Day: June 1, 2022

Bakery Lorraine celebrates Pride Month with cookies for a cause

Bakery Lorraine launches specialty cookie in observance of Pride Month with a portion of all proceeds contributing to LGBTQ organization Thrive Youth Center. Photo: Bakery Lorraine, used with permission.

Bakery Lorraine, a local favorite and nationally recognized pastry shop, will offer a rainbow-colored cookie in celebration of Pride Month. They will be joining forces with San Antonio-based LGBTQ+ organization, Thrive Youth Center. (Bakery Lorraine, 2022)

A portion of all proceeds will be donated to the organization whose mission is to help homeless LGBTQ+ youth in San Antonio. The cookies will be available throughout the month of June starting on June 1 and will be sold in packs of three cookies for $6.50. Cookies can be purchased at all Bakery Lorraine locations in San Antonio and Austin for dine-in or to go. This June Thrive Youth Center aims to raise over $20,000 for its organization. Meeting this goal will allow the organization to accommodate the growing numbers of youth entering their shelter, assist with housing programs, provide funding for increased staffing needs and supply necessary items for LGBTQ+ youth.

Bakery Lorraine is a local favorite and nationally recognized pastry shop famous for its colorful macarons and exquisite French pastries. Owned by chefs Anne Ng, Jeremy Mandrell, and operator Charlie Biedenharn, Bakery Lorraine was named one of the best new bakeries in the U.S. by Food & Wine and CNN’s Eatocracy blog, as well as one of the “13 Destination Bakeries” by Conde Nast Traveler. Bakery Lorraine serves handmade French pastries and macarons using the finest ingredients. The bakery also serves breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner, including items like its breakfast parfait, the quiche Lorraine, an assortment of salads and soups, and artisan sandwiches. Bakery Lorraine has three locations in San Antonio including one in the Historic Pearl district, one in San Antonio’s Medical Center, and one in San Antonio’s RIM shopping center, including now an Austin location at Domain NORTHSIDE.

Thrive Youth Center’s mission is to provide a safe, effective, and supportive center for homeless LGBTQ youth in San Antonio and Austin, so they may become productive, skilled, educated, and successful adults with the ability, opportunity, and possibility of achieving their dreams. Thrive has 10 beds at our emergency shelter located on Haven for Hope’s campus, and we are now in our third year of housing young adults in their own apartments for up to a year through a federal government grant. Thrive Youth Center has served over 200 young adults in 2019 alone.

 

The Red Clay Strays announce debut album Moment of Truth

The Red Clay Strays’ debut album Moment of Truth is available now. Photo: Macie Bowden, used with permission.

After cutting their teeth in the Gulf Coast scene touring for five years, The Red Clay Strays released their debut album Moment of Truth in April. The album is available now worldwide. This 12-track album blends its unique individualities and influences to create a project that breathes raw honesty. Band members Brandon Coleman (lead vocals/guitar), Drew Nix (vocals/electric guitar/harmonica), Zach Rishel (electric guitar), Andrew Bishop (bass), and John Hall (drums) collaborated to create Moment of Truth. Each member, including the band’s videographer, Matthew Coleman, had a hand in writing this project, which strives to bring the public songs with a purpose that embody real-life experiences. (The Red Clay Strays, 2022)

“Moment of Truth strives to bring audiences something real to experience,” the band continues. “The music and lyrics have a purpose to them. These songs have more purpose to them – a mission if you will. They usher in love and deeper thoughts about the situations we humans find ourselves in. ‘Ghosts’ has a clear message about not hanging on to baggage from your past and moving on with life. ‘Forgive’ is about not being able to move on until you let go of that baggage. ‘Sunshine’ is about walking that line and staying within God’s grace and light. The album is loaded with tunes that we hope evoke people’s thoughts and guide them to a better way of thinking.”

Moment of Truth is a collection of songs formed into a tangible album because of the band’s hard work and dedicated fanbase. On February 25, the band started a crowdfunding campaign on their Strays & Friends Facebook group page to see if fans would graciously donate money to go towards the album in exchange for merchandise and the opportunity to receive exclusive content. Over a weekend, that small group of Facebook fans donated a total of $17,000.

On February 27, the Red Clay Strays made their campaign public and raised over $48,000 within the next week, confirming that crowds love the Strays music and believe in their cause to bring their career to the next level. The campaign ended with a total of $57,715 raised – well exceeding their goal of $40,000.

