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Bad Bad Hats - Walkman out September 17th!
Posted on July 13th, 2021

PRE-ORDER WALKMAN

Minneapolis’ beloved indie rock trio Bad Bad Hats has signed with Don Giovanni Records for their brand new album, Walkman, due out September 17. While breathing exuberant joy and her singular sense of humor into every syllable, songwriter Kerry Alexander (guitar/vocals) brings personal storytelling and wit into the multi-layered lyrics, while wailing on bouncing guitar lines and infectious melodies with bandmates Chris Hoge (bass) and Con Davison (drums).

Defined by a balance of sweet and sour, the trio’s music honors classic pop songwriting, with nods to nineties rock simplicity and pop-punk frivolity. Lead single “Detroit Basketball” is delivered alongside a video that charmingly depicts the band’s delightfully absurdist perspective, delivered with the utmost sincerity, as they make their valiant return to the spotlight. Piston’s fans will recognize this song’s title as the call-and-response chant that fills the Little Caesars Arena on game night, but the simple phrase stuck in Kerry’s head, who drew on it for inspiration for this searing power-pop track.

PRE-ORDER WALKMAN

Walkman is the group’s fourth time working with producer Brett Bullion, including their previous two LPs, Psychic Reader and Lightning Round, and the Wide Right EP. Bullion and the band use the studio as an instrument, resulting in their most polished work to date.


Bad Bad Hats Tour Dates

On sale now

July 30: Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry
July 31: Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry (early show)
July 31: Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry (late show)

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On sale Friday, July 16

August 12: Spring Green, WI @ Shitty Barn
September 22: Omaha, NE @ Reverb Lounge
September 23: Kansas City, MO @ Record Bar
September 24: Saint Louis, MO @ Off Broadway
September 25: Des Moines, IA @ xBk
October 7: St. Cloud, MN @ Pioneer Place
October 8: Fargo, ND @ Fargo Brewing Company
October 9: Sioux Falls, SD @ Icon Lounge
October 15: Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop
October 19: Newport, KY @ Southgate House Revival
October 20: Columbus, OH @ Natalie’s
October 21: Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Cafe
October 22: Vienna, VA @ Jammin Java
October 23: Richmond, VA @ Richmond Music Hall
October 24: Philadelphia, PA @ Silk City
October 26: Asbury Park, NJ @ The Saint
October 27: Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom
October 28: New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge
October 29: Concord, NH @ Bank of New Hampshire Stage
October 30: Keene, NH @ Colonial Theatre
October 31: Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
November 2: Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse
November 3: Albany, NY @ The Linda
November 4: Buffalo, NY @ The 9th Ward at Babeville
November 5: Cleveland, OH @ Mahall’s
November 6: Ferndale, MI @ Otus Supply
November 7: Grand Rapids, MI @ Pyramid Scheme
November 18: Wausau, WI @ Grand Theater
November 19: Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
November 20: Chicago, IL @ Schubas
December 2: Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
December 3: Duluth, MN @ Sacred Heart Music Center


PRE-ORDER WALKMAN


Tim Kerr To Release New Art Book "Self Taught" Aug 27
Posted on July 12th, 2021

We are excited to announce a new art book by TIM KERR titled SELF TAUGHT which will be released on August 27, 2021. The book is available for PRE-ORDER NOW and all pre-order copies will be hand-signed by the author.

Tim Kerr is a musician and artist known for his lifelong contributions to the DIY and punk scenes, as a member of the Texas Music Hall of Fame, hailing from Austin, and for having played in The Big Boys, Poison 13, Monkeywrench, and Bad Mutha Goose. Kerr is a visual artist and photographer, and currently releases music with his project Up Around The Sun.

As a bonus, every purchase of Self Taught will include a digital download card of a new Up Around The Sun album along with the book.

"Self Taught" is a collection of paintings, portraits and collages done over the course of his life, and the work is an expression of the spirit of DIY and creating for creation's sake. Kerr has always rejected the impulse to define art or music by categorizing it into a specific genre and throughout his music and visual art career, has preferred to color outside the lines rather than adhere to any one definition of "art" or, for that matter, punk.

The book Self Taught by Tim Kerr will be released August 27 by Don Giovanni Records, and is available for pre-order now. It will include a digital download of a new Up Around The Sun album, composed by Kerr and Jerry Hagins.

