Jammin’ For The Animals II, 7/30-31 @ Blue Falls Grove

The Reading festival season is alive and kicking again with the second annual Jammin’ For The Animals Festival, an event benefiting the Humane Society of Berks County in memory of festival organizer’s brother, Bobby Jones, being held at Blue Falls Grove in Ontelaunee Township.

The second year also brings the addition of a second night of live music, with the festivities to begin on Friday evening (7/30) with two very solid bands, and did we mention, a Grammy Award wnner to fill in the gaps (and from what the rumor is, to sit in with BOTH bands to make the first evening, an epic night of improvisational jams and dueling solos).

The camping music & arts festival returns to Blue Falls Grove, a family fun picnic & camping site for over 26 years, complete with an Olympic size swimming pool (additional discounted cost), fishing (license required), over one mile of creek front, volleyball, basketball, hiking, and horseshoes.  It is adjacent to 3,000 acres of watershed and a 1,000 acre lake for fishing and it has become famous recently as the site of the “birthday party episode” of  the “John & Kate Plus 8” reality television series.

Gates will open at 5pm on Friday, July 30th with Grateful Dead tribute band, the Good Lovin’ Jamband kicking off the music at 6:30pm.  Grammy-winning guitarist David Cullen, a Berks County native, will be providing the “tweener” set before premier Pennsylvania bluegrass band Cabinet hits the stage to headline the first evening at 8:30pm.  There will also be an acoustic campfire jam with the members of Cabinet immediately following their set on the main stage.

Gates will re-open at noon on Saturday, July 31st with events for children and adults of all ages.  Scheduled events are juggling & hula hooping workshops, tie-dying & pottery workshops, piercing & tattooing seminars, glassblowing, fire performances, live painting in the art village, disc golf, Chinese auction, raffles, as well as dozens of kids activities in their own pavilion.  This is all happening while non-stop premier live music is going on from 1pm until 10:30pm with artists including Mike Miz, Flux Capacitor, Fellswoop, George Crow & Cody Chelius, Dakini, Estaban & Friends, and headlining the event is breakout gospel, funk, organic groove jamband, Natural Breakdown.

In only its second year, the Jammin’ For The Animals festival is leading the way in captivating the small, hassle-free festival scene with the caliber of music one would normally see at a larger festival.  Combine the top notch music with workshops, kids events, raffles, and a variety of vendors of all kinds with proceeds benefitting a great cause in the Humane Society of Berks County, and what you get is a great festival with a great vibe – something +VIBES is proud to be a part of.   

PlusVibes Productions will be providing the light show for the festival, as well as greeting you at the front gate and patrolling the grounds as the VIBES PATROL.  Our good friends at Scarlet Sound will be providing the crisp sound.

This event is an ALL-AGES, rain or shine, family-friendly (please be kind to the people AND the environment) event.    Friendly pets are also welcomed (leashed only).

A limited number of advance tickets are available for $30 for the weekend through CHRIS at PlusVibes Productions, at the Brass Lantern, and at the additional ticket outlets listed on the MySpaceand Facebook pages.  

Tickets will be available at the gate for $40.   NO DAY PASSES are available.  We highly recommend you take advantage of the discount and guarantee your ticket (we’re expecting a big crowd) by purchasing your ticket now.

Children under 10 are admitted free with adult.  Camping is available for an additional $5 per person (to be paid at front gate).

For more information or any additional quesitons, email info@plusvibes.com.

WE HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE.    BRING A FRIEND!

Thirsty 3rd Bluegrass Thursdays @ The Brass

PlusVibes Productions is proud to be hosting a series of monthly bluegrass shows at the Brass Lantern every third Thursday each month, with local bluegrass favorites, the Manatawny Creek Ramblers. 

The series will run through the fall, occurring every third Thursday of each month, and is being billed “Thirsty 3rd Bluegrass Thursdays with MCR” in conjunction with the best beer special around - $1.25 Miller Light drafts.

Members of MCR include Daniel Bower (Frog Holler, Society Beat) on guitar and vocals, a recent addition and sometimes called the “hardest working man in [Berks County] showbiz” is Kris Kehr (Kris Kehr & the Stone Poets, The Youngers, formerly of The Recipe) on mandolin and vocals, Michael Beaky on banjo, and Josh Sceurman (Frog Holler) on bass.  They bring traditional bluegrass medleys and intricate originals from the “hills” of Oley, Pennsylvania (also known as “Pennsyl-tucky”).

