artvandalay
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artvandalay

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"Asheville Music Jamboree - June 1-3, 2007"

Lost Ridge Band and Thacker Dairy Road warmed up the Greenlife stage at 10am. Then the Barrel House Mama's took the mainstage. I trekked over a bit fast, as I had been particularly interested to catch these gals. I arrived to the sweet sounds of "Think with Your Heart; Think with your mind...." Ah, the tight harmonies: very sweet, yet groovy too.

Artvandalay got the jam going like last night had never ended with high energy grooves and insightful lyrics. CX-1 took Mountain Xpress stage next; Oh, the agony of a festival schedule you couldn't conquer unless you had a caddy and a traveling couch. Once again I was pained to miss a part of this show. I arrived just in time to hear "This music life is the life for me..." These guys have the vision for humanity that resounds in my heart. Ralph Rodenberry tugged at my heart strings last year at that festival whose name I can' t remember, and I was so pleased to hear his voice coming from the Greenlife stage. He's all about the message, too. "Let the message in ... or the message might get lost..." Once we made it to the stage, the show was already up like a revival. Apparently others feel his music like I do! A high point in the show was the anthem Sister Mama... "You brought the light brand new..." All the mamas were dancing and reveling in the awesomeness of the moment. I'll never forget "you and your light can change the world..." - HomegrownMusic.net


"Big hype for small bands"

Bonnaroo is windfall of exposure for lesser-known Knoxville artists

WAYNE BLEDSOE, bledsoe@knews.com
Saturday, June 17, 2006

MANCHESTER, Tenn. - With several members in their early 20s, Artvandalay is one of Bonnaroo's younger groups. The nine-piece band will perform at the Troo Music Lounge at the same time that headliner Radiohead performs at the What Stage.

While some bands would consider the slot a bad one, Artvandalay members are enthusiastic.

"We're the only other act on," says Artvandalay-member Will Ross. "If you don't like Radiohead, you'll have to see us!"

Again, the members are Bonnaroo audience veterans. They attended the first Bonnaroo in 2002, waiting in traffic for 19 hours to get into the festival. In 2004, the group's car broke down and they camped outside the festival in a Manchester resident's front yard.

The members are happy about the prospect of seeing some of the 130 acts at the show, but they seem just as excited at the prospect of jamming in the campground.

"I can't wait to see what breaks out here tonight," says Artvandalay member Bryan Benson.

"We're really flying under the radar," says Benson.

"Hopefully," adds Ross, "this will help put the signal out a little further." - Knoxville News Sentinel - Wayne Bledsoe


"A view from the stage"

Friday night in Murfreesboro continued the Strut and artvandalay party started last week at the World Grotto. The line-up also included the hometown favorites Corleone, a five piece with elements of reggae, hip-hop
and trance.

Next time you're in Murfreesboro check out Wall Street, which is
comparable to Patrick Sullivan's, with a restaurant on the bottom floor and
the concert venue upstairs. We (artvandalay) took the stage first at something
like 10:30 and there were a good fifty or so people in the room. We played a solid
hour set (which is like 15 minutes stage time). The lights were so blinding that
all I could see was a cluster of dancers in front of the stage, but when the
set ended and those horrible things stopped burning my retinas, I squinted
through the smoke to find that the crowd had filled into a solid block from
the stage to the back wall - which was totally awesome except for one thing:
like Patrick Sullivan's the back of the stage is the back of the building so you
have to load out of the front, and with three bands we had to haul ass on the
change-over.


Luckily the crowd was full of characters willing to help. In fact, a highly intoxicated guy who called himself Mouse tried to part the seas like Moses for our drummer Chris Peck. We turned over fast and Corleone got the crowd going with some dub reggae grooves. They played an energetic yet short set and turned the stage over to the main event, Asheville's Strut. Regrettably, at that point it was about 2 a.m. Knoxville time, and I had to consider the drive home. I only stayed for about thirty minutes of Strut but man did they shake the place. And I mean literally, the building's not so good and you could feel the floor buckle to the beat as over 200 kids danced in the sea of smoke and laser lights.
Damn that was a fun show. - Strut, Corleone & artvandalay at Wall Street Murfreesboro TN


"artvandalay"

So, a sitar player, a Dead Head and a punk-ass art school dropout walk into a bar and decide to make music together. The resulting punchline would sound something like artvandalay’s long-awaited release, fat accomplice. Its indie flourishes, courtesy of found sounds like car doors and such, add a little edge to an undeniably jammy base. Then, on certain songs like “Minus,” the six-man band wanders into a Middle-Eastern sounding beat. The eclectic sentiment doesn’t muddle the record, though. Rather, it puts a lovingly calculated spin on the formulaic sound of your typical jam-band. Put simply, it’s good summer music, with a twist.
—Molly Kincaid - Metro Pulse - Molly Kincaid


"Popular progressive group accepts 'jam band' label"

In the past year, local jam band Artvandalay has been racking up credentials. A performance at Bonnaroo may have served as an appropriate prelude to the release of the group's long-anticipated album.

