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July 12thAlly Venable
July 15thFlor de Toloache
July 16thFlor de Toloache
July 17thAndrea Magee's She Rises
July 18thOscar Butler
July 23rdCelloquacious and Eli del Puerto
July 24thInnastate
July 26thCelloquacious & Eli del Puerto
July 27thGreen Tara Puja
July 29thArkansauce
August 1stMark Hummel
August 2ndMark Hummel
August 3rdLuke Bulla
August 7thLuke Bulla
August 9th7Horse
August 9thRaul Midón
August 13thRaul Midón
August 14thLara Ruggles
August 20thLara Ruggles
August 21stThe WesternHers
August 23rdLevi Platero | Chris Dracup :Funk of the West
August 23rdThievery Corporation
September 3rdDevon Allman's Blues Summit
September 9thTab Benoit
September 9thTab Benoit
September 10thCoco Montoya
September 19thCoco Montoya
September 20thAlasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas
September 24thAlasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas
September 25thJ2B2
September 26thJohn Moreland
September 26thLasotras
September 27thSlim Cessna + Maria de Cessna
October 4thShonen Knife
October 11th"Stop Making Sense" Screening
October 12th"Stop Making Sense" Screening
October 13thHayden Pedigo
October 22ndKurbasy
November 8thKurbasy
November 9thThe Bébé La La 15-Year Anniversary Concert & Celebration
November 15thLuca Stricagnoli
November 21stRyanhood
November 29thRyanhood
November 30thSadness, Madness, & Mayhem III
January 24thMapache
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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.