I really enjoyed the Knowmads show on March 12 at the Vera Project. They sold the venue out and it was electric, an excellent night of local hip hop magic.
I read The Production Venue's rise of knowmads by J. M. Galindo (which I mangled by repeately posting and deleting comments, dang) and got inspired to interview Knowmads, so I followed up via their Faceook page, got in touch with their manager, and arranged an interview with Tom Wilson and Tom Pepe.
I was curious if they had new material coming out, how they were able to sell out the Vera so quickly, and how they created their material. I also wanted to know if they'd disclose a little about their personal lives and the hints of ethics and spirituality that shine through the party songs and slice of life joints.
I interviewed Tom Wilson at his place first for a bit. Some of the details of how they handle headlining and how they draw a good crowd without a record label (hint: viral...) are interesting. It's kind of surprising to find he's twenty, but considering they dropped a couple albums while he was in high school apparently he's already been at this for years. Tom W. talks about where the Knowmads are and how they got there, and where they are going through this summer with new material and tours, interesting conversation.
Next Tom Pepe arrives and Tom W. fills him in, then I switch to interviewing Tom P. then both Toms. Tom P. gives a shout out to the political consciousness of the Seattle hip hop bands he listened to like Blue Scholars, Common Market and Maklemore for helping form his approach and talks about where he came from. Social media comes up again and he talks about how the approach has changed from their earlier work to the more recent stuff. Some criticism is addressed and the songs reflect their changing world, and some reflection on weed and drugs, I also draw him out on writing "River Runs Deep" - I really liked it, which I can't help but tell him (fan-boy moment!). He talks about it and mentions a possible video. Benefit shows for good causes: Trackademics, Japan Relief, and Human Trafficking. Tom W. comes back 12 minutes into it. We manage to hit additional topics like some shout outs to producers, how the violin accompaniment at the 3-12 Vera show came about (outstanding effort, the violin added a cool element to the performance), and even a brief discussion of faith; brief and oblique, but for not wanting to say much about faith they end up having something to say on the topic.
I enjoyed getting to interview both Toms and look forward to hearing what they have coming out of the studio as well as the Vera Project Japan Benefit coming up on April 30.
Being generous with the gate from their shows and giving back, giving their songs away to reach a wider audience rather than limit it to the ones who can pay, and sneaking those ethical and moral bits into their raps, credit to the Seattle hip hop scene for helping them form their conscious approach and hints of faith behind it all - nice overall approach, some fairly deep elements even if we didn;t go into them in details, it's sort of the opposite of the whole bling worship that you sometimes see in hip hop.
I hope their West coast tour goes well, and that they get the opportunity to expand the scope of their touring and get some attention from the new releases. Should be a fun ride!
Update: Free Knowmads show May 27 2011 at 12PM. Free with ice cream.
http://aspb.as.ucsb.edu/2011/03/03/knowmads-friday-may-27th-2011-12pm/
Rudeboy Reggae gives Knowmads a shout out and notices some of the same "super conscious, truthful lyrics" (in Rudeboy's words), and include a couple of embedded songs and a downloadable song, although the downloadable song requires an .exe download, so I can't recommend hat, but the embedded songs are nice - just turn down the download request and they should play fine, Wildflower was a standout song both times I've seen Knowmads, definitely a highlight with that powerful chorus amping up the audience participation and the band feeding on that energy...
Showing posts with label Japan Relief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan Relief. Show all posts
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Japan Benefit With Knowmads, Real Rogers and Friends at the Vera Project
I steered the Japan benefit show at the Vera, putting my 13 year old son and his 3 buddies along with 6 or 7 other volunteers to work running a hip hop show.
The headliners were the Knowmads, and the previous Knowmads show was somewhat controversial. The Vera is an all ages venue, and the sold out mostly white North end and East side hip hop crowd loves it's booze and weed. We had 3 pukes in the venue to deal with (they probably binged on the booze before coming in), I confiscated some booze from an audience member, and any number of bozos felt compelled to light up joints or pipes or whatever pot smoking devices they smuggled in.
We run an all ages venue partially on the basis of being drug and alcohol free, so the controversy is real and important. We bring youth into the venue, and their parents are OK with them being at our shows because we won't expose them to pot smoke and drunken boorish adult behavior, so attention must be paid to living up to our end of the bargain for all shows.
For this show we brought on a crew of 3 paid security staff, along with the regular front door security checking bags, packs and pockets (we don't normally check pockets), and 3 additional volunteer (unpaid) security staff. We put 3 into concessions, a couple of people selling tickets at the front door, and opened the venue up to the crowd.
We got a reasonable crowd, close to the 140 we hope to average but not sold out. One thing I love about the hip hop shows: the crowd gets up close to the performers, crowding up around the stage. The energy level goes way up and the performers thrive on it, giving better performances, which inspires the crowd to amp up the energy in a joyous sweaty dancing feedback loop.
The security was overkill and we didn't get any pukers, so it was a much nicer as far as that goes.
This is probably the best video footage I've ever seen from my Flip camera, the volunteer videographer got right up front and made an intimate fun video of the performance, here's Knowmad's "The Boat Can Leave Now," my current favorite clip:
Better yet, if you got the fat internet pipes play the HD version:
I did a terrible job of keeping track of who performed at the show. There was an earlier act with a man and a woman vocalist that I liked, but I didn't catch the performer's names, here are photos of them:
Rawlo was one of 3 or 4 acts listed ahead of time, so perhaps one of these is Rawlo.
