With MGMT tonight and the Blues Festival on Sunday, just think how lovely Avila will be in the heart of summer, on the longest weekend day of the year (officially, the Solstice is on Monday, June 21st. Put your day off request in now). So what better way to spend the sunniest day than with sunny, vibrant music. The Summer Solstice Reggae Festival comes to Avila Beach Resort on Sunday, June 20th with Fat Freddy’s Drop, the Dirty Heads, Alborosie, Still Time and Top Shelf. Tickets are on-sale now, here at Boo Boo Records or through Vallitix on-line. But we’re offering you a chance to pencil in your calendar now by offering one lucky winner a pair of tickets. Hit more and scroll down to enter.

Fat Freddy’s Drop
They’ve dubbed themselves “hi-tek soul,” but Fat Freddy’s Drop — featuring producer and leader Fitchie, vocalist Joe Dukie, saxophonist Warren Maxwell, trumpeter Toby Laing, trombonist Joe Lindsay, guitarist Tehimana Kerr, and keyboardist Iain Gordon — could just as easily be considered a modern reggae band that incorporates soul and dub. Prior to releasing their first album, 2005′s Based on a True Story, they were already well-known in their native New Zealand; the album shipped gold and became the first independent release to reach number one on the country’s chart. By the end of the year, the band had left an impression in several other countries, including England, where listeners of Gilles Peterson’s BBC Worldwide program voted it as the Album of the Year. Lead singer Dallas Tamaira (aka Joe Dukie) has an airy, soulful voice that sometimes comes across like a more nimble version of Roland Gift’s falsetto, while the band can shift with equal agility between house, dancehall, funk, and one-drop grooves, sometimes within a single track. There album is a hoot and a triumph.


Dirty Heads
Following in the footsteps of their California brothers Sublime, Huntington Beach’s Dirty Heads mix hip-hop, reggae, and rock along with that laid-back, South Cali attitude. While those are the three main styles the group blend, they don’t always use all three idioms in the same song. Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan are even referenced in “Believe.” Billy Preston appears on keyboards in one of the last sessions he recorded before his death.

Alborosie
Alborosie, born Alberto D’Ascola in 1977, is a reggae artist born in Marsala – Sicily, Italy, but now residing in Kingston, Jamaica. He is a multi-instrumentalist, being proficient in guitar, bass, drums and piano. His musical career began in the Italian reggae band Reggae National Tickets, from Bergamo city, when he was 15 years old in 1993, in which he was known as Stena. In 2001 Alborosie decided to try a solo career. He moved to Jamaica to be close to reggae music’s roots and rastafari culture.[1] There, he started working as sound engineer and producer. He has also worked with artists like Gentleman and Ky-Mani Marley. His first solo album was called Soul Pirate. In the summer of 2009 he released his second album which was called “Escape from Babylon.

Its Mother’s Day on Sunday. Aside from taking her out for Sunday brunch and pampering her with flowers and chocolate, consider escorting her to Avila Beach Resort to hear one of Spain’s most internationally accomplished acts, The Gipsy Kings, play beneath the palm trees with the scent of ocean air all around you. If you’ve been to Spain, you know its our sister-country from terrain, agriculture and zest for life. This show should be a magical spectacle. There are still seats available, but we are giving you a chance to win a pair of tickets. Scroll on down, and best of luck.

GIPSY KINGS
The Gipsy Kings are largely responsible for bringing the joyful sounds of progressive pop-oriented flamenco, called Sevillana in Spain, to the world. The band started out in Arles, a village in southern France, during the ’70s when brothers Nicolas and Andre Reyes, the sons of renowned flamenco artist Jose Reyes, teamed up with their cousins Jacques, Maurice and Tonino Baliardo, whose father is Manitas de Plata. They originally called themselves Los Reyes and started out as a gypsy band traveling about playing weddings, festivals, and in the streets. Because they lived so much like gypsies, the band adopted the name the Gipsy Kings. Later, they were hired to add color to posh parties in St. Tropez. Popularity did not come to Los Reyes right away and their first two albums attracted little notice. At this point the Gipsies played traditional, albeit passionate flamenco music punctuated by Tonino’s precise guitar playing and Nicolas’ exceptional voice. Though they had devoted fans, they still had yet to gain wider recognition until 1986 when they hooked up with visionary producer Claude Martinez who could see that the Kings had the makings of a world-class band.

