Events Calendar

BYT & National Geographic invite you to:
My Party Will Go On!

Join us for an Unsinkably-90s, All-Access Party-Mode National Geographic HQ After Hours Take Over!

Friday, September 21
National Geographic Museum
1600 M St NW, WDC, 20036
BUY $25 TICKETS HERE

Featuring the new Nat Geo Museum exhibition Titanic: The Untold Story

+ A hot 90’s live performance from

DC’s best 90s cover band White Ford Bronco

+ DJ Matt Bailer (Peach Pit)
+ DJ Jerome Baker   spinning MORE 90’s tunes (because we are Truly Madly Deeply in love with this theme)
+ A drag performance from three of DC’s GAGGIEST queens – Bratworst, Rigatoni, and Drag Wars finalist, Sigma Fraud (in the auditorium with the Explorers!)
Get Drawn Like One of Your French Girls by our caricature artist!! / Food Trucks / Photobooths / MORE!

Nerd out with lightning talks from Nat Geo Explorers:

featuring:

Gemima Garland-Lewis / @gemimarose / photographer, EcoHealth researcher, and National Geographic Explorer (and cheese fan, which made us think NatGeo explorers they’re just like us! Just much cooler.)

Jennifer Kingsley / @meetthenorth / Jennifer Kingsley is a journalist, storyteller, and National Geographic Explorer.

Justine Ammendolia / @justineammendolia / Justine Ammendolia is a marine biologist, field researcher, and National Geographic Young Explorer.

Katlin Bowman / @kaloubowman / Katlin Bowman is a Oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer.

+ a big outdoor courtyard to frolic in with beer from Old Bust Head Brewing Co. and cocktails!

Croosh Deets:
Tickets on sale now!
Price will go up soon!
We often sell out!
This is a 21+ event

As always, there is no dress code, but we recommend staying on theme:

Jack Dawson / Jack Dawson’s Creek / The Piece of Wood they Both Could’ve Fit On / Unsinkable Molly Brown OR Cathy Bates in General / “Your Money Can’t Save You Now”/ “Women and Women First” / The Heart Of the Ocean / The Heart Of The Ocean IN The Ocean / Robert Ballard / Robert Baratheon / Lifeguard / Lifeboat / Lack Of Lifeboats / An Iceberg / Iceberg Lettuce / Vanilla ICEberg

Look how much fun we had last time at our Sharks and Rec Nat Geo After Hours!

Stay informed:
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com
http://www.twitter.com/byt
http://www.nationalgeographic.org/

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3-Session Weekend Course

Learn to capture this vibrant capital city and sharpen your way of thinking about shooting outdoors. Class sessions include lectures, field trips, loosely structured assignments, and critique sessions in which students develop strategies to meet the challenges of an outdoor shoot. Lectures cover topics including depth of field; exposure adjustments; using a tripod; composition; and natural lighting conditions.

Destinations include sculpture gardens at the Hirshhorn Museum and National Gallery of Art; the Library of Congress and its magnificent King Neptune fountain; the “Contemplation of Justice” statue at the Supreme Court; the Peace Monument on the Capitol grounds; and numerous Smithsonian buildings on the National Mall.

A basic understanding of photographic concepts is required, along with a camera that allows for adjustments to the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and exposure compensation. Participants provide their own cameras, and may work in the format of their choice.

Field trips may require considerable walking. Students provide their own transportation; all locations are Metro-accessible.

Instructor: Joe Yablonsky

3 sessions; 3 hours each

7-Session Daytime Course

Monday, September 17 to November 5, 2018 – 10:15 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Beginning students as well as experienced painters explore new materials and techniques in watercolor painting. Working on still-lifes and landscapes from direct observation or photographs, they explore basic watercolor techniques and learn new approaches to painting through classroom demonstration, discussion, and experimentation.

A supply list may be downloaded from this page no later than 2 weeks prior to the first session.

Instructor: Dave Daniels

7 sessions; 2.75 hours each (no class Oct. 8)

This course is also available on these dates: Oct. 14-Dec. 9

Brookland Exchange is a NEW artists market that aims to support local makers, creative expression and interaction between community and creative commerce on the Arts Walk Brookland at Monroe Street Market. Find everything from handmade jewelry, gifts for baby, locally made foods and more!

Over 40 creative business will offer their products for sale during Third Thursday, an evening of live music, and community activities on the Arts Walk, located next to the Brookland Metro Station on the Red Line.

See our Full Vendor Line Up

Follow instagram / facebook

#brooklandexchange / #monroestreetmarket / #artswalkbrookland

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.

Toledo always knew he would return to Twin Fantasy. He never did complete the work. Not really. Never could square his grand ambitions against his mechanical limitations. Listen to his first attempt, recorded at nineteen on a cheap laptop, and you’ll hear what Brian Eno fondly calls “the sound of failure” – thrilling, extraordinary, and singularly compelling failure. Will’s first love, rendered in the vivid teenage viscera of stolen gin, bruised shins, and weird sex, was an event too momentous for the medium assigned to record it.

Even so, even awkward and amateurish, Twin Fantasy is deeply, truly adored. Legions of reverent listeners carve rituals out of it: sobbing over “Famous Prophets,” making out to ‘Cute Thing’, dancing their asses off as ‘Bodys’ climbs higher, higher. The distortion hardly matters. You can hear him just fine. You can hear everything. And you can feel everything: his hope, his despair, his wild overjoy. He’s trusting you – plural you, thousands of you – with the things he can’t say out loud. ” I pretended I was drunk when I came out to my friends,” he sings – and then, caught between truths, backtracks: ” I never came out to my friends. We were all on Skype, and I laughed and changed the subject.”

