"Their most expansive and adventurous album to date, Boogie Boo!’s enchanting spell lies in it’s unexpected twists and turns. Innovative and fun, spooky, yet hauntingly dark, introspective, and deeply mythic, these songs bring out the best qualities of their signature sound, but they’ve really changed the game on this one."
August 26, 2019 (SOUTH JERSEY / PHILADELPHIA
) - Roots, rockabilly, and swing music group
April Mae & The June Bugs announce the release of their new Halloween inspired album
Boogie Boo! set to release on September 21, 2019. The album’s completion also ushers in a return to touring, with an upcoming tour in New England, and an extensive southern tour in 2020 including the prestigious
New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival.
Inspired by the magic and mystery of Halloween,
Boogie Boo! touts a collection of thirteen songs themed around voodoo legends, Halloween myths and spooky tales; pairings of original music and creatively arranged obscurities hailing from the roaring twenties, the dirty thirties, the swinging forties, and beyond.
Their most expansive and adventurous album to date,
Boogie Boo!’s enchanting spell lies in it’s unexpected twists and turns. Innovative and fun, spooky and mysterious, these songs bring out the best qualities of their signature sound, still based in the roots music styles of rockabilly and swing, but they’ve really changed the game on this one.
Like the soundtrack to a spine tingling ghost story, film noir mind you, in 1940’s in black and white of course, these songs flirt with theatricality and soundscape in a way that’s playful and whimsical, while moving into a realm that is also hauntingly dark, introspective, and deeply mythic.
Boogie Boo! contrasts their previous release
Sun Kissed! The Sun Studios Sessions in a variety of ways.
Sun Kissed! was clearly an “on the road” album, recordedlive at the legendary
Sun Studios in Memphis, with Grammy Award winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang and musical guest Rockabilly Hall of Fame drummer
J.M. Van Eaton. Completed during multiple southern tours while paying homage to
Sam Phillips and a myriad of rockabilly heroes and heroines.
Boogie Boo! is a very different beast, in nature, scope, personality, and production. Although the band still recorded this album live in the studio, this is their most exploratory music to date. April Mae took a different approach to the creation of this album, completing the writing of her original music as part of the recording process. Working with Tony Mascara at
The Audio Lab studio in Millville, NJ she devoted a period of nine months of extended sessions in order to let the songs grow and progress in an organic way. Where they took her was surprising and often utterly breathtaking. For example, one of the songs channels in an ancient story from a pre-fifteenish century Scottish ballad of myth and lore.
Many of her original songs develop the sonic pallet further, almost sculptural in nature, enhancing the sound scape with a richly developed atmosphere, often including field recordings that Mae recorded over the course of the recording process.
The instrumentation on this album includes their classic live configuration of cigar box guitar, upright bass, washboard percussion, and April Mae’s self made ‘kazoo-za-phone” in addition to a variety of drums, lap steel guitar, saxophone, and the sounds of Mae’s tap dancing for additional vintage style percussive flair.
The release of this album also marks a return to touring with upcoming shows in New England beginning in September, followed by regionally based album release parties. An extensive southern tour for January 2020 is in the works including a performance at the prestigious
New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival.
BOOGIE BOO! CD RELEASE PARTIES ANNOUNCED
September 21, 2019 kicks off regional album release parties covering the Delaware Valley, the Philadelphia Metro area, and the Bucks/Lehigh Valley, featuring April Mae & the June Bugs quartet format, with April Mae, vocals, washboard percussion and kazoo-za-phone, Catfish Dave banjo, cigar box, and jazz box guitars, Topher Horner on upright bass, and Tony Mascara, drums.
Saturday, September 21
The Paris Bistro
8235 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19118
Seatings at 7:00PM, 8:30PM, and 10:00PM. $10 Entertainment charge per person.
www.ParisBistro.net
Saturday, September 28
The Record Collector
58 Farnsworth Ave., Bordentown, NJ 08505
7:30PM Door. Tickets $15 Advance / $20 Door. Order by phone at (609) 324-0880 or online at:
www.The-Record-Collector.com/newLCS.htm
Saturday, October 12
The Gas House Dance Hall
311 Front St, Catasauqua, PA 18032
7:00PM Swing dance lesson, 8:00PM Showtime. $15 Door. BYOB event.
www.TheGasHouseDanceHall.com
For full touring schedule and shows, please visit:
[ www.AprilMAE.com ]
ABOUT APRIL MAE & THE JUNE BUGS
"With a sound built on cigar-box guitar, slap bass and washboard, no trio is more fun taking familiar roots genres and twisting them around Mae's elbow-gloved, gold capped fingers."
-- Mary Armstrong, The City Paper
“Hear my train a-comin’…” sings 1940s victory roll hairdo-sporting April Mae; the effervescent songstress who serves as lead vocalist and washboard percussionist for April Mae & The June Bugs. Dubbed the "The Breakout Surprise Act" by concert reviewing journalists on more than one occasion the trio has been garnering recent press. Instrumentation features Dave 'Catfish' Fecca - cigar box guitar, banjo and mandolin and B.Skwire Esquire on upright bass.
The group travels around the country in Mae's innovative and award-winning Boogie Bus, a diesel school bus that she re-designed in vintage 1940’s whimsical style and converted to run on waste vegetable oil. The Boogie Bus will deliver the group to their scheduled appearances while on tour, with a zero carbon emission footprint. Named the Boogie Bus for the musical mantra "It's All About The Boogie" painted on the destination plate.
On their travels they’ve performed with many musicians including Pete Seeger, Eric Frey of the Red Stick Ramblers, Rockabilly Hall of Famer J.M. Van Eaton and New Orleans’ Washboard Chaz. Supporting line ups include BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet, Wanda Jackson, Imelda May, Theresa Anderson, Cyril Neville, Rick Estrin & The Night Cats, Luke Winslow King, Gina Sicilia, and Justin Johnson and among others.
CONTACT
April Mae
April@AprilMAEAndTheJuneBugs.com
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