BLUES FOLK | Yes Ma’am
w/ Mike Collins Jr. and Say Brother
Sat. Dec. 26
8 p.m.
$5
Tin Roof
New Orleans sextet Yes Ma’am calls their music 1920s rock ‘n’ roll. Singer/guitarist Matt Bracken says, “But we kind of put our own feel into it, where it’s kind of like country-rock mixed with blues.” To be sure, the instruments are acoustic, and the sound does call to mind vintage bayou blues and even a little ragtime. But the propulsion is pure, restless energy, and the lyrics are hilarious. Take “The D Song,” for example. It’s a fiddle-and-washboard-heavy dustup that contains the charming couplet, “I like my whiskey and I like my gin/ But the way I like my sister it’s a goddamn sin.” But what’s interesting is how flexible the band’s sound can be. Their most recent release, Bless This Mess, veers all over the lyrical map, from light to dark without missing a beat. “A lot of even the happier songs we do have kind of darker lyrics where it’s talking about needing a girl or drinking too much or whatever your problems might be,” Bracken says. “Everybody can see something in the blues. Everybody’s been there.” Bracken is originally from Columbia, but he says that New Orleans is his band’s true musical home. “I don’t feel like you can come here and not feel that musical influence,” he says. “Especially playing in the Quarter — there’s a band on every block playing jazz or old-time country or blues or brass. I’ve learned a lot about all different kinds of music. Coming here, you really get to know your roots.” —Vincent Harris SATURDAY
DEATHCORE | Induced Insomnia
w/ Capsize, Invoker, Relapse, and The Commoner and I
Wed. Dec. 30
7 p.m.
$8
Joe Pasta
Summerville deathcore band Induced Insomnia is a rough-and-tumble group of musicians that gather their sound from surprisingly varied styles. “Everyone in the band has different backgrounds. Some are into groove and post stuff, where as my guitarist and I are straight death metal,” says vocalist/guitarist Caleb Wyatt. “Nikolayev, our EP, was written with my old guitarist who was more into downtempo, so we had to do a lot of compromising.” Induced Insomnia’s widespread influences pull their hardcore sound in all different directions, creating an adrenaline-fueled rush through each track. “Our newer stuff was going toward a way more technical direction along the lines of Carnifex, early Thy Art is Murder, and a bit of Depths of Hatred, Obscura, and the Black Dahlia Murder,” says Wyatt. Induced Insomnia will share the stage with Summerville downtempo band, the Commoner and I, in addition to several out-of-staters, like SoCal hardcore band, Capsize, heavy N.C. band, Invoker, and heavy Tennessee rockers, Relapse. —Kaleb Eisele
COUNTRY | Haley Mae Campbell
w/ Dylan Swinson, Doug Jones, Katie Rose, The Give The Take
Wed. May 30
6 p.m.
$5 donation
Awendaw Green
Haley Mae Campbell graduated from high school a year early, leaving her free to focus on music. The day after graduation, the local singer-songwriter embarked on a three-week tour of the East Coast in support of her debut LP, Hugs & Disses. “I’ve been really exploring my space as an artist and pushing my boundaries by experimenting with new sounds, collaborating, and co-writing,” she says. “I got back in the studio in September working on my upcoming EP, which aims to showcase how I’ve grown as an artist since my debut last February.” Campbell’s new single, “Phone Home,” is the title track for the new record and was released on Black Friday. “‘Phone Home’ is very upbeat and much more lyrically complex than my previous material,” she says. “There are definitely some double-meanings and cleverly hidden gems if you listen closely. I’ve also been co-writing with my drummer, Ben Sewell, which has allowed me to gain more experience as a songwriter.” The young artist will return to West Ashley’s Truphonic Studios at the beginning of the year to wrap up Phone Home, with a release date slated for late January or the beginning of February. “Our hope is to continue to build off of that and release a full-length LP later on in 2016,” Campbell says. You can check out “Phone Home” now at haleymaecampbell.com. —Kelly Rae Smith next WEDNESDAY
POST-PUNK ROCK | Southern Femisphere Versus Sweatlands
Sun. Dec. 27
9 p.m.
Free
Local 616h
After years of collaborating with and supporting one another, local noisemakers Southern Femisphere (Kim Larson, Emily Connor, and Brett Nash) and Sweatlands (Thomas Berkau, Mustafa Walker, David Petitpan, Myles Walsh, and Anthony Dargan) have had enough of each other. Despite deciding to release a split EP together soon, the gloves are officially out this weekend for Southern Femisphere Versus Sweatlands. “We were under the impression that creating space where people are encouraged to take risks with their music and collaborate with others to discover new, fun, and weird ways to make art would promote cooperation, unity, and a generally more productive and interesting community,” Larson says. “We hosted shows for touring and local bands in our homes, booked events at the beloved and no longer active Communications Museum, put on free, all-ages music and arts festivals, made films set to ensembles of live musicians, founded a radical arts education non-profit organization, and curated a performance series for music, poetry, and other performative art. Blah, blah, blah, am I right?” Apparently, they’ve been going about it all wrong, a fact the bands realized once they began working on the split EP. “You should see this nightmare,” Larson says. “You think trying to get one band to consensus is difficult — you try organizing a group including two feminist educators, four dudes under the macho delusion that they’re the next great whitewater rafting team, a synthesizer player, and Brett Nash.” Rather than working at their relationship, they figure duking it out onstage will be way more fun. “The truth is, this is America — everyone’s a capitalist. The key to success is good old cutthroat competition,” Larson says. “It’s not like we even like each others’ ideas anyway. So we turned on each other. We’ve finally given up all the touchy-feely, hand-holding crap and figured out what making music is really about: winning.” Despite all the hate, you can still count on a Sweatlands-Southern Femisphere split EP sometime in 2016. “Because, you know, money,” Larson says. —Kelly Rae Smith SUNDAY
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