Camping Trip – far from COVID, far from safe. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Fuica Film Pictures and 8Cube are delighted to share the new trailer and poster for their upcoming horror movie Camping Trip. Camping Trip stars Leo Zola (Leonardo Fuica), Caitlin Cameron, Hannah Forest Briand, and Alex Gravenstein and is directed by Leonardo and Demian Fuica, who both make their English language feature-length directorial debuts. The sinister thriller will be available on Digital Download in the USA & Canada (via Gravitas Ventures) starting August 19, 2022. (Gravitas Ventures, 2022)
Camping Trip – In the summer of 2020, two couples decide to go on a COVID era camping trip after months of being in lockdown. The freedom of nature and the company of their best friends offer the group a rare sense of normality, but though secluded, they are not alone. Nearby, during a botched drop off, two goons decide to go rogue; inadvertently, implicating the campers. What started as a fun-filled vacation quickly turns into a test of loyalty and survival. Suddenly the pandemic is the least of their worries.
The film was shot during the height of the pandemic in 2020, meaning requiring strict health and safety procedures were required, but this was not the only obstacle to overcome. Shooting was also forced to halt for a day when a scene sounded so real to the nearby member of the public, the police were called.
Camping Trip movie poster. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Jacob Jolliff’s new album The Jacob Jolliff Band is available now. Courtesy photo, used with permission
Known for his stunning cross-genre virtuosity and his collaborations with musicians from across the musical spectrum, acoustic musician Jacob Jolliff recently announced the release of his album The JacobJolliff Band via Adhyâropa Records. Featuring tight vocal harmonies as well as the customary instrumental fireworks of a collaborative ensemble made up of fellow young stars, this album marks a major milestone in Jolliff’s evolution and the arrival of an authority on bluegrass mandolin. The Jacob Jolliff Band is available now for purchase. (Adhyâropa Records, 2022)
With his new album releasing today, I recently asked Mr. Jolliff a series of questions regarding his background and musical inclinations and this is what he had to say:
Sandra Cruz: You are known as a mandolin player. Do you play another instrument? Which one would you like to learn to play, if any? Jacob Jolliff: I’ve mostly focused on the mandolin for the last 25 years. I play a bit of guitar, piano, and I sing. I’m finally moving in to an apartment that has a piano, and I’m really looking forward to practicing that!
SC: You have played with many notable musicians; who is your favorite? JJ: I’ve been lucky to play with a lot of incredible musicians in my life—here are some that have had a huge influence: —My dad, Bill Jolliff. My first gigging, recording and touring experiences were with dad, and his musical sensibilities have a big impact on me to this day. —Alex Hargreaves. Alex is one of the best fiddlers in the world and we grew playing together, went to college together, and lived together in NYC. He’s been a huge influence. —Tony Trischka and Béla Fleck. I’ve been lucky enough to perform with Tony and Béla, and they’re both huge heroes of mine. —Some other peers of mine that have impacted me musically are: Wes Corbett, Stash Wyslouch, Mike Barnett, Grant Gordy, Lee Dynes, Mike Robinson, Sierra Hull, Michael Daves.
SC: Do you see yourself playing music many years down the road? Would you ever retire? JJ: Yes! I hope to play my whole life!
SC: Do you prefer playing in front of big audiences or smaller, more intimate venues? JJ: I like it all! It’s more dependent on who I’m playing with, and the level of attention of the crowd! I’ve really enjoyed everything from house shows to Red Rocks!
SC: What type of music do you listen to on your leisure time? JJ: Lots of stuff! I’ve been particularly in to Sonny Rollins, Mulgrew Miller and Jason Isbell these days!
SC: Is there anything you would like your fans to know about you? Any messages to them? JJ: Come to a live show! That band really brings it live!
‘Church Street Blues,’ featuring Molly Tuttle, is the first single from the EP. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Growing up, 14-time Grammy Award-winning guitarist and singer Dan Tyminski was not a six-string picker, favoring mandolin or banjo when he joined the jam—until he heard Tony Rice, that is. Hearing Rice kick-off “Ten Degrees and Getting Colder” with J.D. Crowe and the New South for the first time, Tyminski was overtaken by the sound, forever changing his trajectory as a musician. Like the rest of the tight-knit bluegrass world, Tyminski was devastated by the loss of his hero in late 2020. Upon hearing the news, Tyminski took to writing a song for Rice as a way to relieve some of his grief. “I cried all day on day one, and on day two, had written the instrumental part.” The song ended up being called “One More Time Before You Go,” and grew into the title track of Tyminski’s new EP One More Time Before You Go: A Tribute To Tony Rice. (Dan Tyminski, 2022)
Tyminski shared a taste of the upcoming star-studded tribute with his recording of “Church Street Blues” featuring the reigning queen of bluegrass guitar, Molly Tuttle. Sticking closely to Rice’s classic arrangement, Tyminski and Tuttle cross-pick their way through the long-beloved tune, trading solos and sharing vocals on the song’s iconic chorus. Fans can check out “Church Street Blues”now.
