A Song a Day

a site about Dina Maccabee

please visit www.dinamaccabee.com

Hi! Please visit www.dinamaccabee.com for current show listings and news.

East Coast Mini Tour – June 2011

Sunday June 5: Ditmas Acoustic, Brooklyn, 7 pm
with Myk Freedman

Monday June 6: Pete’s Candy Store, 10:30 pm
7:30 Spelling Bee Finals
9:30 The Go Round

Tuesday June 7: The Glade, West Philly, 7 pm
featuring Marie Abe, Accordion!

Thursday June 9: Jalopy, Red Hook, 9pm
opening for Veveritse Brass Band

Seaweed Sway at the Milk Bar: 12/29

Wednesday 8:00pm
The MILK Bar
1840 Haight Street @ Stanyan, across from Amoeba

SeaweedSway & the Orange Room Present:
TENDERFOOT
DINA MACCABEE and the Excellent Spellers
HOLLY MAE and the Painted Room (in from Germany)

late november update

Greetings!

Here are a few public performances I want you to know about. And attend.

Tonight! At Coda in San Francisco
KillBossa the city’s only Brazilian Tropicalia cover band that features bass clarinet.
Also on the bill is the “heavy chamber” bass clarinet super group Edmund Welles.
8pm, $5 (KillBossa on last @ 10 ), 1710 Mission St.

Friday:

1. Tune in to Pirate Cat Radio to check out Diamond Dave’s awesome show where I’ll be a featured guest.
and when I say tune in, i mean click here http://www.piratecatradio.com/listen-live
Or, come by the studio-cafe at 2781 21st Street, near Florida

2. Stop by the Holiday Party and Sale at Pegasus (Pendragon) on College! With live music by myself and Sylvain Carton.

Then, wish me a good trip to Georgia — the country– we are still 1 day and a just a few bucks away for our fundraising goal to reach the black sea city of Batumi for our second performance. Not too late! chip in a fiver if you can here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/845972859/beth-custer-ensemble-tours-republic-of-georgia-in-0/backers?page=2

I’ll be back soon enough, and will finish out the year with a couple more interesting shows.

Milk Bar in the Haight is featuring quality live music these days, including a bill with myself and Sylain Carton Quartet on 12/29.

Stay tuned!

Dina

Innocent Words review

By: Jonathan Tuttle
Dina Maccabee
Who Do You Suppose You Are?
(Antephonic)

Dina Maccabee is a classical viola major, but her music is far from being classical. She is quirky, sometimes a daydreamer, and elegant all in one. Picture the subtleness of Aimee Mann with the chaos of Lisa Germano. Maccabee straddles this fine line masterfully by not getting too folky or too obscure with her sound. She has a striking supple voice that wraps around the music like a warm blanket straight out of the dryer.

On her nine-song debut, Maccabee is joined by free-jazz guitarist Tobin Summerfield and together the classically trained girl and the jazz-inspired boy make beautiful folk pop songs together. The songs on Who Do You Suppose You Are? stand on their own…Maccabee’s style bridge the gap of so many genre’s it’s her own sound.

With her intellictual song structures and perfect-pitch vocals, Maccabee has the abilty to pull off the up beat pop sounds on “Hi-Yo” then counter that with the wide open field of “In Your Galaxy.” “Far Away” is a drum-driven song with screeching strings and Maccabee’s soft vocals. She goes the traditional folk route on “Soon We Will All Be Forgotten” and “Like Dew In the Sun.” The album closes with arguable it’s best track –“Build Me a House” with its tambourine keeping time while a ghostly guitar strums in the back with Maccabee’s slow haunting vocals peeking out behind the haze.

Maccabee, who has played alongside everyone from Vienna Teng, Vetiver, Sufjan Stevens, and Wilco, has learned from the musicians she has played with and applied that to an impressive debut album.

Baltimore City Paper profile

http://www2.citypaper.com/music/story.asp?id=20493

August/September Shows

The Rest of August!

