DC News You Can (Maybe) Use

Name: Nats Night Out
Start: 2018-7-20T17-17-30-00
End: 2018-7-20T18-18-30-00
Location: Due South

Kaylee DuganOctober 11, 2016

News 01 min read

WHEREIN: We bring you the developments (happening in and around D.C.) that we think are newsworthy, or, at the very least, almost newsworthy.

Lena Dunham is in Arlington tonight. (via ARL Now)
And Bruno Mars is going to perform at the MGM National Harbor. I don’t know why, but he is. (via DCist)

Steak-umm’s tried to bribe City Paper.
The Michelin fever is at a all time high! Here are the restaurants the experts believe will get stars. (via Post)

District Distilling has released their first round of spirits. (via Washingtonian)
The flu is officially here! Let the flu shot reminders from all of our mothers begin. (via Post)
DC Inno interviews one of D.C.’s cooler architects.
Someone tried to use fake money at Beuchert’s Saloon. (via City Paper)
The Air Sex Championship is coming back to town. (via Borderstan)

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20jul5:30 pm6:30 pmNats Night Out5:30 pm - 6:30 pm Due South

20jul6:30 pmJanelle MonáeSt. Beauty6:30 pm The Anthem

20jul8:00 pmGreta Van Fleet8:00 pm

Event Details

Jake Kiszka – guitars
Josh Kiszka – vocals
Sam Kiszka – bass/keyboards
Danny Wagner – drums

Frankenmuth, Michigan – Michigan’s “Little Bavaria” – is known for its scenic farmland. Crispy chicken dinners. The State’s best indoor water parks. Picturesque wine and chocolate boat cruises. The world’s largest Christmas store.

These days it’s also home to one of the most exciting rock ‘n’ roll acts to come from the heartland, or anywhere, in many a year.

Greta Van Fleet – which took its name from one of the close-knit community’s town elders – is a hard rocking quartet whose creative ambitions and achievements reach far beyond the ages of the four band members, not all of them old enough to have voted in last November’s election. On its debut EP Black Smoke Rising, the group deftly straddles the line between timeless and future, sounding at once like many things you’ve heard before and also something you’ve never heard before. The three brothers – twins Josh (vocals) and Jake (guitar) Kiszka, younger brother Sam Kiszka (bass, keyboards) and drummer Danny Wagner – have turned their rich and varied musical background into an arresting mélange of rock ‘n’ roll with flavors of metal, pop, blues and grunge, the result of years of practice, study and familial good times.

“When we were not even born yet my father played us blues music and R&B, soul music – all the good stuff,” says Sam. Dad Kiszka was a musician himself, playing guitar and harmonica. “Our parents had a lot of vinyl laying around,” recalls Josh, so we grew up listening to that and really liked playing with the vinyl albums – putting them on the turntable and speeding them up and slowing them down. But, yeah, I really liked the blues and the soul and the funk – Wilson Pickett is the big one, and Joe Cocker, those kinds of things.”

The Kiszka kids furthered their music education during winter ski trips to Michigan’s Yankee Springs, where a plethora of family and friends would gather with instruments. Someone was playing something nearly every minute of the day, and Josh, Jake and Sam soaked it up with relish. “Every year was better than Christmas,” Josh recalls. “In the evenings or during the day, there was always music being made there, everybody getting together and experimenting with sounds, having lots of fun, making music.” For Jake, meanwhile, it was “really awe-inspiring when you see this completely surrealistic environment, to see all these people from all over the place come together, and what brought them together was music. That was mind-blowing.”

It was Jake who turned that inspiration into Greta Van Fleet, drawing the idea from the likes of Cream, the Yardbirds, The Who and other 60s British Invasion favorites. “We liked to see how the English bands had reinterpreted the blues, and we wanted to interpret it again – Y’know, wouldn’t it be interesting if an American band came right back and reinterpreted the reinterpretation that the English did?” the guitarist explains. “I thought there was something there that needed to be created.”