When all was said and done, Tyminski ended up with five songs featuring a number of fellow Rice devotees and friends. New guard pickers like Tuttle, Billy Strings, and Dan Tyminski Band-member Gaven Largent share space with Douglas, Bush, Dailey & Vincent, and more for a stunning all-star tribute to the man who influenced a whole genre of music.
One More Time Before You Go track list: Church Street Blues (feat. Molly Tuttle) One More Time Before You Go (feat. Jerry Douglas, Todd Phillips, Sam Bush, Josh Williams) Ten Degrees And Getting Colder (feat. Dailey & Vincent) Where The Soul Of A Man Never Dies (feat. Billy Strings) Why You Been Gone So Long (feat. Gaven Largent)
Catch Dan Tyminski on tour: August 12 – York, PA – Appell Center For The Performing Arts August 13 – Goshen, CT – Podunk Bluegrass Festival 2022 August 18-20 – Marion, NC – North Carolina State Bluegrass Festival 2022 August 25 – Middlesboro, KY – Levitt AMP Middlesboro Music Series August 27 – Lexington, VA – Lime Kiln Theater August 28 – Doylestown, PA – Bluegrass at the TileWorks Summer Series September 1-4 – Brunswick, ME – Thomas Point Bluegrass Festival 2022 September 1 – Pawling, NY – Daryl’s House September 3 – Plymouth, MA – Spire Center for the Performing Arts September 18 – Flagstaff, AZ – Pickin’ In The Pines 2022 September 27-29 – West Raleigh, NC – IBMA Bluegrass Ramble 2022 September 30 – Rocky Mount, VA – Harvester Performance Center October 7-8 – Big Stone Gap, VA – Blue Highway Fest 2022 October 14 – The Woodlands, TX – Dosey Doe Big Barn November 10 – Wilmington, OH – Roberts Centre November 10-12 – Wilmington, NC – Industrial Strength Bluegrass Festival 2022
Throughout his 30+ year career, Dan Tyminski has left his mark in every corner of modern music. Tyminski’s voice famously accompanies George Clooney’s performance of the Stanley Brother’s Classic song, “I’m A Man of Constant Sorrow,” in the film, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou and his vocal collaboration with Swedish DJ Avicii on the song “Hey, Brother” was a global smash, having been streamed over 1 billion times to date. Dan has also contributed guitar and/or harmony to projects by Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, Brad Paisley, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Kenny Chesney, LeAnn Rimes, Aaron Lewis, and Rob Thomas, to name a few. In addition to his highly successful solo career, Dan Tyminski has played guitar and mandolin for Alison Krauss and Union Station since 1994. His unmatched instrumental skills and burnished, soulful tenor voice have been key components of the band.
Scott Krokoff’s new single Fortunately. Cover art by enchanted.marvel.
With a rich sound drawn primarily from his love of 60s and 70s music, New Yorker Scott Krokoff weaves elements of folk rock and country pop into confessional and compelling Americana. He is an evocative and introspective songwriter with a style that is reminiscent of Tom Petty and James Taylor and a voice that sounds like a mix of Jackson Browne and Steve Winwood. People of all ages find Scott’s music appealing and inspirational, relating to his music not only because of the infectious rhythm and energy each song possesses but because he represents the desire we each have to dream big and live life to the fullest. His latest single Fortunately, is now officially out and available for streaming on all platforms. It is a love song written for his wife in the bossa nova style reminiscent of those classic bossa sounds from the 60s. (Scott Krokoff, 2022)
He will be appearing at the Mercury Lounge in New York on Friday, August 5 along with Rory D’Lasnow and Victor V. Gurbo. Tickets are $10 and are available through Ticketmaster. Each be playing 30 minute full band sets.
To date, Scott has released 3 albums and several singles, including three singles with over 100,000 streams on Spotify (Far Too Many Times, My Own Terms and Groundhog). PopWrapped calls Scott “an artist to watch” and Music Crowns calls Scott’s latest release – 2022’s Fortunately – “a song you’ll want to hold your loved ones close to, and find harmony with one another while swaying along to the music.”
A multi-award-winner on the festival circuit, The Andy Baker Tape premieres on the Terror Films Channel August 5 before a wide digital on August 12 and the Kings of Horror on August 19, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Alpha House’s Bret Lada writes, directs and stars in unnerving found footage horror movie The Andy Baker Tape, releasing this August from Terror Films. A multi-award-winner on the festival circuit, The AndyBaker Tape premieres on the Terror Films Channel August 5 before a wide digital on August 12 and the Kings of Horror on August 19, 2022. (Terror Films, 2022)
The Andy Baker Tape – On October of 2020 food blogger Jeff Blake and his half-brother Andy Baker hit the road on a food tour that had the potential to change their lives. They were never seen again. This is their footage.