Dear friends,

It’s been a whirlwind of a last two weeks, including travels to the east (thank you Minneapolis, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, New York, Baltimore, and Buffalo!) and north (thank you Arcata, Port Angeles, Portland, Hood River, and Eugene!)

As you might have noticed, I’ve been putting a lot of work and energy behind my collaboration with Toby Summerfield, known by the obscure name of the Dina Maccabee Band. Thanks to the awesome work and camaraderie of Josh Tillinghast, Roger Riedlbauer, and Eric Kuhn, we took that show on the road in preparation for the album release, coming this October.

Back in the Bay, that group is on a break but you can catch Roger and me at the Rickshaw stop this Wednesday August 25, performing with the deadly Brazilian Tropicalia tribute Kill Bossa. I’ll also take the stage that night with the one and only Japonize Elephants. (8/25, Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell SF, 7:30 pm) Last time I saw Zoyres, the headliners for this show, they rocked the house and served fresh homemade pickles.

East-bay-ites, never fear, I’ll be paying you a visit with the talented Tim Owen (Boy Lion) at the Starry Plough on Friday evening in Berkeley, 9pm show. (8/27, Starry Plough, Berkeley, 9pm) You might need to buy me a consolation drink though, because my fearless partner in Guts&Buttons, Marie Abe, is playing a farewell set at Tartine earlier on the 27th, from 5 – 7, as we wish her good luck at her new post in Cambridge, Mass. If you’ve enjoyed her music at tartine, or her wonderful spirit in Ramon&Jessica, Japonize Elephants, or anywhere else, please come by and bring good wishes! (Tartine Bakery, 8/27, 18th and Guerrero, SF, 5pm)

I’ll soon be settling back in to teaching music at Starr King Elementary School and also taking new students at West Portal Lutheran, but that won’t put a damper on the fantastic things planned for September. Starting out with a real bang, don’t miss the Nice Guy Trio + String Quartet premiere, featuring members of Real Vocal String Quartet and Turtle Island String Quartet, adding to the inimitable creative stylings of the trumpet-bass-accordion Nice Guy trio. (9/4 · 1:00pm – 2:30pm, Yerba Buena Garden Festival, 701 Mission SF, www.ybgf.org)

Graham Connah makes a rare appearance on September 5th (details TBA), then the Real Vocal String Quartet heads out on tour. We need your help! Please let your friends in Ashland, Portland, Seattle, and Mendocino that we’re on our way, and check RVSQ.com for our show in their area.

That’s all for now, please go outside and enjoy the first glimmers of summer.

West Coast!

DRIVING IS FUN: THE DINA MACCABEE BAND TOURS AWAY

Antephonic

Dina Maccabee — one half of lo-fi favorites Ramon & Jessica, a veteran of the San Francisco Bay Area scene, and erstwhile contributor to the likes of Vetiver, Carla Bozulich, and Vienna Teng — has teamed up with Chicago free-jazz stalwart Tobin Summerfield (Never Enough Hope, Larval, Algernon, Crush Kill Destroy) to collaborate on nine tracks that comprise her debut release, Who Do You Suppose You Are. The first record to come out on the new ANTEPHONIC imprint – the sister label to Chicago’s Contraphonic, Inc. – Who Do You Suppose You Are stands outside pop music’s endless wandering from trend to trend, and finds a strong, solid voice in the vein of Laura Viers or Edith Frost. With the subtle influence of Fleetwood Mac filtered through the speakers of Pavement, THE DINA MACCABEE BAND (Maccabee, Summerfield, drummer Eric Kuhn, and guitarists Roger Riedlbauer and Josh Tillinghast) round out perfect pop pieces that augment Maccabee’s catchy, haunting vocals and carpet of viola and violin strings. In anticipation of the record’s October 12th release, Maccabee & Co are heading out on tour near you starting next week. Mark your calendars with the dates below, and head on over to Antephonic to check out the singles “Hi-Yo” and “Driving is Fun.”

