$15 advance / $20 door
21+
About this Event
Goth-folk musical duo Charming Disaster, based in Brooklyn, NY, perform playfully dark original songs inspired by death, crime, myth, magic, science, and the occult. Inspired by the macabre humor of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, the M**der ballads of the Americana tradition, and the dramatic flair of the cabaret, they combine vocal harmonies and clever lyrics with ukulele, guitar, and virtuosic foot percussion, drawing listeners into a haunting, offbeat universe of paranormal romance, con artists, circus tents, and ancient gods.
Charming Disaster’s music has been featured on the spooky hit podcast Welcome to Night Vale, they have opened for legendary cello-rock ensemble Rasputina, goth icon Voltaire, and Amanda Palmer’s punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls. The duo have captivated audiences across the United States,appearing alongside storytellers, comedians, fire eaters, puppets, burlesque artists, poets, and circus performers. Recent appearances have included Joe's Pub at the Public Theatre in NYC, the Rochester Fringe Festival, Philadelphia’s Science History Institute, the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA, Cleveland's Wizbang Circus Theatre, and the Coney Island Sideshow stage.
Their latest album, Super Natural History, is a musical cabinet of curiosities inspired by both the natural world and the metaphysical realm, uniting the worlds of magic and science with songs that explore subjects like witchcraft, monsters, and the underworld alongside bats, plants, poisons, and parasites. Super Natural History is an alchemical experiment of sorts—magic and science may seem like contradictory concepts, but for Charming Disaster they are opposite sides of the same coin: alternate ways to see the world and consider its mysteries.
"Charming Disaster has an affinity for monsters, mortality, paranormal activity and unearthly shenanigans…sparked by flashes of wry humor." –Rock & Roll Globe
Website: charmingdisaster.com
Facebook: facebook.com/charmingdisaster
Instagram: @charmingdisasterband
Bandcamp: charmingdisaster.bandcamp.com
Spotify: sptfy.com/charmingdisaster
From the first notes of the lead-off track to Secret Emchy Society’s new album, Gold Country / Country Gold, you realize that you’re not in Kansas anymore. It’s a gothy, spaghetti western version of “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond Of Each Other,” written by Latin country musician Ned Sublette but popularized by Willie Nelson. It’s also widely recognized as the first LGBT-themed mainstream country song by a major artist. Par for the course if you know Cindy Emch’s previous work. As the First Lady of Queer Country, she is known for her distinct voice and ability to blend Americana, California Country, Hellbilly, Goth, and Honky Tonk, spinning radically distinctive tales from her singular perspective.
Emchy’s not only a highly regarded musician in the Bay Area—nominated three times for Best Local LGBT Band by Bay Area Reporter—but she’s also a seasoned student of the history of LGBTQA musicians dipping their toes in genres that have always been “off-limits” for non-hetero participants. She was the founding editor of Country Queer and still hosts Gimme Country’s popular Emchy’s Outlaw Americana show. She’s also worked with the original queer country cowboy Lavender Country, the award-winning singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah (from the all-women-of-color supergroup Our Native Daughters), out transwoman folk-punker Shawna Virago, and Haitian-born / UK based Alt-Americana Country-Noire singer DeLila Black when Emchy produced the 2021 National Queer Arts Festival Showcase. Her previous albums have landed her on the road with some of the most popular acts in the genre: Mercy Bell, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, and Karen & The Sorrows, led by the originator of the Gay Ole Opry herself, Karen Pittleman. Needless to say, Cindy Emch has become well-known to anyone paying attention to the increasing popularity of turning old tropes on their ear by melding classic twang with a punk ethos.
Emchy’s music, created with her longtime band Secret Emchy Society, has been compared to songwriters like Ray Davies, Marijohn Wilkin, John D. Loudermilk, and Cowboy Jack Clement, who wrote the early hits for African-American country pioneer Charley Pride. SES’s debut album, 2017’s The Stars Fell Shooting Into Twangsville, swings beautifully from accordion-drenched waltzes to slow ballads to high-tempo roof shakers with lyrics soaked in long-standing country tropes, from day-drinking to painful love to oversized ambitions. It was followed by 2019’s Mark’s Yard, a sparsely recorded collection of cover versions from singular songwriters like Tom Waits and Hank Williams Jr. In 2020 she released The Chaser, a classic honky-tonk album both dark and light, ominous and joyous. It landed her positive coverage in No Depression, Wide Open Country, Ditty TV, NPR, The Boot, and Americana Highways, just to name a few.
The Slow Poisoner (alias Andrew Goldfarb) is an artist and musician based in San Francisco. Since 1996 he has performed six hundred shows all across America, in nightclubs, libraries, science fiction conventions, beauty parlors, donut shops, bowling alleys, park bandshells and quite a few laundromats. Like a late night horror movie host or a creepy camp counselor, The Slow Poisoner invites the audience into a weird world of his own design, augmented by theatrical elements like a giant tentacle and a song accompanied by only a chain. Pounding on an amplified acoustic guitar in a folk-punk fashion, he spins stories of Hot Rod Worms and woods full of wizards, invoking the oddness of antecedents such as Bowie, Bolan, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Screamin' Lord Sutch, Alice Cooper and the Cramps.
TheSlowPoisoner.com
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Amado's, 998 Valencia Street, San Francisco, United States
USD 15.00 to USD 20.00