Kenny Young and the Eggplants + Jess Best + Alison Shearer @ The Way Station

8pm- Kenny Young and the Eggplants
Genre: Intergalactic folk-and-roll
For fans of: Fountains of Wayne. Honestly, the Eggplants don’t sound all that much like anyone in particular, but DJs frequently play us alongside other musicians with oddball lyrics and catchy tunes, including They Might Be Giants, Warren Zevon, The Kinks, Robyn Hitchcock, the Ramones, the Flaming Lips, Devo, the B-52s, Jonathan Richman, Violent Femmes, Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, and Life in a Blender. (But we really don’t sound like any of them … and some people think Kenny sounds like Tom Petty!)

Brooklyn’s inimitable Kenny Young and the Eggplants play intergalactic folk-and-roll songs about giant squirrels, scary bits of cheese, aliens, time travel, inebriated crime-solving birds, and malevolent washing machines, among other important topics. Their spaceship has frequently landed in the UK, where they won a prestigious Herald Angel Award for their performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and where one of their live radio sessions was selected for a Best of the BBC Archives series. In NYC, the Eggplants received an Honorable Mention from Pop Matters for their performance at the CMJ Festival, and they were recognized with a Special Mention in a BMI songwriting competition for their monsterpiece, “The House at Creepy Lake.” The most improbable honor for the band so far occurred in the pages of Time Magazine, where the author Alexander McCall Smith included the Eggplants in his “Short List” of favorite artistic discoveries. The Eggplants have recorded five albums, which have been played profusely on local station WFMU, and which have careened onto the Top 30 charts at various other college radio stations across North America.

“The Eggplants mix brainy, funny lyrics with a fine sense of what makes pop music wonderful.” -- Dr. Demento

“Gentle insanity with irresistible tunes” -- The Herald

“They mix the wit of Jonathan Richman with the sound of the Nico-era Velvets to create a surreal and satirical gumbo.” -- Sunday Herald

“A wonderful weird band” -- The Scotsman

“Surreal entertainment ... energetic, unpredictable and fun ... There is genius among the Eggplants.” -- Sunday Mail

“The naivete Kenny wears on his sleeve is genuine - think of an East Village Brian Wilson, without the money but still tilted in his own wacked-out way.” -- Village Voice

“Giving eloquent voice to the multifaceted neuroses of prolonged adolescence” -- The New York Times

“The most amazing, amusing, wonderful, whacky band in this or any other town.” -- Alexander McCall Smith (author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency)

‘Aubergenius!’ (Adam Walton, BBC Radio Wales)
“An endearingly oddball trio, carving their singular niche somewhere between whimsy, psychedelia, and classic lo-fi pop.” -- The Scotsman

“Brooklyn’s finest ... They channel the spirit of Jonathan Richman into a sort of wonky Velvet Underground/Beach Boys hybrid that has to be seen to be believed.” -- Sunday Herald

www.kennyyoungandtheeggplants.com
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/3149066/
http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/music/they-are-immature-perhaps-...

9pm- Jess Best
Genre: Jazz/Soul
For fans of: List bands that you sound like or if you like this band than they would like you- Amy Winehouse, Esperanza Spalding, Erykah Badu, Joni Mitchell

Native New Yorker Jess Best recently released her debut album Gone Baby, which is a landscape of modern soul, twisting jazz into blues and R&B, creating songs that will stir you up. This collection of songs gives you a taste of her songwriting that is grounded in colorful progressions, deep grooves, rich harmonies and nuanced lyrics combined together to create a raw and intimate conversation.

“Jess Best has already recorded an entire album (Gone Baby), and it’s rich with piano and original songwriting. We love ‘Now That I Got It’ and ‘Wake Up, I’m Coming,’ which borrow from jazz and R&B, and demonstrate the best of her range; in ‘Oh My’ and ‘Champagne,’ electric beats push the album toward experimental territory.” - Refinery 29

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_dhKVqPZmY
www.jessbest.com
jessbest.bandcamp.com

10pm- Alison Shearer
Genre: jazz-funk
For fans of: Kenny Garret, Snarky Puppy, Maceo Parker, Lettuce

The Alison Shearer Quintet fuses harmonically diverse melodies with funk grooves to create a sound that is versatile and fresh.

www.alisonshearermusic.com