L to R: Eli Smith, John Cohen, Walker Shepard, Craig Judelman (since replaced by Jackson Lynch)

This Saturday, John Cohen — the octogenarian photographer, filmmaker, musicologist, and Appalachian musician — will perform with old-time string band the Down Hill Strugglers at the community garden at 1825 N. Calvert Street.

This is a chance for Baltimoreans not only to enjoy a pleasant evening of first-rate music, but to commune with a seminal figure of the old-time music revival. Cohen, with his groundbreaking trio the New Lost City Ramblers, empowered urban musicians to attempt traditional styles, a practice so common today I assume all traditional musicians are from the city.  Read More →

Soul Cannon (L to R): Eze Jackson, vocals; Nathan Ellman-Bell, drums; Jon Birkholz, keyboards; Matt Frazão, guitar

If you were at the Golden West in Hampden at around 11 p.m. last Thursday, you would have seen an MC deftly rapping over shredding synth and guitar riffs. And despite how eclectic — even ill-advised — that looks in print, you would know that for Baltimore four-piece Soul Cannon it’s an alchemical mixture, one that yields raw punk energy from rap and technique-heavy math rock.

But they don’t need me to hype them. They’re happy to hype themselves. Their Facebook page defines their musical labor as nothing short of “tearing apart the guts of hip-hop’s musical workings and transforming them into a new sonic beast altogether.” And in the interview to follow guitarist Matt Frazão claims that he and his bandmates play “everything,” and then insists it’s literally true. While that is absolutely impossible, I will grant that their frankensteined sound builds a summer home in an area previously thought uninhabitable, and that that requires a broad skill set. Read More →

In 2009, the Baltimore Rock Opera Society staged their first original production, Gründlehämmer, which ”takes place in the mythical land of Brotopia, a once prosperous agrarian Kingdom where the melody of an electric guitar wields power enough to tend a field of crops, to heal the sick, or to smite an enemy.”

Janky but grandiose, the show quickly found an audience ready to follow the BROS down the rabbit hole of excess and faux self-seriousness. Four years later, and the group has five major productions to their credit. They were also instrumental in the revival of the once-dilapidated Autograph Theatre on 25th Street and are now raising money to renovate a more permanent home at the Bell Foundry in Station North and to fund tours through the Northeast. Read More →

The Drew Swinburne Vocal Ensemble (clockwise from left): Gavin Riley, Adam Endres, Drew Swinburne, Connor Kizer

Baltimore composer Drew Swinburne is a pretty reserved human being (look at that stare!) who makes pretty outgoing music — danceable 8-bit teen anthems (albeit with some college-level economics thrown in), extended party-type remixes and mashups, that kind of thing. And his 20-minute quadrophonic vocal chant “Canticle of Spring” epitomizes this everybody-get-together-and-feel-something musical impulse. “Canticle” debuted at the Bell Foundry in Station North as a communal celebration of the spring equinox in 2011. The vocal parts were performed in Zasaa, a language invented by musician and “spiritual transhumanist” Connor Kizer, and it was a one-night-only affair: no recordings were made. If you missed it, you had to wait another year. Read More →

Double Dagger in their signature orange (L to R): Nolen Strals, vocals; Bruce Willen, bass; Denny Bowen, drums. Photo by Bruce Willen.

When Bruce Willen asked fellow MICA student Nolen Strals to start a band that writes songs about graphic design, it fit into a minor trend of Baltimore concept bands that blossomed at the turn of the century. Amateur local music historian Tim Kabara recalls “a band called Invert that wrote all their songs about skateboarding and played out of the back of a van with a generator outside of shows” forming around the same time.

But Double Dagger — the name refers to the typographical mark — soon found they had a lot more going for them than their gimmick. Their knack for crafting dynamic post-punk barn burners from a minimal vocals-drums-bass format verged on the alchemical. These were quintessential songs, not only more than the sum of their parts, but other than. But maybe that’s just me. Kabara sees their popularity stemming from their being “fun and loud and never boring.” Read More →

You might know Chris Day for his solo cassette project Vlonde, or as the bass player in the excellent dark punk band Witch Hat — but even if you don’t follow local music you’ve seen his iconic, screen-printed show fliers hung up everywhere from the H&H building on the Westside to Normal’s in Waverly.

Dense collages of counterintuitive images with striking, hand-placed lettering, Day’s designs have helped define the visual language of Baltimore’s music scene. His intense style and focus on manual processes have inspired more than a few collectors; his fliers endure as art hanging on living room walls years after the events they promote have come and gone.

I recently got him to answer some questions about his flier-making process. Read More →

Photo by Jennifer German-Shipley.

You might not recognize Al Shipley on sight, but if you follow Baltimore music, you can’t help but come across his byline on a regular basis. When he’s not explaining the aesthetic and social context of Baltimore club music to outsiders in national media outlets or reviewing records for City Paper, he’s covering an impressive amount of local hip hop, R&B, and club releases at his blog, Government Names. Read More →

Ed Schrader, looking like the kind of guy you don’t want to hand a microphone to.

Some scion of the Baltimore arts scene once argued that the only thing the city’s diverse group of headline-grabbing artists have in common is exuberance. If that’s the case, then multi-disciplinary performer Ed Schrader is the apex of Baltimore art — his unbounded, neurotic energy is a manifesto unto itself, making him one of the city’s most bizarrely compelling artists. And he’s bringing his sporadically staged talk show to the Metro Gallery tonight. Read More →

Photo by Robyn Quick

In recent years, playwright and director Lola Pierson has become a fixture of Baltimore’s theater scene. Her group Un Saddest Factory organized four years of the celebrated and always sold-out Ten Minute Play Festival. And now her new independent theater company Acme Corporation is putting on her latest play — “Office Ladies” — which scored a very optimistic preview in the Sun and a glowing review in the City Paper.

The play, like much of Pierson’s previous work, includes “a lot of meta-theater stuff in it and a lot of nonlinear narrative,” as well as “a lot of people not really talking to each other.” And if that doesn’t sound like the makings of a charming, engaging theater experience, then you’ve probably never seen a Lola Pierson play before. Turning cerebral and formally adventurous character studies into well-paced comedies is a special skill of hers. Read More →

I have no trouble believing Will Oldham (AKA Bonnie “Prince” Billy) would cover Sheryl Crow’s “Strong Enough” — I could even imagine what it would sound like, to the point where I could probably get his version stuck in my head without having heard it. But Will Oldham collaborating with Oxes — the legendary Baltimore three-piece known for dissonant, technical guitar workouts — on a cover of the song sounds like an event with a probability of zero. Trying to guess what it would sound like makes my head hurt. Read More →