Cabinet and Hot Buttered Rum co-headlined an evening of foot-stomping bluegrass at the Abbey Bar in Harrisburg, PA.  Maybe I am just a little behind with the trends, but the Abbey Bar was as packed as I have ever seen it, despite being a cold and generally nondescript Wednesday evening in Central PA.   Maybe you can attribute the packed house to the pop culture bluegrass resurgence that has placed bands like Mumford and Sons in the public spotlight, or perhaps these two bands are just that damn fun.  After seeing these two acts, you really can’t discount the latter.

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Flux Capacitor, a band consisting of three brothers from the ‘City of Brotherly Love’, has been making some psychedelic noise on the east coast jam scene.  After just being named Tri-State Indie Jam Band of the Year, I was excited to experience a Flux encounter here in Central PA.

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I’ll keep this one quick, since most of my thoughts have been said over on my first ever review at Hidden Track!

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Hi!  That’s me.  And this is a photo journal of my experience on Jam Cruise 11.  I am pretty sure everyone by now has the jist what goes down musically on the boat   (if not, please refer to my photo recap of The Music on Jam Cruise 11).  But every music festival has music that rages til sunrise, right?  I wanted dedicate this article to share what makes the Jam Cruise experience separate itself from your typical land based fest.

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Phew, what a week at sea. I am still clearing the haze from my head and sand from my shorts after Jam Cruise 11. There are still a lot of pictures to go through, but I wanted to get a few photos up from the week. Expect new blog posts and galleries for both the music and the experience of Jam Cruise coming soon.

update: full photo recap can be found here.

Erica Lyn Everest and her friends brought a festive mix of jazz/blues/indie vibes to the newly opened Fed Live in downtown Harrisburg on Friday.  The young singer flexed her vocal chops throughout a number of originals and covers including a rendition of an Amy Winehouse tune that just hit that sweet spot.   Erica’s vocal control and nuance are masterful and if you close your eyes, you might feel like you are in a smoky jazz club from another era.  Erica and the girls also gave a nod to the holiday season by including Christmas songs throughout their respective sets.

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Marco Benevento deftly piloted the Aluminum Falcon through the disco-ball-lit space/time continuum of the Abbey Bar on Saturday.  When asked by a friend what style of music is Marco Benevento, I  really didn’t have an answer for him.  The only thing I could say was ‘He plays all sorts of stuff, and it’s all good.  Just come out and get down.’  And so we all did, and Marco gave us an eclectic mix of ‘piano rock’ as he described it, mixing in tracks of his new album ‘Tiger Face’ as well as Marco’d arrangements of various covers: The Knife, Amy Winehouse, The Shins, Muse, even Britney Spears, no genre was left untouched.  Even though the Saturday crowd was relatively light, Marco kept the energy up all night and put on a memorable show .

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I wanted to shoot something local either Thursday or Friday.  The Abbey Bar had the beautiful young singer songwriter Erica Lyn Everest on Friday and the burly, bearded, hill-billy-blues-man Reverend Peyton (and his Big Damn Band) on Thursday.  So obviously I had to shoot the burly, bearded, hill-billy-blues-man.  I stand by my decision, as the three piece band brought a lot of character and energy to the venue.  It really got quite packed up front and the enthusiastic crowd was one of the  best I’ve seen at the Abbey.

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