Tickets are still available at all Vallitix Outlets, on-line at http://vallitix.rdln.com/ or by phone at 888.825.5484. We will pick a winner on Friday, May 7th.

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Sharon Jones is our Ms. Dynamite Soul. A spark plug with three-octave power, she hits the stage with adrenalized hysteria. And with her backing band, the Dap-Kings, replicating the musical references of the sweet blare of Muscle Shoals horns, the sultriness of Memphis soul and the clean, sophisticated Motown back beat sound, all with spot-on precision, the formula is impressive and unmatchable. Their new album, I Learned The Hard Way, comes out on Tuesday, April 6th, and we will be featuring the Daptone artist throughout the day at Boo Boo Records, playing the new Sharon Jones album fully at noon and 4pm.

And better yet, if you come down and pick-up I Learned The Hard Way on Tuesday, April 6th, you’ll be entered to win a pair of tickets to see Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on June 26th 2010 at 8pm. We’ll also be giving away a signed LP to second winner.

Coming to the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara on Wednesday, March 17th, Zac Brown is riding the crest of his “Best New Artists” nod from the Grammys. Not that he wasn’t sizzling stages coast to coast previous to this award, but it’s nice to see a musician whose been doing it alone, finally get an acknowledged measure of success. If you feel like your Celtic luck is running high, we’re offering one lucky winner a pair of tickets to see the Zac Brown Band in Santa Barbara. We’ll pick a winner on Monday, March 15th. Tickets are also available at all TicketMaster outlets and the Arlington Theatre Office. To charge by phone please call, 805-583-8700. Order online at www.ticketmaster.com

Zac Brown Band

Zac Brown is a country singer, songwriter, and bandleader, one of the brightest stars in a generation of performers set on changing the paradigm of the country music business. He’s also a record producer, record label head, and philanthropist set on making the world a better place for as many people as possible. With his winning combination of country, bluegrass, reggae, and Caribbean music, he appeals to country fans and jam band hippies, and could well cross over to lovers of world music and pop. He sold over 30,000 copies of the first two self-produced albums he made for his own Southern Ground label, and “Chicken Fried,” the Zac Brown Band’s first single to get national distribution, went platinum with over a million downloads.

Brown was born in 1978 in Atlanta, GA, and grew up in Dahlonega, GA, a small town in the north Georgia mountains. He was the 11th child in a family of 12 kids, and grew up in a split family. Brown’s oldest brother was 21 years his senior, so he was exposed to a wide variety of music growing up. His siblings’ record collections included country, pop, bluegrass, reggae, folk, and singer/songwriter albums by Cat Stevens, James Taylor, the Eagles, Bob Marley, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings. His brother Wynn played bluegrass guitar and banjo, his mother liked old pop singers like Sinatra, and his dad played folk guitar and led the family in campfire singalongs. Brown sang as soon as he could talk, and started classical guitar lessons at age seven, which helped his fingerpicking skills when he switched to bluegrass and country in middle school. He started playing solo gigs while he was in high school, doing covers of pop and country songs as well as his few original tunes.

In 2002 he put together the first Zac Brown Band, looking for players with a high level of musicianship who wanted to be equal partners in a band with a communal vibe. They played about 200 gigs their first year, a pace the band keeps up to this day.

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Hopefully you had a New Year’s resolution of seeing more live music. For the fan of Boston-punk, here’s a chance to get jump start on your promise to yourself. We offering a pair of tickets to see the Street Dogs on Saturday, January 2nd at Downtown Brew at 7:30. The show is all ages. Scroll down to enter to win.

Street Dogs:

The Dropkick Murphys formed in predominantly Irish South Boston, fusing hardcore street punk with an ever-increasing amount of Celtic folk influences, like a harder-edged and more street version of the Pogues. The Dropkick Murphys’ lead singer was the fierce, gravelly Mike McColgan. Following that band’s first album in 1998, Do or Die, McColgan (a veteran of the first Gulf War) left the Dropkick Murphys to join the Boston Fire Department. Ties between the Boston Irish community and the local fire department run deep, and being a fireman has long been one of the most prestigious jobs in South Boston, but by 2002, McColgan returned to music, forming the Street Dogs.

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Still twiddling fingers over where to be on New Year’s Eve? Here’s a chance for a fun night out. We’re offering a pair of tickets for Novo’s New Year’s Eve party. A winner will be picked tomorrow (12/31/09) at noon, giving you plenty of time to doll up. Tickets are $20 including appetizers and champagne toast at midnight. DJs will be outside and downstairs, giving you two sound systems to select. And if you don’t win, tickets will be available in advance and at the door. Best wishes in the New Year!

