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Goodnight, Texas
March 19thGoodnight, Texas
March 20thK.Flay
March 25thK.Flay
March 25thDavid Wilcox
March 27thDavid Wilcox
March 28thYagody - SOLD OUT!
March 29thJohn Splithoff
March 30thYagody
March 31stScott & Johanna Hongell-Darsee
April 5thThe Glass Hours
April 8thThe Glass Hours
April 9thLevi Platero
April 10thNefesh Mountain
April 11thMatt Andersen
April 11thMatt Andersen
April 12thNefesh Mountain
April 12thRight in the Eye
April 18thArkansauce - NEW DATE!
April 19thSelwyn Birchwood
May 7thMax Gomez & Shannon McNally
May 9thThe Martin Sexton Abbey Road Show
May 10thThe Martin Sexton Abbey Road Show
May 11thProyecto Cumbion with 123 Andres
May 11thZoë Keating (New Date)
May 13thJoe Abercrombie
May 15thCris Williamson
May 15thSkaldik
May 16thCris Williamson
May 16thThe Young Dubliners
May 16thLuciane Dom
June 3rdMargo Cilker
June 4thLuciane Dom
June 6thMike Zito
June 10thMike Zito
June 11thJesse Dayton
June 13thJesse Dayton - New Date!
June 15thEsther Rose
June 27thEliza Gilkyson
June 27thEliza Gilkyson
June 28thEsther Rose
June 28thFlor de Toloache
July 17thAndrea Magee's She Rises
July 18thOscar Butler
July 23rdMark Hummel
August 2ndMark Hummel
August 3rdTab Benoit
September 9thTab Benoit
September 10thAlasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas
September 24thAlasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas
September 25thLuca Stricagnoli
November 21stMapache
Add to Cal
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.