “I’ve really missed it. And I didn’t realise that I would miss it so much. It did come as a surprise. I get a lot of confidence from doing it and it was hard not having that for a while.”

Work on I See You began in earnest with conversations between Oliver and Romy while Jamie was making then promoting In Colour. For second album Coexist the trio had locked themselves away in a small room in Angel, Islington, refusing to play anything to outsiders until they deemed it ready. “It was made in a weird, dark place for all of us,” says Jamie. Three introverts getting used to being stared at and scrutinised was always going to be difficult emotional territory to surf. The first xx record, released when Romy and Oliver were still teens, had sold in disproportionate quantities to the local scale of its ambition, finding a global audience that wildly surpassed everyone’s expectations. “Everyone kept telling us this is moving really fast,” says Oliver. “And in the moment I’m not sure we believed it,” adds Romy. The xx have sold 2.7million records the world over. They have platinum and gold discs amassed from across Europe, the Americas, Australia. They’re one of only three British bands – the others being One Direction and Mumford & Sons – to have a gold certified debut album in the USA in the last decade. Their multimillion streaming and social media stats are dizzying. If this wasn’t supposed to happen, I See You sounds like the concession not just that it did, but furthermore that it was meant to. 

The construction of the third xx record could not have differed further from its predecessor. They travelled to Los Angeles, Marfa, Texas, New York, Iceland. After a road trip in which they played soft rock all the way from Portland to LA, they decamped to a studio in the Hollywood Hills and recorded repentant party-boy apologia, Replica there and then. The dappled sunlight of yacht-rock is a new texture for The xx. I See You is full of them, from Oliver’s afrobeat bass lead on the defiant garage opener, Dangerous, to Romy’s playful purr in I Dare You. When he added the Hall & Oates sample from I Can’t Go For That to I See You’s first single, On Hold – as close as The xx will ever likely get to a certified pop banger – Jamie says an employee from the studio caught him dancing by himself to it, “which was embarrassing.” It is at these eureka moments that the expert producer knows he has located the exact specialness of his pop operation. 

With their unforeseen reach, The xx have quietly become trusted hands across the wider pop hemisphere. Romy has written with Kelela, Jamie famously produced for Drake and Alicia Keys. They curated their own festival, Night and Day, extending branches from London to Berlin and Lisbon. Oliver would make sure to be on site first thing every morning, to greet each artist they had booked individually. Part of the strive for self-improvement that demarks the new arc for The xx on I See You comes from their faithful devotion to music not just as artists but as fans, too. 

While living in LA for a spell, Romy attended writing camps of the sort designated to factory fashion hits for the megastars of the day, including a session with hit-maker for hire Ryan Tedder. Though forever intrigued by it, this is categorically not The xx’s world, and it should be noted that every song on I See You is written solely by The xx. “We’ve always really loved pop and for this record we were trying to find new ways of doing things,” she says. “It was terrifying but I think I knew it was going to be horrible and I wanted that. I knew it was going to be a test.” Making the record, Oliver says, “was about us becoming less self-conscious of how we think we are expected to sound and more about making the kind of music we want to hear.” “I really enjoyed not feeling so clenched,” adds Romy. 

While Romy was learning the whys and wherefores of the hit factory and Jamie toured his solo record, Oliver fronted campaigns for the esteemed menswear wing of French fashion house Dior. “This is all so far out of what we usually do,” he says. The xx were once a lesson in beautiful compression, of looking inward, a study in quietude and subtlety. They are three best friends who obsessed together, drifted apart and found an invigorated new meaning and purpose with I See You. The mirrored packaging of the record is there for a reason. I See You is a record about falling in love with one another, all over again, a minor key Musketeers moment for Romy, Oliver and Jamie. It feels like the start of a new dawn for The xx. The record ends with the song Test Me, a unified declaration of how much that love can hurt but how, when it chimes in tandem, there is nothing that can quite match it. 

“It’s strange to like the record as much as I like it,” says Jamie. “It’s about seeing reflections of yourself in other people. It’s basically us understanding each other better. Being pals again. We went through lots of ways of saying that and I See You seemed the best.” I See You feels like a love letter scripted to themselves, celebrating a marriage that works for better and for worse and on this unusual occasion, would like to tell the world about it. “I never think about people watching or the audience in any way, really,” says Jamie, “I think about the moments on stage and the moments when we come off stage, of us just enjoying ourselves as friends. I don’t even think about how it’s going to go down on stage. I just like the memories I have of us being on stage.” “They are,” says Romy, “the best.” “Communication has not always been easy with us,” says Oliver, “But we’re learning. The thought of sharing the stage together again is perfect. We’re all ready”. 

http://thexx.info/

Spice up your Thirsty Thursdays and come hang with us! 

