The Bowery Presents

The Mercury Lounge upcoming shows

Sea Wolf (Solo Acoustic)
10:00

Sera Cahoone (Duo)
9:00
Patrick Park
8:00
Golden Bloom
7:00

Venue:
The Mercury Lounge
Date:
Sun 9/19
Notes:
21+
Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:00 PM
$12 adv / $14 dos
Tickets
Sea Wolf
official website
myspace
L.A.'s Sea Wolf is Alex Church and L.A.'s Alex Church is Sea Wolf. Sea Wolf is a singer, just as Alex Church is a songwriter. Sea Wolf has a really good voice, and so too does Alex Church (sometimes he sounds like Donovan). Alex Church was once in the indie-pop band, Irving. Sea Wolf was never in Irving, because Sea Wolf wasn't born yet. Both Alex Church and Sea Wolf share a label (Dangerbird) with another Los Angeles band called Silversun Pickups. Sadly, Alex Church is only credited in the liner notes. Both Sea Wolf and Alex Church have shared bills with bands like Clinic, Earlimart and Ferraby Lionheart. - Oh My Rockness
Sera Cahoone
official website
myspace
Her first stage performance came in a suburban Denver bar, where, at the tender age of 12, she played drums behind a bunch of bluesmen on open mic night. She first picked up the sticks in junior high band class, after bumrushing the kit to show the percussion students how to play. And her earliest instrument was saxophone, though she busted her own reeds to keep from practicing.

Unorthodox beginnings surely, but Cahoone has often plotted an unorthodox route on the way to Only As the Day Is Long, her quiet, country-noirish second album and Sub Pop debut, out March 18.

That path has also included a notable tenure as drummer for rock outfit and Sub Pop labelmates, Band of Horses (she plays on their acclaimed 2006 album, Everything All The Time), as well as a stint for the late indie band Carissa’s Weird.

But in 2006, Cahoone decided to step out from the cymbals and snare and focus on singing, songwriting, and guitar playing, skills she’d been honing for nearly 15 years on her own.

“You can’t really write songs on the drums,” says Cahoone, who’s lived in Seattle for the past decade. “I needed to find something to get my creativity out.”

The fruit of her newfound dedication was Sera Cahoone (2006), her self-released first album of thoughtful country songs that was lauded by indie-rock tastemaker KEXP-FM in Seattle along with NPR.

Now on Only As The Day Is Long, the airy gentleness of the arrangements is counterweighted by tension in the lyrics. “I know I’m safe for now, but I know the rest is on its way,” she sings on the title song. Time and again, characters mired in the present cast either skeptical or hopeful eyes on the future: “It’s got to get better than this” (“Runnin’ Your Way”), “I wish this night would pass on by” (“Shitty Hotel”), “Time’s been moving too fast” (“You’re Not Broken”).

“I go to a darker, sad place when I write,” she says. “For some reason, that’s the way my songs always seem to come out. But I’m not a very sad person, really.”

Sad, no. Risky yes. (Perhaps it comes in part from having a father who sold dynamite for a living -- which must’ve meant great Fourth of July celebrations, right? “I’m not supposed to talk about that,” Cahoone says.) She’s the kind of woman who as a teenager could nail Slayer covers on her drumkit and nail vertical drops on her snowboard.

As it happens, the stage is where she found her calling, something she knew even as a 12-year-old, backing up strangers in a bar. “It opened my eyes,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is amazing. This is what I want.’”
Patrick Park
official website
myspace
Patrick Park is a Colorado native that grew up outside of Denver, surrounded by words and music. His mother is a published poet, and his father played folk and blues on the guitar around the house. “I’ve written songs since I was a kid,” he says. “There was nothing else that I really wanted to do—I was obsessed with it. I pretty much decided at the age of 13 or 14 that this was what I wanted to do.” Now with three EPs and two full lengths to his name, Patrick Park is set to release his strongest set of songs yet with the new Come What Will lp.

Patrick Park’s ernest start at becoming a songwriter came sometime around 2000 when living in Los Angeles with a batch of songs that he decided to demo. He lacked the money to go into a studio, but that didn’t deter him. “I ended up recording in the back of a store that a friend’s girlfriend owned. I sang all the vocals on my knees inside of this couch cushion hut that we built because there was a cricket in the room and it kept bleeding into the microphone. It was August and it was hot and horrible,” Park laments.

With his first album underway, Park began playing solo shows in LA, and the local press immediately reacted. His fellow artists took notice as well, as he opened shows for the likes of Richard Buckner and Gomez. Beth Orton handpicked Park as the supporting act on her U.S. tour. Hollywood Records also took notice, and signed Patrick. While recording for the major label, Badman Recording Co. released Park’s gorgeous, well received, six song EP: Under the Unminding Skies.

Park released his first lp Loneliness Knows My Name in 2003 (Hollywood Records) and immediately hit the road, touring with My Morning Jacket, David Grey, Liz Phair, The Thrills, Rachel Yamagata, Granddaddy and more. As the album drew praise from critics, Patrick won over crowds show by show with his intimate, nuanced live performance.

Problems with Hollywood Records quickly appeared and began to challenge the future of Park’s next album as they stalled giving the go ahead to record new tracks. He recalls, “I think they were either waiting for me to try to jump ship or turn in a Hillary Duff song about sexy text messages. I ended up recording a whole new record without them knowing. When it was done I left it on my A&R guys doorstep with a note that said just said "this is my second record". I think that he was amused, but it's fair to say nobody else was.”

After enduring the long process of getting off Hollywood, Patrick finally released Everyone’s in Everyone in 2007. Park worked with several producers including Dave Trumfio, (Built to Spill, Wilco), Rob Schapf (Elliott Smith, Beck) and Chris Stamey (Whiskeytown). The albumwas well received, making several year-end Best Of lists, lead off track, “ Life Is A Song” was featured as the final song on The O.C, and viewed by over eight million people and the second single “Here We Are” was one of Stereogum’s most downloaded tracks of 2007.

As on his first two records, Park returned to working with his friend, producer Dave Trumfio in creating Come What Will. “On this record, I would write a song and then immediately go into the studio and record them when they were super fresh and new. A few songs were recorded at home in one take in the middle of the night- in the same room where my girlfriend was asleep. Topically, I feel like there is a strong thread of redemption and a rebirth that runs through a lot of these songs -mixed in with a healthy dose of regret and the odd bit of "oh fuck , the world is falling apart,” Park reveals. Come What Will is set for an April 6th release date on Badman Recording Co. Patrick Park will be touring Spring-Fall 2010 in support of the album.

“Park is an inheritor of the Elliott Smith melancholy mantle, with a less edgy and more traditional bent, and one of the great heartbreaking voices working in the acoustic singer-songwriter world today.” - LA Times
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