SATURDAY OCT 16, 2021
529 & Speakeasy Promotions Presents:
*This show will require proof of vaccination or recent negative test result for entry*
Dinner Time
Gringo Star
Nordista Freeze | Everybodys Homie
Dinner Time
Artist Name: Dinner Time
Who Are They: An indie pop “supergroup,” if you will, that formed from the ashes of Ian Buford’s old band, the Pellys. As drummer Chad Miller (Antarcticats) told me, Dinner Time probably could’ve assembled before now, as three of the members—Miller, Buford, and Pop Weirdos auteur Bennett Kane—have been shuffling between each other’s bands for years now.
Members
Alejandro Uribe – Lead guitar
Ian Buford – Rhythm guitar, lead vocals
Bennett Kane – Bass, backing vocals
Chad Miller – Drums
Sounds Like: Start with Antarcticats, and that semi-tropical hammock rock, especially at high tide when the waves pound harder. Now imagine the band on the beach, but fully dressed in pressed button-downs and bowler haircuts. And then you realize, as the camera slowly zooms out, that you’re not really on a beach at all, but in a stylized model with plastic palm trees and bleach-white sand. Somewhere on the other side, Phil Spector is watching from his director’s chair; he approves, mostly, but wants to add some clever choreography and timpanis. No one’s got the time or money for either, so we’ve settled for the next best compromise: some twinkly chimes off-screen. Brilliant!
Releases: As of now, Dinner Time has only granted the internet “Walden Park,” but they promise to serve a second single by early August.
Mandatory Listening: Well, “Walden Park,” duh. See ‘Sounds Like’ above for details. However, if we fold in the members’ other projects, then I’d say Antarcticats’ latest long player I Know You Are, But What Am I? points most to what Dinner Time sound like now. See “Back By Midnight” for a scarily close analog of the same doo-wop swing, and “You’ve Got Something” for the hopscotch skip.
Artist Name: Dinner Time
Who Are They: An indie pop “supergroup,” if you will, that formed from the ashes of Ian Buford’s old band, the Pellys. As drummer Chad Miller (Antarcticats) told me, Dinner Time probably could’ve assembled before now, as three of the members—Miller, Buford, and Pop Weirdos auteur Bennett Kane—have been shuffling between each other’s bands for years now.
Members
Alejandro Uribe – Lead guitar
Ian Buford – Rhythm guitar, lead vocals
Bennett Kane – Bass, backing vocals
Chad Miller – Drums
Sounds Like: Start with Antarcticats, and that semi-tropical hammock rock, especially at high tide when the waves pound harder. Now imagine the band on the beach, but fully dressed in pressed button-downs and bowler haircuts. And then you realize, as the camera slowly zooms out, that you’re not really on a beach at all, but in a stylized model with plastic palm trees and bleach-white sand. Somewhere on the other side, Phil Spector is watching from his director’s chair; he approves, mostly, but wants to add some clever choreography and timpanis. No one’s got the time or money for either, so we’ve settled for the next best compromise: some twinkly chimes off-screen. Brilliant!
Releases: As of now, Dinner Time has only granted the internet “Walden Park,” but they promise to serve a second single by early August.
Mandatory Listening: Well, “Walden Park,” duh. See ‘Sounds Like’ above for details. However, if we fold in the members’ other projects, then I’d say Antarcticats’ latest long player I Know You Are, But What Am I? points most to what Dinner Time sound like now. See “Back By Midnight” for a scarily close analog of the same doo-wop swing, and “You’ve Got Something” for the hopscotch skip.
Gringo Star
Over the past decade, Gringo Star have made a name for themselves as one of Atlanta’s most valuable rock & roll exports, carrying the torch for hazy, psychedelic garage rock in a city primarily valued for its contributions to hip-hop. Gringo Star have outlasted wave after wave of buzz bands and indie blog darlings, carving their own career path through constant reinvention and an unparalleled work ethic, amassing a loyal and enthusiastic international fanbase along the way. Their mind-bending take on doo-wop inspired R&B and British Invasion rock & roll has garnered praise from the likes of Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Paste Magazine, KEXP & more, and landed them on bills alongside everyone from Cat Power and Feist to The Black Angels and Weezer, not to mention tours with Wavves, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, and their Atlanta-based contemporaries Black Lips.
Having reached their ten year anniversary, Gringo Star decided it was time to commemorate their career thus far by doing something they’d never done before: it was time to release their first live album. “A lot of my favorite records are old live albums and we’ve always wanted to have a live representation of what we do,” says vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Nick Furgiuele.