 
They recently (June) released their seven song EP “Meet Me by the Moonlight” and have been supporting their debut EP vigorously with frequent showcases at the West Reading Arts on the Avenue series and stops at the Steel City Coffee House (Phoenixville), the Sterling Stage String Fling (Sterling, NY),  the extremely eclectic Stir Fried Festival (Snipes Farm), and two Sunday summer nights at Union Jack’s (Manatawny), with the first on Sunday, July 19th at 6pm.

The Ramblers’ biggest accomplishment  in 2009, thus far, was receiving 2nd place in the highly acclaimed Delfest Music Festival’s Bluegrass band contest.  Despite the deluge of rain that trounced the grounds, they emerged and found themselves playing better than ever and, from what Kris has said, they lost to “a truly professional contestant, a national touring band”.  More recently, they have announced their addition to the Jerry Fest (Kempton), August 7th & 8th, a posthumous celebration of the life of Grateful Dead leader, Jerry Garcia.

The Brass Lantern and PlusVibes Productions would like to invite everyone for a foot-stomping, good old time with the established Manatawny Creek Ramblers, starting THIS Thursday at 9:30pm, and continuing every third Thursday of each month.

Here’s all the information:

Thirsty 3rd Bluegrass Thursdays

with the

Manatawny Creek Ramblers @ The Brass Lantern

every third Thursday each month

9:30pm – 1am
21+ only

$4 @ the door

The Brass Lantern offers:
 - $1.25 Miller Light drafts
 - $3 Jager, Rumplemintz, Blackhaus, Kettle, Stoli & other shots
 - Wings, Burgers, Nachos, Patty Melts, Salads, & more
 - Kitchen open until 9:45pm!
 - Friendly service & great overall vibe

Hope to see you there.

1st Annual Jammin For The Animals Festival in July

PlusVibes Productions is proud to be a sponsor of the 1st Annual Jammin’ For The Animals on Saturday, July 25th at Blue Falls Grove, near Reading, Pennsylvania.  

The festival’s proceeds will be donated to the Humane Society of Berks County, in memory of festival organizer, Todd Jones’s deceased brother, Bobby, who was an avid supporter of both the HSoBC and the Berks Animal Rescue League, as well as a dedicated fan of live music.

The festival features live music from 1pm until 10:30pm with late-night jam sessions slated by the fire pit.  Overnight camping is encouraged and the family-friendly event will have many activities at your disposal including hula hooping workshops, juggling workshops, hiking, swimming (at a small additional cost), and assorted food & arts vendors throughout the grounds.

Bands include Dakini, The Youngers, Mark Furman Band, Kris Kehr & the Stone Poets, the Pluckin’ Grassholes, and more.

PlusVibes Production’s part in this festival is providing security, front gate meet & greet, a light show for the headlining act (Dakini), and most importantly, spreading the word throughout the live music scene in an effort to get some music and animal lovers to come out and support a worthy cause.  It is the first benefit event of many, we hope, that PlusVibes will be involved in.

For more information and to purchase tickets, please see the Jammin’ For The Animals MySpace

We hope to see all of you there! 

Cabinet with Kris Kehr on 4/4 — Derek Trucks Afterpary –

Often considered the Eric Clapton of the millennium, Grammy Award-nominated guitarist Derek Trucks is used to being onstage in front of tens-of-thousands of concert-goers.  He first attracted the attention of the music industry as a nine-year old child prodigy on the guitar, and by age 12 was sitting in with several high profile artists, such as Buddy Guy, touring with The Allman Brothers Band for a decade, before finally becoming an official band member in 1999.   He continues to play with both The Allman Brothers Band and as bandleader of the The Derek Trucks Band, which he founded at age 15.

download Throttle

The Derek Trucks Band will be appearing as part of the 19th Annual Berks Jazzfest on Saturday, April 4th at the Reading Crowne Ballroom at 10:30pm.

PlusVibes Productions is proud to present, in keeping with the theme of high-quality guitar playing and outstanding singer/songwriting,  the combination of Wilkes-Barre’s bluegrass sextet Cabinet A Job to Kill For movie download , and Reading’s own guitar phenom and singer/songwriter Kris Kehr

to the Brass Lantern, as the official Derek Trucks After Party.

Cabinet is no newcomer to the Reading area.  They have had multiple successful shows at the Brass Lantern in the past, with turnout almost doubling each time.  This time should be no different.   There are some fantastic soundboard recordings of both Cabinet and Kris Kehr at the Brass Lantern on the Live Music Archives

Imaginary Heroes movie download

, hosted by www.archive.org.

It will be a late start this evening at the Brass Lantern, in order to accomodate all those who will be attending the DTB show.  We want to make sure they music flows smoothly right after the DTB set(s) ends.  Festivities will be kicking off at 10:30pm with Kris Kehr performing a special solo acoustic set.  Cabinet should be hitting the stage by midnight to rock the night away until 2am.  Its a very short commute from the Reading Crowne Ballroom to the Brass Lantern.  Click here for driving directions.