You might be imagining an extended diary entry, an angsty transmission from a bygone LiveJournal set to power chords and cranked to eleven. You would be wrong. Twin Fantasy is not a monologue. Twin Fantasy is a conversation. You know, he sings, that I’m mostly singing about you. This is Will’s greatest strength as a songwriter: he spins his own story, but he’s always telling yours, too. Between nods to local details – Harper’s Ferry, The Yellow Wallpaper, the Monopoly board collecting dust in his back seat – he leaves room for the fragile stuff of your own life, your own loves. From the very beginning, alone in his bedroom, in his last weeks of high school, he knew he was writing anthems. Someday, he hoped, you and I might sing these words back to him.

“It was never a finished work,” Toledo says, “and it wasn’t until last year that I figured out how to finish it.” He has, now, the benefit of a bigger budget, a full band in fine form, and endless time to tinker. According to him, it took eight months of mixing just to get the drums right. But this is no shallow second take, sanitized in studio and scrubbed of feeling. This is the album he always wanted to make. It sounds the way he always wanted it to sound.

It’s been hard, stepping into the shoes of his teenage self, walking back to painful places. There are lyrics he wouldn’t write again, an especially sad song he regards as an albatross. But even as he carries the weight of that younger, wounded Toledo, he moves forward. He grows. He revises, gently, the songs we love so much. In the album’s final moments, in those ” apologies to future me’s and you’s,” there is more forgiveness than fury.

This, Toledo says, is the most vital difference between the old and the new: he no longer sees his own story as a tragedy.

He’s not alone no more.

Last year the Buttertones put out Gravedigging, but on their newest Midnight In A Moonless Dream, they’re digging deeper and discovering something dark. If Gravedigging felt like an oversaturated spaghetti-western desertscape, Midnight is much more biting—music made for the swampland that spit out Australia’s mad Scientists, or for the Mickey Spillane night city where the Cramps met all those garbagemen and werewolves. Or maybe the Buttertones are heading for an even more primal place: “Show more teeth / Bite your way in,” sings guitarist Richard Araiza. “You’re back in the jungle again!”

They’d started in 2011 as a trio of music-school misfits. Araiza, bassist Sean Redman and drummer/multi-instrumentalist Modesto ‘Cobi’ Cobiån all wanted to pursue something more than boring industry adequacy, and soon locked together their current five-piece line-up with sax player London Guzman and guitarist Dakota Boettcher. With Gravedigging, they leapt from backyard parties to back-to-back tours, including their first trip to Europe, and scored a Coachella slot for 2018. It was a year that made them sharper, stronger, even more sophisticated. And when they were ready to record, they were ready to do things differently.

Midnight was made in two flash sessions at Long Beach’s Jazzcats studio with Gravedigging producer Jonny Bell, whose genre-smashing record collection and appetite for experimentation made for a perfect match. (He’s really a guru, they say.) What was supposed to be a six song EP during the summer of 2017 bloomed into a full-length by the end of that December. Midnight was like a trust fall, the band says—leap of faith after leap of faith, cut to tape as it happened by a tight and tour-tested band. On this album, they’d decided, everything would be new—not just new sounds, like their first-ever string section, but new ways of working together and writing together. They worked on trust and instinct, by feeling instead of thinking. If it worked, they’d keep it, and if it didn’t, they’d burn it and move on. Gravedigging played like the soundtrack to a good heist movie, but Midnight was like the true story itself—a perfect and intricate crime, executed by a crew of professionals under cover of night.

On the vicious “Winks and Smiles,” the spirit of sax and violence that powered cult-classic L.A. punkers the Deadbeats suddenly comes to life; on the starked-out “You and Your Knife” and fog-and-smoke follow-up “Brickhead,” you’ll hear the cryptic echoes of Suicide or Bauhaus. It’s music made for dancers but also for doomed romancers, and you’ll hear it best on the pocket symphony “Eros,” which closes the album with Lynch-ian vision and power—here Araiza sings with almost startling passion, and if you don’t linger on the idea of graveyard angels in perpetual embrace, it’s a love song for the ages. This is the strong stuff, the kind that comes in an unmarked bottle and burns when it hits.

“It’s the darkness that brings us together,” laughs Guzman—in person, this is a band who prefer comedy to tragedy, even if they do claim to spend hours listening to Smiths records all day. But there’s still a tension and even a sinister new dimension on Midnight that the Buttertones never quite had before. Like lead single “C4,” which ignites like something from a New York no-wave song, with slashing sax and ferocious drums and a piano riff falling of a cliff before Araiza fights through the noise and gunsmoke, and what’s the very first word on the whole album? “Bang!” he shouts—and that says it all.

Let us take you out to the ballgame and take you out to the crowd all summer long at Nationals Park. Join us for pregame happy hour drink specials at Due South where you will pick up tickets from the DC Fray Event Squad and then enjoy the game with us in group seating at the Scoreboard Pavillion…a prime location close to the field and the beer!

Tickets are $25 each. All games start at 7:05 PM. Ticket pickup (and pregame happy hour) is at Due South from 5:30 PM-6:30 PM

*Must be 21

In a castle in the San Fernando Valley lies the lair of music icon Gary Numan. Outside is an enormous statue of a dragon, inside a St Bernard (almost as large) greets you on arrival. He’s a new addition to the family – a rescue pup, and huge. The lord of this manor could be as outwardly intimidating as this entire set-up, but he’s a humble presence. Notorious for hits such as ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ and ‘Cars’, Numan’s early career was too often misconstrued, tainted by a sometimes fraught relationship with the media and challenged by the hostility of the music industry at the time, still deeply committed as it was to the guitar, bass, drums approach of old. Numan, however, stuck to his guns, outlasted his naysayers, and became renowned not just as a pioneer but as an institution. Today, with a career that has spanned nearly four decades, his approach to electronic music remains an inspiration to artists across genres and eras, from stadium goliaths such as Depeche Mode, Prince and Nine Inch Nails to alternative heroes such as Beck, Damon Albarn and Marilyn Manson. Even Kanye West owes him a debt and David Bowie once credited him with ‘writing two of the finest songs’ in British music. It’s no surprise he recently received the Ivor Novello Award for Inspiration.