Coming this summer via Baby Robot Records, Gringo Star’s Controlled Burn is a 14-track live album recorded at The Earl, one of Atlanta’s premier rock & roll clubs, in September of 2018. The career-spanning setlist serves as a 10 year retrospective, compiling popular singles and deep cuts from all of their albums into one frenzied, sweaty celebration of Gringo Star’s music, performed before a rabid hometown audience.
From the opening of “Mr. Mystery,” off of 2018’s Back to the City, there’s a palpable electricity that permeates all of Controlled Burn. The band’s comfort on stage, honed over the course of thousands of shows, shines throughout the record as they allow the energy of the performance to flow unobstructed, speeding up and slowing down as the moment commands, but never falling out of sync with one another. This confidence is bolstered by the contributions from guitarist/backing vocalist Joshua Longino, violinist David Claassen, keyboardist/guitarist/percussionist Spencer Pope, and drummer Mario Colangelo who makes his recording debut with Gringo Star after touring with the band since 2017.
Newer tracks like 2018’s “La La La” are performed with as much passion as crowd favorites like “Make You Mine” off 2011’s Count Yer Lucky Stars, and are received with equal fervor by their fans. The diversity of the band’s sound is calculated and stands as one of the main reasons Gringo Star continues to shine. Guitarist/vocalist Peter Furgiuele says, “Throughout all of our albums, we’ve always been on a steady progression. We’ve been writing in basically the same way since we started, but with each record we’ve refined the process and have always pushed to try something new on each record. We just don’t want to ever repeat ourselves.”
Though 2008’s All Y’all serves as the start of Gringo Star’s storied career, the band’s core songwriting duo, the Furgiuele brothers, have been playing together since they were kids, born into a family with strong ties to Georgia music history. “Our grandad started out in radio in the ’40s and ’50s in Columbus, Ga.,” Nick explains. “He was a huge promoter of R&B back when it was still super segregated, and he was playing black music and putting on shows with Little Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers, a lot of Gospel shows. So we grew up hearing all these stories, listening to all this music. Our grandfather was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame posthumously. And my grandma—all her photo albums are like Jackie Wilson shirtless backstage, hanging out.”
With their family’s R&B connections and their young obsession with early rock & roll, it wasn’t long before the two brothers started making music themselves. When Nick was 15 and Peter just 11, they picked up bass and drums, respectively, formed a rhythm section and joined their first garage band. “We played together in the house and messed around on a little two-track,” Nick says. “We’ve been writing songs together since before Peter was a teenager. We even played his 8th-grade dance.”
Eventually, the brothers formed Gringo Star and began the career that has come to define their last decade. All Y’all and Count Yer Lucky Stars forced the world to pay attention. 2013’s Floating Out To See found the band experimenting with producing their own records and layering more keys and strings into their compositions. 2016’s The Sides and In Between contained some of the finest songwriting of the Furgiuele’s career, and 2018’s Back to the City reinvigorated their sound with a new intensity, equally dark and shimmering.
Despite multiple personnel changes, Nick and Peter have remained steadfast in their partnership, continuing to stand by one another through thick and thin in their artistic endeavours. There’s no telling what comes next for Gringo Star, but there’s no doubt that the Furgiuele brothers will continue to write and record on their own terms. “We’ve had a lot of opportunities over the past ten years. If we had an idea about something we wanted to, we did it,” says Nick. “I can’t think of a single thing I’d change.
Over the past decade, Gringo Star have made a name for themselves as one of Atlanta’s most valuable rock & roll exports, carrying the torch for hazy, psychedelic garage rock in a city primarily valued for its contributions to hip-hop. Gringo Star have outlasted wave after wave of buzz bands and indie blog darlings, carving their own career path through constant reinvention and an unparalleled work ethic, amassing a loyal and enthusiastic international fanbase along the way. Their mind-bending take on doo-wop inspired R&B and British Invasion rock & roll has garnered praise from the likes of Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Paste Magazine, KEXP & more, and landed them on bills alongside everyone from Cat Power and Feist to The Black Angels and Weezer, not to mention tours with Wavves, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, and their Atlanta-based contemporaries Black Lips.
Having reached their ten year anniversary, Gringo Star decided it was time to commemorate their career thus far by doing something they’d never done before: it was time to release their first live album. “A lot of my favorite records are old live albums and we’ve always wanted to have a live representation of what we do,” says vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Nick Furgiuele.
Coming this summer via Baby Robot Records, Gringo Star’s Controlled Burn is a 14-track live album recorded at The Earl, one of Atlanta’s premier rock & roll clubs, in September of 2018. The career-spanning setlist serves as a 10 year retrospective, compiling popular singles and deep cuts from all of their albums into one frenzied, sweaty celebration of Gringo Star’s music, performed before a rabid hometown audience.
