Get Out of the House!

By Ben Youngerman

For most, the holiday season is a great time for spending quality time with family. For others, it’s trying to avoid the crazy people you’re unfortunately related to. Either way, SteelStacks has a list of ways to bond with your loved ones or completely blow them off and have some fun away from home.

Get out of the house on Christmas Day…

Oscar Contenders: Joy and The Danish Girl

Your annoying aunt Carol can’t talk in the theater! Academy Award winners Jennifer Lawrence (Joy) and Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl) are getting Oscar buzz again this year. Joy also features Oscar winner Robert De Niro and former Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper.

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ManDudeBro

Does your funny cousin make you laugh? Well this is like have four funny cousins on stage at the same time! Let Lehigh Valley Style Magazine’s 2015 “Best Local Comedian” fill you with holiday laughter in a night of improvised merriment!

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 12/25

Get out of the house on Saturday, December 26…

The Last Will and Testament of Santa J. Claus

Congratulations! You made it past Christmas unscathed! We wish we could say the same for Santa. See what characters show up to the reading of his last will and testament in this scripted comedy show.

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 12/26

Get out of the house on Sunday, December 27…

The Home for the Holidays Standup Show with headliner Jim Tews

Lehigh Valley-grown comedians now living in New York, LA, and points in between come back home to make you laugh and show their families they’re not giant disappointments. Headlined by Allentown-raised Jim Tews (Last Comic Standing/Louie).

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 12/27

Get out of the house on Monday, December 28…

Double Headliner Comedy Show: Aliens that are Ancient / The Incredible Shrinking Matt & Jacquie

Did your Grammy only give you $8 worth pennies in your stocking? Get TWO comedy shows for the price of one. One improvised show, one sketch comedy show. It’s the perfect compromise!

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 12/28

Get out of the house on Wednesday, December 30…

PEEPSFEST ®

You could let your kids make a mess doing crafts at home, or bring them to PEEPSFEST for free family arts, crafts, music and FUN!

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 12/30

Get out of the house on Thursday, December 31…

PEEPSFEST ®

PEEPSFEST continues with the world-famous PEEP drop to ring in the New Year! It’s earlier in the day, so you can still call the babysitter and party on New Year’s Eve…

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The Red Elvises New Year’s Eve Spectacular

The Red Elvises always rock the house at Musikfest. Now, your new favorite band is back to ring in 2016 with belly dancing, conga lines and, of course, BACON! Come party with Igor and his cast of talented musicians.

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 12/31

Get out of the house on New Year’s Day…

ManDudeBro

You’re not seeing double because of all the booze you drank the previous night. ManDudeBro will perform TWO completely different, improvised comedy shows at 8pm and 10:30pm. The perfect cure for a hangover.

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 1/1

Get out of the house on Saturday, January 2…

Craig Thatcher Band presents The Music of CREAM

Were you forced to listen to your niece’s auto-tuned nonsense this week? Tune it out with some real musicianship from the Craig Thatcher Band.

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The Associated Mess

Stuck playing charades with kooky uncle Lou? Come watch improvised comedy games in the style of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” instead!

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 1/2

Get out of the house on Sunday, January 3…

Three Kings Celebration

El Dia de los Reyes (Three Kings Day) is a cherished religious and cultural tradition of many Latin American countries, where children receive gifts from Los Tres Reyes Magos (The Three Kings). Afterwards, go home and sleep like a king because you’ll be tired from the last two weeks of awesome events at SteelStacks.

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COMPLETE LISTINGS FOR 1/3

Echosmith’s Sydney Sierota Talks Dreams and… Babies?

By Kailee Baylor

On Dec. 10, the Musikfest Café welcomes the “Cool Kids” – Echosmith (@echosmith) – as the band travels from Canada to Mexico as part of a short winter tour. ArtsQuest recently caught up with Sydney Sierota (@sydneysierota), lead singer of the multi-platinum selling indie-pop group. Read on to discover more about the upcoming show, her thoughts on the soon-to-be addition to the Sierota family and what she really wants for Christmas:

Echosmith started nine years ago and you were all pretty young. How do you feel your music has changed since then?

Sydney Sierota: It’s really evolved. We were really young nine years ago and the life we’ve lived especially in the last three years has helped shape the stories we want to write about. It’s been a fun process too.

What’s it like always being around your siblings? Do you argue, and if so, what do you usually argue about?

Sydney Sierota: Being in a band is like family for all other bands, the difference is that we are actually family. The same kinds of things that would bother anyone in a band can bug us, but early on we made the decision to not go there with each other. If we’re annoyed it’s usually because we’re tired or jet lagged or hungry or all three. Life is short and the last thing we want to do is get hung up on dumb things that will only divide us.