Now, Numan is preparing his 22nd studio album titled ‘ Savage (Songs From A Broken World)’. He’s a busy guy. A self-proclaimed “one man band”, Numan has always been something of an outlier living on his own terms. These days he manages himself, so has to balance being the artist with all manner of other duties; booking shows, designing flyers, endless scheduling. A mark of overcoming that challenge is currently slightly red and raised on his forearms. The lyrics of the new album’s opening track ‘Ghost Nation’ are now tattooed there, a reminder of the past 18 months of writing and recording in a studio at the side of his garden.

Numan moved to LA five years ago with his wife Gemma and three daughters. He’s originally a West London, Hammersmith boy – born Gary Webb. His father drove buses at Heathrow Airport and, with his mother (who sadly passed away in 2016), bought him his first acoustic guitar at the age of five, kickstarting his obsession with music, and sound inparticular. “I had tiny little hands but I learnt a few chords and could strum very badly,” he recalls. Music was one of two obsessions. The other being machines, specifically airplanes and racing cars. The fascination with both machinery and music left the young Numan unsure of a specific future path, but he knew he wanted to do something that would be challenging, constantly evolving and take him around the world. He wanted something endlessly adventurous.

School was a troubled time unfortunately and he was expelled from multiple places due to bad behaviour. In machinery and music though he found a comfort zone. “Music became the thing I most wanted to do,” he says, “and school became just a huge wall in the way.” That was something that made a lot more sense to him once he’d discovered that he had Asperger’s Syndrome. As he talks today he explains that he’s “socially incompetent” and “terrible at eye contact.” He has a five second rule for that. “If I look at someone for more than five seconds I’m probably being too intense. If I look at them for less than three seconds I think I give the impression that I’m not showing enough interest. So I’m counting all the time while I’m talking. It’s hard work.” He laughs. “Interacting with people is, for me, just a series of rapid calculations, and worry.”

Expelled from school before sitting any exams and so leaving with no qualifications, Gary decided to forge a career in music while punk was all the rage. “Punk to me was a means to an end. It wasn’t what I wanted to be doing long term.” Nevertheless he started a punk outfit called Tubeway Army and signed to Beggars Banquet in early 1978. In the studio while making their debut self titled album a life changing moment took place, Gary discovered a Moog synthesizer in the control room and started experimenting with it. He reinterpreted all the punk songs he’d initially written and over the three day session turned them into pseudo-electronic numbers. After a huge argument with the Beggars Banquet label owners about this collosal change of direction, they eventually deferred to Numan and, to their credit (and good fortune), released those revamped electronic songs instead of making him re-record the punk album they’d signed him to make. The follow-up record ‘Replicas’ contained ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ which went to Number 1. Then came the whirlwind. Three Number 1 albums in succession. Two world tours. All within a year.

“It came good so quickly but I didn’t feel vindicated by it. I was absolutely trampled by the speed of it,” says Numan. “It was like standing in front of a fast moving train. I was on my own, same as now, but with no experience whatsoever. I had no meaningful guidance. I’d only ever done a handful of shows in tiny little clubs. All of a sudden you’re Number 1, the press are comparing you to these megastar legends and you’ve only been there for what felt like two minutes. I was overwhelmed, beaten up. I felt like I was fighting for my life.”

Resistance to this new kind of music, and Numan inparticular, from some parts of the music business establishment was considerable, even the Musicians Union tried to ban him, claiming he was putting real musicians out of work, “How insulting is that?” He laughs. “It was an entirely new form of music and it caught a lot of people out,” he explains. Already existing underground electro artists were equally annoyed that Numan received success before them. Guitar bands, on the other hand, derided him for not making “proper music”. “I never really understood why it was as hostile as it was. All I’d really done was written some songs that a lot of people liked.” he says. “Luckily attitudes changed and things got better, eventually.”

After the Number 1 successes of his albums ‘Replicas’,’The Pleasure Principle’ and ‘Telekon’, he played three Wembley Arena shows in 1981 and then intended to retire from touring to concentrate more on studio work and developing his songwriting skills, although not before flying around the world in his own aeroplane, including an incident in India were he was arrested on suspicion of smuggling and spying. “That was interesting” he says. Musically though the career spotlight had become a monster and Numan a recluse. “Fame makes you a target for every disenchanted idiot with a grudge”. Music went from being a hobby to a huge global nightmare, “You couldn’t escape from it. I was entirely unprepared for the extreme reactions from the media and the public, both good and bad, and I found all of it frightening. It took me a long time to even start to get used to it.” All that’s changed now of course, as there’s a tremendous amount of respect for Numan. At the time however, after ‘retiring’, it all started to slip away. He found himself getting sucked into bad decisions. “I was releasing an album a year, every year,” he says. “But it was getting worse. The success was sliding, album sales were going down, ticket sales were going down, I started to panic and I made that fatal mistake of listening to advice, and so I lost my way. I started to make music born out of career desperation and other people’s opinions rather than my own artistic satisfaction, a horrible period.”

