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Tag: forest City Brewery

  • Cleveland’s New Soft Shoe Pays Tribute to Gram Parsons on New Self-Titled Album – Cleveland Scene

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    The New Soft Shoe, a local band that pays tribute to alt-country icon Gram Parsons by playing covers of the songs he wrote with groups such as Flying Burrito Brothers and the Byrds, was formed in 2010 for a monthly residency at the Happy Dog. Parsons famously pioneered what he called Cosmic American Music in the late 1960s and early 1970s and influenced acts such as the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Wilco and Ryan Adams. 

    Fifteen years after that first gig, the band — Brent Kirby on guitar, Andy Leach on guitar, Tom Prebish on bass, Rachel Brown on keyboards and Jon Niefeld on drums — will celebrate the release of its self-titled debut with a show that takes place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 8, at Forest City Brewery, where the group has held a residency on the second Thursday of the month since 2018.

    Not just a collection of covers, the album finds the band putting its own twist on Parsons’s tunes.  

    “Over the years, we developed interesting versions of Gram’s songs and had people react positively to them, and it was really fun to go to the studio and record them,” says Kirby in a press release. “The songs are so strong that you can bend them all sorts of ways. It has grown organically into a community that celebrates the music of Gram. But also, it has created a monthly tradition where everyone gathers in one place to be together for a shared, authentic experience. It’s a truly special thing.”

    The band cut the record at Suma Recording in Painesville with studio engineer Dave Shaw and recorded the tracks live with minimal overdubs as they take on well-known songs like “Hickory Wind” and “Sin City” as well as deeper cuts such as “Can’t Take It Anymore.”

    Jim Ellis, a local music fan who had a self- published fanzine called CLE in the late 1970s and recently revived his CLE Records, offered to release it. 

    “It’s a bit selfish, but I want to take the band’s music home with me and play it on my turntable,” Ellis states. ”There’s so much great music in Cleveland to see and hear.”

    The Jan. 8th show also represents the band’s 16th anniversary, and the group will offer its “All Gram All Night” T-shirts to the faithful devotees who gathered monthly stamps in a stamp book. In addition, the new 2026 stamp book will be given out to all attendees.

    The album will be available on colored 180-gram vinyl, limited Wax Mage vinyl, CD and digital download through CLE Records Bandcamp.

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    Jeff Niesel

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  • Photos From Cleveland Beer Week’s Holiday Showcase at Forest City Brewery – Cleveland Scene

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    Emanuel Wallace is a photographer and journalist from Cleveland, Ohio. He has been the staff photographer for Cleveland Scene magazine since 2014.

    In the past, he has contributed to Cleveland.com, Destination Cleveland and the Call & Post, among other outlets.

    In his spare time, Emanuel likes to experiment with crafting various cocktails and brewing his own beer.

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    Emanuel Wallace

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  • Ohio City Singers To Debut Two New Songs at Upcoming Holiday Shows – Cleveland Scene

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    For the past 15 or so years, the Ohio City Singers, a local ensemble of about a dozen musicians that plays original Christmas music, has played a slew of holiday shows to celebrate the season. This year, it’s added a two-night stand at Forest City Brewery, the Tremont brewery located in a restored 1860s tavern. The shows there take place on Friday, Dec. 19, and Saturday, Dec. 20. Those performances are in addition to concerts at the Music Box Supper Club (Dec. 6), the Winchester in Lakewood (Dec. 13) and the Treelawn (Dec. 21).

    “We usually just do one night at Forest City Brewery, but the shows sell out so fast that we’ve added a second night,” says Allen one morning over coffee at Ready Set!, the West side coffeeshop he runs with his sister Molly Allen. “After we did the show last year at Forest City, we immediately booked the second night. It’s a great-sounding room and has a beautiful vibe to it. It feels very holiday-esque. It’s a concert venue, but it has a casual vibe. Everyone can sit or dance depending on what they want to do.”

    The Dec. 19 show will be “cover-heavy” and the Dec. 20 show will feature deep tracks and include an acoustic set.

    The Music Box concert will be a family friendly affair, and the Winchester will be a special one too. It’ll feature a performance of the band’s debut album, Love and Hope, in its entirety.

    The band’s roots go back to 2003 when Allen and his sister along with local singer-songwriter Doug McKean worked up four original Christmas tunes and then threw a big Christmas party to which they invited their musician friends. They played the four original tunes they had penned as well as a few covers, recorded them and delivered them on a CD to their families as a Christmas gift.

    “My sister designed the cover artwork for that release,” says Allen. “It was all the musicians I was playing with at the time like Boys from the County Hell, Rosavelt, Annie DeChant and Wally Bryson. We wrote four songs and handed out lyrics. My kitchen was attached to the main room, and people were in there cooking food. We taped the whole thing. People sang along, and we learned the songs as we were recording them. It was like two days before Christmas. We stayed up all night with Mike McDonald, who was the engineer, and burned 30 CDs and put the cover art in. I remember handing it to my dad on Christmas Eve. He thought we were making a mix CD, and he looked at the songwriting credit and saw we wrote the songs and teared up.”

    The group would play five of those house parties before recording 2008’s Love and Hope, its official debut, with producer Don Dixon (the Smithereens, Marshall Crenshaw). Dixon would become a band member in the wake of the recording, and he often dresses as Santa for the live shows.

    “Every year, different people showed up at the parties,” says Allen. “The people who showed up the longest for the most amount of time wound up in the band. Me and Doug McKean were always in it as were Matt Sobol and Kelly Wright and Austin Charanghat. I invited the Jack Fords to one party, and that’s how their drummer, Brent Kirby, became the Ohio City Singers drummer. It was almost by accident. That’s how the lineup ended up so large. It’s like nine people.”

    The group recorded its next albums at various locations around town but always added some crowd sounds by taping shows at places such as the Happy Dog.

    “We always wanted to keep the house party vibe, so crowd participation has always been a big thing,” says Allen. “The crowd and the people who come to the shows have always been part of the music.”

    This year, two new songs, the rollicking “Christmas Card from Heaven,” a song that features bells and accordion, and the blues-rock number “Santa Won’t You See Me,” will make their way into the sets.

    “Doug and Austin and I had been writing all year long and had 15 or 16 new songs,” says Allen. “We were trying to get a record together. We have a record written and ready to go, but couldn’t decide which songs to put on it. These two songs seem to play well live, so we’ll release them as digital singles. They’re really upbeat.”  

    The group played Winterloo on Waterloo at the Treelawn for the first time last year, and Allen says the band is excited to return there for the group’s last show of the season.

    “We saw a lot of new faces at the show there last year,” says Allen. “It was fun. I didn’t know what to expect. Playing original Christmas music doesn’t always go over well, but everyone had a great time. It was a surprise.”

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    Jeff Niesel

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