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Bio

Greg Porn is a revolutionary.

Porn’s new mixtape, Amerikin Junkie (out March 5), follows his critically acclaimed series of collaborations with hip-hop legends The Roots. This impressive body of work spans the group’s last four records, from 2006’s Game Theory to last year’s powerful concept album Undun. The Philadelphia-born emcee spins dark poetry in endless webs, ensnaring listeners in complex metaphors and running threads while his rhymes creep in for a kill you can’t help but look forward to.

Amerikin Junkie is not a typical debut for a hip-hop artist, but Greg Porn is not a typical hip-hop artist. Amerikin Junkie is a statement; a genre-bending creation that explores what it is to be hip-hop, to be American—to be Greg Porn.

“At a certain point, I realized I couldn’t please everybody,” Porn says. “When that happened, I started not giving a fuck anymore. I believe in karma, so I try to put out good vibes, and I get good back. But when it starts to feel like I’m only getting bad coming back at me, it throws me off. I had to insulate myself—I had to get into what I really like. I can’t please everybody, so I decided that whatever leaves fall off this particular tree when the season changes about me, that’s what I have to deal with. And I was cool with that.

“Once I was in this new headspace, friends, family and whoever else—if you couldn’t accept me for who I was, then we keep it moving. I started looking back at myself, not in comparison to everybody else, butinto what I was doing. And from there I was able to find this new sense of realism, a new sense of what it is to be an artist, a writer, a human being.”

Porn points to groundbreaking TV series like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Girls and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as unexpected sources of inspiration. “It’s a different sense of comedy,” he says. “The days of sitcoms and laugh tracks are over with. And that realization put pressure on me—I had to find my artistic craft in that. What I’m saying has to be timeless or work in some progressive fashion. And with Amerikin Junkie, we got there.”

In line with his shifting perspective, Porn decided to leave behind the safe and familiar confines of Roots producer Larry Gold’s studio, where he’d always recorded in the past. It was an essential move on his journey to discover the cutting-edge sounds he was seeking. Not that the old studio wasn’t state-of-the-art, it’s just that you can’t create a set of songs like Amerikin Junkie with a safety net.

“As a solo artist,” Porn says, “it never came together as a whole idea until I started working at Mike Jerz Studio with Mike and Ali Bey [of BeatKhemist]. They were able to bring my ideas to life.”

With these two gifted producers (and Porn’s cousin Damion Ward) taking turns at the helm, Amerikin Junkie is a seedy, street-wise affair—eclectic, shot through with world-class hooks yet slathered in the hyperreal grime Porn has come to crave. “It’s reality music,” he says of his inventive yet unpretentious album. “Up in your face, lyrical—super lyrical—but easy to digest.”

Greg Porn is a paradox; his rhymes are built like a mad professor’s chalkboard scrawls—intricate, full of symbolism and nuance—but when the lights go on, everything is in its right place. Each verse of Amerikin Junkie is a cinematic rendering, a glimpse into Porn’s clandestine and often shocking world. Every track is a hedonistic platter of angst, offered up in the lifer emcee’s instantly identifiable tone and cadence, his delivery alternately nihilistic and affecting as he recounts pulpy Bukowski-esque tales of excess and debauchery, fingering the jagged grain of addiction—not necessarily to transcend it, but to embrace it as an essential part of the human experience.

Sex, drugs, love, pain, money, power, success, comfort—“Everybody’s addicted to something,” Porn says, meditating on the impulses behind Amerikin Junkie. “It’s human nature. That’s how capitalism works, it’s the underlying current that fuels life. You have to eat, you know? That’s just animal nature. Your body needs it. But life has become so much about convenience and customer service; making people feel more comfortable and user-friendly, and with these things it’s about feeding people’s need to be coddled, their need to be pleased or pleasured or entertained. And some people get entertainment out of different things in life. Some people are chasing money, and some people are spending money. That’s what I see. Addiction is what makes the world go-round.”

