Shows in Orange

With October donning a magnificent shade of orange, we here at Shady Maples are offering a special promotion for anyone that comes dressed in the rhymeless color to our show next Friday, October 19 at The Lost Church in The Mission (65 Capp St.).

WEAR ORANGE AND TAKE HOME A FREE COPY OF OUR DEBUT ALBUM, UNFOLD!!!!

The Lost Church is a spectacularly intimate theater with acoustics that will ease your weary ear drums. The Brewer and I are playing as a duo for the first time in SF since we released Unfold, unveiling a grip of new stripped down acoustic material. Our friend Tom Rhodes opens with a set that's almost country and close to blues. The room is small, so come early to make sure you get a seat.

Also, tomorrow, Saturday, 10/13 I'm honored to be one of thirty four songwriters playing at KC Turner's 5th annual Bazaar Stock at the Outer Richmond's song incubator, Bazaar Cafe. My set is at noon but I'll be hanging around most of the day. Come get some lunch and bring the kids.

...in summary...

Saturday, Oct. 13, 12:00 noon / solo @ Bazaar Cafe / map / all ages
Friday, Oct. 19, 7:30pm doors / Shady Maples duo @ The Lost Church / map / $10 / all ages
Saturday, Oct. 20, 8pm / solo @ Red Rock (Mountain View) / map / free and all ages / with Tor House
Friday, Nov. 9, 8pm doors / Shady Maples full band @ 25th St. Collective (Oakland) presented by Art Beat Foundation w/ The Family Crest and Foxtails Brigade

Solo, duo, and full. Hope to see you in orange (green's nice too).

September News

It's been some time since I dedicated much energy to the singer songwriter in me, what with the Shady Maples train on full steam. Lately I've spent most of my free time and many multi-tasking moments writing up a bunch of new songs and getting ready to unveil them on Saturday, September 15 in a good old fashioned solo show at San Francisco's 50 Mason Social House. Join me out on the limb a week from Saturday while I introduce these new bits of my soul. The show is free and early (Brendan Getzell opens at 7:00pm). The venue is at 50 Mason St, obviously, near the corner of Mason and Market. Next up on the Shady Maples full band calendar is Friday, October 19 at The Lost Church, one of San Francisco's great new venues. Take a look at Shady Maples' cover of Radiohead's No Surprises filmed live at the Starry Plough by Tom Rhodes. -Owen

Gabe The Real

A couple weeks ago Gabriel Griffith was up from LA recording some demos at my place to end his long songwriting hiatus. Back in the day Gabe and I had a band together, first Albatross and later The Idlers, and our roommate, Greg Peters, was a plank breaking karate man who'd never touched tone bar to string. One of the songs Gabe brought north the other day was just a verse, hook and riff until we put our heads together and wrote a few more verses to trade off singing, a little harmony, and a spare guitar part. My friend Alex Baum lay a track on the cello he'd recently acquired and hadn't played more than a couple times. Demos and One Offs by shadymaples

nos vamos

It's exhilarating and complex managing a band that's scattered across the state, writing new material for the band and for my solo alter-ego, teaching first grade, and raising a five month old. I've shipped a couple hundred CDs off to radio stations and music writers and been emailing reviewers whose work I appreciate in the name of getting our album heard ahead of a west coast summer tour. The fruits of my hunt for the next big gig so far is an in-store performance at Rasputin Records in Berkeley on April 15 and our album on the "Bay Area Buzz Band" and Indie racks in the record store. Stoked! Many more seeds about to sprout...

I left off at Vaya Con Dios at last check in, the lone linguistic deviation on Unfold. When I wrote the songs on my first album, Bay to Maples, I had Italian on my tongue, probably because living on the east coast I was far away the Spanish that surrounds you on the west coast. But Unfold is a California album and Shady Maples is a California band (especially once Brooklyn Bill moves out here), and you can't represent California properly without Spanish.

Release Month and Lil' Bill

We're coming up on one month since the sold out release show at Cafe Du Nord and our epic Southern California consummation in San Diego. Now we're looking down the road at a summer tour and spring time sprints along the coast. The album is up in all corners of the internet thanks to an arrangement with JMD Distribution, INGrooves and Universal Music Group.

Like Slider's johnson, the list of artists we've worked with on this record is long and distinguished. Tonight the spotlight's on Brooklyn Bill Bell, or Lil' Billy Tickles as he came to be known around the studio last summer...

Bill was born and raised in Brooklyn where I met him in 2007 one night that ended in a Williamsburg bar at dawn. He was the bartender, sound man, and house pianist/guitarist/mandolin player at the legendary Banjo Jim's on 9th and C with a talent for accents and a taste for super hoppy beverages. We were in a band together out there for a year or so, playing venues like Rockwood Music Hall and the Knitting Factory before I moved back to the west coast. Since then Bill has flown out to California about ten times to play on our coastal tours, record this album, and sample the India pales and coconut porters that are hard to track down in New York. He camped for the first time in his life last year at Jalama between shows in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, and he still can't drive a stick which earns him a spot in the cramped back seat in the cab of Peters' Ford pickup. He's one of the most versatile musicians I know and has an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure artists that I'm ashamed not to know.