Space Ballroom Weekly Link Round-up: 6 shows announced including Connecticut’s hottest Led Zepplin tribute band Presence CT
This week Space Ballroom announced Florist, Letters to Cleo, Ceschi & Factor Chandelier w/ Myles Bullen, PT Burnem, and Indigaux, Presence CT, Lunar Vacation and Liliac. Tickets are on sale now via spaceballroom.com
Florist
Space Ballroom • 295 Treadwell Street, Hamden, CT 06514
November 18, 2024
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Florist
“It’s a portrait of who we are as collaborators, as really long term friends and as extended family as well,” leader Emily Sprague says of her band’s new self-titled album. Florist is also the strongest album of the band’s decade-long career, an immersive work that conveys the magic of the earth and of family, and the whole of the band’s heart. It arrives just after the cap of a winding journey. In 2017, shortly after the release of the band’s sophomore record, If Blue Could Be Happiness, Sprague sequestered herself in Los Angeles, thousands of miles away from friends and family, and from the physical void and spiritual crisis left in the wake of her mother’s death. There, she took up surfing and released Emily Alone, which was essentially a solo album released under the Florist moniker. Only after months of self reflection and therapy did Sprague realize that life in a silo is no way to live. That a life directed by fear is not much of a life. “The trauma response to losing my best friend, my mom, was to feel really afraid to get close to anybody ever again,” she says. “It’s sort of cheesy, but I realized that life is better when you share it. The answer isn’t to isolate yourself and be alone.” So she began writing Emily Alone’s companion, the other side of the binary, a record that rings distinctly of Sprague’s tender and poetic spirit, filled with nature and wonder and tears, but without all the loneliness and seclusion. She also adopted a dog, who, she says, “completely changed my life.” “My mind just started exploding with all these thoughts about what it means to live with others, and live with love and care collaboration.” Then, for all of June of 2019, amid a hot and rainy summer, Sprague (guitar, synth, vocals), Jonnie Baker (guitar, synth, sampling, bass, saxophone, vocals), Rick Spataro (bass, piano, synth, vocals) and Felix Walworth (percussion, synth, guitar, vocals) convened in a rented house in the Hudson Valley, to live and work together. It was the first time the quartet recorded that way, and for that long. “In the past we’d meet up for a couple of days, or one day here and there,” Spague recalls. “Living together for a month is a really big part of why the arrangements are the way they are, and also why the instrumentals are such a huge part of the record.” They set up their gear on the screened-in front porch, which looked out onto a canopy of trees, allowing the sounds of nature to play a leading role through out. Then, they experimented. The production and recording of the album directly reflects the organic ways in which the band worked that month, with whispering voices, crickets, rain and birds accenting the aleatoric quality of the instrumentation, each player drawing from the communal energy of the woods and their interpersonal bonds. Poignant, guitar-centric meditation “Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning)” carries on Sprague’s concern with love, loss and the natural world. “She’s in the birdsong/She won’t be gone,” she sings of her late mother, proffering a merciful sense of resolve. “Feathers” finds her facing her fears over threads of bowed guitar while “Dandelion” meditates on the beauty of our finite existence, pairing synth and fingerpicking with the spirit of Emily Dickinson. “Sci Fi Silence” occupies a liminal space between soul baring confession and contemplative new age, a swirl of analog synth that culminates in a full-band meditation. “You’re not what I have, but what I love,” the band sings over and again until the words grow into a kind of mantra, a thing that at once pierces and heals. The quartet played through muggy days and breezy nights, and often impromptu. “In between working on songs specifically, somebody would be sitting on the porch playing a little instrumental piece, and somebody else would be in the kitchen making dinner and stop, and go to the porch and pick up a random instrument,” Sprague explains. These creative bursts became the album’s ambient instrumental bridges, like “Variation” and “Jonnie on the Porch,” gentle moments that portray their life together in that particular moment. The bells heard throughout the album are from a collection housed in the rental, the animals were their neighbors. The result is 19 tracks that feel like the culmination of a decade-long journey, their fourth full-length album, but the first deserving of a self-titled designation. “We called it Florist because this is not just my songs with a backing band,” Sprague explains. “It’s a practice. It’s a collaboration. It’s our one life. These are my best friends and the music is the way that it is because of that.” After making the record they always knew they could, together, as one, Sprague could no longer live on the west coast without her band and blood. So, she returned home. Last year, she moved back to The Catskills to be closer to her father and her creative collaborators. She misses surfing, but finds peace in the area’s natural landscapes, and through a strengthening sense of physical reconnection. “A goal is to share the band’s connectedness and relationship, but also how we’re all connected,” she says. With Florist, Emily is no longer alone.
