In a weekend already filled with a four-day music festival and one of the biggest street fests of the year, Casa Nueva is adding to the excitement ny booking two nights of talented indie rock bands.
Friday will feature the orchestral folk band The Ridges and gypsy folk group Qiet followed up by performances Saturday from the ambient rhythmic-pop of Indigo Wild and a modern take on alternative rock from the four-piece group She Bears.
Hot off a long and strenuous tour down to South By Southwest in Austin, The Ridges look forward to returning to its hometown of Athens.
“It’s going to be a monumental show because our fan base is more or less half of what will be leaving when people graduate,” said Talor Smith, cellist and founding member of the group. “It’s going to be a bittersweet show.”
She said the band hopes to put out an album in 2014, as it’s been a long wait for the band and its many fans.
“It’s taken us a little bit of time, but … we just want to do it right, we want to do something that represents what we want to do,” said Victor Rasgaitis, guitarist for The Ridges. “We have a dual priority of wanting to push out and tour more and be able to be in a place where we can tour to support the record once we release it.”
Many of the songs will be on display Friday night, and the tunes have been changing and evolving as the group plays them live on tour and continues to hone them for the upcoming album.
The West Virginia based group Qiet will join the Ridges on the ticket, harking back to violinist
Alasha Al-Qudwah’s Athens roots. The band plays a rambunctious gypsy folk style; however, it draws from an eclectic range of rhythms and forms.
“We like to tackle everything,” said Christopher Vincent, lead vocalist and guitarist for Qiet. “I got African rhythms that I like, Latin rhythms, we got gypsey, we got mandarin, we got hungarian, we play in major scale, we play in minor scale, we play in double harmonic it don’t matter.”
The band is currently promoting its recent album
Pet Driftwood (Composition #8)
, which was recorded in Athens by Eddie Ashworth.
But Qiet isn’t the only band with strong ties to Athens. Saturday’s show with She Bears will bring the energetic alternative rock sound the band has been honing for the culmination of its sophomore album,
We Will Be Fossils
, which the band said took about two and a half years to make.
“The whole album was basically was us trying to figure out how to be a four piece because for the longest time we were a 5-7 piece band,” said Alex Douglas, guitarist for She Bears.
Douglas said there was a multitude of reasons why it took so long to record including financial setbacks, hitting creative walls, studio mishaps and changing band members. However, the group feels all the stronger for working through those problems.
“We took a lot of care in developing the sound so it doesn’t sound stripped down,” said Stephen. “It was more a matter of carving out the new roles for all of us making sure we could fill each others gaps — make it more efficient.”
If You Go:
What: The Ridges and Qiet
When: 9 p.m., Friday
Where: Casa Nueva, 6 W. State St.
Admission: Free
What: Indigo Wild and She Bears
When: 9 p.m., Saturday
Where: Casa Nueva, 6 W. State St.
Admission: $5
