Meadowlark – a new musical festival set to launch to the public this September 8-10 in the Hudson Valley – will kick off its ticket presale with a concert on the rooftop at Our Wicked Lady in Brooklyn April 23, featuring Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage, Baby Dayliner, Mississippi-influenced blues guitarist Ryan Lee Crosby, and Brooklyn indie rock band MayQueen. Lewis and Crosby performed at Meadowlark last year, in its initial invite-only edition. April 23 Our Wicked Lady concert attendees will receive an exclusive discount code for tickets to the festival.
Born out of a close-knit network of local and traveling musicians, Meadowlark 2022 took place on a sun-soaked rolling meadow among the apple trees at Stone Ridge Orchard, which will also host the festival this year. Less than two hours north of New York City, Stone Ridge Orchard is a 200-year-old working farm on 115 acres in the scenic Roundout Valley, situated between the Shawangunk Ridge and the Catskill mountain range, in the Hudson Valley region.
YouTube playlist (coming shortly), event logos, and high res photos of performers.
WHO: Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage, Baby Dayliner, MayQueen, Ryan Lee Crosby, and video art by Preston Spurlock
WHAT: Meadowlark 2023 presale launch show
WHEN: April 23, doors at 7pm, show at 7:45pm
WHERE: Our Wicked Lady rooftop
TICKETS: https://link.dice.fm/Yfb6e80c5092
Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage
Jeffrey Lewis and his various bandmates have perfected a scuzzy, urban style of indie-folk, developing from late-90s New York City bedroom tapes into a mighty 21st Century mash-up of folksy spiel and artsy garage, like Pete Seeger meeting Sonic Youth. UNCUT Magazine said, “Sublime… Lewis [moves] between melodic garage-punk and raw acoustic grooves to great effect. But it’s his terrific wordplay—sharp, funny, poignant and much more—that really dazzles.”
A born and raised denizen of the Lower East Side, Lewis’s home recordings were discovered by Rough Trade Records in 2001 (famed label of The Smiths, The Strokes, Belle & Sebastian and more) while Lewis was briefly living in Austin, Texas. Since the 2001 release of his first official album “The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane and Other Favorites” on Rough Trade Records, Lewis has toured the world and released numerous acclaimed albums on Rough Trade and other labels. He’s built a worldwide fanbase while regularly changing band names, most recently recording as Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage for Don Giovanni Records and Moshi Moshi Records. Of Lewis, David Berman (of Silver Jews) said, “Jeffrey is the best pure songwriter I know of.”
Baby Dayliner
In the early to mid-00s, rabid fans would fill his shows singing along to every hyper-literate lyric, while mimicking his stage moves. Embodying the effortless cool of Frank Sinatra and the romanticism of Morrissey, The National’s Matt Berninger says that it was, in part, Baby Dayliner’s fearlessness on stage that gave him license to become a front person in the first place. Baby Dayliner went on to open for The National during their 2006 North American tour, their first burst of their popularity.
In 2015, KEXP’s John Richards — following years of airplay for “You Push, I’ll Go” — enthusiastically invited Baby Dayliner to join the line-up of a benefit concert for the Seattle station. “I’ve been waiting to for years to see that live,” Richards said after the performance of “You Push, I’ll Go.” In 2016, the subscription vinyl club Turntable Kitchen put the track on 7″ wax for its first ever physical release — reinforcing its status as an underground cult classic.
UNCUT Magazine said, “a retro romo romp through a New York ghost world that is neither the drainpipe-and-denim sweat pile of CBGBs nor the mirrorball glitz of Studio 54 but somewhere in between.”
MayQueen
MayQueen is a female indie rock trio based in NYC. Natasha’s apartment is their unofficial practice space, much to the chagrin of her neighbors. The MayQueen sound is breathless indie rock with influences from the ‘70s and ‘80s, taking inspiration from Blondie, Bowie, and The Velvet Underground.
Ryan Lee Crosby
Aquarium Drunkard called Ryan Lee Crosby’s music “sometimes light and free-flowing, sometimes intense and heavy.” The songwriter/guitarist may be from Boston, MA, but his musical home is in Mississippi. Fans can journey there either to see him at festivals or figuratively by listening to his new album Winter Hill Blues, produced at Delta-Sonic Sound in Memphis, TN by Bruce Watson, of Fat Possum, who produced all-time great albums by R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Crosby has befriended GRAMMY-nominee Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, last purveyor of the Bentonia, MS style of blues featuring minor-key, open-tuned guitars and falsetto singing, most exemplified by Skip James. Guitar Player Magazine spotlighted Crosby in an article on James and the Bentonia style. He has earned spotlights in Guitar Player, WBUR (Boston NPR station), Smithsonian Mag, Premier Guitar, It’s Psychedelic Baby Mag, American Blues Scene, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and landed him atop the Roots Music Report radio chart at #1. This year, he will perform at Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, MS and Bentonia Blues Festival in Bentonia, MS with a phalanx of Mississippi blues artists.
Preston Spurlock
Preston Spurlock is a South Florida-born multimedia artist currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Over the years, he’s been an animator, an illustrator, a poster designer, a music video director, an experimental video artist, a collagist, a VJ, and occasionally, a musician.