Tag Archives: Concerts

Fritsl & Teni & friends – Chattanooga, TN – Tennessee – 01/03/15 – Barking Legs Theater

share...Tweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookPin on PinterestShare on TumblrShare on LinkedInShare on StumbleUponPrint this page
FRITSL & TENI & FRIENDS
Featuring Jim Palmour & Bob Burns
with  opening set by Ethen Martin

Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave. Chattanooga, TN
Show starts 8pm. Saturday January 3rd.
Purchase your tickets online from www.ArtFRONT.com

$10. in advance $12. day of show.  All ages welcome

If you’re looking for the most pleasant of relaxing evenings after the holidays, an evening to sit back in comfort and absorb some soothing and uplifting local talent perhaps it’s time for You to check out the newly rennovated Barking Legs theater for Fritsl & Teni Butler in their debut full band showcase.   Fritsl and Teni are Chattanooga native talents, sisters who have been mentored by some of our favorite local performers including Jim Palmour who will join them onstage as their backing/lead guitarist along with Bob burns on upright bass and Burnard Tate on drums.  Those of You who have been enjoying Fritsl Butler’s recent performances around Chattanooga and her in-studio appearances on the radio with Richard Winham on WUTC 88.1 will be in for an extra treat as she will be joined by her sister Teni Butler who not only provides the genetically matching vocal backup You might expect but a fully different style that goes beyond just harmonies and creates an enveloping full band & dual vocal experience.   Nanci Griffith, Carole King and John Prine are some listed influences of this up and coming duo and You can read a full bio. on the BarkingLegs.org website   Then take a look at all your friends who have already decided to come to this show on their Facebook Event page.  Seating is limited so You may want to get your tickets early!

The success of our ArtFRONT sponsored events series where the artist chooses their full lineup and performance date has been in evidence with great turnouts for these shows.  For this evening Fritsl Butler has hand picked local singer/songwriter Ethen Martin to open the concert with a set of his original songs.

You can listen to some samples of Fritsl Butler  & Ethen Martin’s music here:

http://www.reverbnation.com/fritslbutler

http://www.reverbnation.com/EthenMartinMusic

 

More concert announcements, streaming  music, videos and reviews from ArtFRONT Presentations will be posted ongoingly on www.ArtFRONT.com On our new ready-to-be-launched site tailored for your mobile device concerts.artfront.com and our Facebook, &  Twitter pages.

~R.

Who
Fritsl & Teni & friends
When
Saturday, January 3, 2015
8:00pm - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
1307 Dodds Ave.
Chattanooga, TN - Tennessee, USA 37404
Other Info
An ArtFRONT sponsored event.
This is a totally flexible setup where outside or even first time concert producers are free to explore creative approaches to their own events’ production and promotion utilising ArtFRONT & MySecretIdentity.org’s professional experience, resources and discounted production rate.
Rather than the normal ArtFRONT Presentations show where our production company takes on all financial risk for the event, these sponsored events allow up and coming artists to enjoy a professional stage presentation on their own terms and at the time of their choosing at a sliding scale expense rate based on number of audience in attendance and the amount of promotion they employ and are then allowed to retain 100% of all money collected from ticket sales.
Visit this link for full details:
http://mysecretidentity.org/ArtistsAgency/our-services/sponsored-events/

« Back to the calendar

Complete Archives: ArtFRONT concert series @ Barking Legs Theater

share...Tweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookPin on PinterestShare on TumblrShare on LinkedInShare on StumbleUponPrint this page
The complete archives of all our Barking Legs concerts

Here is a  roster of concerts produced  by ArtFRONT Presentations  at Barking Legs Theater in Chattanooga, Tennessee  beginning in Sept. 2005.  This page was the home of all the  promotional material and online audio & videos for our Barking Legs Events up until October of 2014 when Our new web format was launched concurrently with the total Barking Legs Theater rennovation.  All our more recent concerts will be available on this new site through clicking the OUR EVENTS or ARCHIVED, category labels at the top of the postings throughout this site.   We hope You enjoy the history.  ~R.

