Back in April, OpenEars Music and Public Radio Sessions put together a special evening at the legendary Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, GA, bringing in three stellar Atlanta/Athens bands to play an intimate evening that is a little bit out of their norm.
Eddie’s Attic is a listening room where many famous singer songwriters have gotten their start over the years, earning new audiences at Eddie’s OpenMic nights and intimate shows everyday throughout the week. For bands that are used to playing rock clubs like The EARL, 529, or The Drunken Unicorn, Eddie’s Attic is a difference experience for not only the bands themselves, but the audience members also. The majority of the audience is sat at tables throughout the venue, or in seating along the bar and back, giving every one good views of the stage. The audience is asked to respect the talented artists on stage by quieting cell phones and not chatting while the artists are playing. The energy is different in the room. No one is up in front of the bands dancing, pumping fists in the air as they play, but there also isn’t the long line that you will find in the back of most rock clubs in Atlanta of audience members trying to talk over the bands that are playing on stage, totally forgetting why they paid to get in. Instead, at a place like Eddie’s Attic, audiences are able to sit back and enjoy the music, listening to the lyrics and hanging on every note that an artist plays on stage. It’s not that one type of venue is better than the other, a listening room versus a rock club each come with their own unique challenges and highlights. It’s just nice that Atlanta has different options for how an audience can enjoy their live music, and we just happen to have one of the best listening rooms in America in Eddie’s Attic.
For the Sound Soup showcase in April, we invited three talented bands, Black Linen, Grand Vapids, and Oryx & Crake, to play special intimate sets at Eddie’s Attic, showing the audience different sides of songwriting that exists throughout our city; unique sets from what each of the band’s fans are used to, and stories behind some of their songs. And you can’t forget the fun the audience was treated to between sets as comedian Louis Galanti and Magician Michael Boone kept the evening light, with plenty of extra memorable moments. It was a hell of an evening, and now we are excited to get to relive some of it with videos from each band filmed by Public Radio Sessions.
Today we are excited to premiere the video of Black Linen‘s performance, as the band performs three songs: “Mental”, “Silver Bullet Blues”, and “Wounded”. Black Linen, led by Randy Michael and Jonah Swilley, are a rock ‘n’ roll band that brings the listener back to the good old times of the pop rock of the 50’s and 60’s. Their music is often likened to something you’d hear in a Tarantino movie. The band released their self titled debut in 2015, one of our favorites of the year, analog recordings that can haunt you while getting you up to dance out of your seat. Eddie’s Attic provided a great opportunity to listen to the pureness Black Linen is producing.
Watch Black Linen live at Sound Soup produced by Public Radio Sessions:
Catch Black Linen live yourself tonight at Avondale Towne Cinema. Randy Michael and Jonah Swilley also have a production team/record label/collective called InCrowd, where they have an uber talented house band, with a horn section, and the Michael Swilley songwriting team working with some of Atlanta’s finest upcoming artists to put out their records, and take pop and other types of music back to the days when pop wasn’t so overproduced. Tonight, the second InCowd Revue takes place at Avondale Towne Cinema, featuring performances from InCrowd artists Ivory Williams, Mattiel, James “The Voice” Fly, Kelsy Davis, and Black Linen. Don’t miss this one! Doors open at 8 p.m. Admission is $10.
