Charger w/ Black Cobra and Iron Front
Starline Social Club and Powerhouse Productions Present:CHARGERBLACK COBRAIRON FRONTSaturday April 9 2022 – Doors @ 7pm$19 adv // $21 dosAll Ages——— Charger is the powerhouse trio that’s been making waves (and a lot of noise) since forming in the East Bay. Andrew McGee plays guitar, Matt Freeman (Rancid, Operation Ivy) sings and plays bass, and Jason Willer (UK Subs, Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine) drums and sings too. Those are names you might recognize if you’re the type of person who reads liner notes to genre-defining albums.Formed in 2018, Charger was a musical challenge between a few lifers in the punk scene who wanted to push each other to dig deep into their shared roots, influences, and musical passions, to create something truly exciting. As a result, Charger’s music feels indebted to the giants but not reliant on them. There is plenty of space for growth and innovation within this decades-old blueprint of how to make someone’s heart race and blood pump.Charger stormed out of the gate in 2019 with the release of their self-titled EP on Pirates Press Records, generating both critical and fan acclaim all the while touring with the likes of their labelmates The Old Firm Casuals and also supporting the follow-up single “Watch Your Back.” In 2020, that single was pressed on 12″ UV digitally printed vinyl-making it one of the first digitally printed records in history! To complement “Watch Your Back,” the band hit the studio and churned out another bombastic track, “Stay Down” and that was released as a 12” picture disc. During the pandemic, the band stayed active writing and recording their debut album, Warhorse, at the iconic Atomic Garden Studios with a 2022 release date in mind.Reinvigorated and reenergized after months and months of being locked in writing rooms and recording sessions, Charger are ready to take the stage once again and melt faces!
Steve von Till w/ Helen Money
Starline Social Club PresentsSteve von TillHelen MoneyTuesday August 9 2022 – Doors @ 7pm$20—————————– Steve Von Till has made a life’s work out of seeking the elemental. With a solo discography that stretches back more than two decades, he has toiled in a shadow realm, peeling back layers of reality in a never-ending search for true meaning and raw emotion. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness strips back the veil even further. An achingly beautiful ambient work with neo-classical leanings, the album is a hallucinatory and elegant rumination on our disconnect from the natural world, each other, and ultimately ourselves. For some listeners, the album may recall the work of modern composers like Jóhann Jóhannsson, Brian Eno or Gavin Bryars. For Von Till, it’s about surrendering to the spirit of place—and to the original intent behind his 2020 solo album, No Wilderness Deep Enough. That album marked a significant first for Von Till: It was his first solo record without a guitar in hand. Instead, Von Till intoned powerful and thought-provoking lyrics over piano, cello, mellotron and analog synthesizers. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness is that same album without Von Till’s words. “This is how I originally heard this piece of music,” he says. “Without the voice as an anchor or earthbound narrative, these pieces have a broader wingspan. They become something else entirely and unfold in a more expansive way. The depth of the synths, juxtaposed with the strings and French horn, have space to develop and allow the listener to imagine their own story.” Also a first for Von Till was Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics, his first book of poetry. Published by the University of South Dakota’s Astrophil Press, the book established Von Till as a formidable and thoughtful author of verse—a fact that Neurosis fans knew all along, but the wider world was only just becoming aware of. “There is a depth of hope, acceptance and loss that permeates these poems,” Joseph Haeger said in his review for The Inlander. “Like any great piece of art, Harvestman contains multitudes, and that’s exactly what I was hoping for when I cracked it open. Von Till has already established himself as a great musician, and he’s about to put his stake into the ground proving himself to be a damn good writer.”
**POSTPONED NEW DATE TBD** Kabaka Pyramid w/ DJ Green B
**POSTPONED NEW DATE TBD**Starline Social Club and Earshot Entertainment Present:KABAKA PYRAMIDDJ Green BSunday March 27 – Doors @ 7pm$25 adv // $28 dos18+———-
DEVIN THE DUDE w/ Kevin Allen (FKA Erk tha Jerk), ST Spittin, & Loove Moore
Starline Social Club Presents:Devin The DudeKevin Allen (FKA Erk tha Jerk)ST SpittinLoove MooreWednesday April 27 2022 – Doors @ 9pm$25 adv // $30 dos21+———- Devin The Dude is regularly regarded as Houston hip hop’s “best kept secret”. A critically-acclaimed rapper appealing to the smoker’s set, Devin The Dude has amassed a loyal fanbase in the underground hip-hop scene over the years.