Letters to Cleo
Space Ballroom • 295 Treadwell Street, Hamden, CT 06514
November 21, 2024
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Letters to Cleo
When Boston alt-rock band Letters To Cleo split after 10 years, 3 albums, and thousands of tour miles together, it was at the behest of a pact that singer Kay Hanley and guitarist Greg McKenna made with each other when they started the band in 1990.
“We said that we’d stop doing it when we weren’t having fun anymore.” says Hanley. “I had just had a baby, (lead guitarist) Michael Eisenstein and (drummer) Stacy Jones were recording and touring with Veruca Salt’s Nina Gordon, (bassist) Scott Riebling was crazy in demand as a record producer, and I know it was frustrating to Greg to be in the shitty position of doing all the work to try and keep the ball rolling. It felt hard all of a sudden, and I hated that feeling.”
Soul searching done and tough decisions made, Letters To Cleo called it quits. The band members moved into new careers in and out of the music business, with Hanley, Eisenstein, and Jones migrating to Los Angeles. They all remained friends and sometimes even colleagues, collaborating on a host of movie, TV, and touring projects.
Now, for the first time in 17 years, Hanley, Eisenstein, Jones, and McKenna have written and recorded five brand new songs for “The EP”, are poised to launch a Pledge Music campaign, and will play club dates in Boston, NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in the Fall. So why reunite now?
“Because we’re good and stuff”, laughs Jones. “To me, the question isn’t ‘Why are we doing this now?’, the question is, ‘Why didn’t we do it sooner and why aren’t we doing it more?’’
McKenna adds, “It’s a blast. I mean, we spent our formative years learning how to do this stuff together. When it was done, we went out and lived our lives and now everyone’s bringing their experiences back to this at a new level of musicianship, but writing with these guys still feels effortless.”
The new material reflects McKenna’s sentiment. All 5 songs are instantly recognizable Cleo concoctions that fans will devour. From Eisenstein’s fierce, angular guitars locking horns with Jones’ roaring locomotive rhythm on “Hitch A Ride” to McKenna and Hanley’s signature melodic ESP on “Good Right Here”, the Cleo bandmates are in prizefighter form.
Staying true to the chemistry that defined their muscular pop sound throughout the 90’s was key to Cleo’s new venture. “It feels completely unforced. It sounds like classic Cleo. But at the same time, there’s nothing nostalgic about it.”, says Jones.
In addition to playing guitar, bass, and keys on The EP, Eisenstein also handled the lion’s share of production at Death Star Studio in the Koreatown section of LA, where he and Jones are current and former partners, respectively. Eisenstein is hesitant to pick any favorites from the new batch of songs but offers, “I really like “Four Leaf Clover” because it’s so in line with who we are as a band. It could have been on any of our records. The emotional content of “Back To Nebraska”is impossible to deny. It’s beautiful and powerful.”
According to Hanley, the opportunity to re-unite with her former band and make new music came almost from out of nowhere. “I didn’t have time to think up reasons to say no, so I just said yes. We didn’t have a plan. We just jumped in and everything unfolded really quickly. We all love the new songs and can’t wait to start playing them. It’s really fun!”
