THE FRESNAN

FUSE Fest 2012: It's The Moments That Count

It's probably a good sign when you are tired after a music festival. Nobody is ever tired after having a boring time. Such is the case the day after FUSE Fest 2012. We're very tired.

There were a lot of cool moments this year: Being moved by the rock of Sparklejet. Discovering Alana Hill has an amazing voice. Seeing Kat Jones reconnect with her Fresno fans. People tripping out on the robot that is Collecto. Light Thieves wowing F55:

Werebear tearing it up the Lampost:

People on Iron Bird Loft balconies enjoying Blake Jones:

POST TAKEOVER - FUSE FEST 2012: Bandgeek is FUSEGEEK

Our last Fresno Urban Sound Experience 'post takeover' is the biggest. A special Bandgeek with all the info you need to enjoy the festival this weekend with links to the venues and band websites.

Come out early and stay late. It's a total geek-out for fans of live and local music. It's FUSE FEST!!:

FRIDAY

IRON BIRD LOFTS (All Ages)

7:30 So Long Williamsburg
8:30 Blake Jones & the Trike Shop
9:30 Boxcar Figaro

FULTON 55 (Main Stage) 21+

7:00 Alana Shap Hill
8:00 Actress
9:00 Light Thieves
10:00 Sparklejet
11:00 Collecto

FULTON 55 (Coffeehouse Stage – upstairs) 21+

7:30 Karen Marguth
8:30 Siren Singing
9:30 Kat Jones
10:30 Fatty Cakes

THE LAMPOST  (21+)

10:30 Your Hero Is A Villain
11:30 Werebear
12:30 Dislodic

SATURDAY

CMAC (Inside Old Fresno Met building) “Studio Stage” (All Ages)

4:30 Gayle and The Bowties
5:30 Danielle Rondero
6:30 College Kids
7:30 Art By Numbers
8:30 Lezayr
9:30 American Sanchez

CMAC “Outdoor Stage” (All Ages)

5:00 I Do Not Exist
6:00 Before Perils
7:00 Distrito Torre
8:00 B-Rawcity
9:00 [surprise band]

FISHBOWL – Warnors Theatre Marque (ALL AGES)

6:30 Aesop Fables
7:30 Strawberry Jam
8:30 Cinco
9:30 It’ll Grow Back

FRANK’S PLACE (21+)

7:00 The Dirty Stomp
8:00 Back In The Valley
9:00 Basura
10:00 Patrick Contreras

FRESNO BREWING COMPANY (All Ages)

6:30 Restaurnaut
7:30 The Overdubs
8:30 Brother Luke & the Comrades
9:30 Achievement House

TOKYO GARDEN (21+)

10:00 Niilo Smeds
11:00 Sunburns
12:00 General Populus
1:00 Ornery Ones

TICKETS
Festival Pass is $20 (gets you into every venue and stage for both days).
Day Pass is $15 (gets you into every venue and stage for one day).
Venue Pass is $5 to $10 (Fulton 55), depending on venue. Good for one venue.

Tickets will be available at the Fulton 55 box office starting now. BRING CASH! They will also be available at most venues throughout the festival…did we mention to BRING CASH! You want to have some cash for band merch too!

PARKING
There is free street parking throughout the Cultural Arts District (or Mural Town!! if you prefer) and at city lots around the Fulton Mall. (Parking meter spots are free on weekends and evenings)

RANDOM
The official Twitter hashtag being used is #fusefest

Check the Facebook event page and invite some folks! There's a lot of samples from FUSE Fest artists poping up there too.

FOOD
Eating at FUSE Fest is recommended at Iron Bird Cafe, Tokyo Garden and Fresno Brewing Company. Dusty Buns will be on the Fulton Mall (in front of Fresno Brewing Company) on Saturday night.

DRINKING
On Friday: Fulton 55 and The Lamp Post. On Saturday: Frank's Place, Fresno Brewing Company and Tokyo Garden. Iron Bird Cafe both nights for excellent coffee and tea.

 

GET THERE EARLY! The set times aren't like normal set times that are "suggested". It STARTS at 7pm on Friday and 4:30 on Saturday (Music Gods willing).

The Central California's biggest LOCAL music festival. Come out and kick ass with everyone.

Post Takeover - FUSE Fest 2012: It Begins

FUSE Fest 2012. It all starts tonight with a festival pre-party happening at The Hashtag on Wishon Row. See various FUSE Fest artists doing hella short sets, plus get your festival passes for Friday and Saturday along with FUSE Fest merch.

You can also get a sweet program you can use to start planning your festival routing. It's music nerd stuff and it's fun as hell. If you don't get a program you can start planning with this.

Get hyped by listening to all the pre-festival podcasting:

• Flowing With FUSE Fest 2012.
• Ozmosis FUSE Fest Special.
• Josh Tehee talking FUSE on The Drive.
• Omar Nare and Before Perils on Radio Bilingue.
• Werebear on Dorktown.

It's like Christmas Eve for Fresno music nerds. Can't wait for it to start.

