The winners of the Showcase competition will play at the Rendezvous in the Park Music and Arts Festival in Moscow this summer.
For $10, attendees can hear 20 minutes of live music from each of these six local bands and wield the voting power to choose the final three.
360 decided to take a closer look at the bands before the battle begins at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, 508 S Main St., Moscow.
Mother Yeti Mother Yeti’s music is adventurous.
According to Zach Degler, who shares bass, guitar and singing duties with bandmate Bill Tracy, their music also defies pinpointing.
“We keep it all over the map,” Degler said. “We’ll play hard rock, then some reggae and then
some more soft, folksy stuff.”
Jim Rizzuto rounds out the Pullman three-piece on drums.
In true all-over-the-map fashion, Yeti’s music has already left the live stage they have scored soundtracks for some independent film projects on the Palouse, Degler said, and soon their music may augment the sounds and narration of a working kitchen in New York.
Degler said they just sent some tracks from their EP to the popular YouTube cooking channel “Brother Green Eats,” based out of Brooklyn.
As for how Yeti’s music translates to all these different projects, Degler said, “We provide something that’s unique.”
Naked in the Philippines
It’s the sort of name that should stay away from your online search bar while at work.
In actuality, however, according to high school senior and Naked in the Philippines keyboardist and singer Henry Gregson, the name was born from a high school anatomy class lecture on disease.
“It was originally ‘dead and naked in the Philippines,’ but we thought that was too angsty,”
Gregson said.
At the time of the then nameless band's first concert, Gregson said, they adopted a teacher’s eccentric quote out of necessity and it just stuck.
Gregson, Reed Ellsworth (guitar), Erik Anders (bass) and Seth Stevenson (drums) make up the young psychedelic grouping. Gregson described their sound as a dance-able, low-key mix of Jefferson Airplane and the Doors.
Naked in the Philippines has played several live shows in Moscow, including at One World Cafe and Mikey’s Greek Gyros. They will play Friday at Humble Burger in Moscow with fellow showcase hopeful Skinny the Kid.
It’s youthful exuberance that they can bring to Rendezvous, Gregson said.
Shiloh
Hailing from Moscow, Shiloh Sharrard has been a solo country musician for more than 10 years and has played more than 400
gigs from Canada to Mexico.
When time began speeding up for the 23 year old with the addition of a baby to her family, the music slowed down.
“A couple months ago I was wanting to get back into music and start making that a big part of my life again,” Sharrard said. “I figured it would be a good time to add a backup band and take that next step.”
Two days away from posting a helpwanted ad on Craigslist, Sharrard said, she was contacted by acquaintance and drummer Trevor Garrett, who, along with Daniel Tate (lead guitar) and Kaitlin Geier (harmony singer), now comprise her maiden country band, Shiloh.
Sharrad said the group's sound is modern and a family friendly twist on old country.
Skinny the Kid
It’s easy to see why Nick VanNuland has a hard time “genrefying” his band's music.
A simple online search for shoegaze, a genre classifier VanNuland uses for Skinny the Kid, will
net obscurities like dream pop, noisepop, postpunk and neopsychedelia, and open a window into just how convoluted it can be.
VanNuland (guitar and lead vocals) is the only Palouse native in Skinny the Kid, although brothers Ethan (bass) and Seth Stevenson (drums), as well as Casey KleppMatson (lead guitar), are fairly recent settlers.
They’ve been playing together for around two years, VanNuland said, and have two tours – which took them as far as the Washington state latitudinal opposites of Olympia and Spokane – under their belts.
As April wraps up, Skinny the Kid will record a debut album in Oregon with a “hopeful” release date toward summer’s end, VanNuland said.
Taproot Bluegrass
There’s around 60 years of bluegrass experience wound into the strings of Taproot Bluegrass members, according to banjo picker Sam Schumacher.
Including the 15-year banjo veteran, members Sean Long (guitar and vocals) and Paul Hohenlohe (dobro and vocals) bring along a trove of experience.
Long, who is a geology professor at Washington State University, and Hohenlohe, who is a biology professor at the University of Idaho, have played Americana music on both coasts.
Nick Brunsfeld (guitar and vocals) has played in many bands, including a previous Schumacher installation called Bluegrass Thinktank.
WSU undergraduate Ariel Hoffman (double bass) is less seasoned, but her introduction to the band is as bluegrass as it comes. Schumacher said he met Hoffman through a friend and fellow musician, an introduction that mirrors the word-of-mouth vein that governs the acoustic world.
“Through musicians you meet other musicians,” Schumacher said.
Schumacher prefers a “25 percent” formula for this newly formed outfit.
Ideally, a Taproot Bluegrass set would be comprised of a quarter of traditionals, original music and rock ‘n’ roll and covers, with the remainder left to unleash those technical, hard-driving foot- stompers.
It’s the rock ‘n’ roll covers, he believes, that can extend the longest olive branch across East City Park.
“Most people enjoy hearing rock ‘n’ roll played on bluegrass instruments – it’s something they can relate to,” Schumacher said.
Mister Handshake
Mister Handshake is a Moscow band made up of Matt Zook (drums), Josh Miller (lead guitar and vocals), Emily Fallin (bass guitar) and Christopher Farnes (rhythm guitar and lead vocals).
Formed in 2015, they’re influenced by ‘90s acts like The Breeders, Ween, Radiohead and the Hives, as well as by rock from the psychedelic era. They’re a garage band by its most literal definition.
Despite their influences, the band stays away from genre classifiers, and instead they focus on creating an organic sound through open collaboration. They are currently working on their first album.
