What do you get when you mix five guys and women’s footwear? Indie rock, apparently. Stiletto is a five-piece band out of the Akron area and members Chad Tisch, Mike DeCarlo, Ryan Chiera, Kyle Shave and Allen Cooper Gilleland have been playing together for six years. “I’ve been with Ryan ever since I learned how to play, so I’ve been with him for about 10 years,” DeCarlo said. “We sort of just met everyone through the local music scene when we were in high school. I think it’s been about six years with these five people.” None of the guys in the group had been playing ...
This year, due to noise complaints from non-rocking members of the Louisville community, the Carriage House’s annual metal festival The Carnival of Chaos is scaled back to one day — but great local bands remain on the lineup. Mike Ritchie will be back headlining the concert this year with perennial crowd favorite Candy Coated Jesus, taking his well-earned place on the Carriage House stage. The Carriage House has always been a staple of the Ohio music scene, and Ritchie has always been there, whether it was working at the Carriage House, playing there or owning it (literally). When Ritc...
Square Records is hosting their 8th anniversary party at Musica to celebrate the shops opening in 2003 on Friday, August 5. The show is free, and three of Square Records’ favorite local bands will perform. What started as a very small, niche-heavy record store has grown over the past eight years to become a store where you can find records from your favorite rocks bands right along side that obscure record you heard about that one time. “We were just trying to open up something in Akron that wasn’t already available,” said shop owner Square Dave. “We focused more on having the ...
On August 6, the Auricle is hosting a benefit for Brian Hudson. Hudson was involved in a car accident in June, and he suffered injuries including a severed spine and a broken back. The 27 year old was in the intensive care unit for three weeks before he was able to eat and breathe on his own. He will never walk again, but the money that is made from this show will help with recovery down the road. Mr. Gnome is headlining the benefit along with minimalist folk rocker Jaybird Goody and folkies duo Zen and Jane. The benefit is being put together by friends and family of Hudson. Mr. Gnome s...
There’s no better way to begin the end of summer than the musical stylings of pop-punk band The Summer Set. The band is currently on the Friday is Forever Tour with We the Kings, but the show at Musica on Sunday, July 31, is not part of that tour. The Summer Set just released an album earlier this month, so this tour is in support of that album, and lead singer Brian Dales said crowds are already responding well to the new music. Compared to “Love Like This,” the band had more time to prepare this album, so they had more songs to choose from when picking the tracklist. “I think it ...
Heat advisories didn’t keep kids from coming out to Vans Warped Tour in herds on Wednesday. The temperature was in the 90s for most of the day, but the bands were hotter. The new location didn’t deter anyone from hitting up this year’s show either. The Cleveland leg of Warped Tour has traditionally been held at Time Warner Cable Amphitheater, but this year it was moved to Blossom Music Center after Time Warner Cable closed to make way for the new casino. The A parking lot was transformed into the main area of the festival with a halfpipe, a Nintendo 3DS tent and most of the stages,...
Just like every great hero in history, Photon Man and Oblivion are unassuming. When they aren’t wooing crowds with their cosmic funk and space rap, they look like two normal dudes. The celestial duo grew up together in Port Clinton, Ohio, and, as Oblivion put it, “We played music together as soon as we started getting angsty.” Yet it wasn’t official until about a year ago, when they joined forces as Galactic Moustache. Oblivion’s and Photon Man’s separate bands were playing on the same bill, and the guys decided to do a song together. After that, they were in demand. As for ...
Every Wednesday this summer, you can get over the hump day blues with blues of a different sort. Lock 4 is hosting The Lock Bottom Blues and Jazz Club where local blues and jazz bands will perform in the Peroni Beer Garden. Urban Eats is providing each week. Starting July 6, the blues and jazz club will run for 10 weeks through September 7. The first performance will be by Aces & Eights, a Chicago-style blues band. Lock 4 is next to Lock 3 and behind the Akron Civic Theatre in downtown Akron. The show starts at 7 p.m., and the admission is free. Parking at city-owned decks and lots is fr...
The location of this year’s Waterfest has been changed. The festival featuring Waterband, which was originally scheduled to be at Nelson Ledges, has now moved to Slippery Rock Dunes in Slippery Rock, Pa. Waterband’s Waterfest is focused around water issues throughout the world and showcases many different styles of music. The dates of the festival are July 8-10. Tickets are $40 with camping included in the price. Waterband will perform both Friday and Saturday, and both of those nights there will be a late night acoustic tent with various artists. For event information and a ...
Painter Marcy Axelband’s renditions of the seven deadly sins and the seven cardinal virtues will be on display at Anderson Creative starting Thursday at the exhibit Of Vice and Virtue: The Moral Universe of Marcy Axelband. For over a year, Axelband has been working on these pieces that illustrate sin and virtue, creating pieces that don’t show the ideas in a literal since, but more of understood meanings of the words. “I tried not to be concrete and I tried to do it how I understood it,” Axelband said. “For love, it was a piece from Katrina where someone is comforting someone e...
An excited, intimate crowd jammed along with Umojah Nation, a reggae band out of Akron, at Northside on Saturday. The bar was packed by the time the band’s set started and everyone was ready to be carried away by the smooth sounds. The people in the crowd were from all walks of life, feeding right into the Umojah name. The Swahili word for “unity,” umojah describes the purpose of the band’s music — to bring people together. “It’s all about the people,” singer Tracey Nguma said. “Whites, blacks, hippies, gays. Reggae music brings all those people together.” Umojah N...
Sixty bucks can usually get you a pretty decent skateboard deck. You could probably even get a Coke with the change. The decks at the Thrash! Skateboard Deck Art Show will go for upwards of $500. But these aren’t ridin’ decks — these are lookin’ decks. Billy Ludwig, owner and operator of Thirteenth Floor in Massillon, said he has been tossing around the idea of having a skateboard deck art show, but he was pushed to put it together when the coordinator of the Massillon Car Show asked him if he was going to do anything for the day of the car show, June 18. Ludwig counted 35 decks ...
Forgotten Souls of Antiquity have a sound from an all but forgotten period in music: the ‘50s. Remnants of the decade can be found in today’s music, but it’s nothing like the pure ‘50s rock and roll this Cleveland band is creating. On the self-titled album to be released June 18, whether it is rockabilly, like the opener “Belly of the Beast, or instrumental surf like “Highway Pipeline,” Forgotten Souls of Antiquity fit its Facebook description of “loud and old.” The band rounds out its sound on its debut album with remakes of “Down by the Riverside” and “No Surf...
