- This event has passed.
Suddenlink Presents – Free First Friday Concert feat. KP & The Boom Boom w/ Hazy Ray & Daniel Gonzales Band
December 5, 2014 @ 8:00 pm - 11:55 pm
KP & THE BOOM BOOM
KP and the Boom Boom formed in the fall of 2010 in Austin, TX. They made major waves around town in 2013, releasing a three-track EP produced by AJ Vallejo, debuting a music video for their single, “Feel It,” and stirring up buzz with a multitude of high-energy performances.
Come see a show and you’ll realize why the band has garnered such a strong following. Frontwoman Kate Priestley sparkles with energy at center stage. Surrounding her, her six bandmates command a critical mass of instruments—in addition to guitar, bass, and drums, there are two members blowing on horns and another switching off between a vibraphone, timbales, bongos, congas, and other assorted percussion. The crowd hugs the stage, pulsing to a singular groove.
Inevitably, your feet start to move and the scene pulls you in. Within the sweaty depths of the dance mob, what started as a spectacle starts to feel more like a happening.
“Our music is about positivity, it’s about having a good time,” explains Priestley. “We want to tell the audience that it’s OK to be human—it’s OK to go through our life journeys and feel all these emotions. You’ve got to take the positives out of the highs and lows in life.”
For a band that inspires so much booty-shaking, KP and the Boom Boom get remarkably cerebral. Informed by her world travels, UK-born Priestley writes hyper-aware lyrics about the human condition, focusing on hope and transcendence rather than the troubles of the present. Ranging from a syrupy sing-chant to a powerful wail, her vocals recall the future-gazing acid jazz of bands like Jamiroquai and the Brand New Heavies.
The band’s sound, while cohesive and compelling, evades sure description. Pull it apart and you’ll find hallmarks of funk, soul, disco, R&B, jazz, and world music—artifacts of the band’s highly collaborative approach to songwriting. A funky stew, for sure, but once fermented and distilled it yields an aesthetic that’s uniquely their own.
It feels at once highly innovative and effortlessly danceable—music for the mind and the body. “We base our music on these soulful grooves that make you want to move. I think we are starting to create our own genre that people are really starting to recognize.”
Call it neo soul or acid jazz or world disco—whatever they’re playing, KP and the Boom Boom act like an organism onstage, morphing seamlessly from texture to texture, navigating the gamut between sparse syncopations and massive cathartic grooves, and with the precision and confidence of a band that realizes its identity. They are musicians’ musicians just as much as they are heroes of the dancing masses.
This year, Mayor Lee Leffingwell and the City of Austin proclaimed March 20, 2014 KP and the Boom Boom Day.
The band will be back in the studio this year to record their highly anticipated first full-length album. On September 12th, they will perform for UTOPIAfest 2014. The Horn named KP and the Boom Boom among the “biggest and brightest in the local scene” with other acts such as Brownout (playing back up the Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA), Wheeler Brothers, and Aaron Behrens of Ghostland Observatory.
KP & The Boom Boom on Facebook | KP & The Boom Boom on Twitter | Official Website
HAZY RAY
Hazy Ray is an amalgamation of sights and sounds you may have seen and heard before, but never blended together so distinctively to create an experience that ensnares the senses and communicates the soul. The five piece band boldly describes their sound as “… at the core, true rhythm & blues,” pulling from their vast influences that range from Jamie Cullum and Dave Matthews to Radiohead and Maroon 5. Hazy Ray’s head-turning sound is equal parts new and familiar, as the band continuously draws from a seemingly-endless bag of tricks. In 2011, the band’s premiere performance in New Orleans birthed the signature sound they now brand as “New Orleans Rock.” Their debut album, “Deep and Shallow,” was recorded at Houston’s Wire Road Studios later that year.
On stage, Hazy Ray is known for their precise and exceptionally energetic live show that leaves audiences dancing to new charts and singing along to familiar, albeit different, covers.The Texas natives stepped onto the New Orleans scene quickly, landing on bills with singer/song-writer John Lefler of Dashboard Confessional, Everclear, Free-Sol, Hunter Hayes, Grammy award-winning Rapper/Actor Ludacris, blues greats Tinsley Ellis and Tab Benoit, and festival headliners Cowboy Mouth, Chicago, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Music Festival appearances at Springboard South (Houston), Gretna Music Fest, French Quarter Fest, and performances during SXSW and Jazz Fest this past year show promise into future festivals. The band’s 2012 and 2013 summer tours have expanded the group into a National Touring Act, performing across 15 states. Hazy Ray has concluded their summer tour and performed their 100th show of the year by headlining the New Orleans House of Blues Parish Room.
Hazy Ray on Facebook | Hazy Ray on Twitter | Official Website
DANIEL GONZALES
Daniel Gonzales is a singer/songwriter out of Dallas, TX currently living in College Station performing with his full band this night.