From its screaming-demon loops channeling Wu-Tang’s rawest bars (“Dot”) to its fresh-faced guest spots (Freeway, Nikki Jean, Suzanne Christina, Patti Crash) Junkie is raw, real, cool. Its creator Greg Porn is no flash-in-the-club, he’s an artist—one with something fresh to say and a brain-bending way of unspooling it from his tongue. As a member of The Legendary Roots Crew and a longtime cohort of emcees Black Thought, Dice Raw, Truck North and STS in The Money Making Jam Boys, he’s got cred worldwide. He’s unashamed, unafraid. A master of his own reality, ready to spit lucid truth as fast as he experiences it. Greg Porn is a man who has realized his own place in hip-hop. He’s been on the inside too long, he knows what he must do next and he doesn’t care what bridges burn. And that makes him, quite possibly, the most dangerous man in the industry.

“The music is starting to really crack,” Porn says. “This is just the beginning…”

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Bio

Moody, hushed, pensive, Centro-Matic and South San Gabriel frontman Will Johnson’s new album Scorpion stings softly—the raw, off-the-cuff music an unexpected cradle for his expressive whisper. Listening to this record is an experience akin to the healing solitude of a pre-dawn stroll through a mostly silent forest, arriving at the top of a mountain peak just in time for the sun’s first rays to break over the horizon. Understated polyrhythms emerge and vanish as mysteriously as they appear. At turns, the wistful music becomes momentarily discordant, anxiety building toward sigh, release, resignation—the redemption of letting go.

On Scorpion, Johnson registers the subtle vibrations of family, love, isolation, spirituality and wonder with the seismograph eyes of a keen, immeasurably sensitive artist perched inconspicuously on the periphery of a rich, tumultuous world that’s at once sad, beautiful and vibrant—alive with the serene poetry of his lyrics, and the thick-swathed oil colors of his sonic paintbrush.

Scorpion is Johnson’s first solo album in eight years, an arresting polaroid of five consecutive days spent recording on the wooded outskirts of Denton, Texas, at the studio of longtime bandmate, producer and engineer Matt Pence. It was a midwinter session, the vibe reflected in the rippling pool of the title song’s lyrics: “War is woven in our touch, there’s promise in our sleep / The warmth is strangled by the clutch of winter’s long release.”

Through 16 years of making music together in Centro-Matic and beyond, Johnson and Pence have developed the ability to complete each other’s musical sentences. “Matt and I lock in so well,” Johnson says. “His instincts and ideas really serve the songs, and his patience and positivity are unmatched.”

Also lending their skills to Scorpion are multi-instrumentalists Scott Danbom (Centro-Matic, South San Gabriel, Sarah Jaffe), Howard Draper (Tre Orsi, Shearwater, Okkervil River) and Magnolia Electric Company’s Mikey Kapinus.

Unlike Centro-Matic’s Candidate Waltz or Johnson’s last solo album Vultures Await (both of which were written well in advance and recorded using carefully conceived arrangements), Scorpion documents the genesis and germination of its songs. “A lot of them,” Johnson says, “were written in the studio, right then and there, in the moment. I enjoy the capturing those initial gut reactions in songwriting. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, there’s so much emotion—you capture the song in such a raw, unique form.” This bold, unrehearsed approach lends an urgency to the record. There’s a beauty, an unvarnished truth, to its rough edges.

On “Bloodkin Push” and “It Goes Away so Fast,” Johnson channels the spirit of Harvest-era Neil Young with his forlorn acoustic-guitar strumming and high, breathy harmonies. And the influence of Johnson’s late friend—revered singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt—can be felt in the warbling minor-key melodies and unconventional phrasing of “Blackest Sparrow,” kin to Chesnutt tunes such as “Panic Pure” and “Sad Peter Pan.”

Of all the subject matter Johnson grapples with on Scorpion, family relationships and the idea of home—as a place of both struggle and refuge—are at the core. Before there was a record industry, before there were fashionable trends in music and pop culture, folk musicians wrote about family and community.

