May 30, 2014

Friday night live at Transistor: Rebecca Jasso, Anna Soltys and Shelley Miller & The BCC. Sound by Jon Monteverde.

Rebecca Jasso started playing guitar at the age of 10. Since then, her aim has been to write the best songs she can. She studied classical guitar throughout high school, until she quit formal lessons and began to focus on her original tunes. For many years she performed solo as a singer/songwriter, but before long found herself leading a rock band and, more lately, an original soul band. Now you will hear her mostly solo, performing songs of love and heartbreak. A visual artist, Rebecca paints pictures with words and plays rhythmic, colorful progressions. Says Rebecca: "My set has been described as sweet and dreamy, and my songs in the vein of Nick Drake. My aim is to enchant."

For this set she was joined on vocals by Julie Jurgens.
Please note: Due to a technical issue, this is an abbreviated recording of her set; our apologies.

Visit Rebecca's website.

Anna Soltys usually fronts Anna Soltys and the Familiar, a modern folk rock band with an entrancing new sound. Anna spent the first part of her childhood in Poland followed by six years in Paris before she moved to her self-proclaimed hometown, Chicago. It is the cross-cultural awareness that may awaken the type of delivery that is so unique to her sound. On top of the music, her lyrical, poetic content fills the heart with an awareness of the self we could all use a little of. "My goal as an artist is not only to explore this roller coaster called life," says Anna, "but also to explore and unveil the strands that bind us all together." Anna's unique vocal stylings sit on a bed of seasoned musical arrangements melting together into a fresh and soothing kind of unfamiliar familiar. Her music explores and embodies elements of pain, strength, honesty and sorrow. From start to finish, lyrically driven simple melodies leave you with a sense of colorful melancholy.

For this set Anna was joined on percussion and drums by Larry Beers.

Visit Anna Soltys' website.

Listen to a previous Anna Soltys Transistor performance from December 13, 2013.

Shelley Miller & the BCC make music to rip the curtains between darkness and light. Hard, delicate, sinewy, soulful music, music driven as much by Miller's skin-of-your-teeth storytelling as by the band's carefully crafted guitar lines and shake-your-teeth noise. Think Radiohead by way of Neko Case by way of Thurston Moore by way of Wilco by way of rusty bicycles and midnight thunderstorms and beer and sobriety and too much coffee and not enough sleep. Since forming mid-2012, Shelley Miller and the BCC have played Hideout, Double Door, City Winery and an abandoned mental hospital.

Visit Shelley Miller and the BCC on Bandcamp.