What’s one thing you’d want first time listeners to know about your music, and who you are as a band?

Sydney Sierota: We want to spread hope and love through music to the world. That’s our actual mission statement and if people even just for an hour at our show, or an hour listening to our music wherever they are, forget about the craziness of the world and find some kind of hope, then we’ve done what we’ve set out to do. We’ve heard from fans all over the world who in some way have felt better from the music we make. That’s really as great as it gets. I love our job – I really do!

The last few years have been crazy for you guys with the success of your album ‘Talking Dreams,’ you doing a duet with Taylor Swift on her 1989 tour, TWICE… you guys were even recently featured on The Muppets! So what’s been your most amazing moment from the past few years?

Sydney Sierota: Yeah it’s been crazy! Now that we are finished with our first album cycle we’ve been really hit with the fact that all this stuff has happened to us. It’s really changed our lives and we’re really happy and grateful. Those moments with Taylor who is such a great friend and artist to us were surreal. Touring in Asia was amazing too. We sold something like 2,500 tickets at our Singapore show and we’d never ever been there before and to see kids singing every word of every song was just so incredible. I cried because it was just overwhelming that this is really working and affecting people.

Amazing time!!! We love you Taylor. Thank you for the most incredible night!!!! @taylorswift

A video posted by echosmith (@echosmith) on Jun 12, 2015 at 7:14pm PDT

Your oldest brother Jamie is going to be a father soon, so he took some time off from touring. How has it been touring without him?

Sydney Sierota: It’s been a real adjustment but we’ve gotten used to it. He’s about to have his life changed in a way none of us can even imagine. We’re all gonna be uncles and myself an aunt. We can’t wait. Jamie has really enjoyed these past four months completely off working and he’s getting ready for it all.

You’re about to begin the process of writing and recording your new album. Is there anything you’re hoping to come out of this album? Any theme or message you really want to try to incorporate?

Sydney Sierota: We’ve already started writing and it feels really exciting to start to tell some new stories. Because we’ve toured so much we can’t help but imagine all these songs being sung in a big concert. The live aspect of what we do has for sure affected how we are writing. We hope people can really see the progression of our writing and art, and most importantly we hope they really feel something as they listen. As far as themes we aren’t sure yet other than these songs will match our mission statement.

What’s the number-one thing on each of your Christmas lists this year?

Sydney Sierota: To rest and relax with friends and family and some great music.

What can fans expect to see from you at your show in Bethlehem.

Sydney Sierota: To smile and have lots of fun. We try and leave our hearts on the stage every night so let’s have a fun night!

Echosmith with special guest Summer Scouts
All Ages
Thursday, December 10
Musikfest Cafe presented by Yuengling

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In the Trenches with Matt Webb of Marianas Trench

By Kailee Baylor
Vancouver-based Marianas Trench has produced chart-topping hits like “Fallout,” “Haven’t Had Enough” and “Stutter” and won the 2013 Canadian JUNO Award for Group of the Year. Touring behind its most recent release, “Astoria,” the band will perform Nov. 22 at the Musikfest Café presented by Yuengling. In anticipation of this exciting show, ArtsQuest spoke with guitarist Matt Webb. Here’s how the conversation went down:

How are you feeling now that you’re officially back on tour?

You know, I’m so excited. It’s funny, we had jumped on the bus in Vancouver, Canada yesterday and then drove down to Portland last night, and it’s like we didn’t miss a beat. I jumped back into my tour bus bunk and fell asleep like a baby. It was great!

Do you guys have a band agreement, or rules that you agree to follow on the road?

That’s a good question! We encourage everybody to be showered and clean on the road so that the tour bus doesn’t smell too bad, and to just come prepared—everyone’s rehearsing hard. Oh, and also we make sure that our pants are very tight. We like to try and ‘out-tight-pants’ the other guys, especially on this tour because it’s a lot of ‘80s themes and we’re trying to really rock it up this time around. So a lot of leather, tight pants and no shaving of the chest hair.

How does touring with Marianas Trench differ from touring as Matt Webb?

Well, you know, it’s on a much grander scale. The Trench is a family, man. I much prefer traveling with the group, with my friends and family. We have a big, happy, healthy crew. Touring solo is just for fun every once and awhile, but the band is where my passion lies.

Have you ever had old enemies, or even crushes, ask for tickets? How did you react?

Yeah, sure that’s happened from time to time with friends and enemies in different towns looking for tickets. I never have a problem with that. I mean if they’re people I hate I’m not going to give them any tickets, but if it’s just friends from the past that’s fine; it’s easy to keep yourself isolated from weirdos in the crowd if you need to.

