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Eddie 9V
August 3rdUNM Jarocho Ensemble
August 4thLiz Howdy, Stella Martinez, Cee Mo
August 7thShae Fiol & Andrea Magee
August 8thLuke Bulla
August 9thElovated Roots
August 10thKevin Fedarko - SOLD OUT!
August 12thWailing Souls
August 15thMac Sabbath
August 17thMike Dawes
August 18thMike Dawes
August 19thJD Simo
August 20thAndrea Magee's She Rises
August 31stLas Flores del Valle
September 1stMary Gauthier
September 4thJ2B2
September 5thTab Benoit
September 10thBlack Uhuru
September 12thAlejandro Brittes
September 20thExtravaganza on Museum Hill
September 21stJoe Boyd
September 24thJoe Boyd
September 25thMaryna Krut
September 27th3 On A Match Kabarett
September 28thMaryna Krut
September 29thAl Di Meola
October 2ndThird World
October 3rdThe Tannahill Weavers
October 3rdCeú
October 8thJoe P
October 9thThe Bones of JR Jones
October 10thMasters of Hawaiian Music
October 11thMasters of Hawaiian Music
October 12thBuckethead
October 12thPeter Bradley Adams
October 16thPeter Bradley Adams
October 17thIndigenous Heritage Celebration featuring Innastate
October 19thKassa Overall
October 26thKassa Overall
October 27thCimafunk
October 30thArkansauce
November 7thKristina Jacobsen
November 17thTopHouse
November 21stKalos
January 15thKalos
January 16thJesse Cook
February 2ndJesse Cook
February 3rdAltan
March 12thLúnasa
March 18thMapache
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Tickets cost $18 in advance, $23 day of show (plus a $2 service charge). They are also available by phone through Hold My Ticket at 505-886-1251.
In the past, Mapache recording sessions have been pretty laid-back affairs, with friends coming and going, the sessions starting and stopping at the band's discretion—as relaxed a process as the immaculately sunny vibes that their four albums would suggest. But on their dynamic and ambitious fifth album of cosmic-folk, Swinging Stars, Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch decided to take a trip and hunker down somewhere particularly special.
"It's a pretty impactful place," Finch says of the Panoramic House, the artist retreat where Swinging Stars was recorded. "It's kind of dramatic. It's a castle-y building on a hill, way up overlooking the Bay."
Located in Stinson Beach in Marin County, California, the Panoramic House has recently hosted acts like My Morning Jacket, the War on Drugs, and Cate Le Bon, and was the ideal combination of scenic beauty and self-imposed confinement to allow Mapache to settle in for their most cohesive album yet. "That environment yields itself to a higher level of focus because everybody's together for a week," says Finch, explaining that the band stayed there during the process, sharing every bit of their time and energy on a shared vision. "We were all captive. No one could escape," he laughs.
Swinging Stars, an album of calm, second-nature swagger, is the natural result of a band that's existed in one form or another for its founders' entire adult lives. Finch and Blasucci first met as students at La Cañada High School, just north of Los Angeles, where they both had a guitar class: "There wasn't much supervision or anything," remembers Blasucci. "It was really nice. And we got to just play guitars together."
The two stayed friends through their college years—Finch went to Chico State and Blasucci spent two years as a missionary in Mexico—and eventually they ended up back in L.A., spending their days playing guitar together once again, just like old times. Working with producer/engineer Dan Horne (Cass McCombs, Allah-Lahs), they recorded four albums —2017's Mapache, 2020's From Liberty Street, 2021's 3, and 2022's Roscoe's Dream. Often trading solos, and occasionally switching from English to Spanish, Finch and Blasucci are perfectly in sync together.
Mapache is so easygoing that their vibe belies their prolificness at times. Swinging Stars is their fourth album in as many years, and they show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.