Jake Bellows To Play San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

Jake Bellows To Play San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
Fall Tour Dates With Tim Kasher Announced

Debut Solo Album New Ocean Out Now On Saddle Creek 

   

"The 11-track LP features previously shared stunners "I Know You" and "All Right Now", and also makes way for "left turns into drunk-in-the-sun bossa nova, blue-eyed-soul ruptured by fuzz guitar, [and] love songs that are not necessarily ballads" - SPIN"He's approachable and humble, but engage the guy in a little conversation and you will soon realize that he's not quite on the same plane as the rest of us - in the best way a
singer-songwriter can be." - Filter

"His best work since Neva Dinova's 2008 high watermark, You May Already be Dreaming." - Paste

Listen: "I Know You" via SoundCloud 
Listen: "All Right Now" via SoundCloud
Watch: "I Know You" via YouTube

Jake Bellows's fall tour kicks off this Friday with a stop at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Jake Bellows will play at noon the festival's Rooster Stage which was curated by Conor Oberst and will include performances by The Felice Brothers, The Evans, First Aid Kit and more. On Monday, Jake Bellows will play a free in-store at Los Angeles' Origami Vinyl before hitting the road later this month with labelmate Tim Kasher. Jake Bellows is touring in support of his critically acclaimed debut solo album New Ocean is out now on Saddle Creek and limited edition cassette through Majestic Litter. 

Jake Bellows had quit music. Or so he thought.

  

After fronting Neva Dinova for more than 15 years, which included five full-lengths, a split EP, and countless tours, he packed up his dog and moved from his native Omaha to his girlfriend's hometown of Los Angeles. Two days before he left he recorded 18 demos with musician and engineer Ben Brodin at his insistence. Once in L.A., Bellows got a job installing sliding-glass doors and sold his Les Paul to buy a Datsun pick-up truck.

Though he had no plans to form a new band, he played the occasional solo show, performed with Whispertown, and continued to write songs. In early 2011, an invitation arrived from Omaha's Film Streams Theater for Jake's old friend Ryan Fox also living on the West Coast, to perform an original live film-score. Fox enlisted Bellows and Brodin to collaborate and the trio began to compose and discuss improvisational ideas over long-distance. Since they were all going to be in Omaha and had a long history of playing in each other's bands, Brodin and Fox nudged Bellows into booking studio time to record some of his dormant songs.

Fox and Bellows drove from LA to Omaha that November. They entered ARC Studios for a feverish recording session, arranging and writing parts on the fly with an impromptu band including Heath Koontz, Todd Fink, Whispertown bandmate Morgan Nagler and other old friends. Committing quickly to intuitive arrangements the band recorded 17 tracks in a little more than a week. They worked remotely on the record throughout that winter and spring, adding overdubs in basements and bedrooms across western North America.

The new music is underpinned by philosophical conviction and shaped by an interest in physics, cosmology and mythology. Bellows returned to music with a renewed sense of the intrinsic value of art and its ability to express the commonality of human experience. His debut full-length, New Ocean, offers a mix tape of different kinds of songs hanging out on one record - love songs that are not necessarily ballads despite their introspective gauziness, with left turns into drunk-in-the-sun bossa nova and blue-eyed-soul ruptured by fuzz guitar. Bellows believes that songs change the fabric of the universe through the very frequencies they emit. As such, the record attempts to create the world he wants to see instead of reflect the world that is.

Jake Bellows Tour Dates

10.04 - San Francisco, CA @ Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (12pm at the Rooster Stage) 

10.07 - Los Angeles, CA @ Origami Vinyl (7pm free in-store) 

10.15 - San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop *

10.16 - Santa Cruz @ The Crepe Place *

10.17 - Santa Ana @ Constellation Room *

10.18 - Los Angeles, CA @ the Echo *

10.19 - Las Vegas, NV @ Backstage Bar & Billards *

10.21 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah *

* w/ Tim Kasher

For more info, please visit:

http://jakebellows.com/

http://saddle-creek.com/