Join DC Fray at Union Market every Thursday for FREE bar bingo from 7-9pm.

Free to enter. Free to play. Free beer swag up for grabs. Sounds like a plan to us! Trivia is hard, Bingo is fun… See ya there!

Visit dcfray.com/bingo for more nights, locations, and info.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Shannon and the Clams was formed by accident. Just outside the invisible borders of Oakland’s warehouse music scene, Shannon Shaw was absorbed in studying illustration at California College of the Arts, a 100-year-old institution that draws freaks into the city from across the country. For many, the school serves as a gateway into the sprawling music underground that agitates beneath the Bay Area, as a hub for fliers for illegal parties in backyards, basements, and overpasses.

During a bout of depression, Shannon took up a neglected bass guitar that had been a gift from an ex-boyfriend years earlier and played it for the first time, writing in a raw and untrained way. The urge to perform these songs soon took her to open mic nights around the East Bay.

“It was the perfect outlet,” Shannon says. “I never thought I’d be someone who played music, but one day I picked up this bass and started writing songs. I became addicted to it. It became my focus.”

Word got around that she was performing and the instigators of art school parties, always hungry for new talent, convinced Shannon to throw a band together and play. It worked, and it pushed her to aim higher, but the band was only meant to be temporary. Now, ten years later, her path has revealed itself and Shannon and the Clams are releasing their fifth album, Onion, this time collaborating with producer Dan Auerbach and his label Easy Eye Sound.

Over the last decade, Shannon and her chief collaborator, guitarist Cody Blanchard, have released four albums of 60s-inspired pop on indie labels, toured tirelessly and have gradually solidified a lineup of devoted Bay Area musicians, Nate Mahan on drums and Will Sprott on keyboards. Nate has played keyboard, guitar and drums in various Bay Area bands for a decade, and Will has served as front man and songwriter for his band the Mumlers and more recently his solo project, Will Sprott, releasing records on his own Hairdo Records. In this current iteration, Shannon and the Clams have developed notoriety for lively and genuine stage performances and a zealous following that craves their particular authenticity and innovation on classic sounds. Their last record, Gone by the Dawn, arrived in fall 2015 and took them to Coachella and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in the year following. On the album you can hear the band progressing from straight 60s-inspired rock and exploring their taste for psychedelic, dramatic throwback pop.

Shannon and the Clams had already begun writing for the Onion sessions in fall 2016, when their world was rattled by the Oakland Ghost Ship warehouse fire in early December. A total perspective shift followed and the writing changed direction. In the wake of the fire, the band looked backward at their origins in the Oakland underground and the importance of that world to their genesis. From where they now stood, they could recognize the community as a delicate incubator for fringe art, an unstable but nurturing place for performers to practice and cross- pollinate where there otherwise is no platform.

In January 2017, the band flew together to Nashville and over the course of ten days, fleshed out their songs with Auerbach at his Easy Eye Studio, where he helped refine and embellish the songs and steer the album. “He works in this very layered style,” Cody says. “He has all these instruments in the studio mic’d up at all times, ready to go. You can go back and add all these layers of instruments really fast and then cut stuff away in the mix.”

With Shannon and Cody focused on pinning down the meat of the songs and tracking vocals, multi-instrumentalists Nate and Will were free to compose arrangement and accompaniment ideas and background vocals. They explored the studio’s wealth of instruments and tapped into their own years of songwriting experience to ornament and color the tracks and lend a refined ear in the control room.

The song “Backstreets” is Cody’s response to the Ghost Ship fire, and particularly the issues of artist housing and being forced to make your own way in a society that is not arranged to accommodate artists. Album closer “Don’t Close Your Eyes” is Shannon’s response, an inspirational ballad urging those suffering through loss to not give up in the midst of tragedy. The theme of origin and introspection had already been at play on the album before the shift of focus to the warehouse fire in December, and other songs on the record deal heavily with self- searching and looking backward, but on a more personal level; discovering our own individual origins and the path that has led us sometimes haphazardly to where we find ourselves, from childhood to now.

“I had this epiphany that was likening an onion to being human and how you’re nothing without layers of experience,” Shannon says. “Each time you have an experience it creates another layer in the onion. And that layer sticks with you forever and other layers grow on top of it, sometimes unevenly. When you get introspective and try to unravel yourself, you’re digging through the layers. Every time you think you’ve figured something out there’s just another layer beneath it. And I wondered, what happens when you get to the bottom, the center, the beginning of everything when there are no layers? Is there anything left at all? It’s a bottomless endless chase of getting to know yourself. Each song on this album is about problem solving and having realizations about yourself.”