Pre-Order The Book Self Taught by Tim Kerr
Tim Kerr Official Website
Tim Kerr on Instagram


Laura Stevenson Announces Self-Titled Album Out August 6!
Posted on June 8th, 2021

PRE-ORDER LAURA STEVENSON

Laura Stevenson has experienced a lifetime of joy and pain since her 2019 album The Big Freeze. Due out August 6 on Don Giovanni Records, her newly announced self-titled studio album follows the heartbeat of these life-altering events. From the excitement and tribulations of giving birth to her first child during the COVID-19 pandemic to the powerful rage born from a turbulent situation in which someone she loves was harmed and nearly killed, the new collection is a dynamic and heartbreaking celebration of life. It was produced by John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Hop Along, Dinosaur Jr.), and features longtime collaborator and bandmate Jeff Rosenstock on guitar. While it is often emotionally heavy, Laura Stevenson never strays from its true motivating force: love.

Unleashed with a high-octane video -- directed by visual artist Christopher Hainey and starring fashion model and molecular biologist Leslie Bembinster -- ferocious lead single “State” is an emotional and visceral embodiment of the waves of rage which powerfully and aptly open the record. Laura explains, "Someone I love was hurt and almost killed by another person and I was so absolutely consumed with this level of rage that I had never known before and it was really powerful and frightening but somehow freeing when I was willing to just let it wash over me."

PRE-ORDER LAURA STEVENSON

The journey that this new collection of songs takes the listener on may be a familiar one for anyone going through the stages of grief. “Mary” sees Stevenson alone at her piano, recalling the long drive to the scene of the crisis, an agnostic bargaining with holy figures to save a life. On mid-album highlight, “Sky Blue, Bad News” Stevenson punishes herself for things that were ultimately out of her control, going over events in her life that lead up to this moment to figure out why all of this was happening. All this uncertainty and darkness is juxtaposed against her warm vocals and bright melodies.

“The album was written as a sort of purge and a prayer,” Stevenson says. When it finally came time to record, she was pregnant with her first child. “It was a very intense experience to re-live all of the events of the previous year, while tracking these songs, with my daughter growing inside me, reliving all of that fear and pain and just wanting to protect her from the world that much more. It made me very raw.”

The album follows Stevenson’s 2019 career milestone The Big Freeze, celebrated for its “finely detailed, wrenchingly intimate songwriting” (All Songs Considered), and a 2020 NPR Tiny Desk (counted as one of the year’s 20 Best). Recorded at The Building in Marlboro, NY, Laura Stevenson is a sincere portrait of a human heart in all its vibrant colors. More than anything, it is about bearing one’s whole self in the face of those you love—uncomfortable, and exposed, but vital, present. Here.


PRE-ORDER LAURA STEVENSON

Laura Stevenson tracklist

1. State

2. Don’t Think About Me

3. Moving Cars

4. Continental Divide

5. Wretch

6. Sky Blue, Bad News

7. Mary

8. Sandstorm

9. After Those Who Mean It

10. Children’s National Transfer


Izzy True Announces New Album Our Beautiful Baby World
Posted on May 11th, 2021

We are incredibly excited to announce the a album from Chicago-based rock band of yearning IZZY TRUE - titled Our Beautiful Baby World - out July 2, 2021. The album was recorded at beloved midwest music venue Rozz-Tox in Rock Island, IL by Ian Harris.

Today, they've released a music video for lead single "New Fruit." The single is also available on all streaming platforms and Bandcamp now.


PRE-ORDER OUR BEAUTIFUL BABY WORLD NOW!

“I ended up choosing the title Our Beautiful Baby World this year as a kind of prayer,” says guitarist/vocalist Izzy Reidy (pronouns they/them). “When I get very sad about the world, I find comfort in zooming out to the macro, universal level. On that scale, humanity is so young, so small, still learning, and full of possibility. When I think of it that way, I feel so tenderly towards humanity. All of the things it does to hurt itself are not its fixed nature, I have hope that it is (very slowly) learning to be gentle.”

