AUGUST 25 / 8:00PM
21+ / $10 Advance

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Nectar Presents:

Joe Purdy

• Meiko
• Jay Nash
• Chris Seefried of the Low Stars

JOE PURDY

Have you ever been hooked on the narrative of a conversation that you weren't supposed to hear? That is just one of the things you might feel when listening to the music of singer/songwriter Joe Purdy. As he reflects on a memory of an angry moment, or a stolen kiss, his voice becomes startlingly intimate -- you can practically feel his breath on your ear. His sweet, folk- flavored melodies, coupled with the warm tones of an old Gibson guitar, is enough to make an audience blush. Born and raised in bluegrass country -- Fayetteville, Arkansas -- Purdy fast developed an appreciation for music. Listening to Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Buddy Holly, and pretty much anything playing on the oldies station. But it was a more contemporary artist that first truly impressed on Purdy the power of songwriting. When he was twelve, he got a hold of his father's record player and sitting in the player was James Taylor's Sweet Baby James LP. Purdy was sold, and very quickly became partial to someone who could effectively paint a picture with words. Purdy picked up a guitar not long after. This is where the bluegrass came in. Purdy started listening to old Tony Rice and Doc Watson records and would sit on the front porch with his father as the two of them would work on their flatpicking skills and quietly pretend to be bluegrass pickin stars. Later, Purdy moved out west only to discover that he could write his own songs. And audiences wanted to hear them. Since then he has released four albums independently. Now L.A. based, with his newly formed five piece band, and recently aquired publishing deal with Warner Chapell music, Purdy and the boys have already been touring the country sharing the music with any and everyone who will take the time to listen. They are currently finishing up a full band record and some nights you can find them blowing off steam playing at the singer-songwriter hot spot Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. Recently you might have Joe's song grace ABC's Lost and Grey's Anatomy!

MEIKO

Go back a few years, back to Roberta, a town of 800-something people. Head down the tar-patched backroads of backwoods Georgia to a little country church. This is where Meiko had her first public audience—a little girl singing for a predominantly black congregation. Without irony or intended insult, she performed “White Christmas”. Whether that sort of start is a success or not, it isn’t reason enough to pack up and head to Los Angeles. That wouldn’t make sense. And of course, that isn’t how Meiko ended up there. No, in fact, that Sunday song service isn’t even really related to how she found herself on the threshold of a legit career in music, except maybe by ethos. She had an opportunity way back then and she took it. The same is true for her now. Meiko was a 19-year-old living in Miami with her sister, Kelly. She’d tried college in Macon, GA, and other prototypical teenage preoccupations, like waiting tables and working at the mall. But she didn’t like it. She had to get out even if there was no other reason; even if getting out was the only reason. She just had too much spirit for such a small space. Like her grandma always told her, “You’ve got champagne dreams and a beer pocketbook.” The will for something bigger than her means. And there in South Florida, she was at the same point. Time for change. “I stayed there for eight months, and then my sister said, ‘I want to move to L.A.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll go with you.’,” Meiko says now. “I’d never been to L.A. before. It was just one of those young-and-dumb, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants decisions.” It wasn’t an oh-I’ll-be-a-guitar-strumming-folk/pop-princess-so-yeah-let’s-go moment; she wasn’t setting out to make a name for herself. Otherwise, Meiko might not have done as well. Like Navin Johnson from her favorite movie, The Jerk, she was just setting out hoping to find something that made sense to her. When she landed in Los Angeles, Meiko found a landscape littered with a seemingly endless supply of wannabe rock stars. Standing out would’ve been nearly impossible if she’d tried. Instead, her fate hinged on knowing the difference between good and bad music. “I’ve always played guitar and I’ve always sung, but when I came here, I noticed that there are a lot of crappy bands, so I was like, ‘If they can do it then I can do it.’ So I started going to open-mic nights. Slowly, after I started doing that, bookers would see me and ask me to do a show, and that’s how I kinda got my foot in the door.” She chose “Meiko” as a stage name because her sister, fashion designer Kelly Nishimoto, called her that when they were little. Though a quarter-Japanese, she had no idea how Japanese names were spelled, which is why a stickler could call her out. As spelled, it’s pronounced “MAY-ko”, not “MEE-ko” as she says it. But, you learn some lessons the hard way. The people don’t seem concerned with that, and neither do the critics. Her self-released, self-titled debut album recently reached #35 on iTunes Top 100 Albums chart, and was the #1 Folk Album on iTunes, totaling well over 200,000 downloads and netting her their “Indie Spotlight” as well as placement on their “Best of 2007” feature. Meiko’s songs have been in regular rotation on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” and the nationally-syndicated “Sounds Eclectic”, drawing vocal support from renowned DJ and station Music Director Nic Harcourt. Meiko played over 100 U.S. dates in 2007, catching the eye of Paste Magazine Editor Josh Jackson who said, “I arrived in time to catch a gorgeous set from Meiko, a waitress at Hotel Café and from what I heard last night, my pick for their next big success story.” With Sundance and SXSW performances already under her belt in 2008 and the highly-anticipated Hotel Café Tour coming in the fall, she seems poised to live up to the praise from gossip blogger Perez Hilton, too. He says, “If you like singer/songwriters then you will be foaming at the mouth for Meiko.” Even people who haven’t seen her perform or downloaded her songs are hearing her music and being blown away thanks to prime positioning in TV shows like “Grey’s Anatomy”, “Kyle XY” and the new CBS series “Moonlight”. Not bad for a girl who got her first guitar for Christmas from her dad who not only taught her how to play it well, but how to play it for the joy it brings. “It’s definitely therapy. That’s the only reason I do it. I feel like I can take a bad or sad situation and put it in a three-minute song, and feel like I turned it into a positive thing.” That point is obviously why she’s picked up so many fans in so many places, both stateside and abroad. Meiko transforms her own pain into something beautiful, giving others in similar situations a means for redirecting their own emotional misfortune. It is art at its highest function, serving as a guide with which to navigate the world around. She gives the people what they need instead of what she thinks they want.

