Founded in 2009, LAUNCH is an annual celebration of music, art, fashion, design and architecture that will take place from July 23-28 at multiple venues through midtown and downtown Sacramento. The LAUNCH event at Bows presented by Concerts4Charity and The Capitol Indie Collective and features short films scored by local bands!
This special event will combine film and music in a way that you’ve never seen before! (probably). Local bands DD Walker, Gentleman Surfer and Ross Hammond will be performing their unique scores to iconic silent films. The films will be The House of Usher, The Joy of Life, The Tantalizing Fly, Neighbors and one WILD CARD surprise film.
The Capitol Indie Collective, an organization committed to supporting local artists, curated this event and chose each film with the help of renowned Film Art Historian Cliff Weimer of InTheBalcony.com. “They were chosen for content that was interesting and challenging for a live band to score. We wanted to push the musicians a bit and give the crowd some great visuals,” said CJ of The Capitol Indie Collective. “The movies have scenes in them that rival the best filmmaking capabilities of TODAY-and they were made with out ‘special FX’.”
We’ll have to wait until the 24th to see what sort of music the local bands have come up with, but they were each asked to put their unique “fingerprint” on the films. Here’s some info about each band:
Drew Walker is behind DD Walker, which stands for Doofy Doo Walker (Doofy Doo is one of Drew’s bands). Drew has also been played with Black Holes, What? and Gentleman Surfer. Drew is known for his mostly improvised sets. “My main goal is to turn my stage-time into play-time, and to really enjoy it,” he said. “Sometimes I like to show up to a show with nothing planned, bring just my looper and some toys and see what I can make of it. This philosophy can have mixed results of course, and I’ve probobly weirded-out a fair share of people, but in the end I can feel good knowing I gave the audience something they could never have expected, and when someone likes it and pays attention they can have a their very own truly unique experience.”
Gentleman Surfer is the project of local drummer Jon Bafus. They should be perfect for this event because Bafus described his musical process as “like writing soundtracks to the movies in my mind.” The first Gentleman Surfer album came out last fall and since then the band has played mutliple shows in town, at Bows and elsewhere. Terroreyes described Gentleman Surfer as sounding like “you may just be winning some sort of mid 90′s RPG Nintendo game…in a good way.”
Ross Hammond is a well known jazz musician in Sacramento. He’s involved in “too many projects to count”, but some of his bands are the Ross Hammond Quartet, Electropoetic Coffee, Lovely Builders, and V Neck. He also hosts “Nebraska Mondays”, a weekly improvised music series, at Luna’s Cafe. Hammond was named Best Jazz Musician by the Sacramento News and Review in 2009, 2008 and 1999.
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Show starts at 7PM.
Tickets are $6 for early bird admission, $8 for general admission and $10 the day of the show. Buy tickets here.
RSVP to the Facebook event here.