Past concerts brought to Chattanooga Audiences by ArtFRONT Presentations have included some of these artists.

| ANGEL SNOW || KAKI KING || LITTLE COUNTRY GIANTS || HOPE FOR A GOLDEN SUMMER ||SARAH SISKIND||BOMBADIL ||ELIZA RICKMAN || ZOE BOEKBINDER || VON GREY || JENNIFER DANIELS || THE BOWMANS |RYAN OYER||8MM||THE EVERYBODYFIELDS || MEGAN McCORMICK || HUDSON K ||ALEX THOMPSON||ANA LOLA ROMAN||DAIKAIJU||SAMANTHA MURPHY||WILLIAM FITZSIMMONS||BEN SOLLEE||HU DOST|

There are  shows from other venues as well as most  of our Barking Legs events down through the years documented
HERE in our complete Archive of Concert Poster designs.

*******************************************************************

FOXYGEN, Two nights in the South. Reviews of Atlanta & Nashville shows on Oct. 1st. & 2nd 2014

share...Tweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookPin on PinterestShare on TumblrShare on LinkedInShare on StumbleUponPrint this page

(Also, an album review of “…And Star Power” is linked here!”)  ~R.

Ruminations on FOXYGEN Live @ Atlanta’s The Loft @ Center Stage on Wed. Oct. 1st. AND AGAIN the next night at Exit-In, Nashville on Thursday Oct. 2nd 2014. (With crappy iPhone 4 photos by yours truly which caught  the blurry, thrashing, sweaty, danceable energy while the real photographer got a last minute paying gig shooting race cars…..)  ~R.

There’s not a performing artist out there that couldn’t learn something from watching Foxygen live. That’s something about stage presence and serving up a lot of creative internal focus for the audience to marvel at, then enjoy sumptuously at this excessive banquet.  Oh yeah, and all they  work with is their own bodies, their voices, some standard musical instruments and a little mascara.   It’s a nearly chaotic, unpredictable bunch of energy funneled  into a tight rhythm section and a well thought out melodic framework.

 Some Foxygen history for the uninitiated;
My first live Foxygen show in Atlanta on Oct. 1st 2014 came after a couple of years of following this band online, including their first two albums, their live & studio adventures via YouTube and interviews & clashes with entertainment press.  A few  phenomenal videos were in that mix interspersed with a lot of very raw material.  Sometimes it’s the raw material that best shows the underlying talent and potential behind any endeavor.  I use that stuff a lot in deciding whether to book an act I haven’t actually seen live.   Foxygen’s studio work so far has been giving us back something we’ve been missing since the heyday of the vinyl LP.   Foxygen caught my attention and kept it and I’ve been at this observational post for a LONG time… (like, “I saw Led Zeppelin live in 1973 when I was fifteen”  long time.)   The occasionally tragic drama accompanying the last couple years of touring for this band is nothing to ever wish You’d see happen, especially to a young artist but admittedly it came with a high entertainment value not unlike watching grand prix crashes or downhill skiing mishaps.   After Sam France’s dramatic stage dive/fall last year (there are reports it was both) which shattered his leg, sending him into emergency surgery and ending their biggest national tour up to that point,  there was a lot of speculation as to whether they would be back or not.

The rapid recovery time before Their next live concerts was surprising but there were reports of moments during those first return shows where it looked like Sam was still reeling with the pain of recovery and was not at all ready to come back.  During this time some interviews surfaced in which Jonathan Rado admitted that they were too Young and totally without the experience to have been snatched up by music industry management and catapulted into national and international touring when they were fresh out of high school.  This kind of honesty and self apprisal by the core band members served to cement my opinion that Foxygen was about to do something really worth watching.  In an era when the most commercially successful “stars” out there have been totally manufactured for  pre-packaging It was invigorating to see and hear the kind of un-pretentious honesty that  seems to have surfaced only a few times in rock n roll history.  The EARLY Rolling Stones, days, the Kinks and maybe a much happier and less tragic Nirvana type of energy coming from performers in their early twenties who are capable of captivating a multi generational audience gives a certain hope that we will have at least one gigantic writhing pile of real  rock’n roll onstage in a future that is trying to define itself as an electronic push button vending machine of pre-fabricated entertainment.    After Sam France’s recovery time  a video surfaced from last years Coachella festival in which most of Foxygen’s entire set was released online complete with between songs breaks and the whole thing  was absolutely riveting.  That unedited video seems to have vanished tho, and was replaced by just a few songs with the breaks edited out.  Not only did they return with power after their fan base had time to absorb and internalize the substantial nature of most of the recorded songs from their first two studio albums but there was now an element of tension, an apprehension of “what the hell is Sam France going to do next?” One moment during the Coachella video when Sam jumped precariously up onto a stage monitor and glared into the audience caused some  real gasps from the fans who have been following their adventures.