“Breathe a loud release, and sing a newer hymn for newer days, my homeward son,” Johnson murmurs on “Bloodkin Push.” “No lament my homeward son, often you have come to sit beside me in silent ways / Every now and then a twitch, a scrape, just to err in silence of newer place.”

As artists grow older and become parents, explains Johnson, who had his first child last year, they take finer notes on those things very close to home that are important to them. “You start to see the world in a different way,” he says, “And for me, it’s impossible for that not to seep into my writing. Even if it’s doesn’t dominate things, it’s going to color them.

“The family is valuable and enriching subject terrain,” he continues. “But a lot of artists are afraid to go down that road. Which is understandable. You don’t necessarily want to lay everything out on the table. That said, it’s pulling at you for a reason, and I think there’s a cleansing that can come through facing it and writing about it.”

While several record labels were interested in picking up Scorpion, Johnson ultimately decided to cut out the middle man (just as Centro-Matic did with Candidate Waltz) and self-release the album direct to fans. With this DIY approach, he says, “there’s an accountability factor—if something goes wrong, or there’s a snag, you can easily trace and correct it. I’m a hands-on individual. I think it’s important for me to learn how to do this on my own. And it allows me to keep the team small, which I like. It’s a more efficient way to operate.”

When Johnson isn’t touring or recording with his main projects Centro-Matic and South San Gabriel, making solo records or working on his visual art (his folk-style paintings have been displayed in galleries from Texas to New York), the prolific renaissance man keeps busy with a slew of notable side projects. He’s the touring drummer for indie supergroup Monsters of Folk, featuring M. Ward, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. He’s got a debut full-length on the way from Overseas, his new collaboration with former Pedro the Lion frontman David Bazan and brothers Matt and Bubba Kadane of The New Year. And this past February saw the release of New Multitudes, a long-in-the-works Woody Guthrie Archives project featuring Johnson, Jim James, Anders Parker and Son Volt’s Jay Farrar.

In between all this action, Johnson is hitting the road this fall in support of Scorpion, playing a mix of traditional club shows, art-space gigs and intimate acoustic living-room sets, with a goal of breaking down the barrier between audience and performer. “I plan to keep it as paired down and artist-to-fan related as possible,” he says. “Shows are always more memorable when they happen on strange neutral turf.”

Johnson will be heading out first with his friend and New Multitudes collaborator Anders Parker (with whom he’s toured living rooms in the past), and then, in November, he heads to Europe for a powerhouse tour featuring three distinct singer/songwriters—himself, The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn and Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood. “The mutual fanship thing is pretty full throttle in that camp,” Johnson says. “With our history together, I think we’ll be able to make a pretty cool show out of it.”

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To set up an interview with Bedouin, or get your hands on press passes, advance music, hi-res photos, album art or videos, contact stevelabate@babyrobotmedia.com.

Bio

Like her name implies, Bedouin’s music has a nomadic heart. Sweeping, hypnotic. Esoteric yet familiar. It is untethered to place because its home is everywhere.

Bedouin’s sound is for the modern cyber gypsy, dipping a curious toe in the swaying Mediterranean before caravaning for weeks across the deserts of the Middle East, and finally catching a redeye back to L.A. for a pre-dawn Southern California stroll.

“It’s in my roots,” Bedouin says over a tenuous skype connection from Saudi Arabia. “I love exploring different places and sounds. My childhood was this amalgamation of different cultures, so I’ve never really belonged to a particular place. But being nomadic can be a beautiful thing if you’re accepting of it—not knowing exactly what you’re doing or where you’re going, but with conviction. Being experimental, even with your intentions.”

An outsider and an introvert, Bedouin prefers anonymity but loves making music enough to share hers with anyone willing to listen—even if it means confronting her fears. An aversion to the spotlight led her away from the stage for several years, where she worked from the shadows, composing music for independent films and art installations until something unexpected happened—she wound up in Los Angeles and experienced the opposite of the cliché.

