SOTE Avdek Engblade Rose

Kait Rose is always moving, always restlessly propelling herself toward the next sung note, the next strummed chord; if you tied her feet together, I'm not sure she could play. That kinetic energy plays itself out across her music, a kind of Americana with a spiked brontosaurus tail, a land of wanderers and bad mothers and awe at the vastness of the universe. Never one thing, Kalamazoo's Kait also plays with her crackerjack band The Thorns,  the All American Funk Parade, and tributes to Bob Dylan and Fleetwood Mac. But her original tunes, introspective, haunting, and utterly original, keep you going back to the beginning of the album for one more spin.

Justin Avdek plays bass.  But Justin is a bass player like Paul McCartney is a bass player:  those two words only scratch the surface of what he can do (including playing a regular guitar quite well).  An ever questing curiosity and creativity have served him well for many years, recently used to shape the cosmic jazz pop of Earth Radio, and a long storied past with Hannah Rose and the Gravestones, the Underground Circus, Chordis Bell, and many more.  But recently Justin has been on a solo search for high lonesome sounds that get to the heart of our current anxious world, with the psychedelic Western drama of Songs for Cowboys (For People Who Aren't Cowboys). Justin is frequently funky, but these tunes are formal, stately, and somber, yet never less than riveting. 

Native of Ludington, resident of Grand Rapids, devoted family man, Eric Engblade seems like a friendly normal fella. But then he sings and the most surprising and versatile tenor voice tells you tales of ships, charlatans, harvests, and dinosaurs, all crafted from an inexhaustible block of creativity like horseshoes on an anvil.  Part one is out, to be followed by parts two and three, of Plant Our Trees, an epic song cycle following one family through a lifetime of joy and pain and living lives connected by blood and water.  But there are so many more tunes, going back a dozen years or more to the days of his band Northern Skies.  Step right up, don't be shy, and buy into what Eric Engblade is selling.