Band: The Future Farmers of AmericaHometown: Bovina, NY
The Sound: electric Americana rock
The short version: Why do I even need to bother struggling to type up some lame description* when you can just listen to 'em courtesy of the interweb thingie:
http://www.myspace.com/futurefarmersofamerica (listen to "Tearing My Heart Apart" first, then the other 3 tracks - they're all good.
* "...sounds like that band you saw when you visited your buddy out west and the night you got there you went to this local bar with sawdust on the floor, drank the coldest beer you've ever had in your life and the band played the exact type of music you needed to hear on that night..."
I'm not the biggest fan of the montage-style video, but the studio version of their song "California" that plays behind this one is good:
And here's another montage video with a studio version of "Tearing My Heart Apart."
The Long, Rambling Version That No One Really Wants to Read:
Every Friday after Thanksgiving local Albany Americana/cowpunk band Grainbelt plays a show at the textbook dive-bar The Garden Grill in Albany's gritty Delaware Ave/South End neighborhood. Now I like me a good dive bar, but when I really think about it, I like dive bars in theory more than in actuality. You see, the problem with dive bars is that they usually have a die-hard - and I mean fuckin' die-hard - group of regulars. Or as I like to call them, lower-class alcoholic losers. And it's surprisingly rare for a dive bar to have that good dive bar ambience. The main culptit is usually weird/outright bad lighting, usually in the form of some sort of way-too-fucking-bright flourescent light fixture incessantly grating upon my retina.
Anyway, this event leads to a modest influx of Grainbelt fans into the Garden Grill and the regulars don't really know how to digest such a thing. And the bartenders certainly could be more friendly, too (hey bartenders I've encountered at this place - fuck you! Giving me change for a 10 when I gave you a 20. That's the oldest trick in the book and an unimaginative and lame one at that...) So the band mentioned how a new song they had written was about a music festival in Bovina, NY. Having never heard of Bovina my brain jumped to a number of conclusions, which can be summed up as "a scarey, low rent music festival packed with drunk-as-shit hillbillys." When I looked it up on the monsterweb the next day I learned I was pretty far off base. From the pictures and stuff on its website (http://www.livestock.com/) it looks very cool. I like the concept of music festivals, but the average festival seems to have a "bigger is better" philosophy, which can certainly make for a great smattering of high-quality entertainment, but it can be an out-and-out pain in the ass for the attendee. So I'm drawn to these very small festivals since they're so logistically easy on the attendees. While at the festival's website I stumbled upon the Future Farmers of America, bought their CD*, been digging it quite a bit, and now I'm typing out a post about them.
* which just so happens to have cover art by Brooklyn artist Steve Keene, an artist I'm liked for years and whose art I have hanging in various places^ in my house.
^ OK, most of those places are the basement, since my wife kinda doesn't like his stuff at all. She just doesn't get it, man...
The album cover art
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