There's a party in the hen house and feathers are flying with these crazy fun loving roosters. Who doesn't love hip-swinging music from a band that enjoys playing together so much it's contagious and starts a ruckus from the first song to the last. Warning: Side effects include uncontrollable giddiness, cravings for shots of Tequila, belly laughs and dance floor mayhem.
MFC Chicken is back in action with Colonel Spencer back from spending another well-dressed summer hidden deep within the Canadian Wilderness. The Chickens are ready to take Europe by storm with a new album and extended tour of Spain and the UK.
After debuting an expanded all-star DELUXE line up at Spring 2016's Hipsville Festival to great acclaim and significant excitement, MFC Chicken have taken this new and improved recipe into the studio for their latest and greatest album to date, GOIN' CHICKEN CRAZY. It keeps that same raw Chicken energy, humour and party vibe that you fans have all come to know and love while adding extra punch and power with a load of special guest talent.
In addition to the core line up of Spencer Evoy (Tenor Sax and Lead Vocals), Alberto Zioli (Lead guitar and vocals) Zig Criscuolo (Bass) and Ravi-Low Beer (Drums), the Deluxe line up includes Chuchi Malapersona (Oh! Gunquit) on baritone sax, Dan Criscuolo (The Fuzillis) on baritone guitar, Tim Harrison (The Caezars) on piano, as well as veteran Chickens The Reverend Parsley on guest keys and Fernando Terror sharing double lead vocals with Spencer on one of the albums' most lyrically inappropriate tunes.
In addition to their new album released in November 2016 on Dirty Water Records, MFC have more exciting poultry products in the pipe line. They've been in the studio with Sister Cookie, recording two more exciting tunes for their second collaborative single and, after an unforgettable performance backing up the legendary GARY US BONDS at the Surforama Festival in Spain, they're in the process of collaborating with the R&B legend for a brand new single. Stay tuned for updates!
My Sunday ritual starts with coffee, coffee, dash of baileys, recliner, headphones and Palmyra Delran's Trash-Pop Shindig on SiriusXM #21 followed by the walking encyclopaedia and spinner of the best R&R on the plant, Steven Van Zandt, and diggity dang doodle Chris Carter's British Invasion is a wealth of obscure tunes and insight. Anyhoo, I kept hearing these groovy retro grrls garage psych tunes and had to wrest myself from my recliner to get close to the device and see who it was making me shuffle and jimmy jam in my recliner and every time it was The Darts laying down some of the tastiest tunes I've heard in a very long time. The two Arizona desert gypsies, singer and keys player Nicole Laurenne, bassist and singer Christina Nunez and two LA streetwise vamps, drummer and singer Rikki Styxx, guitarist and singer Michelle Balderrama seemed destined to wreak havoc on the music scene, having formed just in 2016 they've melded like four spilt tubes of Gorilla glue with missing caps mixing it up with sticky grooves you have to peel off your ears.
Every song on their debut LP is a full onslaught of adrenaline released raw retro raunchy unadulterated shimmy and shaking rock and roll and if it doesn't have you swinging from a chandelier you probably need a defibrillator to shock you back to life.
Release Date: January 13th 2017 on Dirty Water Records. Put this record on your essential listening agenda. It will stick with you until your Best of 2017 List, Giddy up dang doodle!
“I’ve always wanted to an all-girl band, with bad ass girls that are awesome,” says singer Nicole Laurenne (who also plays keyboards) in The Darts. And the key there is “bad ass”. Because this ain’t elevator music. This band is more heavy and aggressive sounding than any of the ladies’ previous bands – which include ’60s garage revalists The Love Me Nots, Motobunny, Zero Zero (Nicole), The Two Tens, The Dollyrots, Thee Outta Sites (drumming singer Rikki Styxx), The Love Me Nots, Casual Encounters, The Madcaps (bassist/singer Christina Nunez), Brainspoon (guitarist/singer Michelle Balderrama).
Christina will tell you clearly that, “The Darts are a little dirtier and little angrier than what we’ve done before.” But one has to ask, if guys were playing like this would it still be describe as “aggressive”? Maybe not. What this is, basically, is just good ol’ fashioned rock’n’roll, a little rough around the edges (as all good rock’n’roll ought to be), with a certain old-school punk feel and, most of all, a good time vibe.
