What is Cellular Chaos? The name certainly triggers trash punk notions; really, a no-wave and post-punk inspired band that spells untamable in a free-flowing eruption of drum slamming & guitar freakouts. The band was recently joined by the elusive, flashy-looking, knee-cap-bearing Admiral Grey, whose contorting vocals are featured in the latest EP "Prisonic Impendance" – released in May 2012. Perhaps for band founder Weasel (who also runs the band’s label ugExplode), this new adventure in its infancy is only a fragment of a boundary-pushing, decade-long noisemaking career, during which he surrounded himself with countless uninhibited, particularly talented instrumentalists and improvisers from Chicago to L.A. Perhaps. Still, it’s enough to keep him and his record label UgExplode settled on the East Coast, as he dives deep into Brooklyn’s underground. See the band live at Death by Audio on September 13. – Tracy Mamoun

Former Dead Sparrows front-man Joey Sparrow released his debut solo album “Paper Peaches,” offering a solid collection of mellow acoustic melodies. The Brooklyn-based Sparrow performs with old band mates, including drummer Jon Airis and brother Stevie Hamm on bass, but exudes a much softer tone than the gritty garage band he used to front. The album is meant as a non-profit effort, with copies available through Sparrow’s Facebook page and plans to download free on a forthcoming Bandcamp page. – Devon Antonetti

(Photo by Tammy Shell)

Our next featured Crossroads Music Fest artist is Mikal Shapiro. Like Velghe, she’s a prolific songwriter with a distinct personality in her music. Mikal recently moved back to Kansas City after spending time around the country. We’re glad to be able to sit down with her and find out more about her and what she’s up to.

The Deli: Gun to your head, 1 sentence to describe your music. What is it?

Mikal Shapiro: An internationally-unknown Broadway musical about a gypsy bandit and her love for animals.

The Deli: Tell us about your latest release or upcoming shows. What can we expect?

Mikal: I just moved back home after a seven-year hiatus in New York, Hawaii and Chicago, so I’m ready to make some music with my KC crew. I play CMF with Kasey Rausch in our new project Partners in Glory Saturday, September 8 from 8:00 to 9:00 pm at Czar. Then Thursday, September 20 at Coda with Betse Ellis and John Keck. At the end of the month, I’m at Prospero’s Bookstore with Brian Frame, on Saturday, September 29 at 10:30 pm. You could say I’m making up for lost time.

The Deli: What does "supporting local music" mean to you?

Mikal: Getting off the internet and going outside where real music exists on a daily basis.

The Deli: Who are your favorite "local" musicians right now?

Mikal: So many to choose from but off the top: Witch and Hare, Rural Grit All-Stars, Ruddy Swain, Kasey Rausch, Metatone, Dead Voices, Victor and Penny, Brian Frame, Amy Farrand, Makuza, Folkicide, Terrence Moore, People’s Liberation Big Band, Stan Kessler, Claire Adams, Rachel Gaither, Emily Tummons and the crickets in my basement.

The Deli: Who are your favorite not-so-local musicians right now?

Mikal: Eleni Mandell (LA), Elvis Perkins (NY), Celia Shacklett and Fire Dog (STL), DeVotchka (CO), Mountain Man, Dark Dark Dark, Boog (Philly), The Cartolinas (Chicago), Box Jellyfish (Chicago), Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (NY).

The Deli: What bands are you most excited to see at Crossroads Music Fest this year?

Mikal: Dang, all of them. Those I know, those I don’t know. I’m lucky to be in the lineup with all these rockers.

The Deli: What is your ultimate fantasy bill to play on?

Mikal: I played it. Ruddy Swain and Eleni Mandell at Davey’s Uptown. Where were you? 🙂

The Deli: Would you rather spend the rest of your life on stage or in the recording studio?

Mikal: Yes.

The Deli: A music-themed Mount Rushmore. What four faces are you putting up there and why?

Mikal: Lisa Gerrard: her ghostly voice.
Leonard Cohen: his smoking lyrics.
Eleni Mandell: her ghostly voice and smoking lyrics.
For the fourth, I’m thinking Rural-Grit All-Star Mark Smeltzer. Have you seen his face? It’s awesome..