ORGŌNE & The Grease Traps
Starline Social Club PresentsORGŌNEThe Grease TrapsSaturday April 16 2022 – Doors @ 8pm$20——– “After two and a half years on the road, we needed to shut away the rest of the world,” recalls Sergio Rios, guitarist and engineer of Los Angeles-based band ORGŌNE. For their tenth* studio album, ORGŌNE retreated to the tranquil solitude of Joshua Tree in southern California. Ensconced in a ranch home with a recording studio for a week in November 2015, the band improvised late into the desert night, carving out tunes that would eventually become the bulk of the material on Reasons (self-released, due out January 18, 2019). The nine-song collection illuminates a band hitting its stride, capturing the raw power and refined sensibilities that defines ORGŌNE. For nearly twenty years ORGŌNE (a universal life force, pronounced or-gōne) has churned out gritty funk and soul recordings and toured relentlessly across the United States and Europe. Traditionally both the studio and live iterations of the band drew on a tight-knit collective of the West Coast’s finest funk and soul musicians—although founding members Sergio Rios (guitar/engineer) and Dan Hastie (keyboards) have been constant anchors. However, since late 2013, Rios and Hasite have been joined by Dale Jennings (bass), Sam Halterman (drums), and singer/lyricist Adryon de León to form a permanent nucleus.—— The Grease Traps are a solid 8-piece funk band based in Oakland, CA. Featuring tight horns and stirring vocals from that sharp-dressing, all-around fly dude, The Gata, their musical mix of hard-driving funk and lowdown soul is guaranteed to get your head noddin’ and cure your dance jones. Over the years, they’ve played at festivals and clubs all around the Bay Area, sharing the stage with acts such as Shuggie Otis, Durand Jones, Monophonics, Robert Walter, Neal Francis, Kendra Morris, and many more. Their first 45 single was released on well-respected funk/soul label, Colemine Records. They just released their first full-length LP, Solid Ground, on the Record Kicks label this past November. Their all-analog album was recorded straight to a Tascam 388 8-track recorder between Fifty Filth Studios in Oakland and Transistor Sound in San Rafael. It was mixed by guitarist Kevin O’Dea and Sergio Rios of the funk group, Orgone. “East Bay Grease” was the name given to the gritty, barroom funk of the late 60s-early ‘70s – typified by Tower of Power, who released an album of the same name. That’s the cultural reference embedded in the name of The Grease Traps, a fabulous retro-funk group who played the Legionnaire’s Saloon last Saturday night. The band started out playing groovy soul-funk instrumentals akin to the Meters or Funk Inc., which was cool in and of itself. But the funk, as it is wont to do, got thicker when vocalist Gata—an Afro-sportin’ soul brotha who showed up looking sharp in some vines worthy of Don Cornelius—took to the stage and turned the heat up about three notches. The vibe went instantly from Meteresque to James Brownish, as the leisure-suited Gata led the Traps through an impressive display of retro soul man bad-assery equaled only in recent times by some of the artists on the Daptone label or maybe the comeback of Darondo. If funk is your religion, a Grease Traps show is like going to church; you might even want to dress for the occasion. –Eric Arnold, East Bay Express
TK & The Holy Know-Nothings
Starline Social Club Presents:TK & The Holy Know-NothingsWednesday March 30 2022 – Doors @ 6pm (EARLY SHOW!!!!)$1518+————————-Rejecting the influence of fleeting scenes and encroaching developers; the Laurelthirst Public House has always stayed in tune with its generations of muddy patrons carving out lives as blue-collar artists. “The Thirst” — Portland, Oregon’s oldest independent venue — has always been a sort of misfit stronghold — a sanctuary for the same kind of spirit that sustained local punk legends Dead Moon and outsider folk hero Michael Hurley. It’s also become a lifeblood for working-class musicians like Taylor Kingman. Most nights, you’ll likely find the TK & The Holy Know-Nothings songwriter and lead vocalist on stage (or at the bar). Ask around the place and you’ll quickly uncover Kingman’s reputation as the sort of songwriter who makes other songwriters jealous, even angry. You’ll also hear about his hustle as both a player and writer, as those same songwriters line up to play with him. It’s led to countless projects, exploring myriad concepts and styles, and making the sort of honest music that stands starkly, alongside the Laurelthirst, against the backdrop of a city quickly fading under the lacquer of gentrification.TK & The Holy Know-Nothings is perhaps Kingman’s most beloved project. Half-dutifully and half-facetiously self-dubbed “psychedelic doom boogie,” the group was born out of Kingman’s desire to create a loose, groove-heavy bar band that never sacrifices the importance of good, honest songwriting. Doing so required pulling together a local supergroup of friends, neighbors, and fellow Laurelthirst royalty, including drummer Tyler Thompson and multi-instrumentalists Jay Cobb Anderson (lead guitar, harmonica), Lewi Longmire (bass, guitar, pedal steel, flugelhorn, mellotron, lap steel) and Sydney Nash (keys, bass, slide guitar, cornet). It’s a band of deeply contrasting styles buoyed by a sincere and palpable mutual trust — one that allows them to find and lose the groove with the same ease. They build graceful, spaced-out landscapes around Kingman’s storytelling — his voice ragged and broken one moment and raging the next — only to deconstruct them through a fit of manic and often dissonant rabbit holes. And Kingman’s equally irreverent, delicate, and cerebral first-person narratives somehow merge seamlessly with it all.