All changed in the early ’90s. Numan stopped listening to other people, and started listening to one significant person – his new wife Gemma. She convinced him to get back to his initial appeal, to stop hiding behind other players and other singers. “Gemma managed to make me understand, after a lot of arguing, that I’d progressively taken out the Gary Numan part of my sound because of my lack of confidence. I didn’t like my voice or my playing, I had no confidence at all.” he says. “The “’Sacrifice’ album in ’94 was a genuine return to doing it for the love of it. Not trying to revitalise a career, not thinking commercially. I’d given up to be honest, things had got so bad that I thought it was all over and so I went back to doing it for a hobby. I had no idea if ‘Sacrifice’ would even get released. I had no record deal at the time and it looked unlikely I’d ever get another one.” When the album was self-released in 1994 on his own label, Numan’s career was simultaneously being reappraised by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Saint Etienne and Damon Albarn. “I see influence both coming to me and from me like sparks,” he says. “People will see that spark and it’ll ignite their own ideas. We are all triggered by something else.” Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor it’s said listened to ‘Telekon’ when making the classic ‘Downward Spiral’ album. “I listened but I can’t hear it,” Gary laughs. “I would never have known. That’s a brilliant use of influence, to turn it into something entirely your own.” He adds “Luckily that wave of new interest in me came at a time when I’d got my songwriting back up to a good standard. A year or two earlier would have been a disaster as I was still lost then.”

Numan had become part of the zeitgeist again. Later on he’d be sampled by Basement Jaxx (‘Where’s Your Head At’) and The Sugababes (on their huge Number one hit ‘Freak Like Me’). “That ‘Freak Like Me’ song,” he says. “I was really proud of the fact that 25 years after I had written that music it still sounded cool and current.” His experience throughout the ’90s gave Numan the confidence to be hellbent on never pandering to radio or to A&Rs or industry trends. He is staunchly independent. It’s something even today’s young breakthrough acts can look to for inspiration.

Fast-forward to 2017 and he’s taking the exact same attitude forward in his songwriting now. Numan’s past few albums have been much heavier and darker. Interestingly electronic music has now become the sound of the masses due to the availability of cheaper technology at home. Anyone can make music now, which Numan finds liberating and thrilling. “Everyone should have an opportunity and not be thwarted by needing expensive equipment. Those with talent will still rise above.” he says. Carrying a recorder with him wherever he goes, his inspiration is sound, atmosphere, the wider world. There’s a recording from the London Underground on one of the new tracks, such was Numan’s obsession with a particular noise a train made on a recent visit to London.

Lyrically, however, the material for ‘Savage’ wasn’t obvious at first. When Numan released his last album – 2013’s highly acclaimed ‘Splinter’ – he had a deep well of real-life inspiration to draw from: a three year period of severe depression and family turmoil. This time around he went far more conceptual. As a child, Numan wrote short stories, influenced by Philip K Dick and William Burroughs. He was consumed by science fiction – “or epic fantasy” –, always fantasising about how civilisation might look in the near future and what the human race could become. His 1979 album ‘Replicas’ focused on that, but since then all of these ideas have been relegated to a novel that Numan describes as “never-ending”. He began to lift ideas from that novel to inform this record.

‘Savage’ is set in a post global warming, apocalyptic, Earth in the not-too-distant future. There is no technology left and most of the planet has turned to a desolate, desert wasteland. Food is scarce, water even more so and human kindness and decency are just a dim and distant memory. Western and Eastern cultures have merged, more because of the need to simply survive than any feelings of greater tolerance or understanding. It’s a harsh, savage environment, as are the survivors who still roam across it.

While he was writing the record, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. It made sense to make him and his climate decisions the catalyst for the apocalypse theme of the album. “The songs are about the things that people do in such a harsh and terrifying environment. It’s about a desperate need to survive and they do awful things in order to do so, and some are haunted by what they’ve done. That desire to be forgiven, along with some discovered remnants of an old religious book, ultimately encourages religion to resurface, and it really goes downhill from there.”

Made partly in his own studio in LA, and partly in the UK, the album was produced by long-time collaborator Ade Fenton. He also set up a Pledge Music campaign to create an experience for fans that would let them see how an album was put together from first note to the finished shrink wrapped package. A strategy that brought Numan closer to his fans, and allowed him to communicate the blood, sweat and tears that goes into making a record. “I find every album I make to be more difficult than the one before,” he says. “It’s like climbing a mountain, and it gets ever steeper. I wanted people to understand what it takes, how hard it can be, the emotional roller coaster that is part and parcel of doing this, and that it can be a real battle, with yourself as much as anything. Confidence comes and goes and you can be your own worst eneny at times.”

With ’93’s ‘Splinter’ album having received the best reviews he’d ever had (not to mention the best chart position he’d had in 30 years), the pressure was on to beat it. “I don’t want to repeat myself,” says Numan. “People who have been around for a long time often tend to bland out a bit and become more middle of the road, or they hide in nostalgia and live on the back of what they did before. Both of those options are awful. Being proud of your legacy is one thing, but becoming trapped by it is another thing entirely. I’m not one for self praise but I am very proud of the fact that as I’ve got to the more precarious latter part of my career the music’s got progressively darker and even less radio friendly. I’ve done the opposite of playing it safe.”

Everything You Need To Know About Portugal. The Man’s New Album.

Well, we’re two full months into 2017 and the world continues to burn like an avalanche of flaming biohazard material sliding down a mountain of used needles into a canyon full of rat feces. But hey, it’s not all bad: Portugal. The Man has a new album coming out called Woodstock.

PTM’s last album came out over three years ago—a long gap for a band who’ve dropped roughly an album a year since 2006. And in true, prolific band fashion, they’ve spent almost every minute since 2013 working on an album called Gloomin Doomin. They created a shit-ton of individual songs, but as a whole, none of them hung together in a way that felt right. Then John Gourley, PTM’s lead singer, made a trip home to Wasilla, Alaska, (Home of Portugal. The Man’s biggest fan, Sarah Palin) and two things happened that completely changed the album’s trajectory.

