Tagged: secretgardenseries

No text

When Maryland's Cotton Jones showed up at Grand Army Plaza the morning after their short set at Le Poisson Rouge, the only thing they'd grabbed from their van was an acoustic guitar. Despite the inevitable traffic noise, we decided it'd be worthwhile to have Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw jump into the empty fountain and try a song there (for an opportunity to see Whitney sit on the lap of some frozen Greek hunk, if nothing else). We then headed to Prospect Park across the street, where they played several more songs, and the [...]

While we were in Austin for SXSW, we swung by the Red House Pizzeria for a pizzastic breakfast one morning. Out in the backyard a host of bands were readying to kickstart another day of endless music , and England's Fanfarlo , who was scheduled to go on later, had prepared a few songs for our mini-musical-documentary series: the Secret Garden . We walked a short distance away from the venue and halted outside someone's house, where I was drawn towards a white garage and the entire British crew towards a car draped [...]

On a rainy Sunday afternoon I went to meet the amazing Sara Lucas and Ryan Seaton of Callers . The location was Trophy Bar, in Williamsburg, which at that early hour wasn't open for business yet. Sara was catching up on a late lunch and Ryan was getting a head start on getting the bar reading for the evening. Though they usually play as a trio, drummer Don wasn't around. Ryan played the guitar and Sara sang, and we immediately realized how fabulous the acoustics was at this place: it seemed as if Sara's voice leaped up to the [...]

After Matt Jones played his set at Union Hall, we led him and a few of his friends to an abandoned couch that was a block away from the venue. The lighting was poor, but that comfy bulk of green sitting amongst the continual swooshes of passing cars seemed like it was just waiting for us. Matt was joined by cellist Colette Alexander, who miraculously lifted a folding chair out of the venue without anyone noticing, and Carol Gray, who played the fiddle. They played three songs, "Lady Dawn", "Threadlines" and "Hand Out the Drugs", out of which [...]

Before playing their Spike Hill show in Williamsburg, Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps were to perform a few songs in the ever-so-mobile Secret Garden. Their bright-eyed bassist Jesse Schuster had wanted to play an upright bass, but when we couldn't find a spot that housed one we could borrow, we thought a well-lit patch of a quiet-ish sidewalk, by which their van was parked close to the venue, suited us just fine. Drummer Arlen Peiffer grabbed a glockenspiel and a shaker, and the other three—Alex Ramsey-Blood, Caroline Smith and Jesse—fared well amongst a guitar, a banjo [...]

A few days after I saw tUnE-yArDs open for Beirut at Music Hall of Williamsburg , I went to film the amazing woman behind it, Merrill Garbus, in Bed-Stuy, where she was staying at a friend's apartment for a short visit. She asked me if I had specific requests, and though I said she could play anything she wanted, she ended up picking three of my favorites, "Little Tiger", "News", and "Hatari", and one new song, "Harold". We tried the first performance out on the stoop, but it was amazingly noisy-multiple airplanes, spontaneous banging, and one "just [...]

• tUnE-YaRdS - Little Tiger (Live at the Secret Garden)

Drink Up Buttercup is one of my favorite new bands right now; I love their distinct aesthetic for rhythm and how all four members seem to totally get it as a sound of their own, which seems to happen less often than you'd think, I guess. I met with them in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, just as the sun was just setting, and they were on their way back to Philadelphia after playing a few New York shows. They'd come in their tour van that "wolf howler" Farzad Houshiarnejad described as "nothing but trouble", though he wasn't quite referring to the [...]

We happened to be backstage at the Black Cat in Washington D.C. when we heard some determined harmonies booming out in the hallway. It was the Williams brothers-Roy and Kevin-from the Minor White , singing a few old favorites in the next room while the band was waiting to go on stage. I decided to film some of it, of which presented here are "Do Right Woman" and "Sin City" by the Flying Burrito Brothers; so this is somewhat of a semi-official, impromptu edition of the Secret Garden , but a special one, nonetheless, since it documents one [...]

I'd been wanting to film Team Genius ever since I heard their Hooray EP last year, and thanks to the band's willingness to brave the cold, and drummer Scott Dyer's intention to take his drum kit outdoors, the Winter season of Secret Garden's going just swell. These guys seem to have a knack for writing songs that you sing along, clap and stomp to, so it's only appropriate that they've managed to gather themselves into a unit of eight, even though of one them, Emma Firth, was missing when I went to see them [...]

It's a whole new Winter season here at the Secret Garden of 2009! Luke Winslow-King was in town to play slew of shows and was staying in downtown Brooklyn, where there was a gigantic Jay Z billboard looking over us; we were in a warm kitchen way high up, looking out onto the rapidly developing world of Brooklyn. Luke was playing for us as the Luke Winslow-King Trio, with friends Rich Levinson playing his amazing washboard and Jason Jurzak playing the tuba. We attempted a song out on the rooftop even though it was about 15 degrees outside. [...]

We were supposed to meet somewhere in the woods of Brooklyn, but it was far colder than the day we strolled through the Botanic Garden with These United States . The wind was harsher and entirely inhospitable to the idea of an outdoor performance. Instead, we met at a warm apartment in Park Slope with colorful walls. Part 1 features two performances by Hurray for the Riff Raff inside the bathroom: Aubrey Freeman and his upright bass in the bathtub, Alynda Lee on the sink, Walt McClements on the toilet seat, and Shae Freeman on the ledge [...]

• Hurray For The Riff Raff - Grocery (Live at the Secret Garden)