With a sound both modern and reminiscent of a Sun Records vinyl, The Red Clay Strays are forging a new path with their spellbinding genre-bending brand of tunes. Inspired by the vibrant heyday of southern music, the band finds its origins in the styles of classic country, rockabilly, and gospel-fed soul, all the while ushering in a new era of rock-and-roll that is as distinctive as the men who form it.

Born and bred in the red dirt clay of south Alabama, Brandon Coleman (lead vocals/guitar), Drew Nix (vocals/electric guitar/harmonica), Zach Rishel (electric guitar), Andrew Bishop (bass), and John Hall (drums), blended their unique individualities and influences to create a band with a rare sincerity that is not often seen in today’s industry. The band is following their album release with a Moment of Truth tour.

Moment of Truth track list:

1. “Stone’s Throw” (Drew Nix and Eric Erdman)
2. “Moment of Truth” (Matthew Coleman)
3. “Do Me Wrong” (Drew Nix)
4. “Wondering Why” (Brandon Coleman, Drew Nix, and Dan Couch)
5. “Forgive” (Matthew Coleman)
6. “Heavy Heart” (Matthew Coleman)
7. “Ghosts” (Drew Nix)
8. “She’s No Good” (Drew Nix and John Hall)
9. “Don’t Care” (Brandon Coleman)
10. “Killers” (Matthew Coleman)
11. “Sunshine” (Matthew Coleman)
12. “Doin’ Time” (Drew Nix)

New album release: Corner House’s How Beautiful It’s Been

Eclectic quartet Corner House brings musical levity to the breakup song segment with the first single ‘South of the City’ from their new full length album How Beautiful It’s Been. Courtesy photo, used with permission.

Emerging from varied genre backgrounds, Boston-formed quartet Corner House’s unique strength is their desire to learn from one another—not only in musical skill and style, but in life experience—such that every challenge overcome by one band member becomes part of the group’s shared musical and personal DNA. On their new full-length debut, How Beautiful It’s Been, the band—songwriter and guitarist Ethan Hawkins, Scottish fiddle player Louise Bichan, bluegrass mandolinist Ethan Setiawan, and cellist Casey Murray—reveals the sublime result of that growth mindset, with a singular sound that incorporates old time, Scottish, progressive bluegrass, and folk music, with the help of their collective mentor and the album’s producer, Scottish harp virtuoso Maeve Gilchrist. Americana Highways premiered Corner House’s first single from How Beautiful It’s Been, “South of the City.” Leaning well toward the upbeat end of the break-up song spectrum, this waltzing number showcases not only Hawkins’s songwriting but the band’s stellar, accurate-yet-soulful musicianship as well. Fans can hear “South of the City” now at this link. (Corner House, 2022)

Corner House’s first full-length offering features five lyrical songs and four instrumentals, which serve as soundscape meditations between each lyrical offering. Several of the instrumentals, such as “Two Rights Make a Chicken,” showcase the Celtic influence in the band, with gorgeous cello and fiddle melodies calling Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas recordings to mind. In this context, however, they are also accompanied by rhythmic and arpeggiated mandolin and guitar, emerging into improvised solos before returning to the melodic backbone of the tune. Although Hawkins is the sole lyric writer, the subject matter of the group’s songs is a reflection of their collective experience. One such song is “Angel Falls,” one of the album’s standout tracks which Hawkins wrote after a long discussion with Murray about her experiences with religion as a queer person. “I am human / I have choices / To love who I want to love / I have a right.”

In many ways, Corner House is the band we all wish we could be a part of. Mutually inspired, learning from one another, and open to any and all ideas, the group is a beautiful representation of their generation; not only tolerating but embracing diversity in every aspect of their music making. If we listen closely enough, we may be able to learn just as much from them as they have from one another.

Catch Corner House on tour:
June 11 – Pamet Harbor Club – Truro, MA
June 23 – House concert – Baltimore, MD
June 24 – Red Wing Roots Music Festival – Mt. Solon, VA
June 26 – Stone Room Concerts – Arlington, VA

Originally hailing from Boston, MA, Corner House takes their name from the place where the four young band members found a musical family in one another—their shared home in Brighton, as students at Berklee College of Music. Made up of songwriter and guitarist Ethan Hawkins, Scottish fiddle player Louise Bichan, cellist Casey Murray, and bluegrass mandolinist Ethan Setiawan, Corner House are students of a wide variety of musical traditions. For their debut full-length record, they enlisted harp virtuoso Maeve Gilchrist, a past mentor to all four band members, to produce.