Heretix
Ceschi & Factor Chandelier w/ Myles Bullen, PT Burnem, Indigaux
Space Ballroom • 295 Treadwell Street, Hamden, CT 06514
November 23, 2024
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Ceschi & Factor Chandelier w/ Myles Bullen, PT Burnem, Indigaux
Ceschi Ramos’ music was created within the worlds of underground Hip Hop, Hardcore Punk & Folk. His version of songwriting may include machine-gun-speed-raps or emotive ballads inspired by Latin American troubadours.
He’s member of the crime wave band Codefendants along with Fat Mike of NOFX & Sam King of Get Dead.
First recognized in the early 2000s within the world of Lo-fi left field Hip Hop through his connections to Freestyle Fellowship , Sage Francis ,2Mex , Anticon & The Shape Shifters, Factor Chandelier , Ceschi eventually branched out into wildly diverse genres & made collaborative albums with folk punk hero Pat The Bunny, cloud hop pioneers Blue Sky Black Death & metal core band Dead By Wednesday.
As a 13 year old he started the fusion band Anonymous Inc with his brother David & eventually added Child Actor producer / keyboardist Max Heath. They joined forces with Tommy V, Xololanxinxo & Danny T Levin to form a band called Toca which was signed by Snoop Dogg’s management team for a development deal.
After a difficult experience with that label, Ceschi & David decided to start their own label, Fake Four Inc in 2008.
Over the last 2 decades he has toured North America, Europe, Asia & Australia, amassing a dedicated cult following
Myles Bullen
Myles Bullen is a genre- fluid, art-poet, ukulele-playing punk rapper, from Portland, Maine. Myles has toured nearly every state in the US as well as many European countries performing packed shows at music venues, colleges, recovery centers, prisons, festivals, and libraries. As a person in long term recovery from addiction, Myles sings and screams songs about grief, mental health, addiction, navigating identity, relationships, and cartoon lore. They released their most recent album, timetokill, on indie record label, Fake Four Inc. They love doing shows and their dog Finn.
PT Burnem
Indigaux
Presence CT: Led Zeppelin Tribute
Space Ballroom • 295 Treadwell Street, Hamden, CT 06514
November 29, 2024
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Presence CT: Led Zeppelin Tribute
Undoubtedly one of CT’s hottest bands, Presence CT Led Zeppelin Tribute have been wowing audiences across the state since their inception in September 2016 with their blistering, spot-on renditions of some of Zeppelin’s finest work.
What began as a jam session among life-long friends and musicians quickly morphed into the sublime when 18-year-old vocal sensation Michael Stearns (The Voice) entered the fray. The band has since never looked back.
From the haunting keys of No Quarter, to the melancholy harmonica on When the Levee Breaks, to the virtuoso guitars of Over the Hills and Far Away and the pounding rhythms of Nobody’s Fault but Mine, Presence CT Led Zeppelin Tribute brings it – in full color – note for note, rivaling and, in many ways, surpassing the “national acts” who pay tribute to one of the world’s all-time greatest rock and roll bands.
There are no gimmicks here. No silly costumes or wigs. Just the pure power, sounds, and delight of the mighty Zeppelin.
See what others have to say about the band:
“Saw these guys in Nov ‘17 at the Ballroom with fellow Zep fans including a pro musician. We were in awe and couldn’t believe what we were experiencing. They’re Class A pros and sound amazing – you got to see them!”
“Blown away by the Presence CT performance at Trinity on Main 3/16/18. Do yourself a favor and see them locally and at a smaller venue while you still can because they could be selling out stadiums before long…”
“These guys are the real deal…great show at Oktoberfest this past weekend…solid vocals and band. Not easy to pay tribute to this level of music and they nailed it!”
“I want to thank the band for not only a night to remember but a youth relived. Last night’s performance was spectacular!!! From guitars, harp, bass right down to the essential heartbeat of the drums = WOW, I am so grateful for these musicians who have done an incredible job in keeping the essence pure. Thank you from the bottom of my heart…”
“I’ve been a Zeppelin fan since I was a kid. Never got to see them live. Presence CT is…simply THE BEST Zeppelin show around, and I’ve seen a few others. No comparison. Very talented band members and their music…simply awesome.”