“The joy I get from making music has nothing to do with any kind of recognition,” Bedouin says, “so when I moved to L.A., I had no intention of pursuing music as a career. But then I started meeting so many inspiring people—talented musicians who were living these double lives, going out on the road with successful bands and playing stadiums, and then coming home to this amazing scene and playing all these great little clubs and bars. It made the idea of starting over with my music less intimidating, and it made me more comfortable with the idea of performing. L.A. actually made me less jaded.”

She soon fell in with the tight-knit community of performers in her Echo Park neighborhood, spending nights trading songs and listening to records with some of L.A.’s best underground artists. “One of my favorite ways to hang out with people,” Bedouin says, “is to take turns listening to each other’s music, bouncing ideas back and forth.”

It was on just such a night that she met collaborator Jake Blanton (The Killers, Father John Misty, Jenny O.), with whom she would record the songs for her new self-titled EP. “I tried not to have too many expectations,” Bedouin says. “We were just having a good time hanging out.”

The two co-wrote “The City,” and put together a short yet memorable set of songs propelled by insistent, mesmerizing beats, and anchored by chiming guitar, daydreamy piano and above all, Bedouin’s unforgettable voice. Impressionistic, her languid vocals swirl into the ether, another color in the palette, another instrument in the band. Her words roll soft off the tongue, careful brushstrokes, oil paint swept across a canvas. The music is beautiful and striking, always revelling quietly in its search for some enigmatic unknown just out of reach. There is no ego here, no filter between Bedouin’s heart and her songs.

And the best part is that there is more to come. As a follow-up to this new EP, Bedouin plans to release her debut full-length in 2014.

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L-R: Dakota Floyd, Witt Wisebram, Dianna Settles, Steve D’agostino, Bryon Scherer

To set up an interview with The Wild, or get your hands on press passes, advance music, hi-res photos, album art or videos, contact stevealbertson@babyrobotmedia.com

“The celebratory storytelling and punk-folksy delivery of this four-piece makes you wonder how such clean guitars could get your body shaking so hard. The Wild are a lot of fun, and their approach, defiant in a Bob Dylan sort of way, should give kids everywhere the feeling that they can make a difference in the world, no matter how bad things get in the interim.” – Pine Magazine

“The Wild have added a definite lightness to the world of folk-tinged punk. Not lightness as in inconsequentiality, but lightness as in the indefinable way their work has a tendency to illuminate and uplift.” – punknews.org

“One of the most energetic and heartfelt albums to come out this year.” – The Blue Indian

“Confident, grown-up and ready for a broader audience.” – Jaded In Chicago

Bio:

Carrying on in the tradition of the great American troubadours, The Wild fuses the genuine spirit of the migrant political folk musician of the 1930s with the raw energy, drive and emotion of the early days of punk. Their music carries a wave of energy that makes one want to dance, smile, cry and dissent in equal parts.

The Wild came together as an extension of frontman Witt Wisebram’s solo folk project in 2008. Now, after releasing four 7-inches, one Japanese split and two LPs, they’re sharing bills with Against Me!, Manchester Orchestra, Mountain Goats, Titus Andronicus, Frank Turner, David Dondero and Brand New.

“Our ultimate goal is to tell stories that emphasize empowerment and not feeling alone. It’s about having no pretension and creating fans who are more like friends,” explains Wisebram. “Really, it’s all about what Springsteen does.”

The band’s new LP,  Dreams Are Maps, is their best yet. Recorded by Laura Jane Grace (Against Me!) at her Florida studio, the band put down ten earnest tracks ranging from folk ballads to all out rockers. The vocal harmonies of Wisebram and his fiancé/bandmate Dianna Settles twist and mesh in a filigree of kinship and positive change. This album is a memorial to The Wild’s friend and frequent tourmate, Anthony Poynter, who died of cancer this year. Poynter released The Wild’s first self-titled EP.

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