The Atlanta Show

The first few opening minutes were the most “theatrical” experience I’ve had in a long time and that’s nothing to do with stage props or makeup but more to do with acting like true rock stars.  While the full band assembled onstage the audience built up a tangible static charge.  Once they were all in place except for a  conspicuously absent front man,  Sam France’s abrupt entrance set off a spark in the audience and instantly the show was on.  Sam France’s face onstage was the trigger that set off an explosion.   I sort of had an epiphany of what Foxygen meant by naming their new album “…And Star Power” at that moment.  Sam France was IT.   Everything whirled around his entrance and his non-stop slamming the audience over the head with whatever it is that he’s got, whatever it is that we all paid good money and endured Atlanta’s traffic & parking-lot hell to escape into. The band, or more obviously France, seemingly assumed this “Star Power” persona at the beginning of this tour and then actually pulled it off. The precarious results could’ve gone either way…  Foxygen live now comes across as a much more seasoned and confident and even (holy crap!) “professional” performing band than just over a year ago. 

And then after I wrote this I read the Issue magazine interview with Sam & Rado…
“STAR POWER IS A PUNK BAND THAT TAKES OVER THE ALBUM AND BY THE END OF THE ALBUM HAS TAKEN OVER THE BAND. AND IT’S ALSO A RADIO STATION, A MYSTERIOUS RADIO STATION RUN BY ALIENS.” — SAM FRANCE

If there’s any one thing I would tell You about a Foxygen show I would say,  see them up close if possible.  The smallish Atlanta venue “The Loft at Center Stage”  was a great interactive experience despite some technical glitches with the sound on the first song and a broken mic. stand halfway through and the lack of any type of risers giving the audience members a better sight line than straight through the crowd.   Oh I forgot to mention this is a high-energy show.  Don’t be fooled by the soft pop nature of some of their recorded songs. Their set has more in common with an Iggy Pop set than any of the languid  commercial  products that are choking out the vision of younger audiences .SamFranceATLPeople in the Atlanta audience were friendly and talking to their newfound compatriots about the band. You could sort of tell that this crowd had done their homework and knew they were in for something special.  After a few songs I realized the importance of the tactile nature of this event and moved up close enough to the stage that Sam actually slammed into me after one of his signature audience dives.  (I saw a  girl goose him on the ass when he was climbing back onstage which would  be a totally unacceptable thing to do to any female performer. ) I noticed he wore a wrist brace for both shows and I think I saw a little blood on an elbow.  Staying up close to the stage and it being my first live Foxygen show are probably the main factors that gave me more of a charge out of the Atlanta show than Nashville, even though the venue in Nashville was a lot more comfortable and the stage was more accessable in a lot of ways.

The next night in Nashville:

The band’s decision to put the back up singers on the front edge of the stage gives some insight into their determination to create a spectacle…

GorgeousFoxygen-Ettes These ladies deserve major props they dance n sing their asses off every night

