By Saturday evening, the weather in Bethlehem had cooled off significantly from its July-esque levels on Friday. However, that didn’t stop the Greater Lehigh Valley Music Association from hosting its second night of Lehigh Valley Music Awards Winners Preview Weekend on the Levitt Pavilion stage at SteelStacks.
A rainy Saturday in Bethlehem set a mellow mood that was perfect to accompany the stellar acoustic sounds of Soul Folks at SteelStacks.
Friday night was a night for new discovery. Thus, we found ourselves in a new location — Phillipsburg’s SoMa Downtown Grill — to hear a band we’ve never covered before — acoustic folk/pop act January Noon.
It can be a tough sell to get people out of their homes on a Tuesday night for an evening on the town. However, Scott Marshall, Rocking the Valley, and a host of artists, organizations, and vendors had no problem doing just that, bringing close to 100 supporters out to the Jetport Bar & Lounge Tuesday night in the name of pediatric cancer awareness.
Life is busy for Alex Mery & The Townsmen bassist Kara Hartzell. In addition to her band’s meteoric rise to prominence in the local scene, and the trio’s budding success outside of the Valley — hello, summer tour — she’s been hard at work on a side project alongside a fellow folkster, New Jersey-based singer-songwriter Zach Russack.
One of the coolest things about our area is its emergence as a live music destination. In addition to all of the great, homegrown talent in our own backyards, the Lehigh Valley attracts national and international touring acts to perform on a regular basis.
One of those acts is Indian singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad, who comes to Bethlehem’s National Museum of Industrial History today at 6:30 p.m. to perform as part of ArtsQuest’s Southside Arts & Music Festival.
We checked in with Prateek when he arrived to stateside on Thursday with a few questions.
You’ve waited for months. Now, tickets to our May-riffic Music Festival at American Spirits Roadhouse are finally available to the public!
With her workshop, “Finding Your Voice, and Making It Heard,” singer-songwriter, recording artist, graphic artist, entrepreneur, mother, grandmother, wife, and community activist Dina Hall chronicles the journey of a shy introvert who learned how to look within herself for the ability to take on adversity, and strengthen her family and her community.
On Saturday, May 28, Hall will bring her program to Bethlehem’s Charles Brown Ice House.
The place to be on the music scene on Saturday afternoon? The Phillipsburg Mall. That’s where Spin Me Round, the popular regional record store, is located, and where the store held its annual Record Store Day celebration.
We capped another successful Saturday on the scene by taking a trip to Steel Pub to visit our friend, local singer-songwriter Billy Bauer. Billy tweeted at us a few hours prior to let us know he’d be playing that night. We decided, after an action-packed Record Store Day at Spin Me Round in Phillipsburg (photos to come), that we still weren’t done!
It was my first time hearing Billy’s tunes in trio form, and it gave me the opportunity to hear them in a new, dynamic light. Bauer’s vocal and guitar talents were on-point as usual, and the element of Chris Lorenzetti’s electric violin — truly electrifying, if you ask me — helped create a big sound and energy that made the people dance.
Like all amazing talents, the trio took a break between sets. Instead of letting dead air take over, however, Bauer invited his good friend Cubbage to the stage to play a short, impromptu set, which included an acoustic rendition of “Here & Now” EP closer “Beautiful Night,” which is 100 percent, absolutely my jam. Cubbage played five tunes, and proved within that timeframe why he is an artist on the rise here in the Lehigh Valley.
In case you missed the show last night, don’t worry: You’ll have the opportunity to check out both Billy Bauer Band and Cubbage alongside Andrew Mark Schaffer and Copper Fields this Saturday when they head to Sherman Theatre in Stroudsburg for a Dave Matthews Tribute show. Information can be found here.