JessieK & The Galactic Cats + Wandering Downhome + Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak @ The Way Station

8pm- JessieK & The Galactic Cats
Genre: Americana Pop Electric
For fans of: Metric, Death Cab for Cutie, M83, Regina Spektor

JessieK & The Galactic Cats is a high energy, get sucked into the music, take your heart and toss it around kind of band. With simple, yet moving chord progressions and catchy vocal melodies, you’ll want to hear what happens next and always want to come back for more!

JessieKuffner.Bandcamp.Com
Facebook.com/JessieKuffner

9pm- Wandering Downhome
For fans of: Lumineers, the Civil Wars, and artist Amos Lee

Wandering Downhome is a four-piece band consisting of guitar, bass, and two female lead singers. Through folklore and a delta blues pulse, these two songbirds captivate audiences with their chilling harmonies. Wandering fluidly through genres, their sound appeals to any ear. Grounded in Downhome roots, they’ll put you at ease, inviting you to be a part of their musical camaraderie. Welcome along their journey.

http://www.wanderingdownhome.com/

10pm- Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak
“You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life.”
So said Sherwood Anderson in his great book, Winesburg, Ohio. Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak knows all about accidents. Of birth. Of place and strange times. Of music heard through screen windows in summer, of lonely faces in discos while blizzards raged outside in the Northern night.

What’s a young criminal to do? Read every book he can get his hands on, obsess over record club 45s, play the theme song to MASH over and over on a rented trumpet, lose a thousand fistfights till he finally wins one. Ride a stolen bike, a bus, a train, get out.

Years later, redemption at last. Robert Whaley is just about where he should be. Compared to everyone from David Byrne to Leonard Cohen, he’s been welcoming audiences into a private world of enchantment and debauchery, and oh the influences are clear: Anderson (words and emotions), Fossee (dance and controlled hysteria), poetry (Artaud and
O’Hara).

Whaley had a lot of practice riding the line between rock n’ roll, performance art, and stand up comedy as the front man for The Niagaras, a legendary force of Manhattan’s live music scene of 80s and 90s, when a wild front man could dance on bar tops and swing from the rafters without getting banned, except for when he was:

“Lunacy? Spectacle? And music too??”- Rene Chun, New York Times

No wonder the attraction included a “celebrity” following – everyone from Ethan Hawke to Kevin Spacey to Gwyneth Paltrow to the good people in Anthrax.

As a songwriter, Whaley has covered a lot of ground and has shown range through a number of outlets. He cowrote and recorded the original score for the feature film, Joe the King, starring Val Kilmer, and has also written for the stage –his rock musical Wrong Way Up ran off-Broadway at NYC’s Zipper Theater. He is currently working with playwright Matthew Freeman on a musical adaptation of the great 1908 novel, Buried Alive – now titled Selling Sacred Objects.

Meat Market Lullaby, the second album from Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak, reflects an obsession with pre-1974 soul, filled with nuance and tender bitter sweetness. Jazz pianist Mara Rosenbloom sets the tone with her loose/attacking, touch on grand piano and Rhodes. Pete O’Connell lends a sophisticated sense of drive and counterpoint as both bassist and co-arranger. Whaley’s long-time collaborator, lead guitarist and singer, Tony Grimaldi, shines with masterful harmonies and chunky guitar lines. Chris Schultz, percussionist with Blue Man Group, shimmers, cascades and of course, rocks.

Recorded live in the studio with a minimum of overdubs, a maximum of misfit charm, and this: “Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.” (Sherwood Anderson, again.)

www.comictalesoftragicheartbreak.com