I planned weeks in advance to see both of these shows to get a more uniform dosage of Foxygen live.  But Nashville’s day of show I  saw that Foxygen was onstage at 11pm CENTRAL time and I live in the Eastern time zone with two hours drive to and from the Exit -In  which meant that they wouldn’t be onstage until midnight my time and after the show I had to drive two hours to get home.   I almost canceled the Nashville trip,  but at the last minute I realized the night in Atlanta was one of the most invigorating shows I’ve been to in ages, that it actually gave me some hope that this band would help carry us into the future on a wave of real performance rock n roll… I said f*ck it I won’t get this chance again maybe ever, so I drove over Monteagle mountain to Nashville.    This was a worthwhile  decision despite having to crash out in my car for a couple hours in a truck stop parking lot on the way home. .
One highlight was getting to chat with
Jonathan Rado briefly after the event.  I had a late night lunch and coffee after the show at Café Coco, the all night hangout  just behind the Exit-In.  Nashville’s Elliston Place area is home neighborhood of Vanderbilt University and is swarming with well-mannered college age kids of every contemporary stripe.  It’s a much more pleasant city environment than downtown Atlanta.   As I was leaving, their shiny, orange tour bus was still loading.  Rado and his singer/dancer girlfriend Jackie were hanging out with a small clutch of fans who were  lingering to chat.  When I mentioned that Sean Ono Lennon whom I’d met earlier in the year was touring in a van much smaller than the Foxygen tour bus, Rado almost apologetically said “but there’s twelve of us and it really wouldn’t work out in a smaller van….” There were nine people onstage for this Foxygen tour.  Rado, if You read this thanks again for putting together such a dynamic entourage in an era where  many bands are cutting down to duo’s on tour to save money on the road.
The opening act of the evening at Exit-In Nashville had this to say:

Both of these venues are in the neighborhood of 400-600 capacity, probably neither were completely sold out but had good full house both week-nights.   And once they got to DC the 9:30 club holds 1200 people and from the photos I’ve seen it looked pretty full too.  People are catching on.  I expect to see them in much larger rooms next tour.  FoxyATLStage1

The band’s decision to put the back up singers on the front edge of the stage gives some insight into their determination to create a spectacle since these ladies not only provide backing harmonies but also a coordinated high energy, continuous dancing chorus line that serves as a balanced antithesis to Sam France’s chaotic movement around, on top of and in front of the stage as well as some splat! moments on the floor.   Not knowing what Sam might do is an  element of excitement for fans who have been following the last couple of tours and there really is no safety net.  It’s up to his fans now to protect the performer when he launches himself into the crowd.   God bless him, I hope he stays safe and gets stronger for all his athletic efforts to entertain us.  The Nashville set was punctuated by a beardie dude from the audience who climbed onstage and managed to give Sam a kiss before surfing off onto the outstretched hands of the audience.
The solid punchy rhythm section by Shaun Fleming on drums and Justin Nijssen on bass cannot be ignored. They bind the melodies together into a vehicle that causes You to move your ass.  But Rado’s keyboards and occasional guitar puts him solidly in place as the band member whose lead instrumentals keep everything focused.  The live songs from their very memorable “We are the 21st. Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic” album anchor the live show with highly recognizable songwriting hooks.  By the time I saw them for the first time they were no longer an unknown act to most audience members.  Atlanta especially seemed to be the more focused of the two audiences although Nashville appeared to be very much in the spirit of discovering a new type of joy.  Both events satisfyingly recreated some of the energy that started the whole rock show phenomenon in the beginning.  After seeing those two shows back to back I’ll go see Foxygen again whenever I get the chance.

Next Up: my long and winding review of Foxygen’s new Album
“…And Star Power.”

ADDENDUM: At the time this article was finalizing THIS VIDEO of the new song “Brooklyn Police Station” was broadcast from WGN’s morning show in Chicago.    Be sure to turn the volume way UP!  Pretty weird that ANY local TV station’s morning program would air something of this magnitude of rebellious energy.    This performance is almost SCARY and full-on carries all the energy of their current tour.  It’s close to being one of the tour performances… heck it IS one of these shows.  It’s like being right down front at the Atlanta show on Oct. 1st   Yeah, this is what it was like  just add several hundred fans packed  around them and extend the whole energetic brawl out for what seemed like a couple of hours…   ~R.

Here’s a few  interviews from other reference points…

“We lived through every rock n roll cliche”
~High Road Touring 

Issue Magazine Interview with Foxygen

Or just google up a whole bunch of Foxygen interviews..