The band formed in early 2016 when, after watching each other’s bands from the sidelines for years, Arizona natives Nicole and Christina got the idea of writing some songs and making music together and recruited the other two members from down in Southern California. With six songs ready, Rikki and Michelle recorded their tracks in Los Angeles and then Nicole and Christina tracked their parts in Phoenix. Arizona producer Bob Hoag then masterfully stirred the mess together over a piping hot console resulting in masterful tunes full of garage riffs, girl-group harmonies, fuzz bass, Farfisa organ, pounding drum fills, and all-around lo-fi-turned-hi-fi goodness.
Their song “Take What I Need” powered its way into the rotation on Little Steven’s radio show, and proclaimed ‘Coolest Song in the World” and the band got a very glowing shout-out from Steven King via Twitter. After all that, they only played their first live show together in October 2016 and then signed to Dirty Water Records just a few short months later.
While The Darts offers a new creative outlet for the ladies, all are already seasoned musicians. Laurenne and Nunez are both veterans of the recently-disbanded Love Me Nots, Styxx has kept the beat with The Dollyrots and Balderrama is a member of the long-running Los Angeles band Brainspoon.
The Darts are about to begin a nationwide tour that’ll keep them on the road through January; after a bit of a break they’ll return to touring in March. The Darts are touring across the southern states of the US in January 2017 with Oakland’s all-girl rock duo Steel Cranes, and then will be poised to invade Europe on tour in May where they will kick your ass
JAN 14 PHOENIX Valley Bar
JAN 18 EL PASO Lowbrow Palace
JAN 19 SAN ANTONIO Limelight
JAN 20 AUSTIN The Blackheart
JAN 21 HOUSTON Notsuoh
JAN 22 NEW ORLEANS Siberia
JAN 23 AUBURN DeRailed
JAN 24 NASHVILLE Springwater
JAN 25 MEMPHIS DKDC
JAN 26 DALLAS Three Links
JAN 28 TUCSON Flycatcher
JAN 29 PHOENIX Rebel Lounge
(Brooklyn, NY) One of the best kept secrets in New Jersey, Garage-rocker and singer-songwriter Francie Moon is exactly what you might think of when you hear “free spirit.” Always traveling in her well-worn van, Moon has gigged in every nook and cranny, bar and coffee shop in the continental U.S. With a prolific amount of releases to her credit since adopting the moniker in 2013, Francie Moon (real name Melissa Lucciola) is now gearing up to drop her most fully realized songs to date. The three-track Francie Moon EP is out September 23rd, 2016 via self-release with Release Show at The Other Side
338 Moffat St, Brooklyn, New York 11237 $5 Bands at 9pm BYOB Friday Night September 23rd on the bill are Sun Voyager, The Big Drops, Elephant Fire (Special acoustic set) Also a special guest is slated for the show. Each of the three tracks on the EP were recorded live on a tape machine before Moon moved for a spell down to Georgia, which lends the overall sound a feel you might hear on a Third Man Records release. Before she returned to the NJ area in early 2016, engineers Richie Semartin and Jon Irizarry worked up the tracks with Moon deciding to record more guitar and solos, backing vocals and little extra bits and pieces. The EP, which teases a larger collection of songs to be released next year, features Semartin (drums) and Adam Pumilia (bass). Moon’s gritty, garage-blues sound is a direct reflection of her life. In her own words, “I set up my life around music to make it work, no matter what. I handpainted 500 covers of my vinyl EP and made and cut every cover. I made hundreds of shirts and sold them on tour and I sold at least a couple thousand CD’s by hand to each person who bought one and gave away hundreds more. I sold my handmade earrings on my merch table. I sold a DVD player one time on my merch table. I bought a van a week before a tour so we’d have something to drive. I’ve come home with $500 and I’ve come home with $50. I’ve walked 2 miles to a show with all my equipment from a train station in San Diego and another time in Boston, ride shared a 15-hour overnight drive from Hollywood to Denver, CO and crossed the desert 5 times in a month just to make it to some shows.” As always, Moon will be picking up plenty of shows as she continues her travels probably to a town near you.
Social Media: Bandcamp - Facebook - Soundcloud - Web - Instagram - Twitter
Don't get the idea Dex's hat tip is a farewell, on the contrary it's a cocky tip of the hat that the bawdry bar room troubadour is back with a vengeance, with some lighter tunes like on the opener 'I hade a Dream' is a lullaby with tragically sadness to it. The second track 'Lonesome Train' is a gritty pining for a lost love, or perhaps many with haunting slide and eerie riffs leading to an outright pursuit of the lady lost. 'Nightide' is where he gets sinister and haunting with amazing guitar work and siren back up singers and an utter obliteration of surf riffs that is pure Dex.