We had short sets from several performers including K $neaky here:
Warm Gun did a short set with some nice numbers:
Warm Gun also played some guitar, I managed to miss it but the photographer didn't:
I think these 2 might have been the last act that performed after Knowmads, but I'm not sure:
Based on the chant it sounds like G-lite, he has some nice backing vocals from the woman who sang with an earlier act. He got a bit longer and rocked the Vera out for several good tunes:
Real Rogers and (from the chant) ICMB (?) did a great set, keeping the crowd jumping and dancing and yelling and waving those arms:
Next up were the headlining Knowmads
Knowmads performed a great set, I already included What We Do To Survive earlier, here's "Wildflower"
Keep 'em High was another standout track:
Good group dynamics, fast and disciplined multi-person rapping, good rhythms and intricate switching and combining of vocals, with some pounding climaxes - very nice stuff, I love me some bouncing around to a good Knowmads show, wearing my arms out lifting them over my head, and sweating through my clothes as I grin like a happy idiot at all the happy people bouncing around me.
P.S. The Vera Videographer was also the Photographer, I simply have to track down her name so I can give her the credit she is due. She gave me her e-mail address but I promptly lost it. Doh! Gonna have to track back through the volunteer sign up sheet next time I'm at the Vera, I suppose. The pictures were taken with my cheap digital camera (not even an SLR) and they were pretty blurry - fast action, weak flash and slow camera combine to mke it difficult to avoid the blurring. In many cases the blurring gave the picture an interesting dynamic quality, and I;ve included a few in this blog post.
Given the number of unknown performers, in general comment away if you know who somebody is or what song is being performed.
...and as always, comment for any reason you like, I always feel flattered whenever somebody comments.
The headliners were the Knowmads, and the previous Knowmads show was somewhat controversial. The Vera is an all ages venue, and the sold out mostly white North end and East side hip hop crowd loves it's booze and weed. We had 3 pukes in the venue to deal with (they probably binged on the booze before coming in), I confiscated some booze from an audience member, and any number of bozos felt compelled to light up joints or pipes or whatever pot smoking devices they smuggled in.
We run an all ages venue partially on the basis of being drug and alcohol free, so the controversy is real and important. We bring youth into the venue, and their parents are OK with them being at our shows because we won't expose them to pot smoke and drunken boorish adult behavior, so attention must be paid to living up to our end of the bargain for all shows.
For this show we brought on a crew of 3 paid security staff, along with the regular front door security checking bags, packs and pockets (we don't normally check pockets), and 3 additional volunteer (unpaid) security staff. We put 3 into concessions, a couple of people selling tickets at the front door, and opened the venue up to the crowd.
We got a reasonable crowd, close to the 140 we hope to average but not sold out. One thing I love about the hip hop shows: the crowd gets up close to the performers, crowding up around the stage. The energy level goes way up and the performers thrive on it, giving better performances, which inspires the crowd to amp up the energy in a joyous sweaty dancing feedback loop.
The security was overkill and we didn't get any pukers, so it was a much nicer as far as that goes.
This is probably the best video footage I've ever seen from my Flip camera, the volunteer videographer got right up front and made an intimate fun video of the performance, here's Knowmad's "The Boat Can Leave Now," my current favorite clip:
Better yet, if you got the fat internet pipes play the HD version:
I did a terrible job of keeping track of who performed at the show. There was an earlier act with a man and a woman vocalist that I liked, but I didn't catch the performer's names, here are photos of them:
Rawlo was one of 3 or 4 acts listed ahead of time, so perhaps one of these is Rawlo.
We had short sets from several performers including K $neaky here:
Warm Gun did a short set with some nice numbers:
Warm Gun also played some guitar, I managed to miss it but the photographer didn't:
I think these 2 might have been the last act that performed after Knowmads, but I'm not sure:
Based on the chant it sounds like G-lite, he has some nice backing vocals from the woman who sang with an earlier act. He got a bit longer and rocked the Vera out for several good tunes:
Real Rogers and (from the chant) ICMB (?) did a great set, keeping the crowd jumping and dancing and yelling and waving those arms:
Next up were the headlining Knowmads
Knowmads performed a great set, I already included What We Do To Survive earlier, here's "Wildflower"
Keep 'em High was another standout track:
Good group dynamics, fast and disciplined multi-person rapping, good rhythms and intricate switching and combining of vocals, with some pounding climaxes - very nice stuff, I love me some bouncing around to a good Knowmads show, wearing my arms out lifting them over my head, and sweating through my clothes as I grin like a happy idiot at all the happy people bouncing around me.
P.S. The Vera Videographer was also the Photographer, I simply have to track down her name so I can give her the credit she is due. She gave me her e-mail address but I promptly lost it. Doh! Gonna have to track back through the volunteer sign up sheet next time I'm at the Vera, I suppose. The pictures were taken with my cheap digital camera (not even an SLR) and they were pretty blurry - fast action, weak flash and slow camera combine to mke it difficult to avoid the blurring. In many cases the blurring gave the picture an interesting dynamic quality, and I;ve included a few in this blog post.
Given the number of unknown performers, in general comment away if you know who somebody is or what song is being performed.
...and as always, comment for any reason you like, I always feel flattered whenever somebody comments.
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