Here’s all the information:

• My One and Only buy

Derek Trucks After Party

  with Cabinet and special guest Kris Kehr @ The Brass Lantern The General’s Daughter

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior full

End of the Line video

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

10:30pm showtime
21+ only
NO SMOKING show

$8 at the door ($5 with DTB ticket stub)

Have more questions?  Contact info@plusvibes.com

Martyrs dvdrip

Boris Garcia w/ Tim Carbone (of Railroad Earth) @ the Silo

Boris Garcia with Tim Carbone (of RRE) @ The Silo Nightclub

• Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation rip

with special guest Kris Kehr & the Stone Poets The Three Lives of Thomasina the movie

Saturday, March 14th, 2009
Doors at 8pm
21 and over only
NON-SMOKING show

$15 online pre-sale or $19 at the door

There is a Quality Inn located on the premises and additional hotels located less than a mile from the venue. Our recommendation is the Holiday Inn.

Boris Garcia

• Ravenous video

Boris Garcia isn’t a person but a band, an ensemble that starts with what is called jamgrass – “We’re all folkies at heart,” remarked one band member – but also fuses a dozen strands of American music into a rich, ever-evolving whole. Bluegrass, jazz, rock, folk, Celtic, soul, blues – you can hear them all. It is a band that didn’t even start out to be a band, merely a recording project. But once five old acquaintances started making music together, the music created its own momentum; they played for a friend’s party, and realized they were a band, and haven’t stopped since.

Tim Carbone of Railroad Earth

The Chronicles of Riddick video

Simply because your mother is a trombone player will not insure that you reach any success in the business of being a fine musician. It may not influence an interest in music whatsoever. It did however, in the case of Tim Carbone, violinist, vocalist, guitarist and a sought after producer in the metropolitan New York City music scene. Somewhere between the notes on that trombone and the voice of Ed Sullivan announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles,” an inspiration harmonized in the mind of a now prolific talent. Tim Carbone’s history was set to motion.

Kris Kehr & The Stone Poets
Kris Kehr plays his unique blend of folk, bluegrass, and alt-country. “When I was 11 I heard the Beatles on the radio and couldn’t believe the music. I’ve been way into music and art ever since I was a kid,” Kehr says. He also counts Neil Young, Warren Zevon and Graham Parsons among his favorites. How would describe their sound? “It’s sort of a mix of bluegrass and soul,” Kehr says.

Boris Garcia performs “Holiday” at Yarmony Grass 2008 with Tim Carbone of Railroad Earth and Aaron and Zac of Hot Buttered Rum. The Last Mimzy rip

Vertigo ipod

The Bridges of Madison County

Kicking the Dog download

End of an Era: The Brass Lantern To Change Ownership

Purchased by John and Ginger Ortiz in 1999, the Brass Lantern, located in the Northeast section of Reading, Pennsylvania, started off as your typical neighborhood bar and restaurant, with a standard American-style menu but focusing mainly on the [at that time] growing fascination with microbrews, which is simply another term for handcrafted beers produced in limited amounts (which varies by region).

The Brass Lantern featured seven different beers on draft and a massive bottled beer selection from microbreweries around the world.  If you wanted a “good” beer in town, you came to Northeast Reading.

After building a successful clientele in a short amount of time, the Brass Lantern became a pioneer in the live original music scene in the Berks County area.  They purchased an entire sound system, built a stage, and began showcasing the best musical talent in the area, such as Frog Holler, The Worms, The Youngers, Hexbelt, and Dakini.  All these bands built a large part of their fan base at the Brass Lantern over the years.

With talent like those bands listed above, the Brass Lantern quickly fit the bill as “Berks County’s BEST Original Live Music” and they established themselves as THE venue to play in the area.  This, in turn, brought the Brass Lantern to the attention of touring bands nation-wide, and they began to receive press kits and demos from bands around the country (so many that they filled an entire coat closet full of demo CDs!).

Acts such as Brothers Past, Townhall, Fat Mama, RAQ, The Recipe, and Lotus all had multiple successful shows at the Brass Lantern in the early part of the millenium before becoming headlining national touring bands.

By 2003 the Brass Lantern had caught the attention of NATIONAL touring acts and hosted maximum capacity shows with Michael Glabicki (of multi-platinum record selling band, Rusted Root) and Melvin Seals & JGB.

It was shortly after these shows when +VIBES founder, Chris Kratz came on staff at the Brass Lantern as a bartender and, by the end of that year, took over the booking responsibilities from the co-owner, John, who had booked all the phenomenal shows up until then (those were some big shoes to fill).

