Zig At The Gig podcast

Zig At The Gig With Dustin Galish of Tree No Leaves

Based in Bowling Green, OH, Tree No Leaves is a quintet that flows between genres and eras of psychedelic rock and soul. Dustin Galish Joins Zig to talk about Tree No Leave's new album Eyes of Xylem which is a multi media release including music, comic, and film. follow link for more info.

https://treenoleaves.com/

Keith Kenny the 

One-Man Rock Band 

Lifetime Ago Motel is the fifth album from veteran New Jersey-based band-of-one, KEITH KENNY. It was written over a three-year period and recorded at his Studio 303 facility in Monroe, New Jersey, self-produced by Kenny. Among special guests contributing is drummer Sim Cain (Regressive Aid, Gone, Rollins Band, Dean Ween Group). Lifetime Ago Motel is being released by iNtuRecords April 2nd as a digital download, physical CD, 12” vinyl LP and via streaming platforms.

Keith's Info 

https://keithkenny.bandcamp.com/community

https://www.youtube.com/c/KeithKennyMusic

https://www.keithkenny.com/

https://www.facebook.com/KEITHKENNYMUSIC/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7gKa4kfIHc1Jt6poBB4DK1?si=AqPQ2JRvTOaCre4ivUxWqQ&nd=1

Alison was born and raised in Petersburg, VA in a working class family that was void of musical talent. Alison is an only child and isn’t aware of any musicians in her family, (she thinks her grandpa looked at a guitar once,)but swears that she has been singing since she learned to talk. 

Alison plays a mix of honky tonk and old time country on the guitar. Her influences range from The Louvin Brothers and Kitty Wells to Roger Miller and Bessie Smith. She has a strong stage presence and her lyrics might make you cry, but you’re more than likely to laugh.

Sometime in 2006 Alison decided to buy a ukulele, by the next year she was playing small DIY gigs around Richmond VA and also spending a good amount of time busking on the street for tips.

Alison spent about 10 years based out of Richmond, Virginia where she was described as Richmond’s chanteuse “with a huge voice unlike any other female singer in Richmond” and until the end of her time living in the region (2015), became a well known musician who booked other acts in town, had side projects and toured the US.

Alison traveled west in a ’96 Oldsmobile with no working windows for most of 2015, with a stint in Southwest VA then Nashville TN, until her car broke down outside of Denver. She played some shows and worked for a few months, decided it was time to go and drunkenly bought a $20 plane ticket to Austin TX. Figuring she had nothing to lose she sold her car for $200 and got rid of mostly everything she had carried with her and made the move. She didn’t even take her guitar. Austin was home for Alison for the past two years until she decided to uproot once again and make the move to Portland OR back in October 2018. 

Alison was diagnosed with colon cancer in the winter of 2018, went through surgery and chemotherapy and finished all that in June 2019. Alison has been cancer free for almost 2 years.

Traveling and restlessness have been strong themes in Alison’s songs which are influenced strongly by her early 20s spent hitch hiking and hopping a few freight trains here and there. Simply put, Alison writes from lived experiences. Thematically her songs run along the same lines of most honky tonk singers, past and present: working class upbringing, death, trains, bad decisions and too much booze. 

Alison Info 

https://alisonself.com/

https://alisonself.bandcamp.com/album/honky-tonk-haze-deluxe-version

Klashing Black is comprised of twin brothers Kane and Kyle Benner. Since 2006, they've been writing, recording, and performing original music together, developing their sound in every iteration of the group.

Klashing Black Info 

https://www.klashingblack.com/

https://www.instagram.com/klashingblack/

https://www.facebook.com/KlashingBlack/

https://soundcloud.com/klashingblack

https://twitter.com/KlashingBlack

Andrew Toy is a session drummer/percussionist and solo performer based in the Washington DC area. He uses percussion as the starting point for composition and sonic exploration. Using live production techniques, Andrew twists, distorts, and re-arranges the sound of the drums to create soundscapes that are at times cinematic and introspective, at other times intense and driving. By re-imagining the process that music is typically created, Andrew has crafted a sound that is inspired by IDM, minimalism, ambient, post-rock, and experimental music, yet has a life of its own.

Andrew's Info

https://www.andrewtoy.net/

See Andrew

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcRar-_yl6QoWZNNvPD1xTQ

Hear Guardrails 

https://open.spotify.com/album/7z8xUJUnwDDUkps6IXcqEw?si=zk2QKPGsRFudMsm1j29SKQ

https://www.facebook.com/atoydrummer

Drummer, songwriter, and producer. Bill Stevenson is best known for work behind the drum kit for the Descendents and Black Flag. He is also an in-demand punk rock producer and co-owner of The Blasting Room, a studio located in Fort Collins, Colorado!

Elizabeth McCullough of Alpha Cat:

How do you take the image of a black hole and make it positive? According to Elizabeth McCullough, aka Alpha Cat, "When I wrote that song I'd just read how astronomers had determined that you could actually escape a black hole, but only by going all the way through and out the other side. And that leads to all this worm hole and time travel theory, where not only do you avoid annihilation, but you arrive at a place you might never have reached otherwise. It's an amazing metaphor for transformation, and ultimately hopeful. That's why the end of the song is: you gotta go deeper it's the only way out.  

A friendship with Television bassist Fred Smith, who agreed to produce a demo, became 1999’s EP Real Boy. With only 150 copies sent to college radio stations, Real Boy ended up in the CMJ National Add Charts not once, but twice, receiving more airplay adds than such formidable and widely distributed offerings as Beck's Midnight Vultures, and Metallica's S&M. It went on to spend six weeks in the national airplay charts, unusual for an EP.  