Tomorrows Taking My Baby Away is pure desert roadhouse crooner, piano comes across as the house player in an old time saloon. But it's a double shout pounder of sorry. Trouble in the World finds him in a revival meeting preacher mode, yet the sinister pours forth like the wine at a monastery.
'My Funny Valentine' seems an after thought but the drum solo and other worldly organ feel in keeping with the overall feel of the record. 'I Don't Know' seems to be a Woody Guthrie tribute.
"Where Do You Roam' is not a question but a demand from a roadside avenging angel. More sinister guitar and vocals, this one's another treat to my apotheosis of the album. 'Smile' is a beautiful standard melody to let down your guard and deceptive in it's placement." Knock Knock' killer rocker, with a great sing along and twang a wang doodle and signature guitar sound. "Midnight at Vics' rips the floor boards off with it's guaranteed shoe sliding floor board shaking rock out. 'Out Of The Way'
is an harmonically heavenly quieting of the storm, in it's beauty and melodic riffs, like the sinister character calming himself form demons. 'Tell Me Why I Do" pines for love found but perhaps to late and not what was wanted all along. As I said in a tweet taking as a whole the album could be the sound track for a Quentin Tarantino remake of Robert Mitchum's 1953 Night Of The Hunter. I stand by that after many listens, and this is an album I'll be playing for a long long time. I really recommend this album for it's dark sinister feel.
Highly recommend as a companion 2014's Dex Romweber Duo and if you missed the Dex Romweber sampler on
Gone on six years now the garage hounds and I have been howlin' the praises of Francie Moon, way aback then we knew her as Melissa Lucciola, a prolific powerhouse of DIY output that featured her edgy distinct voice and slam it to the bedroom wall guitar playing set to heartfelt emotional lyrics that could soar with the best of classic and contemporary poets. She was our Jackie Kerouac, our 21st Patty Smith packed in a petite frame and shyly distant from us ordinary folk, but with a smile to light the haziest dark corners of a venue. Like an aspiring troubadour wittingly or unwittingly must do. Melissa assumed the moniker Francie Moon and took to the road, the country roads, the forgotten roads, the Red Cloud Road and back again to record the dust, dirt and the quilt of America she was weaving and coming to understand herself. It's in her songs, the journey, the growth, the hard lessons learned and shared with us through her undaunted spirit. A moon spirit of many phases. Six years the hounds and I have rocked by the fireside checking our google alerts, where she's playing, the adventures she's having, a song she's posted and now our great hope is showing signs of shining as publications of record and taste makers are taking notice. There's a Moon on the rise and the hounds wagging their tails and howlin' at the moon..
Self-titled EP, releases on September 23rd.
EXCLUSIVE: Francie Moon Mixes up a Brew of Garage Rock and Surf Pop For “Walked Away”
"The phrase DIY gets thrown with eye roll inducing frequency these days, ringing less of a counter-cultural, damn-the-man aesthetic and more of a com-modified punch line. But for New Jersey based singer/songwriter Melissa Lucciola, who performs under the moniker Francie Moon, DIY is alive and well– not only a way of life, but as the only way- for now- that she can devote her life to doing what she loves. “I set up my life around music,” the young artist confesses. In order to spread her work to cafes, coffee shops, bars and back porches across the country, she’s shared rides with strangers, hopped trains, hiked and hawked items to save up for a van of her own. She’s made albums and t-shirts by hand and moved her own merch, making friends and music all along the way. As Moon continues to work on a full length debut and build her catalog of songs, she’s getting set to release an EP, Francie Moon, on September 23rd."
"We’re excited to hear prolific, bluesy garage rocker Francie Moon’s latest EP, which she’s set to self-release September 23, but even more excited to premiere one of its tracks, “West Virginia”. It’s a slinky, groovy tune that drips with fuzziness."
BAEBLE FIRST PLAY: 'Red Cloud Road' by Francie Moon
"garage-rocker and singer-songwriter, Francie Moon. Recorded at Crud Studios and the Land Bridge Records/Rigbi home base in NJ, Francie Moon, AKA Melissa Lucciola, produced the song herself along with Richie Samartin, Jon Irizarry, and Richie Samartin. She encompasses everything that makes her an inspirational woman: attitude, depth, dirt, grit, coolness, and grace. The track is calm with a retro vibe, reverb-packed vocals, jangling guitars, clashing drums, and even a thumb piano at the very end. Francie Moon's ability to make you feel like you're floating in the air is hypnotic."
