Natasha Kmeto grew up in Sacramento, CA. Both of her parents are musicians, and there was always music on in the house. Motown, funk, jazz, latin jazz, pop, classic rock… she sang along and absorbed everything. Her dad started her on piano and guitar when she was very young, and at 15 she joined her parent’s cover band and started gigging around Sacramento. She devoured her older brother’s prodigious hip-hop collection, and together they discovered electronic music.
Check out some of my favorite songs from this years line up on the CHBP 2014 playlist on Spotify. You can also view my personal Block Party Schedule!
The Dip formed in 2012 to provide a much needed dose of authentic soul and funk to the local university house party scene. After many sweaty nights of endless booty shakin’, police head achin’, and even some barbeque makin’, The Dip decided that it was time to serve up their tasty blend of Premium Northwest Soul to a stage near you. Accompanied by their always crunchy and a little bit sweet horn section, the Honeynut Horns, The Dip knows just how to get that groove groovin’ and that booty movin’. Having previously performed at Summer Meltdown, Northwest Folklife, Western Washington’s Lawnstock, and opening slots for The California Honey Drops and Ayron Jones and the Way, The Dip are primed for a busy summer that also includes recording their new full length album. Their debut EP, Premium Northwest Soul is out now! [Taken from CHBP site]
Check out some of my favorite songs from this years line up on the CHBP 2014 playlist on Spotify. You can also view my personal Block Party Schedule!
The Thermals are an American indie band based in Portland, Oregon. The group was formed in 2002. With influences heavily rooted in both lo-fi, as well as standard rock, the band’s songs are also known for their political and religious imagery. Continue reading →
Star Slinger (Born Darren Williams) is a producer and DJ based in Manchester, UK, taking influences mainly from house and hip hop. Star Slinger first came to the attention after self-releasing a beat tape in the summer of 2010 entitled “Volume 1“.
Since Volume 1 he has released many EP’s & Singles. He also has some great sets on his SoundCloud!
Check out some of my favorite songs from this years line up on the CHBP 2014 playlist on Spotify. You can also view my personal Block Party Schedule!
Tennis Pro has been playing and recording since 2003. Tennis Pro is from Seattle, but don’t let the gray clouds and sad, bearded indie-rock populous fool you. Tennis Pro likes to have a good time when they play, and they wish to extend that feeling on to you. Tennis Pro doesn’t wear beards. Sometimes Tennis Pro wears beards, but in a totally ironic way. [Taken from LastFM]Continue reading →
Robert Charles Edward DeLong is an American electronic musician from Bothell, Washington. With a background in drums and influences from a number of indie rock bands, DeLong’s primary genres include house, electronica, EDM, and moombahton.
Friday, July 25th. 8.15pm. Vera Stage Newly discovered band!
HOLYCHILD is a creative collaboration between Louie Diller and Liz Nistico. The two met at college in Washington, DC in 2010 and have been writing music ever since. What began as a school project for Diller in the fall of 2011, eventually evolved into holychild, and what it is today. The sound of holychild seeks to bridge the gap between Bjork and Katy Perry; experimental meets pop.
Friday, July 25th. 7pm. Vera Stage They were at Block Party Last Year
Iska Dhaaf (taken from Somali, translated roughly to “let it go”). Inspired by Sufi poetry, limitation, and an obsessive preoccupation with writing, Nathan Quiroga and Benjamin Verdoes have fused their seemingly disparate musical and personal backgrounds into something searching and honest. Their songs, with heavy rhythms and cutting melodic hooks, are at once infectious and sweetly disarmin
. Friday, July 25th. 7.45 Main Stage (2nd year in a row on the main stage)
ODESZA is a production duo made up of Harrison Mills (Catacombkid) and Clayton Knight (BeachesBeaches) based out of Seattle. They met their senior year of college and decided to spend the summer as recent graduates collaborating on an album. On September 5th, 2012 they self-released a free LP entitled “Summer’s Gone”, creating a delicate balance between dreamy sun trickled melodies, glitched out vocals, crunchy drums and large sweeping basslines.
They have a pretty phenomenal SoundCloud full of remixes and original singles.
Saturday August 31, 2013 8 pm on the Starbucks Stage
Charles Bradley, born 1948, Gainesville, Florida is an American funk/soul/R&B singer, signed to the Daptone Records label under the Dunham Records division. His performances and recording style are consistent with Daptone’s revivalist approach, celebrating the feel of funk and soul music from the 1960s and 1970s.
Charles was raised by his maternal grandmother in Gainesville, Florida until the age of eight when his mother, who had abandoned him at 8 months of age, took him to live with her in Brooklyn, New York. In 1962, his sister took him to the Apollo Theater to see James Brown perform. Charles was so inspired by the performance that he began to practice mimicking Brown’s style of singing and stage mannerisms at home. When he was fourteen, Charles ran away from home due to his poor living conditions — his bedroom was in a basement with a sand floor — and lived on the streets during the day and slept nights in subway cars for two years. Later, he enlisted in Job Corps which eventually led him to Bar Harbor, Maine to train as a chef. One time while working, a co-worker told him he looked like James Brown. When asked if he could sing, he was at first shy but eventually admitted that he could. He overcame his stage fright (when a crew member pushed him through the curtains onto the stage) and performed five or six times with a band. After his band mates were drafted into the Vietnam War, the act never re-formed. Bradley worked in Maine as a cook for ten years until deciding to head west, hitchhiking across the country. He lived in upstate New York, Seattle, Canada and Alaska before settling in California in 1977. There, Bradley worked odd jobs and played small shows for 20 years.
In 1996, Bradley’s mother called him and asked him to move back in with her in Brooklyn so she could get to know him. It was there he began making a living moonlighting as a James Brown impersonator in local clubs under the name Black Velvet. During this time, Charles experienced more hard times, including almost dying in a hospital after being given penicillin (to which he has an allergy) and waking to the police arriving to the scene of his brother’s murder just down the road from his mother’s house.
While performing as “Black Velvet,” he was eventually discovered by Gabriel Roth, co-founder of Daptone Records. Roth introduced Charles to Daptone artist and his future producer Tom Brenneck, then the songwriter and guitarist for The Bullets, and later for Menahan Street Band, who invited Bradley to his band’s rehearsal. Bradley asked that the band simply perform while he made up lyrics on the spot. After writing several songs, with Daptone releasing some of them on vinyl starting in 2002, ten were chosen and released as Bradley’s debut album No Time For Dreaming in 2011.
In the spring of 2012, Soul of America, a documentary directed by Poull Brien, debuted at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Poull Brien first met Bradley when he directed the music video for “The World (Is Going Up In Flames).” This feature film told Bradley’s story from his childhood in Florida, to the humble days of homelessness and heartache, then later his gigs as Black Velvet, and finally ended with him touring and recording at Daptone Records. The film went on to play prominent festivals around the world, and the story and legacy of Bradley continued.
Bradley’s second album, Victim of Love came out on April 2, 2013.
Check out some of my favorite songs from this years line up on the Bumbershoot 2013 playlist on Spotify. You can also view my personal Bumbershoot Schedule!
.
Music Streetlight 