Funky Rivertown Fest Thursday Night Supergroups!

76 North Huron Street,Ypsilanti MI 48197

30 March, 2023

Description

Starting the show off will be Delta 88. An indie folk/rock band based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Delta 88’s music is that of an American hymn. Brought together on the four winds, its members combine numerous musical influences to create their own unique sound like haunted mountain spirituals played through a distortion pedal. The songs move through wide channels of dynamic, emotional arrangements, from dark and somber barroom ballads to anthemic battle cries. With four studio albums, the most recent produced by Grammy-award winning Joe Henry, Delta 88 continues to mine for the new American songbook. The band’s music has been heard on stages through the U.S., Canada and Europe with the likes of Ralph Stanley, Richard Buckner, Emmylou Harris and Buddy Miller to name a few. The second performer of the evening is The Crossed Lines which formed around a recording project, about 2 ideas and a story. And like most things that happen it was a bit convoluted at its source. The first idea was to make our own version of the second side of Abbey Road merged with the Red Headed Stranger by Willie Nelson. but this album would tell a single, direct narrative about a man going west a little over a century ago. We knocked all of the bed tracks out in 2 days and a week after Erik Santos had left on sabbatical for 3 months, we painfully realized that all of the tracks were screwed up with digital noise due to a RAM failure in the recording machine. The idea of redoing what we just did was deflating at best. But then there was another idea. Lets get it over with. Lets record the whole thing live. Really live. Without rehearsal and with additional musicians that had never played together and in most cases, had never met. So we lined up a group of very trusting musicians, sent our charts and demos, introduced ourselves and pressed record. The liveness of the album fits the story. And in every aspect of the recording, arranging, mixing and mastering the story has been in mind. It’s a story of hope, violence and lost love. And you can listen to it here at the Funky Rivertown Fest!