Los Tikkilyches y Los Schwamigos
Fox and Goose, Sacramento Aug. 7th and Marcos Cafe, Columa CA, Aug. 9th.
Los Tikkilyches are a five piece from Sayulita, Mexico that describe themselves as “latin-surf-funk-rockin’soul-reggae fusion” who played recently with a Sacramento funky trio, The Scwamigos for two beautiful nights of eclectic musical maestrosity.
Los Tikkilyches play in all the restaurants and bars in and around Puerto Vallarta and they’re bringing their significant musical chops to the Western States for a couple months of rampant touring and tearing it up.
Both bands played their lights out in two venues the weekend of Aug. 7-9 and demonstrated true musical transcendence. Schwa Monley, bassist for Schwamigos, is nearly as much fun to watch as he is to hear, with the funk happening on a grand scale. Alejandro on drums and Hunter as frontman scoop up the funky vibe and groove to unheard of heights.
In the Tikkilyches, we got Alyssa Adams on keys and vocals with the beautiful grace and style. She harmonizes with Julia Blumenthal on guitar while Jonas Brewer holds down the lows and the beautiful flute solos and works his hair and his chilled out beatific personality pretty good as well. There’s a new guy on drums, Chad Sylva who’s worked out his amazing chops in Nashville for the last ten or twenty years. His fills are so clean they bring a tear to the eye. And then forget
Los Tikkilyces
about the guitar player, Jess Edmondson, if you’re worried about crying because his tasty guitar leads and solos fill the air with enough creamy goodness to fill the tear coffers of the most industrious tear merchant. Lightning fast and graceful is an understatement and it’s enough to turn everyone’s body into “one giant ear” according to the musician himself. Plus, the beard alone is worth the price of admission.
They got the whole glorious crowd gyrating exponentially and feverishly and nobody wanted it to stop. It was so frenetic my nice digital camera flew apart into a million pieces spontaneously and luckily nobody got hurt. Russ flew himself to the floor once, but made a graceful recovery, moved to his left and kept eveyone’s groove alive. We all felt gloriously alive and swam down the rapids of love and nostalgia until the next show. 
Catch their tour right here: wooooo!
Nebula, Entrance Band, Kaura – Elbo Room 08/04/09
Whoa!
Too much shit is going on and all I want to do is rock!
After an epic weekend in Big Sur I just didn’t get enough of Entrance Band and this is their last stop in SF before the big new record drops. I ran into Paz (bass, a perfect circle, Zwan etc…) in a little gift store down on highway one and she informed me about this show with Nebula and, to my surprise, some old acquaintances Kaura. There’s a connection there, as there always is, but I’m not yet in the know.
I couldn’t get any delinquents to come along, which is a shame, but everyone in the city has got there thing and I guess there’s no time built into the schedule to witness near perfection. There’s that recording session, or that FIFA game, or that social network or whatever, but this is real. This is happening. It’ll affect you or it’ll influence you and it’ll surely leave a mark. But I get it. There’s a time for influence and a time to make it happen. One thing is certain: there’s not enough time for everything. But this is something I’m not willing to compromise on. Entrance at Elbo, are you kidding?
Kaura go first. This is a surprise. I know there’s a Paz connection in there somewhere. Is it the guitar player? He looks vaguely familial. Whatever, they fire right up and the wall of sound doesn’t let up until their penultimate song when the guitar player unleashes a magnum opus of arpeggiated LPness that would do Slash’s Sweet Child riff proud and it was the one highlight. It was rad. Totally. The rest of their set was not really my thing, to be quite honest. Typical songwriting conundrum where everyone is struggling to be heard and nothing is, and the fine vocals are the first to be washed away in a sea of sonic doom. It’s hard to make out a melody. It’s hard to get carried away by the emotion because there doesn’t seem to be one. The gear is perfect, the hair and the outfits, the concept with the “World” intstruments, the connections, the chops even, but something is sorely missing. Still, it’s pretty close. Nothing that a good producer couldn’t repair. This is exactly why live music is worthy. A bunch of kids with dreams and a lot of hard work. Maybe nothing comes out of it but fun and a lot of love, but that’s good enough. These are the times of your lives.
I went out for a smoke and came back up to an entirely different stage scene. All the overblown Marshall stacks gone. The huge drumkit gone. Paraphernalia, stripped away. In it’s place a simple kit, one Mesa Bass Cube and a Fender 2X12 of some kind. The stage looked naked but when Entrance hit the air was filled with lovely, earthshaking, coherently cacophonous, beautiful noise.
Paz’s bass tone was magic, round, powerful, magnetic and articulate. Guy’s Telecaster had that shimmery, extra delayed out glass and his vocals a tinge of slapback and those PA speakers at Elbo are pretty damn fantastic.
They started with “Crowded Train” which has a great bass riff and Paz shines right from the start. Her fingers dance, she gets into a trance, her recently washed locks hang in her face and she rocks as if she means it. You can tell when someone’s just going through the motions, when someones just trying to emulate a good practice on stage or when someone is really feeling it. Great musician’s are always feeling it because they love music. Sure, some nights are better than others. It’s a job. But there’s always a spark. If there’s not, you’re done. Put a fork in you.
Paz has it. Guy always has it. Derek looks like he’s just trying to keep up and he’s doing a fine job. His hair alone is worth the price of admission. And what about their outfits. Could they be any less rockstar? Kaura comes out with perfect rockstar attire and do a workmanlike job. Guy comes out with an old white t-shirt and white jeans and puts more rock into one hammer-on than a chorus of post Cobain posers and it’s what it is, and more because this kind of music transcends.
You might not be that into Guy’s caterwauling or his look or his style or his ethic or whatever, but you can’t deny their utter power. He’s a singer-song writer in every sense and you got to get into his thing. It’s there for all to see. Can’t wait until Sept. 1st when the album drops.
After the set I ran into Malcolm of Kaura back at the merch table and asked him about the connection with Entrance.
“Oh, she recorded with us on our first EP. She played violin on it. So this is great. It’s like a reunion. And then came A Perfect Circle and Zwan and now Entrance so it’s really great to see her back in her element again.”
“Cool, what do these guys, Nebula, sound like?”
“Total psychedelic stoner rock. They’re good. You should stay and check ‘em out.”
Thanks, I will. Nebula hit. Another power trio and I tried to justify the term “stoner rock”. They weren’t exactly chilled out. They weren’t exactly splayed out on the couch playing video games. They weren’t inept and listless, but it was hard to tell if they had the munchies. I guess there’s a third way. You can move your fingers a little and turn the amps up and get them to do all the work, I guess that’s what stoner rock is. It’s loud enough. It’s got some requisite pomp. It’s accessible. It rocks, sort of. Maybe a really good laser show would put it over the top. I’m tired, time to hit the hot tub and fire one up and go to bed.