First, John got some parental tough love from his old man, who called John on the proverbial carpet or dogsled or whatever you put people on when you want to yell at them in Alaska. “What’s taking so long to finish the album?” John’s dad said. “Isn’t that what bands do? Write songs and then put them out?” Like fathers and unlicensed therapists tend to do, John’s dad cut him deep. The whole thing started John thinking about why the band seemed to be stuck on a musical elliptical machine from hell and, more importantly, about how to get off of it.

Second, fate stuck its wiener in John’s ear again when he found his dad’s ticket stub from the original 1969 Woodstock music festival. It seems like a small thing, but talking to his dad about Woodstock ’69 knocked something loose in John’s head. He realized that, in the same tradition of bands from that era, Portugal. The Man needed to speak out about the world crumbling around them. With these two ideas converging, the band made a seemingly bat-shit-crazy decision: they took all of the work they had done for the three years prior and they threw it out. 

It wasn’t easy and there was the constant threat that the band’s record label might have them killed, but the totally insane decision paid off. With new, full-on, musical boners, the band went back to the studio—working with John Hill (In The Mountain In The Cloud), Danger Mouse (Evil Friends), Mike D (Everything Cool), and longtime collaborator Casey Bates (The one consistent producer since the first record). In this new-found creative territory, the album that became Woodstock rolled out naturally from there

Remember that mountain of burning needles we were talking about? Good. Because Woodstock is an album (Including the new single “Feel It Still”) that—with optimism and heart—points at the giant pile and says, “Hey, this pile is fucked up!” And if you think that pile is fucked up too, you owe it to yourself—hell, to all of us—to get out there and do something about it.

Fronted by the enchanting Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, and backed by their counterpart bandmates Dan Molad and Pete Lalish, Lucius have drawn acclaim for powerful songs showcasing taut hooks, along with their mesmerizing stage presence and bold visual aesthetics. The New York Times described Wolfe and Laessig’s vocals as being “especially gorgeous,” while Rolling Stone says Lucius is “powerful enough to knock you over.” The band released their second album, Good Grief in 2016, and much like their debut album Wildewoman, it earned them high praise from influential critics such as Pitchfork, NPR, Rolling Stone and The Guardian.

Aesthetically, while their resemblance onstage seems uncanny with matching outfits and hairstyles, offstage, they don’t bear the same resemblance at all. When Lucius takes the stage, what you see and hear is two voices coalescing into one stressing, agile sound. They sing in an arresting unison, doubling their high, clear voices and creating a third sound that is as unnerving as it is lovely, like two mirrors, creating an infinite number of reflections that reveal as much as they obscure. The band’s distinctive play on duality showcases Jess and Holly’s powerful voices at the center, bolstered and surrounded by the mathematically precise drumming of Dan with the graceful chiming of Pete’s guitar. Together the quartet create a sound the New Yorker calls “seemingly impossible with flawless grace that brings delicate beauty to even the most bombastic moments.”

Since 2017, Jess and Holly hold duties, contributing what Rolling Stone describes as “sweet, soulful, and smothering” vocals to Roger Waters mammoth arena-conquering Us Them tour, performing over 160 shows around the world.

And yet 2018 finds Lucius together for an intimate sold out acoustic tour and the release of an accompanying 10-track acoustic album, NUDES. A collection of songs chosen specifically to showcase their soulful, powerful voices and gorgeous harmonies, NUDES includes three new songs, four from the band’s back catalog, and three covers. The album also features sit-ins from Pink Floyd legend Roger Waters (on “Goodnight Irene”) and Wilco’s Nels Cline (on “Million Dollar Secret”).

This event is all ages

Please note- there is a 10 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.

Grab your friends and join Reese Witherspoon for a fun night of lively conversation! With her debut book, Whiskey in a Teacup, the Academy award-winning actress, producer, and entrepreneur invites you into her world, where she infuses the southern style, parties, and traditions she loves with contemporary flair and charm. Reese will share personal stories about what growing up in the South taught her about life, love, and work, and fans will learn how she entertains, decorates her home, and makes holidays special for her family. She will be joined by a special guest for the conversation and audiences will learn just how easy it is to bring a little bit of Reese’s world into their home, no matter where they live.

Each ticket includes a copy of Reese’s book, Whiskey in a Teacup (a $35 value, published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster). VIP ticket holders will walk away with a limited-edition Draper James tote bag filled with some of Reese’s favorite products.

Life can feel like a movie. Each moment functions as a scene that comprises a larger arc. Given the big screen-worthy scope of his musical vision, singer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and mastermind Adam Young projects his experiences in filmic fashion on Owl City’s sixth full-length album and first independent offering, the aptly titled Cinematic. Preceded by a trio of three-song Reels, the record artfully threads together dream-pop lucidity, poetic revelations, and Steven Spielberg-style eighties wonder into 18 new anthems.

“It’s a personal narrative, as if a film was made from key scenes throughout my life,” he explains. “My hope is there’s a way to teach yourself to recognize and appreciate what I like to call, ‘movie magic moments’, so you don’t miss out on them. That’s what the title alludes to. You have an audience cheering you on. Everybody is in your corner. Do your best for them.”

In many ways, the entire undertaking represents the apex of Young’s decade-long output to date. Hailing from the tiny town of Owatonna, Minnesota, he quietly became one of pop’s most ubiquitous voices, selling over 2.5 million albums and 18 million singles globally. 2009’s Ocean Eyes yielded a timeless smash in the form of “Fireflies,” which went seven-times RIAA platinum, soared to #1 in 26 countries, and ignited a meme frenzy in 2017 nearly ten years removed from its initial release. Among a discography of hits, “Good Time” [feat. Carly Rae Jepsen] also earned a triple-platinum certification and toppled charts worldwide. No stranger to film and television, Zack Snyder tapped him to compose a theme song for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, while he contributed and performed “When Can I See You Again?” for Disney’s Academy® Award-winning animated blockbuster Wreck-It Ralph. Other placements span The Croods, VeggieTales, Smurfs 2, and more.

