Friday November 16th, 2007
Grass Roots Record Co presents
MARIEE SIOUX's Faces in the Rocks Album Release Show
With Special Guests Howlin¹ Rain and the Moore Brothers
Center for the Arts, 314 W Main Street, Grass Valley, CA, $15 GA, All-Ages,
8pm
November 10th, 2007
George Parsons takes a trip through the universe of El Capitan for Dream Magazine
El Capitan / Stickeen
This San Francisco-based quintet make a nice dusty home-baked rootsy rocking sound. Gently ambling in the ramshackled shadows of folks like: The Band, Wilco, Crazy Horse, The Flaming Lips, Œ66 Dylan, Lambchop, and Camper Van Beethoven, with their own distinctly tender hearts, histories, and stories to tell. A good natured organic authentic hand crafted sound with guitars abounding over an adeptly loping rhythm section with excellently employed keyboards. Harmonious vocals in various states of grace and disgrace on their way to paradise. A masterful set of eight varied but soulfully unified songs about love, loss, friendship, the hometown scene, a bucolic dreamland, and that rush of elation that catches your heart in it¹s hands, all played out as some sort of universally empathic stoned folk rock majesty. I think they are nearly unlimited in their potential audience.
George Parsons
Dream Magazine #8
www.dreamgeo.com
October 24, 2007
Mariee Sioux's Faces in the Rocks featured on MusicRemedy.com
October 13, 2007
Mariee Sioux on PlayBack:stl - See the Light
"Mariee Sioux's debut full-length is a spine-tingling showcase of her nimble
finger-picking, sweetly feminine voice and lyrically eloquent narratives"
read more
October 12, 2007
Boston Globe Rock Critic Joan Anderman paid us a lovely visit one rainy day
a few weeks back...
read more about her trip to Nevada City here
October 9, 2007
El Capitan's STICKEEN reviewed on PerformerMag.com
"Deep in the heart of Yosemite¹s vast forest stands the mighty and ancient
vertical rock El Capitan. The thing is intimidating, a landmark of ancient
scope. It¹s clearly left its mark on this San Francisco group. On the
group¹s third album, Stickeen, El Capitan serves up a rural mix of
psychedelic rock and folk charms"
read more
September 28, 2007
Family Album featured on Side One: Track One.
Read more about Alela, Mariee and Lee Bob here
September 26, 2007
Mariee Sioux Get's Lasso'd on the Day Trotter, find out what's been
inspiring her lately
READ MORE HERE
September 20, 2007
Mariee Sioux's Faces in the Rocks is 116 on the
CMJ charts this week!
Call your local radio station and request Mariee Sioux's Faces in the Rocks
Click here to find a radio station near you!
Click here to buy the album!
September 17, 2007
Mariee Sioux featured on Spin.com read more
September 15th, 2007
Mariee's Wild Eyes on Touring the Indies
Click here to read..
September 14, 2007
Mariee Sioux reviewed in Arthur Magazine Issue 26
"A beautiful voice of nature, singing about nature, in nature. Contentment and beauty. Forest-folk."
September 12, 2007
Lee Bob Watson's Aficionado "like a good Bob Dylan record" reviewed on Ink19
read more..
September 10, 2007
Lee Bob Watson on Aquarium Drunkard
read and listen more..
August 30, 2007
Spotlight on Americana Music and Lee Bob Watson in SF Examiner
Click here to read more..
August 30, 2007
Mariee Sioux named "Best Feather-Heavy Femme Folkie" by SF Bay Guardian
click here to read
August 30, 2007
Synthesis Magazine - Lee Bob Watson is A True Aficionado
Click here to read the review..
August 24, 2007
Mariee Sioux on Cameraphonic
Click here to read!!
August 23rd, 2007
Lee Bob Watson on My Old Kentucky Blog "Watson pairs his cowboy hat with Chuck Taylor's and adds an indie-rock flavor to his country roots."
Click here for more..
August 22nd, 2007
SF Weekly - Lee Bob Watson wrestles for musical truth
Click here to read more..
August 20th, 2007
Mariee Sioux Featured in Parade magazine!
August 10th, 2007
Mariee Sioux on Raven Sings the Blues
Click Here to read more
August 8th, 2007
SF Weekly - El Capitan delivers a rootsy California tapestry on their new album "Stickeen"
Click here to read more..
Click here to buy the album!
July 30, 2007
Lee Bob Watson "One of these days I'm gonna be a big noise" on Nerd Litter
Click here to read more..
July 26, 2007
Lee Bob Watson "Living in the Past" featured on NPR's All Songs Considered
Click here to have a listen..
July 24, 2007
Synthesis: Aaron Ross Shapeshifting Ways
Click here to read more..
July 21, 2007
Indie Folk Forever: Aaron Ross "I'm reminded of Led Zeppelin
III"
Click here to read more..
July 19, 2007
Sacramento News & Review of Shapeshifter: "It's refreshing, in an age of self-conscious, wavering vocals, to hear a singer who can belt out a song ..."
...like he actually feels a variety of emotions, not just grief. Hella frontman Ross' solo debut is beautifully mastered, with deep strings and crisp vocals that put the listener in the middle of a poem, each song a different stanza. Some tracks sound as if they were recorded in a cavern, Ross sitting by a fire whispering the verses. Some begin in tranquility, then nearly lose control. While it's not hard to compare Ross' storybook folk and nasal-y vocals to Dylan or Guthrie, there's a controlled chaos that defies genres and lets the work paint pictures instead of easy comparisons. It's clear at once that everyone involved with this project, particularly Ross himself, believed in it fully. - Josh Fernandez
July 12, 2007
Shapeshifter No 12 most added on CMJ charts this week
Click here to read more..
