Bushwick Book Club

We’re excited to present original music inspired by Becky Cooper’s new book Mapping Manhattan: A Love (And Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers.  It’s a collection of hand drawn maps of this city – each as different as the New Yorker that created it.  They are maps of lives lived and stories told–lamenting, celebrating, remembering.

Come hear the music inspired by these glimpses into our neighbors’ lives.  Show is Tuesday, June 18th, 8pm at The Living Room in the Lower East Side.  Songs by:

Hilary Downes, Toby King, Susan Hwang, Jessie Kilguss, Sweet Soubrette, spiritchild, Herb Scher, Dan and Rachel and Danydany.

This book choice was inspired by Maria Popova’s awesome blog to inspiration and all things interesting, Brainpickings.org.  If you click on the book there and buy it through Amazon, you help her out.  If you come hear the songs next Tuesday night, you help out your inner hunger for brand new, literature-inspired songs!  (That sound is your soul grumbling for songs about books.)

Like a bag of chips or a napkin note from your mom, songs about books can really boost your lunch.  Tomorrow, the Bushwick Book Club  and Hip Hop Book Club play a lunchtime set at Grand Army Plaza for The Brooklyn Public Library.  Come hear Susan Hwang, Phoebe Kreutz, Adventures of Kaila and The Kid from Hip Hop Book Club, spiritchild and members of ArtStart!

Wednesday, May 22nd, 12:30pm-2pm
Grand Army Plaza/Brooklyn Central Public Library
ph: (718) 623-7100

We’ll be right here.  We’ll be the ones playing songs about books.

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May 29th at Prospect Park, Brooklyn, follow the sound of songs about books to the southern end of the Great Lawn.  We’ll be there, playing our songs inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.   Players include:

Ellia Bisker

Ben Arthur

Justin Vahala

Joe Crow Ryan

Susan Hwang

Up Against The Wall String Band

Leslie Graves

We’ll get started around 8pm!  Shakespeare in the Park, Bushwick Book Club style…

March 28th, 8pm at Culturefix in the Lower East Side.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective stories are the inspiration for new music tomorrow night!  A Study in Scarlet, A Scandal in Bohemia and any of the 56 much loved short stories featuring Sherlock (and Dr. Watson of course) are fair game for intrepid local songwriters:

Aron Blue:  Aron is a singer songwriter, sound engineer and producer. She created SuperMeow Records and also curates shows in Brooklyn.   She ain’t afraid to get things started.

The Adventures of Kaila and The Kid – Kid Lucky and Kaila Mullady are the beat-rhyming duo of the decade.  They are a beat-rhyming force of nature, soon to be touring with their new recording.  Watch the TRAILER.

Casey Holford - is an Antifolk-based musician, songwriter, recording engineer and photographer.  He has a way with melodies, and his songs are harder to drum to than you think.  Did you hear his Game of Thrones song?

Chris Andersen – When he’s not working on his daily online comic, The Ego and The Squid, he’s redefining your notion of hip hop with The

Happy Rappies.  He’s performing solo for Book Club this month!

Dan & Rachel - This rock and roll duo is usually zig-zagging the U.S. in their Mazda, hypnotizing the country city by city with their cross-genre, harmonizings and brazen lyrical variety.  They will also seduce you with Kale – KALE RECORDS, that is.

Jason Perlman – is a local songwriter who made THIS for the first book club of the year.  Happy to have him back for our March show!

Natti Vogel – can break your heart in any musical genre and at least 2 languages.  One of them i being Chinese.

Phoebe Kreutz – is an award-winning songwriter and exceptional conversationalist.  She is known for her remarkable ability to turn a Sumerian epic into a musical.  You must see her GILGAMESH the Musical.

Susan Hwang – is the founder of Bushwick Book Club.  She bends literature to her own musical whims and makes a mission of encouraging others to do so because she thinks it’s funny.

THURSDAY, March 28th, 8pm

Culturefix

9 Clinton St. (just south of Houston St.)

New York, NY

ph: (646) 863-7171

Door: by donation (suggested $5)

We’re taking literature-inspired hip hop to the youth.  Queens Library at Long Island City has been hosting our workshop for kids afterschool.  These kids are fearless, let me tell you.  They’re taking Tupac Shakur’s The Rose that Grew From Concrete and using it to inspire their own rhymes and beats.

The kid’s show will be March 21st at Long Island City Queens Library.  Here’s a little excerpt from the class.  All-star NYC beatboxer/emcee/beatrhymers giving a little taste of what one can do.

That’s Baba Israel, Kid Lucky, D Cross and Kaila Mullady.  It’s like hip hop superheros coming together for the cause of songs about books.

It was a lovely evening of songs inspired by the coming-of-age story of one of NY’s most beloved performing/singing/writing talents.  It seems that Justin Bond’s childhood/teenage years inspired a lot of beauty from the songwriters that night.  I can think of a better outcome to adolescence.  If mine would only amount to as much…

You can hear the songs in the latest album uploaded to our BANDCAMP page - bushwickbookclub.bandcamp.com

Photos from the night are forthcoming!

Here’s another New York songwriter/performer who is joining the Bushwick Book Club presentation of Justin Bond’s TANGO tomorrow night!  Meeting Justin Vahala:

Hailing from the bright lights of Dallas, Justin Vahala is a Brooklyn-based musician and performance artist. Justin’s unicorn folk is a blend of country, Americana, and straight up Lilith Fair realness. For links to Justin’s music, upcoming shows, and innermost thoughts, check out his website:  www.justinvahala.com.

Intrepid Davi Cohen is joining us this Thursday with his new piece inspired by Justin Bond’s compelling coming of age story.  It’s Davi’s first time performing with Bushwick Book Club, and we’re thrilled!

Davi Cohen is a Bushwick-based actor, singer, dancer, writer, producer.  She’s performed in some large venues with Taylor Mac and the SITI Company, donned head-to-toe fetish wear as a mime/acrobat for the San Francisco Opera, and given birth to a live lobster by self-caesarean on a very tiny stage in Ditmas Park.  She also helps organize the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History and is a founder of the New York Abortion Access Fund.

This is her first time contributing to the literary-musical spectacle that is Bushwick Book Club.  She is a woman of many creative projects, but her musical focus is her chamber pop band, The Snow.  We’re excited to have her perform on Thursday!

A native of Portland, Oregon, Hilary Downes knows how to ‘just put a bird on it.’ Hilary successfully integrated front lawn dance performances, piano recitals and auditions for high school musicals with her long-time residence in New York City, and allowed her love of music to reign. To date, Hilary has co-written and recorded three albums with Brooklyn stalwarts, The Snow, and continues to perform with them live.  In addition to regular gigs in the New York area, The Snow have also performed in Los Angeles, Scandinavia and Russia. 

 C. Gibbs, Les Bandits and Bad Reputation are among the other artists Hilary collaborates with – sometimes as volunteers at the New York Methodist Hospital. Hilary is a writer, world traveler, multi-linguist, and a practitioner and teacher of both yoga and martial arts.

Another featured performer this Thursday!

Natti Vogel – Combining “the swagger of Jim Morrison with the honky-tonk piano of an old-timey saloon” (WeLiveInBeijing.com), 25-year-old “indie rock fusion virtuoso” (New York Press) Natti Vogel is not above “throwing your own overpriced cosmopolitan in your face from behind his piano” (the Onion). Possible side effects include re-evaluation of music and your self (“Natti Vogel is an artist who can transform you” – Diane Taha of Associated Content, “Natti Vogel and his band do a wild part-vaudeville, part-pop, part-classical act that made me think about what music does” -the Brothers Frank).