JAY NASH

Jay Nash's defining musical moment came at age 12, after hearing a 90-minute Maxell tape with the 1971 Grateful Dead Live album on one side and Cat Stevens¹ Greatest Hits on the other. To steal a line: What a long, strange trip it's been ­ and it's brought him where he is today. Jay grew up in the small town of Manlius, outside Syracuse in upstate New York, spending his summers in the idyllic Thousand Islands region on the St. Lawrence River near the U.S.-Canadian border. Listening to that double-sided Grateful Dead/Cat Stevens cassette "shook something loose in me. I felt a connection to something I¹d never felt before." Picking up the guitar, he eventually discovered Dylan ("I was blown away by his imagery, his use of metaphor and allusions It actually scared me away from even trying to write songs"), then discovered his talent singing the high parts with a friend on Cat Stevens¹ "Father and Son" at a school talent show before an audience of 1,500. "There was something kind of magical and amazing about it," he says of the experience performing live. "It wasn¹t about me, but having all these people in the same place feeling the same things forgetting about everything else for that moment." Attending SUNY Binghamton and then University of Vermont, Nash played in a variety of bands, then as a solo act around the ski lodges of Vermont, working packed audiences into a frenzy with medleys that went from "Tennessee Jed" into "Johnny B. Goode," "Feeling Alright" and "Tangled Up In Blue." After graduation, Nash got into his Honda Civic and drove to New York City, where he began to write songs in earnest, recording a six-song EP, playing some live gigs and experiencing "lots of silly adventures born of naivete and youthful stupidity." By 2001, he had moved to Los Angeles, where he began to pursue a musical career in earnest. He established a residency at Bar F2, which eventually became Room 5, an intimate venue located above an Italian restaurant on LaBrea Avenue, where he went on to not only play, but also book such soon-to-be major label artists as Colbie Caillat, Sara Bareilles, OneRepublic and Tyrone Wells, then began a touring schedule that included up to 200 dates a year. Along the way, Nash developed a following, putting out a series of indie releases on his own, including 'Open Late ('2002), the full-length effort he started three days before 9/11 and ended up selling 2,000 copies through gigs and CD Baby; 'Nine', a 2004 compilation of demos; the autobiographical A Stream 'Up North', one of two companion albums he recorded in Thousand Islands with Joe Purdy; 'The North LaBrea All-Star Conquistadors,' a CD inspired by the celebrated weekly Monday night shows at Room 5 that also included fellow singer-songwriters Garrison Starr and Gabriel Mann; and his most recent release, 'Some Kind of Comfort'. When the shows at Room 5 started attracting media interest and more crowds, Nash moved over to the larger Hotel Cafe, which spawned its own musical community. His upcoming release, 'The Things You Think You Need', is the latest chapter in Jay Nash¹s ongoing saga, but in reality, it¹s the start of the story, not the end. The album, produced by Chris Seefried and recorded at Phantom Vox Studios in Hollywood, CA during October and November of 2007, shows a vastly more mature side to Jay Nash, both sonically and lyrically. All of Jay¹s influences are apparent on the album, from the Springsteen-like "Hard Lesson² to the mellow James Taylor/Dylan and the Band vibe of "Sweet Talkin' Liar," from the Cat Stevens-inspired narrative of "Wayfarer" to the "Tangled Up In Blue" storytelling of "Over You," the Jackson Browne politics, spaghetti western guitar and huge drum sound of "All the Same," the Wilco-reminiscent fusion of "Keep on Talkin¹," the country-rock anthem "Easy" and the Americana music hall honky-tonk of ³Forgive Me.² Nash¹s vocal style is comfortable and familiar, but polished and all his own, like a new pair of shoes that fit just right. The album includes guest appearances by some of Nash's close musical friends, including Epic recording artist Sara Bareilles (on "Barcelona") and David Immergluck and Charlie Gillingham from the Counting Crows. 'The Things You Think You Need 'will be released digitally on May 20, 2008.

LINKS

• Joe Purdy on MySpace
• Meiko on MySpace
• Jay Nash on MySpace
• Chris Seefried on MySpace
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