From the opening of “Mr. Mystery,” off of 2018’s Back to the City, there’s a palpable electricity that permeates all of Controlled Burn. The band’s comfort on stage, honed over the course of thousands of shows, shines throughout the record as they allow the energy of the performance to flow unobstructed, speeding up and slowing down as the moment commands, but never falling out of sync with one another. This confidence is bolstered by the contributions from guitarist/backing vocalist Joshua Longino, violinist David Claassen, keyboardist/guitarist/percussionist Spencer Pope, and drummer Mario Colangelo who makes his recording debut with Gringo Star after touring with the band since 2017.
Newer tracks like 2018’s “La La La” are performed with as much passion as crowd favorites like “Make You Mine” off 2011’s Count Yer Lucky Stars, and are received with equal fervor by their fans. The diversity of the band’s sound is calculated and stands as one of the main reasons Gringo Star continues to shine. Guitarist/vocalist Peter Furgiuele says, “Throughout all of our albums, we’ve always been on a steady progression. We’ve been writing in basically the same way since we started, but with each record we’ve refined the process and have always pushed to try something new on each record. We just don’t want to ever repeat ourselves.”
Though 2008’s All Y’all serves as the start of Gringo Star’s storied career, the band’s core songwriting duo, the Furgiuele brothers, have been playing together since they were kids, born into a family with strong ties to Georgia music history. “Our grandad started out in radio in the ’40s and ’50s in Columbus, Ga.,” Nick explains. “He was a huge promoter of R&B back when it was still super segregated, and he was playing black music and putting on shows with Little Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers, a lot of Gospel shows. So we grew up hearing all these stories, listening to all this music. Our grandfather was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame posthumously. And my grandma—all her photo albums are like Jackie Wilson shirtless backstage, hanging out.”
With their family’s R&B connections and their young obsession with early rock & roll, it wasn’t long before the two brothers started making music themselves. When Nick was 15 and Peter just 11, they picked up bass and drums, respectively, formed a rhythm section and joined their first garage band. “We played together in the house and messed around on a little two-track,” Nick says. “We’ve been writing songs together since before Peter was a teenager. We even played his 8th-grade dance.”
Eventually, the brothers formed Gringo Star and began the career that has come to define their last decade. All Y’all and Count Yer Lucky Stars forced the world to pay attention. 2013’s Floating Out To See found the band experimenting with producing their own records and layering more keys and strings into their compositions. 2016’s The Sides and In Between contained some of the finest songwriting of the Furgiuele’s career, and 2018’s Back to the City reinvigorated their sound with a new intensity, equally dark and shimmering.
Despite multiple personnel changes, Nick and Peter have remained steadfast in their partnership, continuing to stand by one another through thick and thin in their artistic endeavours. There’s no telling what comes next for Gringo Star, but there’s no doubt that the Furgiuele brothers will continue to write and record on their own terms. “We’ve had a lot of opportunities over the past ten years. If we had an idea about something we wanted to, we did it,” says Nick. “I can’t think of a single thing I’d change.
Nordista Freeze
Where did Nordista Freeze come from? Everyone who saw it happen has a different
explanation, but they agree on one thing: a flaming blue orb came flying out of the sky and
smashed into the earth, and there, lying sprawled in the crater, was a man wearing only his
underwear with a tambourine in his hand. He rose to his knees, vomited profusely, and took off
running over the rim of the crater and into the distance yelling “Na Na''. Where did he come
from?!
Maybe outer space? His first two records were called Space Travel and Cosmic Haus. Is he a
time traveler from the past? His 60s pysch-pop anthems and bouncy flow say so. A time traveler
from the future? Many believe he’s like a Terminator 2 Terminator sent back to save the music
industry from self-destruction. All this is speculation. His origin notwithstanding, he’s brought a
transcendent message, a secret of life that transmits through his legendary live performance.
Come hear it and believe.
Where did Nordista Freeze come from? Everyone who saw it happen has a different
explanation, but they agree on one thing: a flaming blue orb came flying out of the sky and
smashed into the earth, and there, lying sprawled in the crater, was a man wearing only his
underwear with a tambourine in his hand. He rose to his knees, vomited profusely, and took off
running over the rim of the crater and into the distance yelling “Na Na''. Where did he come
from?!
Maybe outer space? His first two records were called Space Travel and Cosmic Haus. Is he a
time traveler from the past? His 60s pysch-pop anthems and bouncy flow say so. A time traveler
from the future? Many believe he’s like a Terminator 2 Terminator sent back to save the music
industry from self-destruction. All this is speculation. His origin notwithstanding, he’s brought a
transcendent message, a secret of life that transmits through his legendary live performance.
Come hear it and believe.