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Tuesday, September 12
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The Ditty Bops
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w/ Datri Bean
Ticket Price: $11.00 adv / $13.00 dos
Doors at 7:00 PM, Show at 8:00 PM
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The Ditty Bops
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With the release of their Grammy Award nominated album Summer Rains, The Ditty Bops continue to bewitch their listeners with iridescent golden harmonies, playful storytelling and a visionary lyrical worldview. Their music has been described as genre-defying, bearing influence of Western Swing, Ragtime, Gypsy-Jazz, Pop, and Vaudeville-era Musical Theater. Teaming up again with Grammy nominated producer Mitchell Froom (Suzanne Vega, Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello), The Ditty Bops have generated a work of whimsical invention and exceptional craftsmanship.
The band is also well known for its elaborate live shows, which incorporate theatrical elements complete with props, costumes, and skits. Interview magazine says, "these vaudevillian vamps are putting the show back in showmanship." The Bops have been featured on Late Night with Conan O'Brian, The Late Late Show with Craig Fergusson, The L Word, Extra, NPR's All Things Considered, and A Prairie Home Companion, and have toured with diverse performers including Tori Amos, Nickel Creek and Nancy Sinatra. Their music has also appeared on ABC's Gray’s Anatomy, Men in Trees, and in numerous films and commercials.
The Ditty Bops' Abby DeWald (vocals, guitar) and Amanda Barrett (vocals, mandolin) see performance as just one facet of their artistry. As environmental activists, the girls creatively explore inspiring ways to live responsibly in today’s world. In 2006, they chose an unorthodox method to promote their sophomore album Moon Over the Freeway. Abby and Amanda hit the road for a four-month tour, traveling cross-country from Los Angeles to New York City solely by bicycle. They rode over 4,700 miles and performed 40 concerts along the way to promote clean air and cycling. For their efforts they were named as one of Billboard Magazine’s Top Ten Green Bands and received The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition’s Roll Model Award.
In Spring 2007, The Ditty Bops started the environmental nonprofit “You And I Save The World.” The group helped pass America’s first plastic bag ban in San Francisco, for which Abby and Amanda were presented with a certificate of honor from the city’s Board of Supervisors. The following Summer, The Ditty Bops toured through farming communities across the country, to bring attention the struggles and achievements of family farmers. Their tour raised money for sustainable farmers and culminated with a performance at Willie Nelson’s nonprofit concert Farm Aid.
Back at home in Los Angeles, Abby and Amanda have reinvented their urban life - ditching their cars and converting their cement driveway into a living, edible garden, complete with organic fruit trees and dark leafy greens. Drawing inspiration from this, they wrote a new crop of songs for Summer Rains, in which life becomes an ongoing celebration of the regeneration of modern culture, offering a lullaby to a transforming living planet.
A nostalgic throwback to times when record packaging was as exciting as the music itself, Abby and Amanda designed Summer Rains with elaborate pop-up art made from recycled materials for which they have been nominated for a Grammy. In an increasingly digital age, The Ditty Bops have created something beautifully tangible for their first independent release.
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Datri Bean
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"Southern-fried vintage jazz," ...with its languid melodies and sultry vocal lines, it does sound as if it could have floated off a Georgia porch and landed by accident in rainy, cold Seattle. Bean's vocals recall Billie Holiday, only with sheer joy replacing all that pain." The Seattle P.I.
Steeped in hot muggy weather, love, God and corn whiskey, songwriter Datri Bean's music blends 1930s jazz with folksy Americana, for a lazy afternoon on the porch feeling.
Bean was raised in a rodeo family on the plains of Wyoming. Listening to her mother's scratchy Scott Joplin records, at the age of five, she began to study piano seriously. She studied at the Boston Conservatory of Music, but found it a bit stuffy, so she quickly high-tailed it for Austin, Texas. She kicked around here and there, eventually landing in a big house full of jazz musicians, hooligans, exchange students and bike mechanics, from whom she learned to play jazz, fix bicycles, speak Russian and drink hooch- all at the same time. Pulled by the love of a very special bicycle mechanic, Datri was dragged kicking and screaming from Austin to Seattle. She soon returned to Austin to records her ten song, all original debut album, Slow Down Summertime.
Shortly after the release of Slow Down Summertime, About.com named her one of the "best folk artists you've never heard of ." She has been touring the Northwest and Southeastern United States, and sharing the stage with notables such as the Weepies and Po' Girl. She was recently honored by the Kerrville New Folk, Telluride, and Rocky Mountain folk festivals for her songwriting. Slow Down Summertime was released in Japan on Americana label Buffalo Records (North Mississippi Allstars, Asylum Street Spankers) shortly after its U.S. release.
"...especially beguiling, at times recalling the dynamic between Billie Holiday and Lester Young." - The Stranger
"delightful anomaly" - Seattle Times
"Datri Bean creates a sound that makes me imagine a sunny, country afternoon sipping mint juleps on an old screened porch, the air moving ever so slightly under the ceiling fan. It's a nice place to be." - Vigilance Magazine
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