Following the release of 2015’s Mobile Orchestra, he took a step back from Owl City and devoted 2016 to releasing one instrumental score per month, simply as “Adam Young,” basing each song off of a favorite historical event. These spanned Apollo 11, RMS Titanic, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Ascent of Everest, Omaha Beach, Miracle in the Andes, Project Excelsior, Corduroy Road, Voyager 1, Mount Rushmore, and The Endurance. This exercise earmarked something of a creative turning point.

“Coming out of all that instrumental music, I felt really refreshed to be back in the world of lyrics,” he goes on. “I got my bearings again as far as what I wanted to do with Owl City.”

Galvanized, he retreated to his Owatonna basement studio to commence recording in January 2017. As the sole writer, the sessions conjured the magic of Ocean Eyes. With Spielberg’s Hook often playing in the background, he unlocked a whimsical sense of wonder that wouldn’t be out of place in a “Brat Pack” flick.

“There’s something I’ve always missed about my first records,” he admits. “I didn’t know the status quo or any of the rules. I wasn’t traveling to L.A. or New York to collaborate. I wanted to return to that feeling. So, I decided to shut myself away, and I just kept moving in the studio rather than stopping.”

That motion drives 2017’s Reel 1 from the endearing “Fiji Water”—which details his first meeting at a major label and consequentially first flight—to the ethereal calm of “Lucid Dream.” Elsewhere, the lead single “All My Friends” builds from breezy acoustic guitars accompanied by a friendly gang vocal into a stadium-size chant that’s impossible to shake.

“It’s about those rare friendships that you never forget,” he elaborates. “At the time of writing, I was remembering a bunch of my friends from junior high and high school. I was so overwhelmed and thankful they were in my life. I’m still close with some of them, and I’ve grown apart from others. Still, they stick with me. It’s my way of saying, ‘Hey, thank you for being there. I probably wouldn’t have turned out the way I did without the positive impact you had on me.’”

Perhaps the most personal of the bunch, “Not All Heroes Wear Capes” remains a centerpiece of Reel 2. A clean riff resounds under his breathy delivery before culminating on a heartfelt refrain, “My dad’s a hero to me.” In under four months, it quickly surpassed 2 million Spotify streams and 3 million YouTube/VEVO views and counting in addition to garnering acclaim from People, Billboard, and more.

“It’s the most literal one,” he states. “It’s all about my dad. He loves hot rods. He has a workshop. He’s quiet. He doesn’t always say, ‘I love you’, but everyone knows it by his acts of services. That’s his way of telling you he cares. I’m cut from the same cloth. We’re both super reserved, so this was a way for me to tell him he’s been an amazing dad. It’s everything I feel, but never said aloud.”

Finally Reel 3 jump-cuts from the synth bliss of “Cloud Nine” to the wintry young love of “Be Brave,” which recounts the December evening he met his longtime girlfriend at a late-night movie.

“Before now, I’d mostly written songs about daydreams and abstract ideas,” he says. “That’s how I’m inherently wired as a songwriter. I hadn’t really written about actual things that have happened to me. I decided to go down this path with Cinematic though. I looked back at the past thirty years and saw all of this great songwriting fodder. I felt like I was watching this highlight reel of my own movie.”

Cinematic features the music of Reels 1-3 as well as nine other tracks, rounding out an entire experience. In 2018, Young shares this “movie” with listeners everywhere.

“I have a handful of records and songs that I’ll play if I’m having a hard day,” he leaves off. “They’ll directly speak to my emotions. I’d love for this album or even a song from it to be that for somebody else. That’s all I want at the end of the day.”

Brian Fennell is a student of simplicity. As SYML (pronounced “simmel”), which translates to “simple” in Welsh, Fennell writes emotive ambient pop songs that capture the ethos of his musical persona. With delicate piano, swells of strings and Fennell’s sterling vocals, the songs that comprise his debut EPs “Hurt For Me” and“In My Body,” out January 2018, embody the relinquishing of all emotions, a cathartic release laid bare.

“The name meaning simple was the cornerstone of what I wanted in these songs,” Fennell says. “Keep it simple because you can’t hide behind things aswell when it is stripped back and when it is naked and raw.”

The project’s origins stem from a pair of songs Fennell had written years prior, borne out of the resulting introspection from navigating a healthy and supportive relationship with his now-wife. Over a heaving string orchestration and harrowing piano on “Where’s My Love,” Fennell looks outward at a romantic partner and wishing for their emotional wellness for the sake of the relationship; on “The War,” a stark track with thundering percussion, abattle is waged between the boy and adult man living inside himself. Fennell shared these tracks with a friend who helped land “Where’s My Love” in an episode the MTV drama “Teen Wolf” in 2016, thus thrusting Fennell into the spotlight. So he wrote more songs, self-recording and producing in his home just outside of Seattle.

A child of a closed adoption, Fennell discovered his Welsh roots as an adult and utilizes his heritage in his music in the project’s name and as a filter through which he views the world, though it’s ultimately the juxtaposition between his own happiness and the content of his music that is most resounding.

“I describe my music as generally being pretty sad or dark but the reality of where that comes from is a general mystery that exists behind my history as a person,” Fennell says.

