When the internet became ubiquitous, and access to the entirety of pop music history was suddenly at everyone’s fingers, suddenly a whole generation of bands were armed with reference points that were heretofore only available to crate-digging record obsessives. Slamming two disparate sounds together, just to see what happened, became a thriving part of the music landscape. Certain genres would get a little more attention than others, depending on the time – dance-punk, New Wave indie twee, psych-electronica, just slapping a Bruce Springsteen filter onto any old genre, and other experiments all had their day in the sun in the first decade of the ‘00s. Nowadays, with this mixing and matching having effectively been gamified, it’s refreshing to run across a band that combines sounds in interesting ways.

Tacoma loves beer. We’re pretty good at brewing it and we enjoy drinking it on the regular. But we enjoy more than just the taste, we enjoy the competition and the culture that surrounds it, either it makes you a fan of a company or a naysayer. It helps that Eastern Washington grows some of the best hops in the world and has a natural habitat to do so. It also helps that there are taprooms everywhere that strive to provide the best, newest, rarest and most popular beers out. During the rather short lived Great Notion era and the even shorter lived slushie era taprooms around Tacoma were scrambling weekly to keep up with demand. It was a fun moment but it wasn’t for the beer drinker it was for the non beer drinker. Why would you mask the beer taste if you like the taste of beer??

When people outside of Washington state picture it in their minds they see forest for miles, pretty lakes, raging rivers, wilderness trails, farms and country. Those ideals are usually followed with images of fresh markets and farm to table meat by the pound from persons who are masters of agriculture and livestock. It’s one of the more romanticized versions of living in the Evergreen state and it’s not completely inaccurate. But it doesn’t encompass the entire picture and that lifestyle is few and far between in the Western half of the state. The glimpses you do get remind you how lucky we are to have such a blended mix of town and country for retailers and markets like the Tacoma Boys.

Tomo Nakayama and Bryan John Appleby | Sunday, April 16It’s only in the past years that Tomo Nakayama and Bryan John Appleby – the co-headliners at this April 16 show – would be seen as strange bedfellows, musically. In actuality, both emerged from a similar space of contemplative chamber-folk, using their earnest voices to convey any emotions that their carefully composed acoustic guitars, pianos, and strings couldn’t. Over the past decade and change, both artists have grown, implementing every bit of the knowledge they’ve gained in the intervening years, but in recent times, they’ve found themselves at different sonic destinations.