AND here is …
POSSIBLY THE GREATEST ROCK ‘N ROLL STAGE SHOT OF 2014 by Washington DC photographer Richie Downs.  Foxygen’s subsequent show at the 9:30 club. Click the photo for the full-screen view.  (not published to the public yet pending permissions)

DC930ClubPhotoByRichieDownsBW

Jonathan Rado & Sam France: Together they can probably kick any of the other band members out and still keep Foxygen intact, but why would they want to?  This lineup kicks ass.  Especially the bassist Justin Nijssen and the drummer Shaun Fleming who fronts his own band, “Diane Coffee” who are starting to get their own attention.   The whole rhythm section works incredibly cooperatively in coming up with the bounce energy that keeps everything rolling along .

RichieDownsPhoto930DCRadoAndSam

The 9:30 club in Washington DC holds 1200 people BTW so it looks like quite a few people in the DC area were reading up on their current rockstar notes and decided to give Foxygen a listen…..

RichieDownsPhoto930DCCrowd

These last 3 photos are courtesy of Washington DC photographer Richie Downs You should hire him to shoot pix for You whenever something interesting is happening in his home base.  http://richiedowns.com/book-a-shoot

Piper Ferguson is an illustrious LA based photographer who gets to shoot lots of talented, underground glamorous people before the rest of us even hears of them.  Check her website and twitter out here:
www.piperferguson.com   &   twitter.com/piperferguson

All other photos in this article except the ones from twitter were shot by the author/publisher of this piece, Robin Merritt on his sh*tty iPhone 4.

~R.

Jim Avett, Mandi Rae & The Goodbye Girls. Friday, Dec. 27th 2013 @ Barking Legs Theater

share...Tweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookPin on PinterestShare on TumblrShare on LinkedInShare on StumbleUponPrint this page

Friday December 27th, 2013 ArtFRONT Presentations concert
@ Barking Legs Theater 

This post contains a spectacular video performance preview of MANDI RAE onstage at Nashville’s Music City Roots.

Continue reading Jim Avett, Mandi Rae & The Goodbye Girls. Friday, Dec. 27th 2013 @ Barking Legs Theater

Chattanooga Left Field Showcase resumes

share...Tweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookPin on PinterestShare on TumblrShare on LinkedInShare on StumbleUponPrint this page

While all the recent successes in the Chattanooga local music scene are underway as long time players get their due recognition in events like the widely popular Road to Nightfall and local opening spots for major touring artists at venues like Track 29 & Rhythm & Brews and a few headlining spots at those venues as well, there is a current wave of newer artists honing their skills for launch into the sea of music that is originating right here in the scenic city.  In collaboration with ArtFRONT Presentations, The Left Field Showcase is our most accessable  stage setup for newly emerging local artists.  We will be looking to have events monthly,  usually on a Thursday night in Barking Legs Theater and possibly other locations as well.   These showcases will be among our most economicaly priced ticketed events while retaining all the integrity and pristine sound quality that Barking Legs shows have become known for.   Stay tuned for more announcements and developments.
Read our full press release for the first Left Field Showcase, the stripped down Grand Ol’ Opry style evening of music emcee’d by Chattanooga theater maven Jessie Knowles, complete with audio & video.

Re-Starting our concert reviews: New shows and Archived

share...Tweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookPin on PinterestShare on TumblrShare on LinkedInShare on StumbleUponPrint this page

John Fogerty at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN Dec. 5 2007
We’re rebooting our concert reviews here on ArtFRONT.com after way too long of a hiatus. We’ll be looking for smart people who can write and have great taste and are astute about who and what to watch for on the nationwide concert scene at ALL levels from Major label to local acts. It’s just got to be really good!) ~R.

Fogerty at the Ryman. Yep that was badass.  Really! ~R.

Although it is not Creedence Clearwater Revival, his backing band is tightly knit and professional without being stiff or dragging on Fogerty’s Front Man persona and flash. The pure originality and structure of his songs protects the live performance from coming across like a lounge act version the way the first half of another Fogerty contemporary, Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation’s show at The Green Man Festival in Aug. of 2007 did before they finally seemed to figure out that the Audience wanted a more authentic version of the old Led Zeppelin songs and gave it to them. Fogerty’s set was C.C.R.’s pure distilled essence from the first song . The intermittent numbers from the new solo CD “Revival” were a bit more contemporary adult in nature but worked to serve as the mashed potatoes to the spicy gumbo jambalaya of all the Creedence songs that he assaulted the largely middle aged audience with.