In creating Our Beautiful Baby World, the pacing of Izzy True’s songwriting process has slowed down since their prior Don Giovanni releases -- Sadbad (2018) and Nope (2016). Arranging with bandmates Curtis Oren (they/them pronouns- bass, sax, flute), and Samuel H Goldstein (they/he/she pronouns- drums), Reidy says they’ve grown as musicians together, and their songs were given space to grow, too. OBBW exhibits eleven rock songs of melded collaboration, expressing the deepness of acceptance. These are the band’s most dynamic compositions to date. Reidy also being a cartoonist - which is evident in the fuzzy imagery and storytelling held within their songs - hopes the album to “sound like a bad drawing of a rock record.”

There’s a desire to find okayness in this harsh world, with images of angels, open pastures, and ghosts of old friends and lovers looping around Reidy's twanging yet patient vocals. The inspiration for the soft-hard dynamics that make up OBBW come from Reidy’s love of Thin Lizzy, along with the blending of the band members’ strengths and histories: Curtis as a courageous experimental musician in the DIY circuit as well as a fellow organizer with Reidy in the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, and Sam’s expertise as a hardcore drummer. These influences commingle and translate to a thrashing around; a sound filled with wonder.


The music video for "New Fruit" is debuting today, and features handmade costumes and props and Izzy's pet Axolotl. It can be seen below.


PRE-ORDER OUR BEAUTIFUL BABY WORLD NOW!


Nineties Feminist Anarcho-Punk Progenitors Spitboy Announce First Complete Discography
Posted on April 6th, 2021

Photo by Chris Boarts Larson

"They were one of those bands that were a prequel to what the future was becoming. Feminism, human rights, animal rights, environmental protection, gender issues... Spitboy was singing about these issues 30 fucking years ago. I’m so grateful to have witnessed it."

- Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day

A lot of people don’t want to go to a punk show and get a lecture, but we didn’t care. We want to be a band for women in the scene and while we’re at it, we’d like to tell the young men a thing or two and maybe prevent harassment, prevent rape, or get people thinking about these issues. We knew that we were alienating some people, but the music was loud and fast and angry, so it was as combative, and we just thought, we’re never going to break into a major label. That wasn’t our aim, so we didn’t really spend a lot of time worrying about that.”

- Drummer / lyricist Michelle Cruz Gonzales to LA Review of Books, 2018


Discography cover art by Martin Sorrondeguy

PRE-ORDER NOW

Spitboy blazed trails for feminist musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond during their brief but impactful life, touring the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Releasing records on labels such as Ebullition, Allied Recordings, and Bay Area punk institution Lookout Records, they stood solitarily against what, at the time, was an almost entirely male-dominated sub culture of punk and hardcore. Formed in response to the homogenized masculinity of the late 1980's and early 1990s scene, their brash and abrasive style of music was paired equally with their confrontational live shows, and unwillingness to tolerate preconceived gender roles and social norms within the punk scene, and American society at large.

The release of the discography Body Of Work (1990-1995) marks the first time the entirety of Spitboy's recorded output is being made available on digital streaming platforms, and will be packaged in a limited edition double LP on red marble vinyl, the layout of which features extensive liner notes written by Vique Simba, and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day (who often played shows with Spitboy), and includes graphic design by Martin Sorrondeguy (of Los Crudos and Limp Wrist).

Spitboy's legacy is just as powerful today as it was thirty years ago, and their lyrics - unfortunately - still as poignant. Though today, we now have words and names for the concepts they were writing about then: toxic masculinity, gender non-conforming. Concepts that are now mainstream in western culture. As Vique Simba writes in her liner notes for the discography, "I valued their lyrics, their politics, their sense of community, their ethics, their commitment to punk, and their art. I felt like they could change the world. I also felt like I could change the world. We need this. We will always need this."


Body Of Work (1990-1995) will be released June 25th, 2021 and the collection is available for pre-order now.

100% of the proceeds from the release will be given to the National Women's Law Center.

Bad Bad Hats announce new album!
Posted on March 5th, 2024

Sug Daniels "When I'm Gone" OUT NOW!
Posted on March 3rd, 2023

Rodeo Boys - Home Movies out June 16th!
Posted on February 21st, 2023

Announcing our 2023 SXSW Showcase
Posted on January 20th, 2023

Franz Nicolay - New River out November 11th
Posted on September 14th, 2022

She/Her/Hers Announce New Self-Titled Record
Posted on September 6th, 2022