On the “Hurt For Me” and “In My Body” EPs, Fennell examines the will of a person that exists after hurt and loss, the humanity in the thoughts and feelings we all possess when we close our eyes each night.He reckons with internal struggles in “Body,”: “I’ve become the only thing I hate,” he sings; a plea for a lover’s own self-acceptance on “Wildfire”: “You’re not a curse, you’re not too much / you are needed here, you are enough / nothing’s going to hold you down for long.”

“There’s not a ton that we can all agree on other than like what it feels like at the end of the day being human and going through intense things such as hurt and loss,” Fennell says. “You can compare it to the honeymoon phase of something positive, we also have honeymoon phases in hurt and loss. At the end of each of those phases I think that we’re unified in ‘I have to decide how I’m going to choose to still love after this. Do I still love myself?’”

Fennell’s heartfelt approach to music comes from an experience he had in college with a percussion professor. A classically trained pianist who graduated with a degree in music education, Fennell often rested on his laurels early in his career. The instructor inspired him to strive for more, to put more of himself into his practice.

“I had to bleed and really be upset with myself to understand fully how to learn something like music,” he recalls. “It all collided at the same time and I really latched onto writing songs at that point. You need to let go of being perfect or being the best. As soon as you accept failing at something and can give yourself up in a personal way to the music, then you can finally be light enough to reach your potential.”

Ultimately, it is a kind and truthful depiction of emotion, grounded by his gut-wrenching vocal delivery that keeps SYML from sounding maudlin, soppy. Like the name implies, it’s the simplistic approach –things are hard, let’s talk about it –that makes SYML relatable, the topics he sings about tangible.

“One of the pitfalls of writing more emotional music, as a listener and lover of that music, would be you pulling the wool over somebody’s eyes just to make them feel something,” Fennell says. “I’m trying to be conscious of not doing that. It’s not flippant music where I’m throwing out this emotion to the world, I’m trying to approach it with more care and conscience.”

Isaac is the lead vocalist of the Grammy-nominated group The Fray whose numerous works include: “How To Save a Life”, “You Found Me”, and “Over My Head”.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime concert hosted by the Neal Simon for U.S Senate campaign that you wont want to miss. Space is limited so don’t wait to RSVP!

Tickets are $45 for standing room tickets or $150 to reserve table seats (comes with two free drinks).

For the super-fans out there $1000 will include reserved priority seating, VIP private reception and photo with Isaac before the concert. We have a limit of 300 guests so act quickly!

RSVP today!

BYT is proud to sponsor Pop-Up Magazine on Tuesday, September 25 —a night of new, true stories about the fascinating world around us. Each issue is different from the last, with photography, film, radio, and original music mixed together and performed live onstage by a cast of talented people.

September 25
Warner Theater
7:30pm, Tickets starting at $24
Receive $15% off with code BYT15

It’s Back! Our interactive butchering demo, paired with local craft beer and dinner from Crave Catering and Sloppy Mama’s Barbeque.

Really want to pig out? Get the Meat Lover or VIP ticket to take home prime cuts of meat after the class. 

Mess Hall’s popular butchering series, Some Disassembly Required will be back for another appearance on Wednesday, September 26th from 6:30 – 10:00pm.

Join Mess Hall for our signature whole-animal butchering class, paired with local craft beer & dinner by Sloppy Mama’s BBQ – aka your best Wednesday night this Fall!

What to expect:

Gather at Mess Hall to watch Mike Haney, a skilled butcher from All Purpose (and formerly Birch & Barley and The Salt Line) break down a beautiful free range, heritage pig, sourced directly from Spring House Farm, in Lovettsville Va. During the interactive 3 hour event, Mike will cover many butchering techniques and skills while you indulge in local craft beers and BBQ. Yes, you can don gloves and participate to an extent (but you cannot wield the blades!). We will also discuss various types of charcuterie preparations, and unlimited Q&A.

Joe Neuman, pitmaster and founder of Sloppy Mama’s Barbeque will provide a dinner of smoked pork and hand-made sausages, plus sides. VIP and Meat Lover packages include prime cuts of meat to take home after the class.

Ticket Options (all ticket levels include dinner and unlimited local craft beers):

• VIP Ticketholders will take home premium cuts: chops, pork belly and sausage (approx 6 lbs = $90 value)

• Meat-Lover Ticketholders will take home heritage braising cuts and sausage (approx 5 lbs = $50 value)

• Voyeur Ticket Holders will go home with full bellies and empty hands.

It’s your best chance to be the the most interesting person in your office on Thursday morning…you’re welcome.

We keep our butchering classes small, which means tickets are extremely limited. Limited free parking available on site. Please drink responsibly.  21 years .

Anne-Marie doesn’t do anything by halves. Ever since she was two years old and joined her local performing arts school in Essex, she’s wanted to excel at whatever she puts her mind to. Childhood roles in West End productions of ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘Whistle Down the Wind’ proved she had a gift for singing and acting. She started doing karate in her teens, and won three international championships by the age of 17. But music has always been her passion and after touring the world with Rudimental and cementing her place in pop history with ‘Rockabye’ – the Clean Bandit which became the longest-running UK No.1 in 22 years – she’s ready to excel yet again and her debut album, ‘Speak Your Mind’, sounds like one of 2018’s defining pop records.

Anne-Marie has been writing the album for five years, and whittled down the finished article from nearly 1,000 songs. Getting the track-list spot-on was incredibly important to her. “I’ve always wanted to have an album that makes sense from start to finish, rather than an album that’s just a load of random hits put together,” she explains. “I want people to know about me from every angle. I want people who listen to this album to be able to figure out who I am as a person, not just as a singer.”