“The Andy Baker Tape was written, shot, and edited in a 6-month period during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Created by a displaced screen actor, an out-of-work Blue Man, an Australian-based sound engineer, and a first-time female producer; this film is a testament to creation and keeping the artistic spirit alive while the rest of the world was forced into hibernation. Our story is a joyride of laughs, thrills, and suspense. My team and I are delighted to share it with you.” – Bret Lada
Infrared is now available on digital platforms and will be released on Kings of Horror on August 5, 2022. Photo: google
Terror Films released found footage horror film Infrared, starring The Room’s Gregory Sestero, worldwide on digital platforms on July 22 and it will be available on Kings of Horror on August 5, 2022. (Terror Films, 2022)
Infrared – A paranormal investigator and his production crew gain access to a mysterious, abandoned school but when the thrilling haunt turns deadly, the team must race to uncover the terrifying truth before they become the school’s next victims. Jesse Janzen, Leah Finity, and Lori Richardson also star in the spooker.
“Infrared is first and foremost a horror film, but at its heart, is a movie about siblings reconnecting in a time of need. Often in horror films, we find ourselves rooting for the characters we don’t like to die, so it was important for us to develop characters that we wanted to survive, creating a larger emotional investment for those watching. With this intention in mind, we set out to wholly develop their backstories and create a believable connection. From there we tackled the darker themes and scares within the film, workshopping ideas with our actors, and giving them the freedom of collaboration within our improvisational process. This film is injected with humor, tension and scares, and we really hope that nobody finds an owner’s manual in their basement.” – Directors Robert Livings and Randy Nundall Jr.
Infrared movie poster. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
The Western Express show off their nuevo-retro style of Texas country with new single “Flower Of The Rio Grande.” Upcoming album Lunatics, Lovers & Poets is due out August 9, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Lone Star State honky-tonkers The Western Express are aware of the renewed interest in the eras of country music that inspire them—and the major-label artists who are leading that surge in popularity with radio-friendly hits—but they are not chasing trends. “My first real concert was the Judds at the Houston Rodeo in the late ‘80s. I sang George Strait songs at every talent show I could enter as a kid,” says Stephen Castillo, one half of The Western Express, along with Phill Brush. “I’ve just always been immersed in it.” Their sound is real, and it goes deep. Their new album Lunatics, Lovers & Poets will be out August 9,2022. (The Western Express, 2022)
Phill Brush and Stephen Castillo, together known as The Western Express, met via Craigslist in early 2018 and bonded over their shared love of first-rate songwriting and the country hits of the 1980s and ‘90s. Drawn to the tragic or notable lives of writers and performers such as Dean Dillon, Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz of Watchhouse, and Chavela Vargas, Brush and Castillo’s unique set of influences are balanced with classic country troubadours like Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, and Alan Jackson. It is through this lens that they refract a sound all their own. Touching on classic pop country, Latin blues, gospel, and even a little outlaw, The Western Express are cultivating their one-of-a-kind brand of Texas country.
Pro Country debuted The Western Express’ “Flower of the Rio Grande,” the first single from their upcoming full-length album, Lunatics, Lovers & Poets. With a swaggering, moody Mex-Tex feel, “Flower of the Rio Grande” tells the story of a lovelorn man roaming the desert, as Castillo puts it: “searching for the dark-eyed woman who now only lives in his dreams.” A lonesome fiddle and a reverbed-out electric guitar dance in and out of Castillo’s vocal melody, painting a perfect, cool desert evening scene. “He wants her and she knows it,” says Brush. “And she’s not giving in that easily.” Fans can check out the music video for “Flower of the Rio Grande” now and stream it.
The nine songs on Lunatics, Lovers & Poets work together despite their differences—much like Brush and Castillo themselves—because of Castillo’s strong, but not self important, songwriting decisions. There is an old-school storytelling style masking deeply personal reflections in “Flower of the Rio Grande,” and “Leyenda,” unflinching honesty over upbeat melodies in “Trust Me, You Can’t Trust Me” and “Emptying Me,” and straightforward, dancehall-ready love stories in “You and Me and the Neon” and “Lovin’ You for a While.”
“I took the craft of writing these songs seriously,” explains Castillo, who wrote much of the album during a solo trip to West Texas in the fall of 2018, “but the songs themselves don’t take themselves very seriously.”