08.08.10 Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock
08.09.10 Chicago, IL @ The Whistler
08.10.10 Ann Arbor, MI @ Blind Pig
08.11.10 Pittsburgh, PA @ Howler’s Coyote Cafe
08.12.10 Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool
08.13.10 Baltimore, MD @ Copycat Annex
08.14.10 New York, NY @ Rockwood Music Hall
08.15.10 Buffalo, NY @ Sugar City
Enter the Antephonic site.

THURSDAY JULY 8TH SeaweedSway Presents:

THURSDAY JULY 8TH

SeaweedSway Presents:

the BETH CUSTER ENSEMBLE
DINA MACCABEE BAND
ALLISON LOVEJOY’S CABARET NOUVEAU

at Cafe du Nord
2170 Market St.
San Francisco, CA 94114

Doors 7pm, Show 8pm
$12

Tickets: http://bit.ly/july8bethcustertix
Venue: http://cafedunord.com/
RSVP here! http://bit.ly/rsvpjuly8

BETH CUSTER ENSEMBLE

The Beth Custer Ensemble is a veritable crème de la crème of Bay Area musicians including long time collaborator Jan Jackson on drums, (Will Bernard’s Motherbug; Chuck Berry), guitarist David James (Sila, The Coup, Spearhead) iconic pianist Graham Connah (Ted Brinkley), trumpet player Chris Grady (Mark Growden; Grassy Knoll); backup singer Diana Mangano (Jefferson Starship); Seth Ford Young, bass (Tom Waits, Sean Hayes) and Beth Custer, vocals/ clarinets (Trance Mission, Club Foot Orchestra, Eighty Mile Beach).

BCE’s latest release ‘Roam’ received the SF Chronicle’s highest review rating Pink Section and Memory Select said “Roam… is about songs — Catchy stuff that AOR radio stations ought to take notice of. Custer’s voice takes center stage, a lightly silky sound that can dig deep into earthly soul, and a tone that lets you know you don’t have to be in a hurry.”

http://bethcuster.com/

http://myspace.com/bethcustermusic

DINA MACCABEE BAND

Classical viola major Dina Maccabee and free-jazz guitarist Tobin Summerfield made friends in Ann Arbor in 1998. They joked about the pop record they would make one day, but didn’t realize the common musical ground they’d create until…

A dozen years later, Dina is the go-to string player for all kinds of creative and popular music in the San Francisco Bay. The resulting collaboration is a set of tunes from right now that also stands outside pop music’s endless wandering from trend to trend. The songs are timeless, intertwining disparate influences with a contemporary stylishness. Maccabee’s credentials from a decade in the real School of Rock show up in the shape of her songs, concise, intelligent lyrics, and her direct, unaffected singing style. Tying the room together, Maccabee arranges a catchy and haunting carpet of strings to complete this remarkable set.

The Dina Maccabee Band on July 8th will be Dina Maccabee on violin/vox, Tobin Summerfield on guitar (Never Enough Hope, Larval), Roger Riedlbauer on guitar (Boxcar Saints), Eric Perney on bass (GoJoGo), & Eric Kuhn on drums (Silian Rail, Sean Hayes).

http://dinamaccabee.bandcamp.com/

http://myspace.com/dinamaccabeeband

ALLISON LOVEJOY’s Cabaret Nouveau

Concert pianist and first place winner of San Francisco’s Best Modern Cabaret Competition, Allison brings to the stage the stylings of Marlena Dietrich, Nina Simone and Dresden Dolls. Original and classic. Stellar piano playing with sultry vocals and saucy stories. “Smart, mischievous fun,” says the Pacifica Review. Allison will be joined by special guests Stoo Odom on bass, William Seekamp on sax, Marco Villalobos on drums, & Diana Mangano on vocals.

http://allisonlovejoy.com/

http://myspace.com/allisonlovejoy

For press or other inquiries, please contact Jessie Woletz, seaweedsway@gmail.com

PLEASE get a ticket now, RSVP, invite friends, & SPREAD THE WORD!! Thanks for your support of local music!!

R&J, chasing the moon!

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