Lunar Vacation
Space Ballroom • 295 Treadwell Street, Hamden, CT 06514
February 14, 2025
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Lunar Vacation
As one would expect of any historic city, the houses in Decatur, GA are old, and while many have been renovated to suit the needs of the 21st century family, the one Lunar Vacation calls home has not. The porch is quaint and crumbly, the roof leaks, and there is a single bathroom shared by the band’s five members who insist that this is not, actually, a bad thing. “We go on tour and share a hotel room for a month and then all come back to the same house,” guitarist/vocalist Maggie Geeslin says cheerily, aware that to most, this scenario sounds maddening. “We’ve become homemakers together.” Just beyond the porch, the small vegetable garden produces enough to be proud of; in the cramped living room, there is always enough room for a house show, or a jam session. For ten months out of last year, engineer/bassist Ben Wulkan transformed the room into the ad-hoc studio wherein Lunar Vacation wrote and demoed their fearless sophomore album, Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire. “I used to be so protective of the songs when I gave them over to the band,” lyricist/vocalist/guitarist Gep Repasky says. “There’s so much trust involved, but this house helped us grow as best friends, as musicians, as a band.”
That newfound sense of trust is apparent on Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire, whose title, taken from the concluding track “You Shouldn’t Be,” is a thesis statement. While Lunar Vacation’s last album, 2021’s Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp, happily bathed in the waters of indie pop, their latest effort is exploratory, a product of many hours shared experimenting in a living room together. Inspired by prolific shapeshifters like Yo La Tengo and Björk, Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire adopts an ethos that every idea has the potential to be a good one. “Our last album was super produced, manicured,” Maggie says. “This one’s organic. We embraced mistakes; it made the work even better.” In other words: everything matters, everything’s fire.
Once billed as a band of high school friends, Lunar Vacation have transcended the cloying designation of “just kids” and have confronted the sink-or-swim mentality that overtakes you the minute you’re out of your parents’ basement. “Stop being so bitter,” Gep self-admonishes on the chorus of “Bitter” over a plodding, bony arrangement anchored by Connor Dowd’s drumming that summons Television. When they wrote the song, there was a lot to be bitter about; Gep had undergone a year of emotional tumult that led to a psychiatric hospitalization, which was both traumatic and transformative. Most of Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire documents that period, which the rest of the band witnessed as Gep’s closest friends. “When it happened, everyone was there. They brought me a note in the hospital, they brought me clothes, they brought me books.”
For a while after, the songs Gep wrote were lovelorn, angry, hopeless, but with Maggie’s encouragement, they began to see the duality in every lyric they penned, the cracks that let the light in. Now, Gep describes “Just for Today” as a song about both suicide and sex, as heavy as it is featherlight. When Lunar Vacation decamped to Athens, GA to record with Drew Vandenberg, Gep was mortified that “Set the Stage,” a song they’d written after a humiliating rejection, was the producer’s favorite. “It went from a super emo love song to, like, My Bloody Valentine,” Gep says, their astonishment still palpable a few months later. With Vandenberg behind the board and their bandmates’ unrelenting encouragement, Gep’s shame became a towering wall of sound.
After their hospitalization, Gep sought a sense of stillness they’d long been deprived of, which required letting go of the frenetic, elliptical thought patterns that had led them to rock bottom. In ways, the recording process mirrored the therapeutic, as the band made choices in the studio that, as Maggie puts it, “prioritized performance over perfection.” Mistakes started sounding like happy accidents that grew the band’s confidence and pushed them in unexpected directions. “Fantasy” begins muted and confessional, a smoke screen for the potent, psychedelic chorus that hits with the oomph of Portishead’s “Glory Box” when it drops. Opening track “Sick” is a bass-driven punk song, simple on its surface, but punctuated by Matteo DeLurgio’s rototoms, woodblock, and jaw harp, it offers an unsettling introduction to the album as Gep beckons a coming apocalypse. “The Earth is finally taking back her children,” they sing over the seasick arrangement, voice clear and unguarded, a beacon.