 

FUSE Fest 2012 - Fresnan 'Post Takeover' + FUSE Schedule

If you're a beer snob then you may have heard of a thing called a 'tap takeover'. It's when one brewing company takes over all the taps at a bar or restaurant for the whole night.

So we're taking that idea and bringing it to the blog world. This week on The Fresnan, all the posts will be Fresno Urban Sound Expierience related. In other nerdy words: FUSE Fest is doing a 'post takeover' here at The Fresnan.

First up, it's maybe the most important of all: the schedule is out for this weekend's FUSE Fest. You can check the site, or check it right now here:

Eat These Tonight: Tacos

Wanna bet Colorado Springs doesn't know how to do a Taco Throwdown? Yeah, these are the kind of things that make Fresno cool. It's Taco Truck Throwdown #2, happening again at The Chuk. The Beehive has all the details cabbage on the event.

Basically, you go to a Grizzlies game and a taco truck fight breaks out. It was wildly successful last year so getting there at 5:30 might not be a bad plan - plus you get to see batting practice...if you're into that sorta thing.

BANDGEEK! Bank Vaults, Doin It and Rocking The Top

Plenty to cover. Let's get to it. Let's Bandgeeeeek!!:

FRIDAY

PACIFIC SOUTHWEST BUILDING: The Light Thieves are hot and have new music to play for you. It's Hide and Seek's two-year anniversary. Starskate will be there too. And it's all happening in an old bank vault. Go:

KUPPAJOE'S: Experimental rock from Las Vegas with Stolas and Habit. Plus locals Mane Horse, Corsair and Weary Hands:

AUDIE'S OLYMPIC: If the Soulflower Group is doing a tribute to Def Jam we're pretty damn sure it's going to be good:

STARLINE: Well hand it to American Made Concerts for bringing the OG metal through town. It's Mandy Lion:

THE LAMP POST:  

THAI PALMS: 

THE NEXT BAR: Metal from Grooveyard, Spirit Descending and more:

Beer, Bikes and Clovis? Dammit.

It really saddens us to promote something that is partially going on in Clovis. But this involves craft beer and biking so we have to swallow our pride and post:

New Belgium Brewing and I Bike Fresno are helping BC's Pizza & Beer, Michelangelo's Pizzeria and Spokeasy Public House with this cool three-day event. Clovis still sucks.

LINEUP ANNOUNCEMENT: Fresno Urban Sound Experience Festival for 2012

Hope you'll be in town September 6th-8th. It's going to be a fun weekend in Fresno. Fun because that's the weekend for the Fresno Urban Sound Experience. It's the 5th year for FUSE Fest and while it may be a bit bigger, the ideals are the same as year one: Showcase Fresno's diverse and talented music scene while featuring relevant venues in Downtown Fresno.

So. The big stuff. The reason there is a festival at all. Let's take a look at the lineup for Fresno Urban Sound Experience #5! Because FUSE Fest has no headliners, this is in no particular order:

• Light Thieves
• B-Rawcity
• Patrick Contreras
• Lezayr
• Werebear
• Blake Jones & the Trike Shop
• Distrito Torre
• Boxcar Figaro
• It'll Grow Back
• Gayle and The Bowties
• Alana Shap Hill
• Fast Car
• Restaurnaut
• The Overdubs
• The Dirty Stomp
• Collecto
• Fields Of Prey
• Actress
• Strawberry Jam
• Kady! Danger
• Sparklejet
• Dislodic
• Cinco
• The Dirty Dirties
• Back In The Valley
• I Do Not Exist
• Karen Marguth
• Niilo Smeds
• Before Perils
• Kat Jones
• Your Hero Is A Villain
• Basura
• Brother Luke & the Comrades
• Danielle Rondero
• Achievement House
• General Populus
• Siren Singing
• College Kids
• Sunburns
• Ornery Ones

That's a large helping of Fresno music. Lineup is supject to change (such is life). But it's looking damn special so far and we cant wait to see it all in Downtown Fresno, Friday and Saturday September 7th and 8th.

Make sure to start inviting all your friend's faces. Follow FUSE Fest on Twitter and check the website for the latest news.

Music To ArtHop To: Benji McEntee, Brother Luke, Niilo Smeds, Strawberry Jam and Fatal Rebirth

We noticed there's a lot of good music happening during Art Hop tonight... Alright well, there's ALWAYS good music at Art Hop, we just noticed it this time.

At P*DE*Q, Benji McEntee (he of the greatness that is The Fay Wrays) will being doing a set of his own in support of Danielle McEntee's exhibit. [Free, 5-8pm]

At Fresno Brewing Company is Brother Luke & the Comrades featuring Bekah Eropkin, Pro Wings, and Kevin Reese (Aspen Hollow). [Free, 8pm, All Ages]

And, of course there's always Jazz Hop:

POST HOP

At Tokyo Garden, there's some Strawberry Jam, Niilo Smeds and Who's Clayton. [$3, 9:30, 21+]

At Audie's Olympic, some late night metal from Fatal Rebirth and DJ Evil G all night. [$3, 9pm, 21+]

There's probably plenty more music too. As always, please feel free to leave a comment if you know of something!

