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Uncle Lucius w/ Austin Meade & Ottoman Turks
October 2, 2014 @ 9:00 pm - 11:55 pm
UNLCE LUCIUS
South Austin, TX’s Uncle Lucius is a dream, conjured in the minds of 5 sonic mercenaries, a clarion call to arms for true believers. It is the voice that shakes you from complacency, grabs you with both hands and implores: Get in the van!!!
Like the city that brought them together, UL is a gumbo, with hints of Americana and folk juxtaposed with a slow-cooked roux that is steeped in classic rock n roll and the blues. The resulting flavor is familiar and unique, roots at its most refined, albeit with a gutbucket foundation.
A certain spirit inhabits the tunes and tunesmiths alike, a seeking and a questioning that leads one far from the prescribed path. It was that spirit that brought Kevin Galloway, then a banker and music minister, from his east Texas upbringing to the streets of south Austin, in search of a life more imbued with meaning than financial well-being. Around his voice and songwriting the other pieces fell into place. Mike Carpenter left his job on a Houston assembly line to vie for greatness in one of America’s foremost guitar scenes. San Antonio’s Josh Greco fortified the emerging group w/ his considerable classical and jazz training. The road brought them to Lexington, KY, where restless Jonny “Keys” Grossman was ready to eschew his comfortable life for a van’s eye view of the country. Last to join was Nigel Frye, the pride of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s outcast jazz scene, and low-end accomplice for some of Austin’s finest musicians.
The creature is a five headed beast, each member’s diverse taste finding a place. Deeply indebted to the country/jazz/rock fusion native to Austin, as well as the ever-evolving gumbo that is New Orleans music, the band serves as a vehicle for its lyrical vision, one that imagines a life where profits and losses no longer rule man’s motives. Though its focus falls on the darker edges at times, at heart the band’s vision is a hopeful one. What could we possibly lose, after all, when “right now is all we’ve ever had”?
After 8 years of touring across Texas and to both coasts and back, UL was named 2014’s Best New Band by the Texas Regional Radio Report. Their most recent release, Live @ Grady’s 66 Pub, is available for free download here. They are currently in preproduction for their next studio recording with George Reiff (Ray Wylie Hubbard, Shinyribs, Band of Heathens), with the album to be released in early 2015.
Uncle Lucius on Facebook | Uncle Lucius on Twitter | Official Website
AUSTIN MEADE
Austin Meade is a young artist who has recently stepped onto the scene. His music is honest and catches a wide range of attention. With classic influences like Croce and Cash as well as many modern Red Dirt and Blues influences such as Cody Canada, Adam Hood and Sean McConnell, you can find Austin’s music somewhere in the middle. Live shows are exciting and keep listeners interested.
OTTOMAN TURKS
Ottoman Turks is a Dallas/Bryan/College Station-based four piece that was formed at the beginning of 2010 out of the ashes of a former band. Somebody had written a few songs, so we all got together and figured them out somewhat and then we played two shows without knowing what we were doing. They went well enough, so we figured we’d continue.
Over the years we have gained and lost a couple members, but the core of the group, and the sound we hope to cultivate, have remained essentially the same. A mixture of rough and rowdy blues, fast train songs and sad country ballads, with some skewed jazz and doo wop thrown in.
We have been repeatedly praised for our energetic live shows, which is where we have our most fun. The songs we write are largely built for the stage, and we prefer to showcase them that way. We appeal to a large array of audiences, and have played shows that reflect that – from biker parties by the Brazos to a grocery store opening in a Dallas suburb (that one was a weird one).