Strand of Oaks w/ Pat Finnerty
Starline Social Club PresentsStrand of OaksPat FinnertySaturday May 21 2022 – Doors at 7pm$18 adv // $22 dos18+—— To say In Heaven is about conquering grief would be oversimplifying everything Tim Showalter has achieved on the eighth studio album from Strand of Oaks. A stunning, hopeful reflection on love, loss, and enlightenment, In Heaven is a triumph in music making, and a preeminent addition to the Strand of Oaks discography. In late 2018, Showalter’s wife, Sue, lost her mother in a car accident. Soon after, Stan, the cat they both adored, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Showalter quit drinking so he could take better care of his wife and help rebuild the life they shared. And within months, they decided to pack up and move across the country from Philadelphia to Austin, Texas. It was an irrational decision made at the height of a terrible time, but it’s one that shaped so much of what In Heaven is about. In Heaven was recorded in October 2020 with Kevin Ratterman at Invisible Creature in Los Angeles. Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket) is featured on guitar throughout the record, while James Iha (The Smashing Pumpkins) contributed vocals and guitar for “Easter.” Bo Koster (MMJ, Roger Waters) provided keyboards, Cedric LeMoyne (Alanis Morrissette, Remy Zero) bass, Scott Moore violin, and Ratterman monstrous drums. Showalter also played a lot of synth on this record, which he hasn’t done since 2014’s HEAL. With clean sounds, Jeff Lynne-esque acoustics, and sophisticated songwriting, he approached In Heaven in a more poised and pop-leaning way than his past releases. “I wanted to strive for something greater than what I thought I was capable of.”
Joy Again w/ Rebounder & LoserLees
Throwin Bo’s PresentsJOY AGAINREBOUNDERLOSERLEESWednesday April 20 – Doors @ 7pm$18 adv // $20 dosAll Ages———
Tuesday Night Comedy at Starline Social Club: Live in the Crystal Cavern
See the Bay’s best comedians every Tuesday night at the legendary Starline Social Club in Uptown Oakland. Featuring local favorites and rising stars from Netflix, late night TV, Comedy Central, SF Sketchfest and more, live in the Crystal Cavern! Doors at 6:30, show at 7:00 PM. Produced by DOPE SHOW Comedy. Featured in SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Yelp Bay Area, and more! Check out DopeShowComedy.com for more shows across San Francisco and Oakland. Follow us on Instagram @DopeShowBayArea! 24-hour notice required for cancellations. Seating is first come, first serve. Parties later than 30-40 minutes may have their tickets sold at the door.
Tuesday Night Comedy at Starline Social Club: Live in the Crystal Cavern
See the Bay’s best comedians every Tuesday night at the legendary Starline Social Club in Uptown Oakland. Featuring local favorites and rising stars from Netflix, late night TV, Comedy Central, SF Sketchfest and more, live in the Crystal Cavern! Doors at 6:00, show at 6:30 PM. Produced by DOPE SHOW Comedy. Featured in SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Yelp Bay Area, and more! Check out DopeShowComedy.com for more shows across San Francisco and Oakland. Follow us on Instagram @DopeShowBayArea! 24-hour notice required for cancellations. Seating is first come, first serve. Parties later than 30-40 minutes may have their tickets sold at the door.