Capital City Film Festival announces music lineup!

Lansing, MI - Fusion Shows and the Capital City Film Festival have announced the headlining acts for the four nights of music being hosted at this year’s festival, taking place April 12-15 throughout Lansing.  In 2011, the inaugural Capital City Film Festival drew thousands of people to Lansing for Michigan-made and international film showcases, lively discussions with filmmakers, and diverse evening entertainment.  This year, the festival decided to expand the music segment of the event.  

All music events will take place at The Loft, located at 414 E. Michigan Ave., right across the street from the Lansing Center.  Tickets for each individual events go on sale this Saturday, February 25, at 10am.  Festival passes can be purchased for $50.00 at the festival’s website, CapitalCityFilmFest.com, and will include entry to all music events as well as the entire four days worth of film screenings.  

A summary of each day’s music event is below:

Thursday, April 12 - GREENSKY BLUEGRASS - 8pm - $10 adv / $13 day of
Genre: Americana / Bluegrass
Label: Big Blue Zoo Records
For Fans Of: Railroad Earth, Frontier Ruckus
Listen: www.greenskybluegrass.com

If you’re familiar with bluegrass music, then you’re tuned in to some of what Greensky Bluegrass does. They’re also known to throw a great party, rock n roll, and (if the critics are to be believed) they have great songs. They are unquestionably a team of friends that traverse the country making music they enjoy. What makes Greensky different than Bluegrass? Poignant rural ballads about real people? Dobro tone that Jerry (Douglas or Garcia) would love? Distortion Pedals? Grit and attitude from a whiskey soaked card game? Indeed, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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Friday, April 13 - MURDER BY DEATH - 7pm - $13 adv / $15 day of
Genre: Alt-country
Label: Vagrant
For Fans Of: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Cursive, Man Man
Listen: http://www.murderbydeath.com

They may call Bloomington, Indiana home, but since their 2000 formation, Murder by Death have been a band without musical borders. Theirs is a world where Old West murder ballads mingle with rock-injected Western classicism; where an album’s sequencing can take listeners from a haunted back alley in rural Mexico to a raucous Irish pub. All of which is to say, Murder by Death albums don’t just string together songs; they create experiences. With their fifth album (and second for Vagrant), Good Morning, Magpie (04/06/10), Murder by Death continue the tradition of border expansion that drove career standouts like 2006’s In Bocca al Lupo and 2008’s Red of Tooth and Claw. The difference, however, is that this time, the band literally went off the map to get there.

“Going into the woods helped me write in a way I never would’ve been able to otherwise,” says singer/guitarist Adam Turla, recalling the 2009 retreat into the Tennessee mountains during which, armed with little more than a tent, a fishing pole and a notebook, he wrote the 11 songs that would become Good Morning, Magpie. “There were days where I’d sit down and write for seven hours, make dinner, and then sit down and write late into the night with my little camp light going: just intense, nonstop sessions of pure writing. I’ve never worked that way, ever, because with all the business of being a band, I’ve never had so little to do! Every day I was either cooking, hiking while writing, or writing. I didn’t speak to a single person the whole time.”

Be that as it may, Good Morning, Magpie still speaks volumes. Recorded at Bloomington’s Farm Fresh Studios with Jake Belser (who most recently worked with MBD on their all-instrumental soundtrack to Jeff Vandermeer’s 2009 book Finch), and mixed by Grammy-winning Red of Tooth and Claw producer Trina Shoemaker, the album weaves 11 disparate stories into a whole that’s unlike anything else in the band’s catalog. “These songs definitely come together as an album; we just aren’t relying on a concept this time,” says Turla, referencing the conceptual storylines that drove Murder by Death’s last two albums as well as 2002’s Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them? “Being out in the woods with no pressure freed me up to explore different moods and different stories, all of which became linked through the experience I had writing them: just that sheer sprint of working in isolation.”

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Saturday, April 14 - WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE - 7pm - $10 adv / $12 day of
Genre: Acoustic Folk
Label: Anti
For Fans Of: Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Lucero
Listen: https://www.facebook.com/williamelliottwhitmore?sk=app_178091127385

On his newest album Field Songs, released July 12th of 2011 on Anti-Records, impassioned troubadour William Elliott Whitmore documents a vanishing American landscape with all the heartfelt soul and quiet fury one would hope for. “Heartland firebrand blows fuse, fights for truth” heralded Spin Magazine when describing Whitmore, who utilizes a powerful singing voice beyond his years and a stark dramatic sound rooted in bluegrass, blues and folk protest music. The new songs vividly evoke a life of struggle, humble resilience and family bond undoubtedly inspired by life on his family’s farm along the Mississippi River.

William Elliott Whitmore has been building a reputation as an absolutely stirring live performer able to convert crowds with just his banjo and voice. Creative Loafing stated, “Whitmore writes songs as honest as Abe Lincoln, takes to the road to share these songs with rooms full of people who’ve likely never heard them, and turns these strangers into fanatics nightly” while the Seattle Times offered, “You hear the diesel engine growl of his voice, the century of blues and folk tradition behind his banjo-driven stomps, the everyday relevance of his lyrics, and you succumb.”

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Sunday, April 15 - LIGHTS - 7pm - $13 adv / $15 day of
Genre: Pop
Label: Last Gang Records
For Fans Of: Owl City, Kina Grannis, Never Shout Never
Listen: http://www.facebook.com/lights

When electro-rock sensation Lights first hit the music scene in 2008, she was just a songwriter with a synth and a dream. Her name may have been pluralized but Lights Poxleitner was a one-woman show who played and programmed her own instruments and sang her own lyrics.

Lyrically, Siberia is light years from her last, which was written when the singer, who spent much of her childhood travelling toplaces like the Philippines and Jamaica with her missionary parents, had left the nest and landed in Toronto. “A lot of those songs came from a sad but hopeful place. I was alone and pondering a lot. I’m a lot more aware of the person I am now and each of these songs is about an experience I’ve gone through,” she says. “This record came from a very happy place.”

Siberia‘s beats skitter and thwack, the retro electronics fire like decomposing lasers and the analog synths dirty up her trademark pretty melodies, propelling Lights’ emotion-soaked but still-cute croon into her sprawling, imperfect new sound.

Call it anti-electro, dream-step or perhaps even grit-pop. Whatevs. Just rest assured that it’s the same bright Lights; she’s just built herself a bigger city.

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Additional support acts for all shows will be added in the coming weeks.  Tickets for the individual events will be available starting on Saturday, February 25 at 10am at FusionShows.com (with no service fees), and will also be available in person at the Loft box office, Flat Black and Circular in East Lansing, and Music Manor in Lansing!

Stick To Your Guns Release New Song

propertyofzack:

Stick To Your Guns have released a new song called “Against Them All.” The band’s new album, Diamond, will be released on March 27th. You can stream the song below by clicking “Read More.”

Read More

Don’t miss them in Michigan this April!