How would you say the band’s music style has changed over the years? What do you attribute that change to?

Just growing up and getting a little bit older. I think we’ve always stayed true to ourselves and released music that we loved to make and perform every night. I guess as you get older you have a lot more life experience that reflects lyrically. I think this record is the most lyrically candid record we’ve ever done, which we’re all very excited about. In terms of sounds, we wanted to go for an ‘80s sound on this record and we tried hard to get gear and instruments and studio equipment that were all period correct so that we could recreate these ‘80s sounds, because that’s what we all sort of grew up listening to and loving.

How does the image of the band translate into your personal lives? How does your personality and style differ off-stage compared to on-stage?

That’s a good question. There’s no doubt that being on stage has kind of, I wouldn’t call it a costume (look) because we don’t think that we look ridiculous like it’s Halloween or something, (but) this is stuff that we love to do and when you see a rock band on stage they should look like a rock band. The style definitely ties over into our personal lives; maybe not as flamboyant perhaps, but no one is really dressing out of their comfort zone. The style that you’ll see on stage reflects just a more extreme side of our personalities.

You do a lot of contests and promotions for your fans through social media. How much do you think your online presence impacts the band and its success?

It’s huge! I’m not sure that we’d be successful without it. The social media platforms allow us the ability to be able to connect with our fans which I think is awesome. People can sort of get to know us and see what we’re all about, and also it’s great for marketing and spreading the word, which I think helps to grow a band. We’re very thankful to have all that stuff and all the followers as well. It’s great. I love the social media and being able to interact with people and get to know our fans.

I see that Josh’s Labrador retriever gets an executive producer credit on Astoria. How does she like the band’s music?

Yeah! Her name is Benny and the Jets and she likes to step on cables and peddles and turn knobs accidently, but sometimes that leads to favorable results.

‘Astoria’ is your first physical release in the U.S. Now that the album is out, how are your fans reacting to it?

The response has been overwhelming. We were all over the iTunes charts in the states, which is really encouraging to see. Tonight (Nov. 3 in Portland) will be a good gauge because it’s our first show on this tour and I’ve been seeing on social media that there’s good buzz about the tour and the shows, and we’ll see what the crowds are like. But as far as the overall reaction, it’s been really positive and I’m excited that we finally have a U.S. release and we can get down here and tour our asses off and make some new friends. It’s awesome! I love America, man. I have family here, I have friends here and I’m excited to tour like crazy.

Which song is your personal favorite on the album?

I love the opener, “Astoria,” and “Wildfire,” and I like “Burning Up.” They’re all great. We haven’t played a lot of these songs live yet so after the first couple of shows I’ll have a better gauge of that. Sometimes you really love listening to songs but you don’t enjoy playing them live as much, and vice-versa.

You guys have shown up to award shows in everything from oversized hamster balls to bouncy castles. Can we expect a unique entrance from you when you’re in Bethlehem?

That’s a good question. I wonder if we still have those hamster balls lying around in the back of the tour bus? Typically we don’t put that much thought into the entrance to the shows because we just roll in in a tour bus, but now that you mention it, maybe we’ll think of something!

Marianas Trench
Nov. 22, 8 p.m.
Musikfest Café presented by Yuengling

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Our 3 Favorite Leon Russell Collaborations

By Ben Youngerman

With a legendary half-century career in music, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Leon Russell has performed with so many star musicians it’s easier to list who he HASN’T worked with: Kanye West, The Wiggles and the Times Square Naked Cowboy. That’s basically it.

In honor of Leon Russell taking the stage on Wednesday, November 11 at the Musikfest Cafe, we compiled three videos of our favorite Leon Russell collaborations!

Leon Russell and Elton John – “Hey Ahab”

The 2010 Grammy nominated album The Union was a collaborative effort with Sir Elton John that reinvigorated Leon Russell’s career. It gave us some awesome piano duets like “Hey Ahab” (performed here on the Late Show with David Letterman).

Leon Russell and Willie Nelson – “Heartbreak Hotel”

Back in 1979, Leon Russell and Willie Nelson put out an album entitled “One for the Road”. This Elvis cover is definitely one we’d listen to during a long road trip.

Leon Russell and Joe Cocker – “With A Little Help From My Friends”

This 1971 cover of the famous Beatles tune is fitting since Leon Russell has previously worked with George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Russell’s guitar work paired with Joe Cocker’s one-of-a-kind voice makes this a powerful number. Plus…that…HAT!

Leon Russell
Nov. 11, 7:30 p.m.
Musikfest Café presented by Yuengling

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