David Wax Museum

David Wax MUSEUM
Why do we need museums? They show us something familiar and traditional, while at the same time documenting our innovation, showing us possible directions for the future. This is the same reason we need David Wax Museum to give us music that is somehow familiar, as if it has always existed somewhere in our cultural ether, but is at the same time irresistibly fresh. Recently anointed as Boston's Americana Artist of the Year (2010 Boston Music Awards), the David Wax Museum has been… Show more called "one of Boston's hottest new bands" (Boston Globe) and "a revelation" (Providence Journal). It is no surprise that their acclaimed performance at the 2010 Newport Folk Festival was hailed as one of NPR's All Songs Considered Highlights of the entire weekend. The Museum's ability to fuse traditional Mexican folk with country, folk and rock, creating an utterly unique Mexo-Americana aesthetic, is what generates its contemporary sound and its broad appeal. Combining Latin rhythms, call-and-response hollering, accordion pumping and donkey jawbone rattling, they have electrified audiences across the country. And they've just gotten started. David Wax's circuitous journey from mid-Missouri to the back roads of Mexico inspires the Museum's blend of traditional Mexican and American folk music. While attending Deep Springs College, an unconventional school that doubles as a cattle ranch, David spent his summers working in rural Mexico with the American Friends Service Committee. He finished his degree at Harvard University before heading back to the Mexican countryside to study its rich folk music tradition on a year-long fellowship. It was there that he first began blending Midwestern folk with the instruments, rhythms, lyrical themes and song structures of son mexicano. Homeschooled by her father on a small farm in rural Virginia, Suz Slezak was reared on music -- traditional Irish, classical, old-time folk. She graduated from Wellesley College, traveled around the world on a Watson Fellowship to study textiles, and then found herself back in Boston where she met David Wax, recently returned from his Mexican travels. He convinced her to track down a donkey jawbone, a traditional percussion instrument from Veracruz, and join his band. Suz is the Museum's anchor to American roots music and helps fashion its distinctive sound with her fiddling and harmony vocals. Since 2007, David and Suz have formed the core of the Museum. David Wax Museum's ascent has been a steady one. The band now consistently sells out historic venues such as Boston's Club Passim, often performing two shows in a single night due to heightened demand. The Museum is closely associated with many of the most innovative Americana bands active today, having toured nationally with the Avett Brothers and the Old 97's and having shared bills with such acts as Carolina Chocolate Drops, Langhorne Slim, Ben Kweller, The Low Anthem, and Nathaniel Rateliff. In addition to packing clubs and theatres across the country and touring with national acts, David Wax Museum has been causing a ruckus in living rooms and backyards throughout the country. In these unique settings, the band's fiery and heart-wrenching shows have created an undeniable buzz and a devoted following. The David Wax Museum's exposure is not limited to its performances. The Museum receives consistent play on XM Sirius Radio's Acoustic Coffeehouse and on numerous radio stations in the Northeast. The Boston Globe selected the band's second album, Carpenter Bird, for its top 10 local albums of 2009. The band is featured semi-regularly on NPR, having been spotlighted on a segment about Mexico-centric indie rock and, more recently, as a favorite act of the 2010 Newport Folk Festival. A new album, Everything Is Saved, is produced by Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Langhorne Slim, Erin McKeown) and will be released February 3, 2011.Along the way, the David Wax Museum has had the good fortune to ally itself with a uniquely talented corps of musicians for recording and touring: David's cousin Jordan Wax (People's Republic of Klezmerica) on accordion and piano, Mike Roberts (Wooden Dinosaur) on upright bass and electric guitar, Greg Glassman (The Sacred Shakers) on drum kit and requinto, Jiro Kokubu on mandolin and dobro, Alec Spiegleman (Cuddle Magic) on baritone sax and clarinet, Brian O'Neill on percussion and Sam D'Agostino on upright bass and tenor sax.
http://www.myspace.com/davidwaxmusic
http://www.facebook.com/DavidWaxMuseum
CARAVAN Of THIEVES
Caravan of Thieves
Gypsy Swinging Serenading Firebreathing Circus Freaks!
For the past three years, this Caravan of Thieves has roamed the North American continent recruiting a family of avid thrill seekers at their high energy shows. Driving gypsy jazz rhythms, acoustic guitars, upright bass and violin lay the foundation for mesmerizing vocal harmonies and fantastic stories. It's theatrical and humorous. It's musical and intense. It entertains, dazzles and defies classification while welcoming the spectator to join the band throughout the performance in momentary fits of claps, snaps and sing-alongs. If Django Reinhardt, the cast of Stomp and the Beatles all had a party at Tim Burton's house, Caravan of Thieves would be the band they hired.
In the spring of 2008, vocal harmonizing, acoustic guitar spanking husband and wife songwriting duo Fuzz and Carrie Sangiovanni extended their family to include fiery violinist Ben Dean and double bass madman, Brian Anderson completing their colorful vision. Since then, the four of them ran away from home and never looked back.
Within that first year, the Caravan of Thieves began to win immediate praise for their unique blend of gypsy swing and popular music, inspiring them to record and release the debut full length album "Bouquet" (2009). To accompany this collection of dramatic and satirical tales, they built an interactive stage set of percussive junk and the ragtag quartet took their newly animated show on the road, sharing stages with world renowned artists such as Dan Hicks, Decembrists, Ricky Skaggs, Tom Tom Club, Iron and Wine, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Tony Trischka, John Hammond, John Jorgenson and many others. The Caravan successfully connected with audiences on each of these diverse bills, proving their act to be understood and appreciated by folk, pop, rock and jazz audiences of all ages.
For Caravan of Thieves' next release, "Mischief Night" (2010), the band felt their sophomore effort would best be suited as a live recording due to their continuously evolving show and the response and energy they had been receiving from audiences far and wide. Captured from one sold out show in Fairfield, CT on May 1, 2010, Mischief Night highlights the first two years of their most outrageous and engaging on-stage antics, original composition favorites and a few selections from their list of unexpected cover song reconstructions.
In between their 2011 spring tour legs and stockpiling an ever growing collection of sonic scrap metal, Fuzz, Carrie, Ben and Brian have been residing in the highly innovative and sought after Tarquin Recording Studios (The Swell Season, Interpol, The National). Set for release later this year, the latest Caravan of Thieves full length album project is sure to break new ground for the band while continuing to satisfy the core family of "Freaks" they have been cultivating for the past three years.
http://www.myspace.com/caravanofthieves

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