La Cerca

La Cerca are from Tucson. They bring a sound that is unlike many bands that may come out of the desert rock sound of the Southwest. The guitars are more jarring, the atmosphere is thicker and the tones are deeper, and the songs are more daring than the usually bands you may hear of when you think of desert rock. They will be supporting their last record, Night Bloom, which is on the Xemu Records label ( Dead Meadow, Morning After Girls, Spindrift, Matthew Tow....) and their latest record, which was just released on vinyl, A Nice Sweet Getaway on Fort Lowell Records. This album is a dark ambient space rock, which is also an ode to the Sonoran Desert. lacerca.net xemu.com lacerca.bandcamp.com Strange Parade was formed by keyboardist, singer/songwriter Brian Cleary, former keyboardist and occasional co-songwriter for The Movies and Radar Brothers (Merge). Now locked in as a band, Strange Parade features long-time/former Brian Jonestown Massacre drummer Dan Allaire (Cass McCoombs, Darker My Love, BJM) lap-steel/guitar wiz, Paul Lacques (I See Hawks in LA, Double Naught Spycar, The Bonedaddys) and bassist Ashley Berry. Originally from Boston, Cleary co-formed co-formed The Movies (Gern Blandsten / Houston Party) in 1999. Cleary joined Radar Brothers in 2010, touring with them and co-writing songs for the album “Eight” (Merge, 2013). At this point, he also started writing songs for a new project, Strange Parade. The first album, “Between Us All” was released in 2018, featuring various lineups with members of Radar Brothers, Trans Am, Eels, and DNTEL. 
 After finishing the debut, Cleary locked in the current line up with Paul Lacques, founding member of The Bonedaddys, Double Naught Spy Car, and I See Hawks In L.A. Lacques has 25 albums under his belt and has recorded and/or played with with Bo Diddley, Peter Case, Stan Ridgway, and Mike Watt. Drummer Dan Allaire played with Brian Jonestown Massacre for 15 years and also played with Cass McCoombs, and Darker My Love among others. The new lineup was rounded out by Ashley Berry, who had recently filled in on bass for a friend’s band. Cleary saw them and was immediately won over by her playing. Their second album, "The Watchers" was recorded mostly live by Lacques and mixed by David Trumfio (Hope Sandoval, Built to Spill, Waco Brothers). The album is due for release Spring, 2022. Strangeparadeoffical.com Levi Thomas is a twentysomething Missouri-born songwriter, currently residing in the Bay Area, where he ended up after chasing the same West Coast American dreams as his forebears. The former singer/guitarist of sludge-psych outfit Ghost Dance, Thomas released one album on Rough Beast Records—also home of bands Ranch Ghost and Del Sur—before leaving behind his old band’s heavier garage-psych/space-punk sound to pursue a cosmic-country solo career. “The Fear” is the first single from Thomas’ debut album, Billie, which was recorded throughout the winter and spring of 2016 with Winston Goertz-Giffen (Grass Widow, other notable credits???) at Oakland’s Santo Studio. “The Fear” is defined by Urban Dictionary as the sense that you have done yourself some lasting damage after a night of drinking. “As with most of my songs,” Thomas explains, “it’s about 50/50 autobiographical / poetic embellishment. I had experienced a pretty strange and lonely year, including the harshest winter of my life, in which I was stricken with the fear so frequently the only way to shake it was through the power of song.” http://www.babyrobotmedia.com/levi-thomas/ https://www.facebook.com/levithomasmusic