When Lunar Vacation started writing Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire, they returned to a song Gep started writing years ago called “Tom,” initially named for Vanderpump Rules cast member Tom Schwartz, whose maddening, happy-go-lucky approach to even the direst situations now modeled the cartoonish ease Gep was trying to enact in their own life. Abandoning the original premise, the band reconfigured the song in their living room while the sky dimmed to dusk outside. “We went through so many versions of it before finally settling,” Maggie says. The product of those many hours of work and laughter is sublime; just as “Set the Stage” became an empowering epic, “Tom” is a blinding pop song, filled with the possibilities that a crush engenders. Nothing about it sounds vulnerable until the bridge, when the instrumentation falls away save for a sputtering drum machine that accompanies Gep’s isolated, reverbed vocals. “I want you to be my friend,” they sing. “Let me out or let me in! Let me in! Let me in!” And as those words repeat, Lunar Vacation crashes back in, just in time to catch their bandmate as they sing, “As lonely as it seems—”
In that single, isolated moment, surrounded by friends, loneliness seems impossible.
Liliac w/ Amber Wild
Space Ballroom • 295 Treadwell Street, Hamden, CT 06514
February 25, 2025
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Liliac
LILIAC, the ‘First Family of Rock’, is a 5-piece hard rock band from Los Angeles. The band is fronted by Melody, lead guitarist Samuel, drummer Abigail, bassist Ethan and keyboardist JusGn. The sibling’s talents were discovered by their dear father, Papa Liliac, also the band’s manager and producer. AKer many crazy nights, they honed their craK as weekend street performers on the Santa Monica pier. Their sound takes the listener back to a Gme when rock was complex but told a story! LILIAC’s raspy vocals, catchy lyrics, scorching guitar solos, sparkling keys, thick bass and thunderous drumming provides a familiar, but fresh take on classic hard rock.
The band initially went viral on social media for their impressive covers, and videos, of classic rock and metal songs. This opened the door for LILIAC to appear on The World’s Best on CBS and America’s Got Talent, catapulGng them to internaGonal recogniGon. It is no mystery why their covers of Rainbow in the Dark and the Trooper won the hearts of millions and had people dancing in the dark.
LILIAC was not afraid and began wriGng their own hook-heavy, original material produced in their home studio by Papa Liliac. Their debut original album, Chain of Thorns, was released early 2019 and hit #1 on Amazon’s Best Seller for Rock Music Charts; proving why they say “we are the children” sent to save rock n’ roll.
The summer of 2019 kicked off their first North American tour consisGng of 40 dates of sold out shows in front of 1000’s of fangs! The band opened for classic rock icons such as Loverboy, Queensryche, Stryper, Slaughter, and even Kiss on the Kiss Kruise! Their follow-up, full length album, Queen of Hearts, brought 13 new songs in 2020: reaching #29 on the iTunes Rock Charts!
LILIAC’s 2022 “Moonlight Tour” consisted of 48 shows (44 headlining) allowing the band to sail away across country mulGple Gmes. During this tour LILIAC ‘grew up’, further sharpening their skills, and their fangs, on the stage and impressing the likes of Bret Michaels, Vinny Appice, and mulGple other rock n’ roll icons. With nearly 1 million fans on Facebook, and quickly growing on other socials, LILIAC is ready to take the world by storm.
Amber Wild
Don’t Miss
Lucas Zelnick – Friday, September 13th
Lady Lamb w/ Hannah Mohan– Saturday, September 14th
Sweet Pill w/ Cashier, Cinema Stare – Sunday, September 15th
Club XCX: A Bratty Dance Party – Thursday, September 19th
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