Win Something: Tickets To Saturday's 'Rock Expo' At Blackbeards!

Okay, so The Artourage is putting on a big rock festival Saturday at Blackbeards. Yes, Blackbeards! (How has someone not thought of this before?!). All kinds of festival-y stuff going on. Most notably to us are all the bands. Like, locals Bully The Kid, The Velusha, Homebrew, Dislodic, Rise Before The Fall and more. Big out of town acts too, such as Michale Graves (ex Misfits) and Pacific Dub.

Point is, it's going to be a crazy-ass time out there. The Artourage has been very generous with the ticket give-aways for Rock Expo. So generous they want a couple Fresnan Readers to go. So, to maybe win a pair of tickets, just email us something, you know whatever, to [email protected] and you'll be entered. We'll pick the winner using our Randomizer and email him or her Thursday night.

Good luck!

If you don't trust your luck, you can always buy some tickets here.

[sorry it's over] Win This!: A Pair Of Tickets To 'The Black Keys' at Save Mart Center

UPDATE!
Sorry everyone, this contest is closed. Sorry to everyone but April that is as she won the pair of Black Keys tickets. Thanks for all the emails. Don't feel so bad because we haven't gotten our tickets yet either. Maybe we can get April to take us.

ORIGINAL POST
If you at all like The Black Keys then you know they're coming to Fresno's Save Mart Center October 1st (with Tegan and Sara). It will be a damn fine night. If you're a hardcore fan then you've already got your tickets. If you're a regular Fresnan, you haven't gotten around to getting any. Well, your Procrastinating Fresnan ways might pay off.

The SMC is being cool to Fresnan readers and letting us give away a pair of tickets to the show. No creative hoop to jump through to enter our little contest. Just email something to [email protected] and you are good.

GOOD LUCK!

Winner will be chosen randomly. Contest will end Friday night at Midnight. One email per household (we have our ways of knowing you sneaky guy). We're GIVING away something so promise to still be cool if you don't win. Winner will be emailed by Saturday (July 21st) and will pickup their tickets at SMC Will Call.

BANDGEEK!: It's Not Quite ALL About Saturday's 'Catacomb Party' But It's Close

Once you've stolen a glass from Fresno Brewing Company, you're all set to begin your weekend of comedy and music. It's time to... BANDGEEK!!

FRIDAY

KUPPAJOE'S: Frequent Fresno visitors Picture Atlantic stop in to release their CD "Digital Tension" with Cold Eskimo, Happy Body Slow Brain, Sahab and Conveyor:

FULTON 55:

C.A.F.E. INFOSHOP: Seattle folk rock from Origami Ghosts. Plus Fresnan favorites Werebear and more:

THAI PALMS: Valley rock from Dislodic, Hamerdown Sindrum and Keeney:

STARLINE: It's a Jurassic Jam to fight cancer:

SATURDAY

FRESNO BREWING COMPANY/FULTON MALL: Biggest show Catacomb Party we've seen all year and one of the more unique ones. The Fulton Mall (out front of FBC) will be turned into, basically, a music festival venue. Lots of good bands, lots of good beer, highlighted by a performance from the Firece Creatures. Plus music from Fast Car, Strange Vine, The Slient Comedy, a reunion for the Argyle Pimps, Achievement House, Coast Jumper, Animal Eyes and Bell Thieves. And did you get that it's free and open to all ages? Yep:

In Town Tonight: Mo Collins and Rebecca Corry

We normally aren't together enough to post about comedy stuff happening in Fresno but this one looks good. Mo Collins and Rebecca Corry are performing Downtown at Club One. Great room, great comedians, buy some tickets and check'em out tonight!

BANDGEEK!: Coast Into Summer, Meet Olivia Mancini's Mates and Clash With Metal's Titans!

Your firework hangover should be cleared out by now. Time to get out there this weekend and enjoy some live music. LET'S BANDGEEK!!!

FRIDAY

KUPPAJOE'S: Fresno Coasts Into Summer with Rookie of the Year (NC), Challenger!, Eryn Woods, Clouds like Mountains, & Get Up & Go:

TOKYO GARDEN: Stopping in Fresno tonight, Olivia Mancini "Olivia writes pop songs. Upbeat, melody-driven, and not interested in being taken too seriously, Olivia-the-music is a lot like Olivia-the-person. Likable." There ya go. Go:

AUDIE'S OLYMPIC: Comedy at Audie's? It makes sense when it's Neil Hamburger. Plus Brian Kenney Fresno opens so now we're totally getting it:

FULTON 55: Assless chaps are encouraged at Glam Corbra will be hitting the stage for a FREE event!:

THAI PALMS: Homegrown Fridays returns after a week off with Keep Your Fingers Crossed, 2 Hours Later and Relion:

In Town Tonight: Achievement House, The Duke Of Norfolk, Panteon Rococo, Versus

AT FRESNO BREWING COMPANY:

AT CAFE INFOSHOP:

AT THE LOFT:

AT FULTON 55: