Arts & Entertainment
Hope for Agoldensummer & Mike Killeen - Live at Eddie's Attic!
Doors open at 6:30 pm. Tickets will be $12 at the door.
HOPE FOR AGOLDENSUMMER is a family band, living and working in the fine town of Athens, GA. A junkyard-orchestra. An anarchist-soul-choir. For nearly a decade, this band has traveled the USA creating rusty, gutter angel melodies with a slide guitar, banjo, jangly percussion, glockenspiel, singing saw, piano and a few old coke bottles. The defining sound of the band lies in the frighteningly beautiful sibling harmonies of sisters, Claire and Page Campbell.
"The music was exotic, ethereal, fragile - full of childlike wonderment. There were spare arrangements with singing saw, xylophone, clarinet, acoustic guitar, strange percussion, so much reverb that it seemed to be playing in another dimension, and, at its center, one of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous female voices I’d ever heard. The singer’s voice was booming and haunted, and the lyrics were full of mourning, yet also managed to be hopeful and at times even silly. This was summer music about winter themes... I began to hear it in my dreams. It colored the way I looked at everything around me." - Filmmaker Magazine
“Claire and Page Campbell sing about God and heartbreak like they’re drunk on their own glorious harmonies and have all the time in the world.” - Philadelphia City Paper
In late 2009, Hope released the live album: "Hours in the Attic"", a compilation of songs recorded with several different audiences. They've spent the last 2 years in the studio completing their 4th full-length album, “Life Inside The Body” (to be released in Spring 2012 on Mazarine Records). Their most recent studio album, “Ariadne Thread”, was recorded over a span of 2 years in Georgia and North Carolina. It was released in December 2007.
The band takes every effort to ensure that their merchandise meets the highest ethical standards. All albums are packaged entirely in PCW recycled paper and printed by a worker-owned press in Oregon, USA or by a local screenprinter. They also make and sell old fashioned lye soap and a myriad of folk remedies.
"This is music that’s definitively southern, definitely rural, and reminiscent of a folk-art angel singing her heart out... the territory tread by Hope For Agoldensummer is equal parts Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor with weaponry provided by Nick Cave-the sort of songs that hold knives behind their backs, lingering in sweetness just long enough to unveil the darkness lingering ‘neath..." - Resonator Magazine
"The instrumentation is spare and unusual - banjo, bottles, accordion, cello, desk bell, acoustic guitar, slide whistle, clarinet, vibraphone, saw, drums and assorted doodads and noisemakers. The harmonies - sung by Claire and her sister, Page - are tight and siren-like. The sound that the band creates is as open and spooky as the sky on a starless night. It is the stuff of moonshine dreams and junkyard symphonies. If Tom Waits were a woman, stoned on peyote, lost in the deep woods and caught in the same scenario as The Blair Witch Project, this is the music that would play. This is dreamy music, hauntingly beautiful, evocatively barren, driven by poetic narratives that flit between story-song and stimulating imagery. It is transfixing and engaging, slow and gentle. Time stands still." – Relish
"The ethereal, eloquent songs of Hope For Agoldensummer are as promising and wonderful as the band’s moniker. Built around majestic melodies and strong storytelling, the songs of these musicians make the perfect soundtrack to a golden summer. The hip folk-rock quintet’s latest EP was recorded in friends’ backyards and basements in and around Athens and Atlanta—and, for better not worse, that’s exactly what it sounds like: lush, intoxicating, and heart-rending. Above the excellent musicianship lies one of the most powerful, beautiful voices and seamless harmonies to surface since Indigo Girls. It’s not everyday you’re invited to share a private moment with a group of jaw-droppingly talented musicians sitting around on a lazy summer afternoon, enjoying one of the simple, uncompromising pleasures that comes with life in a small town. " - Out Magazine
Their first album, Heart Of Art (2004) was named the #1 local album by Flagpole Magazine (Athens, GA) putting them in the company of heavyweights like Drive-By Truckers, Now It’s Overhead, Vic Chestnut, and Of Montreal. Since then, they’ve consistently been voted the #1 Folk/Americana act in town.
Originally from Athens, Georgia and now living in Decatur, MIKE KILLEEN counts Bob Dylan, Vic Chesnutt, Nirvana, and Uncle Tupelo among his formative influences. He has shared the stage with southern rock legends the Marshall Tucker Band and Grammy Award winners The Blind Boys of Alabama.
Mike's third full-length album, "Poverty is Real" was released in spring 2011. Produced by Will Robertson, the record is a more muscular presentation of Mike's songwriting than found previously, with crunchy electric guitars and racous crash cymbals appearing throughout. BeAtlanta.com called Poverty is Real, "a collection of beautiful arrangements and meaningful lyrics." The album's title track will be featured in the documentary, "What is Philanthropy?," to be released in 2013.
Mike’s first album, "Guns Kill People," was produced by Mark Van Allen and released in 2006. The record opens with the electric guitars of "Crippled Town," before settling into the pedal-steel-laden "Searching for an Angel". Together, the first two tracks capture the spirited arrangements found throughout. Appearing on the album are Van Allen (Indigo Girls) on pedal steel, Mike Steel (Randall Bramlett band) on bass, and Claire Campbell (Hope For Agoldensummer) on backing vocals.
The following year, Mike released "Demos, Outtakes, Live, and Whatnot Volume I: 2002-2006," a collection of songs recorded before the Guns Kill People album. The compilation includes "Verb in E," which appeared on Vol. 2, No. 1 of "Verb," an award-winning audioquarterly that features original fiction, poetry, and music.
In 2008, Mike reconnected with Mark Van Allen to record and release "Little. And Low.," an EP featuring five of Mike's more melancholy songs. "Baby Be True" was recorded live at Full Moon Studios in Watkinsville, Georgia in May, 2009. Produced by Jay Rodgers, the album captures Mike's songs in their rawest forms, supported only by acoustic guitar and harmonica.
