Friday, April 22, 2011

My Friends Done Good: Josh Damigo, Jesse LaMonaca, The Heavy Guilt, D/Wolves

As my life has evolved from media assistant to media buyer to media planner to unemployed to this around the clock barely-paying-rent music lifestyle, my refusal to get a day job has forced me to wear many hats...blogger, booker, social media manager, consultant, stage producer, merch girl, door girl, band manager, band momager, publicist, and people connectress. That last one is my favorite...putting people in touch with each other to do good things for San Diego music (though I still haven't figured out how to make that one pay the bills). While all of these things leave me broke as hell, I get to share the pride when my friends do well. Here's a little roundup of some exciting things happening with Josh Damigo, Jesse LaMonaca and the Dime Novels, The Heavy Guilt, and D/Wolves.



D/Wolves recently recorded their EP at Black Box with Mario Quintero. Today they were featured on This Music Doesn't Suck based out of Brooklyn. They were also featured on the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang e-zine last week, getting two "Agents' Number One Bullets" for the week. I posted about our trip to Vegas last week and hopefully they can do some more out of town gigs soon.



Jesse LaMonaca and The Dime Novels have been busy in the studio working on a recording and video for their song "Other Side of The World". He invited guests to watch the process and it was a pretty great night in Pacific Beach. The video is still being edited but will be available soon and then Jesse's got some decisions to make about recording a new record or EP or live album before he heads to the East Coast for an as yet undetermined amount of time. Crossroads, I suppose you could say. For now, along with Jesse's bar gigs all over town, I'm happy to say he's opening for The Builders and The Butchers at the Casbah on Tuesday and will be playing with my twitter friends The Morgansterns on Wednesday at the Redwood Bar in Los Angeles. Hope there's room in the car for me for that one! He also went to Dirty Boulevard Recording Studio and recorded some songs for their podcast. Check it out here (Use the full Podcast download, as I couldn't get the stream to work past 3 minutes).



The Heavy Guilt have recorded a new record and though I only have my paws on an unmastered version, it is AMAZING. Plans are in the works for a big summer release party, but in the meantime, check them out in 944's Music Issue (go to page 60-61) as one of "San Diego's Bands To Know If You Don't Know". They're playing tonight at Winston's if you wanna gimme a ride :)




Last but certainly not least, Josh Damigo has been ALL OVER the place since he's moved to L.A. and it is so exciting to see someone so deserving getting so much love. Whether it's the San Diego Troubadour cover story, Wechter guitars bragging about him or SESAC calling him a "Social Media Powerhouse" or some of the killer gigs he's been getting all over Southern California, I've never seen anyone so aggressively yet gracefully steward their own career.

I'm happy to say that all four bands will be performing on the Main Stage of the North Park Festival of Arts. This is a free all ages event on May 15. There's also a Bar Pink/FM 94/9 stage in the ticketed Craft Beer Block, so I suggest you buy tickets for that portion here.

Keep rockin, San Diego. You make a broke and tired blogger proud.

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