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

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

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

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.

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, http://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!

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.