The result is a deeply personal collection that captures Anne-Marie’s super-warm and straight-talking personality. Her break-up bangers ‘Alarm’ and ‘Ciao Adios’ (both UK platinum singles) are obviously present, joined by the infectious single ‘Heavy’, but they rub shoulders with other modern pop gems which show different sides to the 26-year-old. “I didn’t want people to think I’m just about being hateful to ex-boyfriends!” Anne-Marie says with a knowing laugh, referring to the spunky subject matter of ‘Alarm’ and ‘Ciao Adios’.

We’re already seeing her more playful side on ‘FRIENDS’ – a collaboration with DJ/producer Marshmello that just cracked the UK top five. “You’re not my lover, more like a brother, I known you since we were like ten, yeah,” Anne-Marie sings sassily, placing a guy firmly in the friend-zone. The flirty tropical pop tune ‘Can I Get Your Number’ (“something I’d never ask in real life!”) and tongue-in-cheek strut of ‘Bad Girlfriend’ also show off her sense of fun.

But other songs on the album are more sombre and contemplative. Slow-burning opening track ‘Cry’ finds Anne-Marie channelling Alanis Morissette, one of her teenage heroes. ‘Trigger’ is a heartfelt plea for society to stop relying on guns to sort out its disagreements. And ’Perfect’ sees Anne-Marie lay bare her imperfections to help others embrace theirs. “I always wanted to write a positive song for women, but one that doesn’t sound cheesy,” she explains. “I want someone else to listen to this song and think, ‘Yes! I’m not the only one who sometimes doesn’t want to put makeup on in the morning.”

Elsewhere, the raw and revealing ‘Machine’ finds Anne-Marie grappling with the fact she’s an empath, someone who can’t help being affected by the emotional state of others. “I can walk into a room full of happy people and feel really happy. But if I walk into the next room and someone looks sad, I can go into a really depressive state,” she explains. “It can be really draining, so I wrote this song because sometimes I wish I wasn’t like that. Sometimes I wish I was a machine.”

But it’s hard to imagine Anne Marie writing the devastating electro ballad ‘Then’, inspired by a friend’s split from their long-term partner, without this gift for empathy. Equally, it’s hard to imagine someone who lacks Anne-Marie’s deep love for pop music coming up with the nostalgic bop ‘2002’. Anne-Marie actually co-wrote ‘2002’ with Ed Sheeran, the artist she’s about to go on tour with. “Ed is amazing,” she says excitedly when Sheeran’s name is mentioned. “He can just write these melodies that connect with everyone on such a fundamental level. But to be honest, I always try to work with people who are my friends and I can speak openly to. I just tell them what’s happening in my life and they say, ‘Yeah, let’s write about that.’ And it ain’t ever scary because I just think the best songs come from stuff that’s real. To be honest, I can’t write about something that isn’t real.”

Anne-Marie says writing songs gives her the same kind of emotional release as karate, “only this way it’s a bit less aggressive!” She finds herself writing music nearly every day, whether she has a studio session booked or not. “I’m still a very emotional person, but if I didn’t get to write songs, I can’t imagine what I’d be like!”

Cool, contemporary, and crafted with some of pop’s most exciting songwriters and producers (including Steve Mac, MNEK and Ina Wroldsen), Anne-Marie’s debut album is packed with hits that people can relate to. But she’s the kind of artist who’s already looking ahead. “I want to continue to make music that I’m really passionate about, and tour the world doing the job I love.”

When you listen to ‘Speak Your Mind’, you’ll realise this shouldn’t be a problem.

When Afghan-American pilot Shaesta Waiz decided to fly around the world, she knew she wanted to do it for something bigger than herself. Last year, Waiz became the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe solo in a single-engine aircraft—and along the way, she inspired girls and boys to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields and aviation careers.

Born in an Afghan refugee camp, Waiz and her family immigrated to the United States when she was a young child. She discovered her passion for aviation at the age of 18 and went on to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. While at Embry-Riddle, Waiz founded the Women’s Ambassador Program to mentor and support young women pursuing an education in aviation and engineering. She also founded the non-profit organization Dreams Soar, Inc., with the mission to inspire the next generation of STEM and aviation professionals around the world. Waiz holds a commercial pilot rating and is the first certified female civilian pilot from Afghanistan.

In this lecture, hear first-hand about Waiz’s passion for global outreach to youth in underprivileged socioeconomic environments and in regions unsupportive of women. Waiz will also share stories of her around-the-world flight in a Beechcraft Bonanza A36 single-engine aircraft, a journey that spanned 145 days, 22 countries, and over 24,000 nautical miles.

Come early at 6:00 pm for free flight simulator challenges and a chance to talk with local pilots.

Request FREE tickets here

“Wine food” is a new way to talk about wine pairing, coined by the evolving breed of wine drinker and cook who wants to discover a wider range of wines and match them to the rustic, casual, global food they love to eat.

Drawing on their new book, Wine Food (Lorena Jones Books), sommelier and winery owner Dana Frank and award-winning cookbook author Andrea Slonecker offer a guide to one of their favorite categories of paring elements, natural wines. While the term natural can be controversial and doesn’t have a solid, agreed-upon definition in winemaking, it generally means that the grapes are grown without the use of herbicides or pesticides and the vineyards are organically or biodynamically farmed. The wines ferment by way of their own wild yeasts and are free of additives, except in some cases, enhancements in naturally occurring sulphur as a preservative.

Frank and Slonecker discuss a range of distinctive flavors that natural wines offer, and how to match intriguing, off-the-beaten-path labels with your favorite foods. Their suggestions include combining dry sparkling Vouvray with Indian flavors, orange wines from the Republic of Georgia with hearty roasted vegetables, and Sicilian reds with rich braised meats. Wine drinkers of all knowledge levels can bring home plenty of tempting natural wine-and-food duets to try.

After the program, enjoy a specially paired bite and sip. Wine Food is available for sale and signing. 

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.