June 27, 2007
Seattle Weekly - Grass Roots is in the vein of other region-centric labels like Sub Pop or Omaha’s Saddle Creek, but more hippie.
Click here to read more..
June 27, 2007
Willamette Weekly – Nevada City, America’s second finest city for folk singers-songwriters
[FOLK] Portland may well be the finest city in America for incredible folk singer-songwriters, but the Grass Roots Record Company has released a compilation of artists from a city a little farther south of us that could be a close second. The Grass Roots Family Album features artists from Nevada City, Calif., including Alela Diane, who grew up there and is slated to return in the near future. Alela will celebrate the album's release with other natives, such as her longtime friend Mariee Sioux, who awed the Portland crowd last time she came through. Immerse yourself in another city's local scene tonight—without having to leave the comfort of your own. DEVAN COOK. Holocene. 9 pm. $7. 21+. Mariee Sioux also plays Sunday, July 1, at Music Millennium Northwest. 7:30 pm. Free. All ages. read more..
June 25, 2007
Cable & Tweed along with Lee Bob Watson make the ladies swoon
Click here to read more..
June 24, 2007
Head Explorer: "Aaron Ross has the voice of a desert
hurricane"
Click here to read more..
June 22, 2007
Grass Roots Record Co's West Coast Summer Revue Tour takes off today for Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
June 22, 2007
Fader Magazine digs Aaron Ross’ “Looking Glass Mass”
This Saturday we're going to have the fine fine pleasure of seeing Hella
frontman Aaron Ross perform the earthy anthems from his upcoming solo album
Shapeshifter (Grass Roots Recording Co., July 24) at the Echo in LA, so in
order to persuade you to join us we're putting up "Looking Glass Mass" of
same said album. If you listen to it enough you might start writing in the
weird pseudo-bumpkin fashion which we are currently employing in this here
weblog posting. Good luck to ye! He'll be there with the Grass Roots Summer
Revue, none of whom we know much about, but hey, that's what leaving the
house is for. read more..
June 20, 2007
SF Bay Guardian: Wayfaring Stranger, Finding Mariee
Sioux
Click here to read more..
May 2, 2007
Davis Enterprise - Intimate musical voyage, Spiritual guitarist and songwriter enchants listeners
When Mariee Sioux last performed at Delta of Venus, her emotive voice and hypnotic finger-picking transfixed the room: The chatter stopped and the audience listened intently. Reverence took over. Sitting cross-legged around Sioux, we no longer were at a café, but instead around a campfire, serenaded by songs of the earth. Sioux returns at 8 p.m. Sunday to Delta of Venus, 122 B St.; she'll be part of the Grass Roots Family Tour, which highlights Nevada City musicians such as Lee Bob Watson, Kings & Queens, El Capitan and the rockin' Them Hills. Davis artist Katie Delwiche also will be on the bill.
Tickets will be $5 at the door, and all ages welcome; call 753-8639 for further information.
On the song "Wild Eye" Sioux sings:
"Papa my pine whistler,
Sparrow-eyed sun misser;
Papa my pine whistler.
Sparrow-eyed moon blisser.
Mama my jaw clencher,
Spirit-mouthed ghost dancer;
Mama my vein braider,
Thousand-year bone burner."
Sioux's poetic storytelling details the connection between her physical being and the natural earth. Her deep respect for nature reaches spiritual and mystical heights in songs such as "Bravitzlana Rubakalva," a land that Sioux made up.
"I used to write a lot of really sprawling poetry, very rambling stuff," Sioux said, during a recent interview. "It has carried through a lot in the songs."
In "Buried in Teeth," Sioux describes the body inside and out, buried in the
earth: muscles, organs and bones, along with fossilized ferns and bird wings. It's the constant cycle of life.
" 'Buried in Teeth' holds a lot of different meanings for me," Sioux said. "It deals with my feelings on the history we walk over every day ... the things that lay under our feet, that hold all of the past, but that we never see. Feelings of past lives, past wills, past strengths, past love; trying to bring consciousness into my own mind ˜ and, hopefully, others ˜ about our precious, ancient and intense land." This ideology derives from Sioux's Nevada City upbringing.
"My parents always did organic farming, and they kept me and my brother very
involved with the gardens, planting and harvesting. Self-sufficiency is the only lifestyle that could save this Earth. It's one of the most real things, and we need 'realness' right now, in these ever-developing times." She doesn't live anywhere specific at the moment: "I'm just a wandering minstrel, I guess!"
Does Sioux practice a specific form of spirituality?
"I never was raised with any specific path or religion," she said. "I love the natural world, and definitely think it's just too insanely beautiful to not believe there's a greater craziness out there.
"I'm not quite sure what I believe it to be, but man, it must be pretty rad."
Sioux's songwriting style, which includes long verses and trance-inducing movement, is also uniquely her own.
"It's funny; I never realized it until someone pointed it out: 'That is a really long verse.' I get in a zone, and don't realize that the song is 10 minutes long."
Her debut album, "A Bundled Bundle of Bundles," was recorded at home with
just an acoustic guitar. She recently completed her first studio CD. "It has some band-like qualities, although we didn't record everything live." Sioux said, "My new, wonderful friend, Gentle Thunder, plays percussion and Native American flute. A lot of special moments were captured that way."
Come Sunday, you'll have a chance to experience this intimate form of spirituality, one that could transport you to another place. And once you visit Bravitzlana Rubakalva, you may not want to come back. (Landon Christensen)
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