The Deli: All right, give us the rundown. Where all on this big crazy web can you be found?

Mikal: Mikalshapiro.com, baby.

The Deli: Always go out on a high note. Any last words of wisdom for The Deli audience?

Mikal: Dear music lovers, show your faces. You are my heroes. You make the scene. Thank you for your support.

Mikal plays the fest this Saturday at 8:00 pm at Czar. Be sure to make it to see her wonderful, artistic work.  

–Michelle Bacon

Michelle is editor-in-chief of The Deli – Kansas City. She also has a weekly column with The Kansas City Star and reviews music for Ink. She plays with Deco Auto, Drew Black and Dirty Electric, and Dolls on Fire. Her favorite salty snack growing up was Shrimp Chips from the Asian grocery store.

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(Photo by Matt Naquin)

This week we’re kicking off our Artists on Trial series with several bands playing Crossroads Music Fest this weekend. We’re starting with John Velghe & The Prodigal Sons, a group filled with Kansas City superstars (from bands like The Hearts of Darkness, Diverse and The New Riddim). Velghe, one of the area’s most prolific and heartfelt songwriters, takes a few moments to tell us a bit about the group.

The Deli: Gun to your head, 1 sentence to describe your music. What is it?

John Velghe: Rock n roll troubadour; music with brains and guts.

The Deli: Tell us about your latest release or upcoming shows. What can we expect?

John: We’ve been demoing for the new record which is sounding great. We’ll be debuting new material at CMF. We just got done with a tour to the East coast where we started opening up some new cities to our music and bookers in cities like Cleveland, New York and Chicago are asking us to come back. So, we’re hoping we can get back there next Spring after SXSW.

The Deli: What does "supporting local music" mean to you?

John: It means participating in it—that doesn’t require you being a musician either. I’m going to just go ahead and call people in KC out: too many of them honestly do not realize or appreciate how much better hearing music in a crowd makes you feel. In two decades of playing here I’ve played to no one and I’ve played to packed rooms. The quality of the show and the music is proportional to the number of people in the crowd and their participation in the show. We play cities like Austin, Cleveland, New York and people engage in music with such regularity that they know how important it is to their enjoyment of life. They understand that it’s hot, sweaty, communal and doesn’t sound like listening to an MP3 on their laptop through a set of earbuds—that’s the point of it. And that whole experience makes the music better too.  Bands—good bands—learn how to make their music better from their experiences at performances.

When you go to see a show, you help enable the next one to be even better and the next record will reflect a little of you in it.

The Deli: Who are your favorite "local" musicians right now?

John: I got a sneak listen to the new Pedaljets record yesterday. It’s great. The songs are so good—very well thought out—and the playing is killer. I saw Deco Auto a few times and they have great songs.

The Deli: Who are your favorite not-so-local musicians right now?

John: Well, I’ve been preaching the gospel of Alejandro Escovedo for a long time and it seems like that kid is finally going places.  His whole band is truly great people. I’ve also been into a lot of New Orleans artists lately: Glen David Andrews, John Boutte, Irma Thomas. Shoes just put out a new record. I have some of their records from the ’70s and they’re great songwriters.

The Deli: What bands are you most excited to see at Crossroads Music Fest this year?

John: Starhaven Rounders for sure. I’ve been meaning to see them for a while.

The Deli: What is your ultimate fantasy bill to play on?

John: Bruce Springsteen, Alejandro Escovedo, Trombone Shorty, and us. Al could open.

The Deli: Would you rather spend the rest of your life on stage or in the recording studio?

John: On tour. Something happens on tour that nothing else is a substitute for. The band improves, the travel informs my songs, the people we meet are all unique and true music fans. The new locations give me a better experience of humanity and a higher threshold for discomfort.

The Deli: A music-themed Mount Rushmore. What four faces are you putting up there and why?

John: I put these faces up there because I consider them the founding fathers of American music:

Duke Ellington: He perfected the American musical idiom. He’s a brilliant arranger, orchestrator, and he moved asses. His success is why we have a lot of the music we have today.

Chuck Berry: He had the imagination to combine the blues and country and turn them into rock n roll. He inspired bands like The Beatles, The Stones and countless others.

