Hacienda, Generationals and Floating Action - 2/19/10 - Friday

8:00 pm - 11:30 pm

Hacienda, Generationals and Floating Action
at The Showroom, Downtown Spartanburg
Friday, February 19  8pm
$8 advance/$10 door

Hacienda
There is something to get excited about in south-central Texas. In fact the buzz surrounding San Antonio's Hacienda may signal a rebirth of young rock n' roll -with emphasis on the "roll"- to the country's landscape. Formed by cousins Abraham Villanueva (piano/vocals) and Dante Schwebel (guitar/vocals), together with Abraham's brothers Jaime (drums/vocals) and Rene Villanueva (bass/vocals), this Mexican-American quartet blends a raw yet sophisticated style of pop music with harmonies reminiscent of the Beatles and Beach Boys. As fate would have it, a demo of 6 songs landed in the hands of Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and the band's life was forever changed. Soon after they were opening for The Black Keys in Austin Texas, as well as for Dr. Dog, gaining some much needed exposure. Under Auerbach's watch, Hacienda would write and arrange more than twenty songs, sending him demos periodically in preparation for their debut album, ultimately recording in Dan's own studio in Akron, Ohio.

Generationals

Generationals is the collaboration of Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer. Following the breakup of their previous band the Eames Era, they returned home to New Orleans in 2008 to form Generationals and record their first record, Con Law.

They tapped the Oranges Band founder Daniel Black (the mind behind the Eames Era's swan song Heroes and Sheroes) to engineer and produce the record at his D.C.-based home-studio. Black recorded Con Law in the style of his heroes—George Martin, Phil Spector, Jeff Lynn and Quincy Jones—with a meticulous attention to detail and a willingness to make the recordings sound old. The result is one of those classic “first record” moments that blissfully wills its listeners into repeat listens.  

The sounds of Con Law were cobbled together from the far corners of the instrument room to form a cohesive group of songs written in straight-forward pop structures. Chiming 12-string electric guitars sit next to 8-bit sequencers, synth-bass and trumpet. Often the shakers, hand-claps and acoustic guitars sound like Paul Simon and Tom Petty, while another arrangement recalls Junior Walker and Booker T., all recorded to an old 24-track 2-inch tape machine that threatened to melt down several times.

Floating Action is the pseudonym of musician, songwriter, and producer Seth Kauffman.  After releasing both a debut EP and his first full-length on Hightone Records in 2006, Kauffman returned in the Fall of 2007 with another homemade gem, 'Research' (Park The Van).  This coming March, Park The Van will release Kauffman’s most accomplished work to date – and his first under his new moniker – the self-titled ‘Floating Action’.

Mixed by Bill Moriarty at Dr. Dog's American Diamond Studio in Philadelphia, ’Floating Action’ displays Kauffman's marked growth as both a producer and songwriter: "A concept I like to integrate to give a more descriptive texture to a piece is attaching the wrong type of style-approach for a song...". This off-kilter approach manages to align seemingly disparate elements of bossa nova, dub, folk, blues, garage-rock, soul, gospel, and country into one cohesive, cross-cultural soiree. In the artist's own words, "It's definitely dance music".