From there, it was full steam ahead for live music at the Brass Lantern, with shows two, three, four, and sometimes fives days a week for several years. It showcased THE premier artists (of ALL genres) in the jamband circuit, including Quagmire Swim Team, Alchemy, Jazzam, Cabinet, Living Earth, Future Rock, Jah Works, Pnuma Trio, BioDiesel, Boris Garcia, Kris Kehr & Julie Edlow, Juggling Suns, Family Groove Company, Natural Breakdown, U-Melt, Mike Miz, Codename, Bodega, Ronnie Penque (of New Riders of the Purple Sage), Jeff Bujak, David Cullen (Grammy winner), Marco Benevento, and many more.  It is roughly estimated that, through the years, the Brass Lantern has hosted over 1500 shows with over 200 bands with over 600 individual musicians.

Those numbers demand respect, especially in the fact that 90 per cent of those bands performed their own original material and not just a night full of cover songs (with the exception of the Grateful Dead and “reggae nights”), so every night was its own unique show.

It was undoubtedly evident that the Brass Lantern had established itself as a landmark for live original music in Reading, Pennsylvania.

But while the music flourished over the years, Father Time had taken his toll and danced his heavy boots all over the Brass Lantern property, leaving a trail of evidence – a leaky roof, a pothole-ridden parking lot, a shattered front marquee, broken tables, chairs, & bar stools, broken beer coolers, and many other little tedious broken things throughout the  building. 

Showing the utmost respect to what it had become in the music scene yet having its demeanor not going un-noticed, people have even called it the “Brokedown” Lantern, in reference to a Grateful Dead classic.

So these extra repair bills and responsibilities, in addition to a city with a rising crime rate, as well as a declining national economy (which hurts the overall patronage to the venue) and that equals a financial liability for the current owner, who has a family including a newborn to worry about, and also a thriving interior & exterior renovation business.

Understandably, the business was put on the market in 2009, and it is now official – the Brass Lantern has been SOLD!  The final day of the current ownership is tentatively Thursday, April 29th, 2010.

Although deeply saddened by the situation, PlusVibes Productions keeps its head high in knowing that it has provided the best hospitality around to all the artists, the crews, the patrons, and our beloved Brass Lantern “family” of regular customers, and also, that it has been such a positive experience for everyone involved – the memories, the lasting friendships made, the laughs, the tears, the smiles, and most of all, the MUSIC! 

It will NEVER be forgotten.

After speaking with the NEW owner, he has stated that he wants to give the Brass Lantern a much needed makeover and improve the general security inside and outside the venue, but keep the overall vibe the same.  Upon the urging of his wife, who ironically worked in the building when it was a seafood restaurant, he plans to simply name it, the ‘New’ Brass Lantern.

We are very anxious to see what the future will bring for the landmark Berks County venue and hope that +VIBES will be able to continue to provide the same quality live music to our beloved community of music lovers at the Brass Lantern.

Stay tuned for information on that as the changeover approaches.

In the meantime, +VIBES has put together a proper lineup of music from now until April 30th, with some of the artists that have been our true friends throughout the years.

Please be sure to catch one of your favorite acts before the changeover, and say goodbye to the current owner.  In honor of the years past, we are encouraging patrons to write down on a small piece of paper, a positive experience or good story about the Brass Lantern and attach it to our band wall.

Here’s the final lineup of the ‘old’ Brass Lantern:

3 on the Tree
9pm, Thursday 4/8

Three’s Company feat. DJ Gregg Nyce, DJ Evolution, & VJCA
10pm, Friday 4/9

I Yahn I Arkestra
10pm, Saturday 4/10

Cloud Party
9pm, Thursday 4/15

Good Lovin’ Jamband
10pm, Friday 4/16

DJ Alpha Zulu vs. DJ Spacecase
9pm, Saturday 4/17

Bodega
10pm, Thursday 4/22

Frog Holler
10pm, Friday 4/23

Quagmire Swim Team with Ben & Josh (of Alchemy)
9pm, Saturday 4/24

FINAL SHOW OF THE OLD BRASS LANTERN
Jah Works
9pm, Thursday 4/29
Kitchen CLOSED this evening!

For all show information, go to http://www.thebrasslanternlive.com/.

And KEEP POSTED to http://www.plusvibes.com/ for information on FUTURE shows at the Silo Upstairs Lounge, Trooper Thorn’s, possibly the New Brass Lantern and other venues near you. 

And we are ALSO sponsoring four festivals again this summer.  More information on that coming soon.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT OF LIVE MUSIC & ARTS!