The follow up to Real Boy, October 2001’s Pearl Harbor, was, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, unfortunately timed. With an image of a bomb and the sound effects of a glass building falling down, the CD was eerily prescient. It was not well received initially, for obvious reasons. Upon rerelease in February 2002, it did much better, receiving significant airplay on college radio, and winning a couple “best of” awards that year.  

With the Alpha Cat song “Pearl Harbor,” it' becomes apparent how longtime photographer McCullough's previous passion has informed her current love. Without an understanding of how equally light and its absence form the world we see before us, it's difficult to imagine McCullough having had the vocabulary to describe that world musically. "It occurred to me that this place was called Pearl Harbor before it was bombed, and that it must be because literally, there were pearls in the harbor. I tried to imagine what it might take to get back to where that place was about treasure, rather than destruction.”  

In 2005, following the ending of an unfortunate romantic entanglement, McCullough decided to move to L.A. to work with drummer Jason Smith, who had gigged with Alpha Cat several times in Los Angeles over the previous years. Recording began on the album Venus Smile in April of 2006, and 15 instrumental tracks were completed with the help of engineer Jon Mattox, guitarist Doug Pettibone (Lucinda Williams, John Mayer), bassist Reggie McBride, (Elton John), and Jason Smith on drums.  

Seven vocal tracks were completed as well, but by July, McCullough fell into a real life black hole, losing her voice and experiencing a profound emotional and psychological breakdown. She was unable to complete the record.  

Years of depression, hospitalizations and treatment, including a round of ECT followed with no result. But in 2013 an experimental treatment yielded some relief from the devastating suicidality that had plagued her, and she attempted a return to music. She booked the first of two gigs in London at the legendary 12 Bar Club. However, her perceived betrayal by both her heart and her music, rehearsals and the prospect of returning to the stage brought extreme anxiety and fear. She began to drink to cope. The 12 Bar gigs were virtually unattended, a sense of hopelessness set in again, and the drinking continued.  

Fortunately, McCullough decided to revisit the Venus Smile recordings that actually had been completed. She enlisted engineer Brett (Cosmo) Thorngren to do mixes of the songs, with encouraging results. And as it turned out, she had found a new champion in Thorngren. But it wasn’t until early 2019, with newfound sobriety and the retreat of long held fears, that she began to listen to those mixes anew, and began to appreciate them and realize that maybe there was something in this music after all. And then, in early June, McCullough experienced an epiphany, and decided to put out those songs as an LP. The result is the new record Thatched Roof Glass House. At long last, her journey through the worm hole seems to be complete

Elizabeth McCullough  info

https://alphacat.band/home

https://www.facebook.com/alphacatband/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LLx0yaBiRPaPXPZOgAqoz

James Muschler drummer extraordinaire, formally of Moon Hooch is a near and dear friend to C-Level, and we are excited to help him celebrate the release of his up coming project The Evolution of Life Forms on Earth.

Jame's Info 

https://jamesmuschler.bandcamp.com/

https://www.patreon.com/jamesmuschler

Matthew Roads : Tropidelic

Matthew Roads is a singer songwriter of the Cleveland based band Tropidelic.

“Every single second is a blessing if you count them all,” sings frontman Matthew Roads. You can hear the sincerity in his voice; the joie de vivre that oozes from everything Tropidelic does is apparent. When they take a stage, their synergy flows member to member ­– horns blow, knees kicked high and grins are passed from one man to the next. Almost immediately, it spreads to the crowd, lifting hands in the air as their feet begin to move. The pulse collectively becomes that of one.

The six-piece band from Cleveland, Ohio may be far from any tropical islands, but that doesn’t stop them from dishing out an interesting mix of reggae, hip-hop, and high energy funk for audiences across the country. Unapologetically original, Tropidelic has a deep and widespread appreciation for music that can be heard in each note. Some of the members are hip-hop heads, while others are into metal, funk or reggae. Each of these genres lends something to their collective sound. “We pride ourselves in being original in our musicality and personality as a band,” says Roads, “but also in not taking ourselves so seriously that it ruins the fun.”

Quickly elevating themselves in the live circuit, Tropidelic can be found spreading their soulful sound across the country in both intimate venues and music festivals, having shared the stage with and supported such acts as 311, Slightly Stoopid, The Dirty Heads, Pepper, The Flobots and Wookiefoot. Previously, Tropidelic has been featured at Electric Forest, California Roots Music & Art Festival, Reggae Rise Up, Warped Tour and 311 Caribbean Cruise, as well as the host of their own annual Freakstomp Music Festival.

Following on the success of their 2019 release, Here in the Heights, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard reggae charts, Tropidelic has released a series of impressive singles featuring guest appearances from Dirty Heads, Matisyahu, Devin the Dude and Shwayze. These singles have amassed over five million streams in 2020, and they are featured on their latest album, Of Illusion, which debuted on November 13th, 2020. Of Illusion was released on Billboard’s number one reggae label, Ineffable Records. Tropidelic has put in their ten thousand hours, and they have arrived on the national scene to the delight of their ever growing and rapturous fans.

Matthew/Tropidelic's info

http://tropidelic.com/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2SGFnb6c73UJd1vT6aGBMl

https://www.facebook.com/tropidelic/

Matthew's solo work

https://www.facebook.com/RoadsIcarus