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In a first for Downtown Brew, Iration will headline a special late night show, this Saturday, November 21st at 11pm. This gives you plenty of time to enjoy a full Saturday morning and night, with the amazing show to carry you into Sunday morning. The Santa Barbara Independent noted it best: “There’s something to be said for any band that can capture the undivided attention of a crowd full of drunken Isla Vistans, especially when there are kegs to be tapped and cops to avoid. But roots reggae rockers Iration manage to do it on a regular basis.” Don’t miss this special event!

IRATION
Where most modern reggae bands tend to move more towards rock or dancehall influences, Iration dips heavily into their Roots Reggae influences. Originally from Hawaii, the members relocated to Santa Barbara, giving their sound a duality of island and west coast flavor. With an emphasis on drum and bass dubbing, Iration presents an array of different styles and melodies while staying true to their roots background. The duo of Joe Dickens on drums and Adam Taylor on bass provides a strong rhythmic foundation for the percussion sounds of Joe King and the modern organ/piano/synth attack of Cayson Peterson on the keyboards. Micah Pueschel and Catlin Peterson add their rock and blues guitar sounds to the mix as well share the majority of the vocal duties. Kai Rediske completes the sound with another strong vocal voice paired with additional percussion help.

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Next Friday, bury your worries into the plaintive sound of the Mountain Goats, with the baroque chamber pop of Final Fantasy opening up the night events. The show is Friday, November 13th at Downtown Brew.

Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats are one of the more unusual bands to find shelter under the ever-expanding umbrella term of indie rock. Hyper-prolific and militantly lo-fi, there are over a hundred Mountain Goats songs scattered across compilations and label samplers, most of them recorded (by choice) on a department-store boom box. Although many musicians have contributed to Mountain Goats releases, by far the person most identified with the outfit is singer/guitarist John Darnielle. (In fact, many Mountain Goats tracks feature only Darnielle’s nasal bleat and his primitive yet frenzied acoustic guitar.) Taking the name from the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song “Big Yellow Coat,” Darnielle donned the Mountain Goats moniker in 1991 while working as a nurse in a California State hospital and began releasing cassette-only albums for the Shrimper label. Despite attracting a devoted underground following (or, possibly, because of it) the Mountain Goats continued to release songs in cassette form only for many years, using tape hiss as, virtually, an additional instrument.

Lyrics are also essential with the Mountain Goats. Highly literate and full of metaphor, many of Darnielle’s songs fit together to form a larger narrative than they would alone.

On their newest album, The Life of the World to Come, Darnielle muses on the need to believe and keep faith in something as the pressures, horrors, and oddities of life in the 21st century flash by at the speed of a keypad. There is a downcast and deeply meditative mood to this album, though, and the arrangements feature more piano than guitar (and plenty of violin arrangements from Owen Pallett), but Darnielle’s fans don’t need to worry here. He’s still writing finely observed vignettes that manage to intersect life as we live it with life as we wish we could live it, and as such, he has more in common with a short story writer than he does with the typical singer/songwriter. What Darnielle has discovered, though, is that faith has its twin opposite, and it’s called doubt, and thedark, uncertain path between the two is where most of our lives are led.

Final Fantasy

Canadian violinist/singer/songwriter Owen Pallett has been a member of the groups Les Mouches and Picastro, as well as a touring member of the Hidden Cameras and Arcade Fire. Final Fantasy, essentially a one-man solo project with occasional help from drummer/engineer Leon Taheny, released its first full recording, Has a Good Home, in 2005 on the small Toronto-based cooperative label Club Blocks.  With his 2006 album, He Poos Clouds, the one-man classically trained Canadian string section — think Andrew Bird and Patrick Wolf — has created a gem of a baroque pop record that manages to appeal to both the bespectacled hipster and the disgruntled orchestra student. Employing a measured croon caught somewhere between Scott Walker and Louis Philippe with a soft Donovan-esque vibrato, Pallett assumes the position of narrator on the opening track, an ornate snapshot of youthful longing that manages to balance lyrics like “she has a heart that will never melt” and “but the quarry don’t share his taste for Anne McCaffery” with equal parts heartbreak and bravado — he shares more than a little in common, both musically and lyrically, with the Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon.

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