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THE SUITCASE JUNKET

May 13, 2015 @ 8:00 pm - 10:30 pm

$10
THE SUITCASE JUNKET is a one-man tour de force out of Western Massachusetts. Matt Lorenz — aka Suitcase Junket — has been road dogging for three years, solo and with his band Rusty Belle, touring with Chris Smithers, David Wax Museum, and Peter Mulvey. He’s got a powerful new CD out called Make Time.
Matt plays a collection of leather satchels, baby shoes, oil cans, cast-iron kettles, sticks, bones, and a ragged guitar he had pulled out of someone’s trash. At first the novelty is mesmerizing, then the music is. Suitcase finds extreme sounds — the wicked grind of a guitar , the vintage buzz of an old mic, the wild insect drone in the throes throat singing  — and uses them to forward his restless skinny road-dog blues-playing big-hair cause. The boy has stories to tell.
Peter Mulvey and many others sing Matt’s praises on a collection of various media, including in-person speech, echo chambers, telephone, shouting from the mountain tops and social media.
Matt is a Vermont born musician, visual artist and tinkerer, and a professional showoff. “I aim to write good songs and sing them honestly” says Lorenz. He does that and more. The Suitcase Junket’s artistic vision is one of salvaged and repurposed objects, images and emotions. His innovative junk-percussion constructions, original album art featuring inanimate objects with wings, and the high craft of his songwriting all combine to create a unique and engaging entity with a force and style all its own. Lorenz’s self-taught throat-singing adds a fascinating edge to the overall sound. “I’m interested in the hidden voices that reside within things: the songs stuck inside instruments, the story behind the object, the mysterious weight of a word, the harmonic sequence that’s in every note waiting to be broken as light through a prism.”

Lorenz tours The Suitcase Junket nationally playing on festival stages and city street corners, in concert halls and dive bars, in living rooms and listening rooms. The sound isn’t easy to pin into a genre, but The Suitcase Junket is often likened to Tom Waits, The Black Keys and Andrew Bird. Lorenz’s songwriting is unexpected, powerful and poignant, drawing from the deep well of the American musical traditions of folk, rock, blues and storytelling, all sharpened with a keen pop sensibility. With masterful command over instruments of his own creation, he silences a room with the first notes of his throat singing and holds the crowd until the final chords of his guitar. When he plays you get the sense that he is truly playing and that he’d be doing it just as joyfully with or without an audience.

The Suitcase Junket has self-released two albums: Sever and Lift (2009) and Knock It Down. (2011) The third album, Make Time, came out on January 6, 2015. “The band” is built around a resurrected dumpster-diamond guitar, an old oversized suitcase, a hi-hat, a gas-can baby-shoe foot-drum, a cookpot-soupcan-tambourine foot-drum, a circular-saw-blade bell and a box of bones and silverware that operate much like a hi-hat. He pounds out rhythms with his feet and his twang-and-buzz guitar growls through a couple of old tube amps. On top of all this is the ethereal edge of his overtone throat-singing. This act is unique and not to be missed.”Make Time truly travels to various destinations of musical fortitude and emotion[…]It’s one hell of a ride that holds its resonance well after the record has stopped spinning.” – No Depression.

“If croons could kill, this one-man band would be a bounty hunter. Armed with a unique, self-sufficient approach to raw instrumentation, The Suitcase Junket is an artisan of song, bending, forging and sharpening each piece into an emotional tool.” -Performer Magazine.

“His songs have a sense of beauty about them and are delivered with such forceful sound you can’t believe you aren’t listening to a full band.” – Greenfield Recorder

Details

Date:
May 13, 2015
Time:
8:00 pm - 10:30 pm
Cost:
$10