Some amalgam of the faces of the members of R.E.M.: To me, they invented what became alternative music. They maintained a collectivist mindset for a long time, even with their massive success. That four-as-one ethos was the foundation of what became indie music until it was turned into more of a pose than an operative principle. There may not be an "indie" genre without them.

Chuck D: He was one of the inventors of rap and hip hop. In that era, Chuck gave music a license to be political again. I think he inspired a lot of the people making music today in all kinds of genres.

The Deli: All right, give us the rundown. Where all on this big crazy web can you be found?

John: www.facebook.com/johnvelghe 
www.JohnVelghe.com
www.twitter.com/johnvelghe
JohnVelghe.bandcamp.com

www.lakeshore-records.com/

The Deli: Always go out on a high note. Any last words of wisdom for The Deli audience?

John: The best thing to happen to you is not Google fucking Fiber. If you’re a musician, act like people engaging in your music is the most important thing on earth to you, because your songs are more compelling when they do. If you’re not a musician, get out of your living room, get off your ass, go engage in music. You’ll lose weight, your skin will clear up, you’ll have better sex, kids will think you are cool and your parents will be proud of you.

You can catch John with The Prodigal Sons at Crossroads Music Fest on Saturday, September 8 at Czar. They’ll be taking the stage at 9:30 pm. Get out of your living room, get off your ass, and go engage in some great local music.  

–Michelle Bacon

Michelle is editor-in-chief of The Deli – Kansas City. She also has a weekly column with The Kansas City Star and reviews music for Ink. She plays with Deco Auto, Drew Black and Dirty Electric, and Dolls on Fire. She really, really wants to wear cool hats.

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The 8th annual Crossroads Music Fest kicks off this Friday, September 7 with a pre-party at Crossroads KC at Grinder’s! The show will include performances from The Good Foot, The Grisly Hand, and a special reunion show from The Supernauts. Tickets are $10 in advance and $13 on the day of the show.

The fest continues on Saturday, September 8 at Czar, The Brick and Midwestern Musical Co. Performances from The Hearts of Darkness, Starhaven Rounders, My Brothers & Sisters, Dead Voices, The Hillary Watts Riot, Dim Peepers, Appropriate Grammar, John Velghe & The Prodigal Sons, Cherokee Rock Rifle, Makuza, Victor & Penny, Mikal Shapiro, Rural Grit All-Stars, Thom Hoskins, The Atlantic and Kasey Rausch. A full schedule can be found at the link here. Saturday tickets are $15 in advance and $18 on the day of the show. Tickets for both days are $20 in advance. Each venue also has its own cover if you don’t have a festival pass. More info here.

The fest also includes a Legal Bootcamp for Musicians on Saturday, September 8 at Czar from 12:00-5:00 pm presented by the Kansas City Volunteer Lawyers & Accountants for the Arts. More info can be found at the link here. Admission is $10 if you are attending CMF.

Crossroads Music Fest is presented by Spice of Life Productions and co-sponsored by the Midwest Music Foundation (who also makes The Deli KC possible!). If you’re interested in volunteering for CMF, please contact rhonda@midwestmusicfound.org.

–Michelle Bacon

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Clear Plastic Masks is a rootsy, bluesy 4 piece rock band in the classic mold – with occasional psychedelic influences straight out of the 60s (see streaming single "Pegasus in Glue"). If you’re staying in town this weekend and rough, raw guitars, loose, jammy drumming and passionate build-ups are your kinda thing, then don’t miss their show at Goodbye Blue Monday on… Monday September 3. – Read Dave Cromwell interview with the band here.

Doe Paoro is actually Sonia Kreitzer, a New York state native who wears the mythical façade after an unforgettable trip through the Himalayas. It was in the southern Asian mountains that Kreitzer discovered “Lhamo,” a Tibetan opera style characterized by songs and dance of the region. With a unique vocal delivery and heavy spiritual elements, Doe Paoro stands out from her Brooklyn peers by forging a musical genre she calls "Ghost Soul." – See Doe Paoro Live at Irving plaza on September 29 opening for First Aid Kit – Watch the video of "Born Whole" here. – Read Devon Antonetti’s interview with the artist here.