As with most jam bands, Artvandalay prides itself on good vibes and its live presentation. The group had this idea in mind when selecting its name (a "Seinfeld" allusion), which serves as an instant indication of the band's fun-loving attitude.

"There's no huge relevance to it," says guitarist/vocalist Dustin Milotte. "We liked the way it sounded and agreed on it. If you don't know what it is, it sounds kind of cool and mysterious. There's a huge segment of the population that watches 'Seinfeld,' and they know it. In my opinion, it gives some kind of impression of what we're going to be like - a little out there."

While jam bands abound, Artvandalay says that qualifications for the jam designation consist of more than mere use of improvisation. The genre, which also goes by the "scientific" name of "progressive fusion," is identifiable by its mixture of styles and influences. In Art's case, the most commonly touched-upon inspirations include jazz, psychedelia, funk, pop and metal riffs.

"A lot of people don't like the words 'jam band,' but we don't mind it at all," says Milotte. "It's recognizable; that's what everyone calls it these days. It's just blending different styles progressively into a sound you can call your own. It's impossible to stay within one genre and not get bored. We can bring in any genre that we can pull off. It's not limited."

"Some songs have structures that are intended for improvisation," adds guitarist/vocalist Bryan Benson of the group's style. "We can start with an idea and let it go where it goes, but end it with another set idea. That leaves it open to being different every time."

Artvandalay began recording for its upcoming release, "Fat Accomplice," in December of last year. The recording process was originally intended to take two weeks, but as possibilities multiplied, the band found itself working diligently for four months before completing the basic tracks. The CD's 78-minute length dodges tedium through a number of nonmusical interludes and the trademark variety from one song to another.

"The most important event with the album was getting our producer, recorder and sound engineer, Brock Henderson, a local musician, who took the time (most others are) not going to take," says Milotte. "He's amazing. The two weeks we signed up for turned into four months because he really got into it. He molded some of our songs into something different than what we brought in there and made it into a real record."

"If you listen to the record you're going to hear some jazz and some pop elements, some metal stuff, some trance and psychedelic," adds Benson. "One of our goals with the record was to show how we can infuse all these genres and make it flow together. We could have spent four more months on this record because there was so much that we could do with it. We had too many ideas for one record."

The ensemble hopes the album will help launch many future regional gigs, though its recent Bonnaroo appearance might have done the trick already.

"Bonnaroo was a great exposure for us," Benson says. "We played the cafe stage and had a great time. We actually played during Radiohead and still had a great draw. I think one of our goals right now is to continue to play regionally as much as we can."

"I definitely see this wide-lens perspective on the whole music scene," says drummer Chris Peck, who also works for A.C. Entertainment. "When you're bringing in national and international bands to Knoxville, you get a different perspective on music in general, and that helps when you're in a local band."

Saturday night, Artvandalay will unveil "Fat Accomplice" with a CD release party at World Grotto. Also on the bill is dub reggae act Dubconscious. The show is set for 9:30 and costs $5.

"This one's a big one because it's our CD release party," Milotte says. "The whole process has been this entire year up until now, so it's a big climax for us. We've had the CD for a while, but we wanted to wait for a special time when students were back in, and we could get the venue we wanted and the support we wanted." - Knoxville News Sentinel - Jer Cole


Discography

"Live in Peck's Room, 2004"
"Fat Accomplice" - March 2006

Photos

Bio

Artvandalay began as an improvisational music project in a house-basement during the summer of 2003 in Knoxville, TN. Emphasizing on melodic grooves, jazz, and progressive jams, the band definitely provides a heavy sound that rips through immediate, consecutive changes and melds delicately into mellow resolutions. Naturally, the 5-piece band extended its musical instrumentation to a total of 6 pieces in 2005, including Charlie Moorefield on keys, Dustin Millote and Bryan Benson on guitars, Will Ross on bass, Nathan Barrett on percussion, and Chris Peck on drums, to provoke a full-out musical brawl of intriguing sounds and progressions. The year of 2006 yielded their first album titled Fat Accomplice, and just like their live performances, the album flows intrinsically from an atmospheric and dreamy quiescence to a fast-paced and energetic burst of rock. Harmonic guitar licks and vocals top off the tightly strung band with original flare. Guitar, keyboard, percussion, and drum solos sporadically occur throughout their performances, accentuating their musical talent in a music-lovers world. Artvandalay's eclectic form of creating live music, being a progressive jam band, is bound to keep listeners movin' and grovin'.