Lunatics, Lovers & Poets track list:
Honky Tonk Saints
Flower of the Rio Grande
You and Me and the Neon
Trust Me, You Can’t Trust Me
Leyenda
Lovin’ You For A While
Last Apology
Emptying Me
Quesadilla Mamacita
Catch The Western Express on tour: August 4 – Austin, TX – Broken Spoke Dancehall (Album Release Show) August 7 – Helotes, TX – Floore’s Country Store August 19 – College Station, TX – Calvary Court
Tiffany Williams pays homage to her family and every other long line of coal miners with stunning new song “All Those Days of Drinking Dust” from upcoming full-length debut All Those Days of Drinking Dust, out August 19, 2022. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Singer-songwriter Tiffany Williams is the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of eastern Kentucky coal miners, but the more she introduced herself to audiences that way at her live shows, the more she felt guilty about it. “I hadn’t done anything to deserve claiming that,” she says. What she meant is that she did not have to make the same sacrifices or take part in the back-breaking labor that they did, yet she was proudly sharing and identifying with that part of her culture and heritage. In actuality, Williams is an award-winning fiction writer and a self-described lexophile who has taught high school English and studied Appalachian speech and sociolinguistics in graduate school—not to mention working as a dialect coach on the set of “The Evening Hour,” which debuted at Sundance in 2020. She shares a stunning example of a sum of her lifetime of parts; the title track from her debut full-length album, AllThose Days of Drinking Dust, due to be released August 19, 2022. (Tiffany Williams, 2022)
“All Those Days of Drinking Dust” was written, in a way, to purge Williams’ guilt about attaching herself to her forebearers’ hard-working Appalachian lineage, and what came from it is a hauntingly beautiful tribute to not only her family but to generations of families like hers; folks who spent their lives working beneath the mighty Appalachian mountains. Those mountains, as the song says, “are the only ones that watched us ripe and rot / and hold the bones of both our living and our dead”—the “ripe” and “rot” a reference to Shakespeare’s As You Like It. “From the first-line echo of the original coal miner’s daughter Loretta Lynn, this song pays homage to a succession of coal mining forebears and talks about living life in the shadow of the harrowing vocation—how it comes to bear on the body, the spirit, and the people making a home in fraught yet beloved coal country,” says Williams.
Americana Highwayspremiered “All Those Days of Drinking Dust,” writing, “Williams’ rich vocals hold sorrow and longing, and the album promises to be one of this year’s favorites.” Produced by legendary Lexington, Kentucky-based Duane Lundy, All Those Days of Drinking Dust will be released on August 19. Fans can pre-order or pre-save the album ahead of its release and listen to the album-opening title track. All Those Days of Drinking Dust represents a monumental convergence of each chapter of Williams’ life.
Williams and Lundy recruited an eclectic band of pickers from the Commonwealth that add energy and nuance to each track. Virtuoso cellist Ben Sollee lends a ghostly vibe to “The Sea,” while J. Tom Hnatow adds bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and steel to other tracks throughout. There is percussion from Tripp Bratton; contributions on keys, acoustic, and electric guitars from Justin Craig; fiddle stylings from Ellie Miller; and Taylor Shuck on banjo. Fellow Kentuckian and noted New York Times best-selling novelist Silas House adds vocals to a lively duet. Lundy not only produced and contributed keys but also engineered and mixed the recording.
All Those Days of Drinking Dust track list: 1. All Those Days of Drinking Dust 2. Carletta 3. Harder Heart 4. Know Your Worth 5. The Sea 6. Wanted It To Be 7. When I Come Back Around 8. Don’t Give A Damn 9. No Bottom 10. The Waiting
Orders From Above is now available on digital. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Vir Srinivas’ writing and directorial debut, Orders From Above has picked up awards or nominations at four world festivals, including Cannes and Mannheim. It is available on iTunes and all major digital platforms including YouTube, Vudu, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video. The 87-minute film is based on the interrogation of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann by Israeli police. (Gravitas Ventures, 2022)
Orders From Above – Winner of Best Historical Film at Cannes World Film Festival. Fifteen years after the end of World War II, Israeli police officer Avner Less interrogates Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution. Adolf Eichmann is finally captured and brought to Israel to stand trial, but without enough evidence to prosecute him, Avner Less needs a confession from him. Directed by Vir Srinivas, with Richard Cotter, Peter J. Donnelly, Darrell Hoffman, and Emmanuel Drakakis.
Glasshouse is now available on digital and On Demand. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Kelsey Egan’s directorial feature debut Glasshouse is now available on digital platforms including Google Play Movies & TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube. This dystopian science fiction thriller stars Jessica Alexander, Kitty Harris, Helton Pelser, Adrienne Pearce, and Anja Taljaard. It received rave reviews at the 2021 Fantasia International Film Festival and is currently 91% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. (Glasshouse, 2022)
Glasshouse – A family consisting of a mother, three daughters and one son isolate themselves in a greenhouse, which the mother calls the Sanctuary, to escape the Shred, a dementia-like toxin that erases people’s memory. All is well until the sisters are seduced by a Stranger who shatters their peace and stirs a past best left buried.
SA Examiner 