A band perfectly balancing the risks you’ll remember from At The Drive-In with the spunky brattiness of Arctic Monkeys, Brick + Mortar seems to sound bigger every time I listen to them. And indeed, it’s been a couple months now since I have. But recently, they’ve scored the front cover of Aquarian (congrats!), thanks to the Asbury Park, NJ band’s new 7" available here and streaming below.

Members Brandon Asraf and John Tacon have also recently released this video to their new rabble-rousing ‘Bangs.’ Don’t watch it if you’re not into hot women or skull-splitting riffs.  – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

With an etheral blend of airy, earnest vocals and driving melodies, Sticklips‘ sophomore album has a space-aged pop tone that haunts with each note. "Zemi" highlights the chilling and tender vocals of frontwoman Johanna Warren, who croons with a sleepy force, while the band maintains their mantra to “keep it weird” in honor their late founding member Jonathan Nocera (passed away in 2011), who helped create their electro-folk sound. On September 5th Sticklips will appear live at the Fisher Center at Bard College in the Hudson Valley, where they will open for New England Piano-Alt-Pop queen Amanda Palmer. – Devon Antonetti

Between a cover of Plastic Bertrand’s iconic ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’, some sweet synth-pop with a touch of irony, some celtic-pop punk floating between slow stripped down drinking songs and anthemic foot-stomping jams (and a whole lot more, let’s not ruin the fun), the ‘pop’ label Team Genius has loosely been attributed is nothing but reductive; if anything, it’s merely a conducting thread to this troupe’s project that’ll certainly put a smile on the faces of those who spent the last decade ranting about how spaced out bands’ releases are today. These brave guys will be releasing not one, not two but THREE EPs on the same DAY via Paper Garden Records and a second LP shortly after. Now what d’you think of THAT? If you’re eager to get a taste of this eclectically festive, deliciously tacky package, two of the forthcoming sets are available to stream (Pop & Loud). The triple-release show will take place at Union Hall on September 29th.- Tracy Mamoun

Photo Source: Seattle Peach

Nightmare Fortress are headlining at The Black Lodge on Thursday, September 6th, with Mass Games, Trash Fire, and Wishbeard also on the bill. It is the vinyl release show for their debut EP Until The Air Runs Out.

The self-dubbed "grave rave" group are sure to rob listeners of shut-eye; their music is made of many layers, delving ever deeper into a fathomless core. "Hang You On The Wall" is one of the darkest and most infectious bone-rattling tracks of late. Its beginning sounds an alarm, as if forecasting the terror and wonder that lies ahead. A wall of buzzing synth, coupled with Alicia Amiri’s evocative vocals, generates a concoction with viable portions of post-punk, shoegaze, and dance music.

"The Castle" starts off with a more pensive air. The beat-making on the song is haunting, as if in desperate search of the voice that accompanies its music. Rather than rote head-bobbing, "The Castle" causes a wave-like flow to pass through you again and again. One’s listening becomes a vessel for Nightmare Fortress’ eerie soundscapes to articulate themselves.

Check out The Black Lodge on the 6th of September to see Nightmare Fortress. The show starts at 8pm. They will be a natural fit – one can easily imagine their music playing on the set of Twin Peaks. Stream "Hang You On The Wall" to start and then check out their Soundcloud page for the entire EP. Sweating Tapes is releasing the record; it is available for $6 digitally, or $12 on wax.

– Cameron LaFlam

Here at The Deli NYC we TOTALLY relate to quirky bands, maybe because we are writing from the place They Might Be Giants and Mixel Pixel call home. Ball of Flame Shoot Fire insert themselves in this bizarre, originality driven musical tradition with a sound that shares with those two bands a poppy approach to songwriting, although replacing their electronic tendencies with orchestral ones, and filtering the results with chaotic Captain Beefheart-ish influences. The outcome is a charmingly soulful, slightly crooked, and entertainingly unpredictable orchestral pop.

The band has been around since 2009 and is about to release their fourth album, entitled " Zileur (Mi-Mi-Mo-Mo)". They advanced a couple of free mp3s from it – the first one, entitled "Bad Thing," is pasted below. See them live at Cake Shop on September 7 with Miniboone, I’m Turning Into and The Meaning of Life.

Mp3: Ball Of Flame Shoot Fire – Bad Thing