Jake gradually assembled his brothers into a band. Sam was caught up when Jake began jamming at the family home with a drummer friend from school. “It dawned on me that I needed to play bass for them,” Sam says. “Plus,” he joked, “my mom always said I looked like a bass player.” Josh, meanwhile, was studying theater, film and painting at school, with acting giving him an ease on stage, as well as a voice, that made him a no-brainer to be Greta Van Fleet’s frontman. “It wasn’t something I set out to particularly do. But it felt pretty natural,” he says now.

Danny Wagner, a friend of Sam’s since kindergarten, became the last piece of the Greta Van Fleet puzzle, joining a year after the group started, after being a regular at the Kiszka house for jams and rehearsals. “We all have similar taste in music and that helps a lot,” Wagner notes. “But at the same time we have these little differences in what we like, and when it comes together it produces this sound. It’s got that classic kind of vibe but it has a lot of soul, a lot of energy, and that’s a huge part of it.”

You won’t find a better description of the four songs on Greta Van Fleet’s EP, recorded at Rust Belt Studios in suburban Detroit with producers Al Sutton (Kid Rock, Hank Williams Jr.) and Marlon Young from Kid Rock’s Twisted Brown Trucker Band. The introduction runs a gamut from the dusty grind of “Highway Tune” to the sinewy punch of “Safari Song” and the muscular crunch of “Black Smoke Rising.” “Flower Power,” meanwhile, is a trippy sonic tapestry that weaves psychedelic and folk textures into the mix. “No limits, no barriers, no boundaries,” Jake declares. “It was like that when we were growing up, and it’s like that when we’re making our own music.”

Listen closely and you’ll also hear the flavor of a small, tight-knit community seeping into the group’s songs. “I think it has a huge presence in the music,” Josh says. “It’s this romantic, simple, Americana kind of thing, like Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn growing up outside of town in the country.”

The good news is there’s more where these four songs came from. The group has been in the studio for about two years now, with nearly 20 tracks down and more coming every day. “We’ve been writing since Josh and I were 16 and Sam and Danny were 13,” Jake says. “We have so many songs we’re working on it’s ridiculous. We’re just trying to develop and get better. That’s very important to us.” So is playing live, where Greta Van Fleet has been slaying audiences with an electrifying show that sounds more like a band that’s been around for decades rather than just a few years. The group can’t wait to take it around the country, and around the world in support of the EP, showing off the big sound this band from a little town can make whenever it hits the stage.

“It’s really happened so quickly. It’s definitely overwhelming and exciting – and it’s awesome,” says Wagner. “All these things are happening – the record deal, management, William Morris (booking agency). It’s slowly starting to build up, and we’re starting to get that fever. We’re itching to show everybody who we are and what we can do.”

Time

(Friday) 8:00 pm

Cost

$35

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20jul8:00 pmQueen Latifah / Common8:00 pm Wolf Trap

20jul8:30 pm9:30 pmThe Bentzen Ball Podcast Studio: That's So RetrogradeDistrict of Comedy Festival8:30 pm - 9:30 pm The Kennedy Center

21jul5:30 pmDispatchw/ Nahko and Medicine for the People • Raye Zaragoza 5:30 pm Merriweather Post Pavilion

Event Details

$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.”

Time

(Saturday) 5:30 pm

Location

Merriweather Post Pavilion

10475 Little Patuxent Parkway Columbia, Maryland, 21044

Cost

$46

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21jul6:30 pmAnimal Collective (Performing Sung Tongs)Laraaji 6:30 pm Lincoln Theatre

21jul8:00 pmDeafheavenDrab Majesty • Uniform 8:00 pm 9:30 Club

Event Details

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.

Time

(Saturday) 8:00 pm

Location

9:30 Club

815 V ST NW, Washington, DC 20001

Cost

$20

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21jul8:30 pm9:40 pmThe Bentzen Ball Podcast Studio: Employee of the Month with Catie LazarusDistrict of Comedy Festival8:30 pm - 9:40 pm The Kennedy Center

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