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October 23rdMariachi Azteca de Santa Fe
October 26thKassa Overall
October 26thKassa Overall and The Boomroots Collective
October 27thOUTREACH - Kassa Overall
October 28thCimafunk
October 30thCoco Montoya
November 2ndArkansauce
November 7thInnastate
November 9thThe Real Matt Jones
November 14thLOL Comedy Fundraiser
November 14thZoë Keating
November 15thKristina Jacobsen
November 17thThokozani Mhlambi
November 19thTopHouse
November 21stHolly Near with Jan Martinelli
November 23rdHolly Near with Jan Martinelli
November 24thCheryl Wheeler with Kenny White
December 4thIris DeMent
December 5thCheryl Wheeler with Kenny White
December 5thClay Street Unit
December 6thLaurianne Fiorentino & Michael Kott
December 11thLaurianne Fiorentino & Michael Kott
December 11thMem Shannon
December 18thKalos
January 15thKalos
January 16thJesse Cook
February 2ndJesse Cook
February 3rdThe Ocean Blue
February 21stAlbert Castiglia
February 25thAlbert Castiglia
February 26thSadness, Madness, & Mayhem
March 1stAltan
March 12thLúnasa
March 18thK.Flay
March 25thYagody
March 29thYagody
March 30thMapache
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Tickets cost $18 in advance, $23 day of show (plus a $2 service charge). They are also available by phone through Hold My Ticket at 505-886-1251.
In the past, Mapache recording sessions have been pretty laid-back affairs, with friends coming and going, the sessions starting and stopping at the band's discretion—as relaxed a process as the immaculately sunny vibes that their four albums would suggest. But on their dynamic and ambitious fifth album of cosmic-folk, Swinging Stars, Sam Blasucci and Clay Finch decided to take a trip and hunker down somewhere particularly special.
"It's a pretty impactful place," Finch says of the Panoramic House, the artist retreat where Swinging Stars was recorded. "It's kind of dramatic. It's a castle-y building on a hill, way up overlooking the Bay."
Located in Stinson Beach in Marin County, California, the Panoramic House has recently hosted acts like My Morning Jacket, the War on Drugs, and Cate Le Bon, and was the ideal combination of scenic beauty and self-imposed confinement to allow Mapache to settle in for their most cohesive album yet. "That environment yields itself to a higher level of focus because everybody's together for a week," says Finch, explaining that the band stayed there during the process, sharing every bit of their time and energy on a shared vision. "We were all captive. No one could escape," he laughs.
Swinging Stars, an album of calm, second-nature swagger, is the natural result of a band that's existed in one form or another for its founders' entire adult lives. Finch and Blasucci first met as students at La Cañada High School, just north of Los Angeles, where they both had a guitar class: "There wasn't much supervision or anything," remembers Blasucci. "It was really nice. And we got to just play guitars together."
The two stayed friends through their college years—Finch went to Chico State and Blasucci spent two years as a missionary in Mexico—and eventually they ended up back in L.A., spending their days playing guitar together once again, just like old times. Working with producer/engineer Dan Horne (Cass McCombs, Allah-Lahs), they recorded four albums —2017's Mapache, 2020's From Liberty Street, 2021's 3, and 2022's Roscoe's Dream. Often trading solos, and occasionally switching from English to Spanish, Finch and Blasucci are perfectly in sync together.
Mapache is so easygoing that their vibe belies their prolificness at times. Swinging Stars is their fourth album in as many years, and they show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.