Tommy Schichtel, Carnage, Oh Wonder, Hinder and more deliver rare musical mix: Weekend Photo Galleries

This week’s musical potpourri spanned every genre imaginable, with Willy Porter, Valentiger, Less Is More, Mark Lavengood Bluegrass Bonanza and Stovepipe Stover all part of the photo roundup.

 

For once, the snowshoe is on the other foot.

New York and the East Coast endured a snow-mageddon this weekend, buried with the sort of snow we usually get.

Luckily for many of us in West Michigan, most of this week’s flurries came in the form of wildly diverse live music — indie-folk, country-rock, pop-rock, heavy metal, EDM, bluegrass, U.K. pop and one-man-band romps.

 

TOMMY SCHICHTEL

Perhaps the week’s most unusual show took place Thursday between the “Biography” and “World Languages” sections amid the stacks of the main branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library. That’s where Grand Rapids guitarist Tommy Schichtel (The Concussions, The B-Sides, owner of Goon Lagoon) set up with his pals — Dave Stanton, Christopher Schichtel, Drew Howard, Bill Vits, Johnny HiWatt, Michael Houseman, Patrick Wieland — for the library’s “Music in the Stacks” series. The show attracted an uber-capacity crowd of 100 or so fans who jammed the area in front of the “stage” and peered through or around shelving units to witness a rare Schichtel solo show that featured a number of unreleased tunes spanning pop, garage rock, surf rock and psychedelic wonder. (Some of it even boasted a Wilco-meets-The Beatles flavor). “It’s really surreal doing these things,” conceded a nervous Schichtel, who joked he lost 10 pounds fretting about the unusual, Dewey Decibel-friendly performance — a performance which boasted blown fuses, a couple of false starts and some of the most innovative, sonically pleasing passages you’ll hear anywhere. In the end, he had to concede, it was a groovy set. “This is kind of a cool event,” Schichtel said. Check out the photo gallery here, with some video highlights below.

PHOTO GALLERY: Tommy Schichtel at GRPL
Photos by Anna Sink

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Elsewhere this week:

OH WONDER

London pop duo Oh Wonder brought its North American tour to Calvin College’s Covenant Fine Arts Center on Friday — with West Michigan’s own Less is More opening the show — leaving the college crowd in awe of their engaging music.

PHOTO GALLERY: Oh Wonder at Calvin College
Photos by Tori Thomas

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CARNAGE, HINDER

The Intersection hosted consecutive crowd-pumping nights, with Carnage, Valentino Khan and Kayzo delivering EDM hoopla to Grand Rapids on Thursday, followed by the amp-cranking metal of Hinder, Shamans Harvest, Within Reason and Revolve on Friday.

PHOTO GALLERY: Carnage, Hinder at The Intersection
Carnage and Hinder photos by Eric Stoike

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WILLY PORTER

On the softer, folkier side of the equation, singer-songwriter and top-drawer guitarist Willy Porter returned to Spring Lake’s Seven Steps Up listening room to perform with Carmen Nickerson on Thursday (followed on Friday by a sold-out show featuring Stephen Kellogg and his band, with Anthony D’Amato).

As Local Spins writer Matt Marn put it, Porter and Nickerson certainly performed every note with passion. The duo left the audience moving to the melodies and the thought-provoking, moving lyrics. Porter and Nickerson performed hits from recent records, as well as a number of songs the pair have yet to record – they are headed into the studio at the end of January. Porter said they are trying the new songs to brush up on them, as well as to see how the crowd enjoys the new tunes.

“We want to capture what makes us unique,” Porter said. “I see each album as a photograph – a snapshot of the group at that time. You have to capture it while the songs are new and exciting. When a song isn’t as new, you may begin to play them with a detachment, and that isn’t healthy for the music.”

PHOTO GALLERY: Willy Porter with Carmen Nickerson at Seven Steps Up
Willy Porter photos by Matt Marn; Stephen Kellogg photo by Sara Mahoney

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VALENTIGER, KATY NEEDS A BAND, MARK LAVENGOOD, STOVEPIPE STOVER

Local bands delivered impressive performances on consecutive nights, with Valentiger (plus Woven Tangles and Ladders) giving folks an early start to the weekend on Thursday at Founders Brewing, the same night that Kalamazoo’s Katy Needs a Band, Due North (from Detroit) and The Sailor Kicks (from Grand Rapids) kicked it up a notch at Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo; the eclectic mix of the Mark Lavengood Bluegrass Bonanza, Scott & Molly Schultz and March Forth pumping up a capacity crowd at The Pyramid Scheme on Friday; and finally, Stovepipe Stover celebrating his 36th birthday and the release of his new CD, “Love in the Time of Satanic Panic,” with Elroy Meltzer and JOE at Tip Top Deluxe Bar & Grill on Saturday.

WEEKEND PHOTO GALLERY
Valentiger, Woven Tangles photos by Anna Sink
Katy Needs a Band, Due North, Sailor Kicks photos by Derek Ketchum
Mark Lavengood, March Forth photos by Katy Batdorff
Stovepipe Stover photos by Tori Thomas

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VIDEO: Tommy Schichtel, Music in the Stacks

Copyright 2016, Spins on Music LLC