“People say that artists are blessed with talent and live enchanted lives,” says Cody. “In truth, being an artist is excruciating and there is no clear path for you. It is a struggle to find your purpose and support yourself while scratching that endless itch inside your head. A lot of people don’t make it, lose their minds, more or less, to depression, anxiety, resentment, drugs, as a side effect of that struggle.”

“It’s Gonna Go Away,” is the album’s biggest stylistic departure, mixing elements of soul, disco, R&B, psychedelia, the Zombies, chanting and baroque. It was written by Shannon and muses on the notion that all in life is temporary, the good and the bad, and finding comfort in that. Album opener “The Boy” is quintessential Clams. Written by Cody, it is a heavily 60s rock inspired track with a mournful hook that speaks about the way childhood experiences stick with and shape you, for better or worse, and hang around forever like baggage until you choose to lose them.

“I hope my lyrics can be an entry point for people into introspection and self-analysis,” says Cody. “There’s a stigma around it and there’s so much distraction available, but you’ve got to sort through the chaos of your personality. I hope people hear what I’m singing and give themselves permission to look around inside their own heads.”

“It’s okay for people to interpret the songs,” Shannon says. “You can put your own story into it if that helps you heal. I just want people to feel something, whatever it is. When I’m performing I make a point to always go back to the place emotionally of when I wrote the song and tap back into it. I try to stay really connected to the original feeling and I hope people can see that. I feel like people appreciate our genuineness. That’s the thread we’ve been able to keep this whole time and we’ll always stay true to that.

Come out to Decades rooftop on Friday, July 27th (6-10 PM) for another fun party with music, games, and drinks!
No cover charge. Just drink specials.

Bring friends, teammates, roommates, and coworkers to kick off the weekend, get ready for DC Field Day 2018, and celebrate summer victories with DC Fray!

PubU will also be on-site to crown the FASTEST flip cup team in DC.

Drink Specials:

$7 Red Bull slushies

$7 Arnold Palmer

$5 Absolut Lemon Drops

$3 MillerLite

$3 Coors

Admission is FREE!

REPERTOIREIn a program that celebrates the wealth and breadth of Leonard Bernstein’s music, Misty Copeland and Tony Yazbeck are featured in the Dream Ballet from On the Town, and Paquito d’Rivera shines the spotlight on Bernstein jazz in Prelude, Fugue and Riffs. Musical theater highlights include “Maria” and “Cool” from West Side Story as well as “Auto-da-fe” and “Make Our Garden Grow” from Candide. The Washington Chorus and National Cathedral treble soloist Enzo Baldanza perform Chichester Psalms, and artists from Wolf Trap Opera offer selections from Songfest. 

Overture from Candide Chichester Psalms
Excerpts from Songfest
Prelude, Fugue and Riffs
Excerpts from On The Town
Excerpts from West Side Story
Excerpts from Candide 

Get ready for another unforgettable experience at the second annual DC Field Day. Join hundreds of young professionals on Saturday, July 28, 2018 to relive your favorite day of elementary school… at a whole new level.

We’ll have classic games with an adult twist! Expect sack races, tug-of-war, an obstacle course, and get ready for a few surprises! In case that’s not enough to look forward to, we will have food trucks, a bar, and a Field Day market with samples & swag for you and your team.

Will your team have what it takes to become Field Day Champions? Grab your friends, start a team, join as a group, or sign up solo and get ready for the ultimate day of fun, friends, and games this Summer!

Every ticket purchased online for David Byrne includes a CD of the new album American Utopia, released on 3/9/18. You’ll receive instructions via email on how to redeem your album shortly after ticket purchase.

Please note- there’s an 8 ticket limit for this show. Patrons exceeding the ticket limit will have their order cancelled automatically & without notice. No refunds or exchanges.

Attention: Parking at MPP has Changed! Everyone MUST pre-select parking (or decline parking) once tickets have been bought. Once you’ve completed your ticket transaction, you’ll receive a link to select your FREE parking. Please do so in advance before arriving at the show.

Note to ridesharers, walkers, bussers & cyclists: If you have made other transportation arrangements, you don’t have to select parking.

American Utopia Tour
David will be performing songs from his new album American Utopia, out March 9th, as well as classics from his solo career and days with the Talk Heads. Performing with David will be an 12-piece untethered band.

“We’ll be doing some new songs… and many others that will, I assume, be familiar. I’m excited. This is the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for ‘Stop Making Sense,’ so fingers crossed.” – David Byrne

British-American singer, songwriter, artist, film and record producer born May 14, 1952 in Dumbarton, Scotland and based in New York City. He was married to Adelle Lutz from 1987 to 2004 (divorced).

Best known as the lead singer of Talking Heads, David Byrne has also collaborated with many artists from Brian Eno to X-Press 2, and has also released several solo albums on his own Luaka Bop label.