Born in Dreieich, just outside of Frankfurt Germany, guitarist Michael Jost (pronounced ‘yoast’), found his way to the bohemian Venice Beach boardwalk, in Los Angeles California, where he now lives and makes music.
Owing to Michael’s unique European heritage, his rigorous classical training, and his 21st Century American experience, you can hear something very different in his passionate, Spanish-style guitar. Michael’s travel companion is Miss Lucy, a Flamenca guitar built by Tomas Delgado of Candelas Guitars. She has a strong character, with a warm and beautiful sound.
Michael has a unique sound. His music is a journey in time and space fueled by his passion for music and his instrument. His influences are very multicoloured and involve different styles, continents and time periods from Paco De Lucia and Stravinsky to Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.
No two of Michael’s live performances are ever the same, drawing from his recent albums, Zeitlos and California Burning, as well as unreleased songs from his upcoming album, Concierto.
Zeitlos is a timeless and unique blend of acoustic, classical and flamenco styles, entwined with the sounds and soul of Venice, California. His earlier album, California Burning, is a psychedelic fusion of electric and acoustic guitar.
Suzy Williams, deemed by LA Weekly as “LA’s Diva Deluxe”, has played venues from Carnegie Hall to the Canary Islands with Van Dyke Parks, Buster Poindexter, Marc Shaiman, Nicholas Ray, and the Pilobolus dance troupe, among others.
Bette Midler, Horace Silver, Roosevelt Sykes, Ann Magnuson, Eubie Blake, Odetta, and Hadda Brooks have praised her passionate singing and vibrant energy. Her original songs will leave you laughing, sobbing, or both.
Let’s Pull Together and Stand Apart by Suzy Williams and Brad Kay
Let’s pull together and stand apart
Let’s sanitize our own shopping cart
Let’s do our huggin’ just from the heart
Let’s pull together and stand – – – – Apart.
We’ve gotta flatten this doggone curve
Six feet of distance takes some reserve
Call up your buddy, now THAT will serve –
We’ve gotta flatten the dog – – – – gone curve.
[spoken] Virtual virtue … is the
order of the [sung] DAY…
Let’s do our face time here on face-book –
Instagram, Marco Polo, Skype – OK?
[Brad:] Okay!
[Suzy:] OKAAAYYYY??
[Brad:] OHHH – KAAYYY!!
[Suzy]: Show solidarity to Hospital Staff,
Knockin’ themselves out on our behalf – THEN
When this is over, we’ll live to laugh!
Let’s pull together and stand —
Then we’ll resume what we planned –
THAT will be so frickin’ GRAND! [triplets]
Let’s pull together and STAND – – – Apart!
It’s no secret that great art comes from the margins. From those who are either pushed to create from inner forces, or who create to show they deserve to be recognized. Los Angeles based street singer, guitarist, and roots music revolutionary Sunny War has always been an outsider, always felt the drive to define her place in the world through music and songwriting.
As a young black girl growing up in Nashville, she searched for her own roots, looking first to the blues she heard from her mother’s boyfriend, and learning from a local guitarist. Moving to Los Angeles in her teens, she searched for herself in the LA punk scene, playing house shows with FIDLAR, and shoplifting DVDs from big box stores to trade at Amoeba Records for 80s punk albums. But here too she found herself on the outside, working to bridge her foundation in country blues and American roots guitar traditions with the punk scene she called home. She first made her name with this work, bringing a wickedly virtuosic touch on the fingerstyle guitar that sprang from her own self-discoveries on the instrument. But her restless spirit, a byproduct of growing up semi-nomadic with a single mother, led her to Venice Beach, California, where she’s been grinding the pavement for some years now, making a name for her prodigious guitar work and incisive songwriting, which touches on everything from police violence to alcoholism to love found and lost.
Her new album, With The Sun, out February 2, 2018 on Hen House Studios, is the culmination of years of burning curiosity as an artist, the result of many wandered paths to find some new way to speak her heart. For the first time, she’s writing songs first and crafting the guitar work second, focusing on her own poetry and trying to tell her own story. She’s an outsider artist in the truest sense, living on the margins of the establishment and fueled only by her own creative genius.
To help achieve With the Sun’s larger vision, Sunny War turned to the ragtag group of Venice Beach musicians she’s fallen in with, mainly members of psych folk band Insects vs Robot, including multi-instrumentalist Micah Nelson, fiddler Nikita Sorokin, and guitarist Milo Gonzalez. Produced by Harlan Steinberger at Hen House Studios in Venice Beach, which also doubled as the record label, the new album pushes and pulls between cleverly arranged orchestration and the DIY aesthetic that remains as Sunny’s throwback to her punk roots. For an artist with so many different influences, the album is remarkably cohesive, choosing to focus on Sunny’s songwriting and intricate guitar work. As an artist, Sunny borrows ideas and patterns at will from across the canon of American music. Her influences range from Elliott Smith, Black Flag, Joan Armatrading, and Tracy Chapman, to Robert Johnson (“To Love You” is her homage to Johnson’s “They’re Red Hot”), Elmore James, and Bessie Smith. “I feel like I am a blues guitarist, but I don’t think I’m a blues artist,” Sunny explains. “I only use the scales and techniques that I know and the only time I was trained in music was on blues guitar. I really love Elizabeth Cotton and Mississippi John Hurt. I still like to listen to them to feel that there’s nothing wrong with me playing the way I play.”
“…her right thumb plunks the bass part while her forefinger upstrokes notes and chords, leaving the other three fingers unused. A banjo technique, it’s also used by acoustic blues guitarists. Her fingers are long and strong – Robert Johnson hands – in jarring contrast to the waif they’re attached to. The walking bass line sounds like a hammer striking piano keys in perfect meter, while the fills are dynamic flurries – like cluster bombs. I haven’t heard a young guitarist this dexterous and ass-kicking in eons.”
– Michael Simmons, L.A Weekly
