After a long week (9 or 10 days) on the road The Hobo Banned got back to Albany late this last Sunday night after a great show with our friends The Red Lions .

The whole thing started with Alpha team (Alex, Louis, Tim and Adam) heading out thursday night and blazing a trail to the awesome cabin we stayed in outside Athens. Bravo team met us there after 16 hours of straight driving at around 10am on saturday.

After that we packed in and played Athens Pop Fest , which was awesome. Our set was a bit lack luster but we made friends with BaakGwai who played right after us, and were pretty cool, definitely check them out. The best part of Athens Pop Fest for us though was definitely the Music Tapes. Elf Power was pretty good, but The Music Tapes were amazing, I could have just gone home after that set. Thanks to the power of the internets you can check out the whole set vai You Ain’t No Picasso , via The Flat Response.

After that we moved on to Charlotte where we got to play with the lovely and excellent Anna Bullard ( I even got to play Tuba (poorly) on one of her songs) and we started our tour habit of busking everywhere.

After that it was off to Chapel Hill where we played with Reid Johnson of Schooner . Eric (aka Pops) corralled some business people off the street and we got to play for a sizable crowd mixed of locals who came out to see Reid and out of towners there to get drunk and see lots of horns. We made good friends with the Cave’s bartender Tony as well who was an awesome guy and hopefully we will play with his band Salt to Bitters on our next pass through the Cave.

After that we had a couple days off so decided to get signed to merge records by busking in front of their HQ. The plan didn’t exactly but all in all it went pretty well. Check out merge’s account .

By then it was Thursday and we went to play at the Golden West Cafe in Baltimore where we made friends with Hop Along, Queen Ansleis , who was already one of our current favorite artists. Her real name is Francis (we think) and we ended up hanging out and she came and played percussion and sang with us at our show in west Philadelphia in the basement of a cool house some people call Chernobyl . The next day we went and hung out at her house and tried our hand at putting some Sgt Dunbar arrangements on Hop Along songs which was way more fun than we deserved.

After that we went and played at Piano’s in Manhattan and due to some booking snafus didn’t end up going on until about 2:30am but there was still a ton of people there which made the show really fun. On the drive up to Woodstock I repeatedly stuck my head out of the window to stay awake until we got to my parents house.

And that brings us around to our last show at the Colony Cafe. Now obviously I left out a lot of stuff here because it would probably take a week to describe everything that happened. For example, I missed the lady in Georgia who asked us for a ride and when we said no she asked for a dollar and when I gave her the dollar she asked for five dollars. I also missed the story about how Omar the wise transient of western Philadelphia ended up giving Eric a boogie board and the rest of us a couple of cushions.  and so on.

We all can’t wait to get on the road again but for now you can catch us this Saturday at Valentines with the Eureka Birds .

Tonight

Our good friends The Red Lions will be opening up for the Avett Brothers tonight at Revolution Hall in Troy. The show starts at 8pm and will set you back 18$ if you don’t have a presale ticket but this is going to be an excellent show and worth the money. The Avett Brothers were in town last Fall and they really know how to put on a show.

Friday (July 4th)

After doing some research it appears that Blotto, arguably Albany’s most famous band of all time is playing (a reunion?) at the fireworks at empire plaza. I haven’t heard much else about that but I may well go see if I can’t check that out.  They are billed as going on at 5:45pm.

Also tomorrow night you can find Palatypus with Red Haired Strangers and Happy Balky and the Good Liven at the Lark Tavern at 10pm once you are done watching all the fireworks.

Saturday July 5th

Catch one of our favorite local bands, Beware! the Other Head of Science, with the Shoe gazing Severe Severe and the Problem with Dragons, who according to myspace is made up entirely of storm troopers. 8pm 5$.

Lastly while we are talking about local shows, All Over Albany posted a couple of great videos from the Sgt Dunbar & the Hobo Banned show last weekend at the Grand Street Arts Center. Go check them out (both the blog and the videos).

Songs for the Sake of CDFI

The Capital District Federation of Ideas is a wonderful little space and group of people headquartered in a once abandoned little store front at 383.5 Madison Avenue. Recently in an effort to help CDFI raise money to continue being awesome, their good friend Harith from The Rev Records put on and recorded (with the help of Bryann Hamill) an excellent show of twelve local bands. Then he released record and named it after something scribbled on one of the tables at Point 5, Brontosaurus : Human (thats pronounced Brontosaurus is to Human , which if you were wondering is 8:1, I measured).

Mp3s and Videos after the jump.

After a redesign and relocation the Three B3nson Music blog is back in a functioning state. You will now be able to find daily updates about all things music related that we like. Be sure to reset your RSS feed or bookmarks to our new location.

There is a lot going on musically in Albany these days. Actually, there probably has been for a while, but I worked a lot of stupid jobs and was kind of missing out on it. Mercifully, I don’t work for any stupid jobs anymore, so I can go see lots of people play lots of instruments and it’s a good time.

About two weeks ago, I went to a free show at the Muddy Cup. Some of the bands that played are well known and good so I won’t waste space going into it here. However, one band definitely worth mentioning that I hadn’t seen before that night is The Luxury Flats from Hudson, NY. They have a mellow-ish indie rock feel and they sounded great live. I really liked the vocals a lot, this band is very listenable. Also, some of them had the sweetest facial hair I have seen in a while (but that really has nothing to do with anything).

So, why am I going to remember February 15th? Two reasons: 1) I rode my bicycle into a moving vehicle (don’t worry, the injuries were negligible) and 2) I saw Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over The Sea” covered in it’s entirety with an exuberance that I like to think Jeff Magnum would have approved of.

Ok, so the reason I hit a moving car on my bike was a mix of being cut off, riding much too fast in slush, and the brakes not working properly. After hitting the car and exchanging a mixture of “wow I’m really surprised but ok!” gestures with the people in the vehicle, I hopped back on my bike and rode to Valentines. There was no way I was going to miss this.