Tag Archives: Honah Lee

Best Friends Club “Season Finale” 5/21

Friday May 21, 2021! Best Friends Club is gonna take the summer off from our “big show” series (but will still post video content periodically) and we’re going out with a bang! We’ve got the great Cryptkeeper Five streaming a full set with Tim and Dim from Honah Lee and The Wild Honey Collective opening things up. After the show we’ll be broadcasting video of The Plurals Futurospective CD release party at Mac’s Bar from May 21, 2011 i.e. 10 years later to the day! This album was very important to the band and the label, and the video is a riot. Check it all out at 7 PM, Friday 5/21 at bestfriendsclub.us or on facebook.

And HERE is an article written about BFC and the show, thanks to City Pulse!

Big BFC Bash 3/26!

Mark your calendars, we’ve got a rager planned for Best Friends Club kinda sorta in honor of Tim Hoh on March 26th! Super stoked to have Joe Jack Talcum of Dead Milkmen joining us for a livestream, as well as Marc from Mad Anthony, Midwest Bonsai, Nikki Nailbomb, Dale J Gordon, and Tim the man himself! Streaming at 9 PM, Friday 3/26 at bestfriendsclub.us!

Best Friends Club: A No Show Space

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Hey! A new thing! Looks like we’ve finally been in this pandemic long enough that some of our restless, old, show-playin’ GTG hearts are adapting to the times.

Best Friends Club is a live-streaming, live venue substitute curated by Tommy Plural, Raymond Strife, Jim Graz, & Tim Hoh.

You must join the group to join in the fun. In an effort to bring you “live music”, all performances will be streamed live and taken down within 24 hours of original broadcast. “Doors” will open 30 minutes before the music and we encourage you to engage, socialize, and support in the group and on the live-stream feeds.

These events will be free to all, but support is heavily suggested via tipping and online merch sales. We encourage you to share this group with friends and help us create a unique built-in-scene for performers and all friends of music.

This is not a space to advertise or share links. This is a space to enjoy and support “live music” in the era of no shows, and is intended to be treated like a live venue.

Our first show is this Thursday, July 1, hosted by GTG Records, featuring Nicholas Weltschmerz, Tim Hoh, and the official debut of The Wild Honey Collective, a new more folk-oriented project-kinda-sorta-Drinking-Mercury-offshoot from Tommy Plural, Timmy Rodriguez, and Danielle Gyger.

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All inquiries should be directed to bestfriendsclubinfo@gmail.com

GTG Fest XI and more!

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GTG Fest 2018! 25+ independent bands and artists converge on the capital of Michigan September 7th and 8th for the 11th annual GTG Fest. GTG Fest is curated by a group of friends and musicians to foster a safe, intimate, and creative environment to experience the passion of DIY music, make new friends, and see old ones. Music, food, a raffle featuring items from rad local businesses, and a barrage of good times fill the weekend. Please be respectful and cool to all attendees and to all of the spaces. No hate. We’re all in this together.

SEPT 7 & 8 @ THE AVENUE CAFE (Lansing, MI)

The Plurals
City Mouse
The Hat Madder
Erotic Novels
Raymond Strife Who Raps
Lipstick Jodi
Scary Women
Ryan Allen and His Extra Arms
Tart
Nonbinary
No Skull
The Stick Arounds
Pissed
The Quirk
Sexy Toxins
The Hemingers

…. AND MANY MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED!!

More events for the weekend will be announced shortly, check out the event page here!

But GTG Fest is over a month away, there’s plenty happening this month too. Three GTG mainstay bands are hitting the road, starting with a midwest run from The Stick Arounds – who also just released a new single ahead of their forthcoming 2nd LP.

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The Stick Arounds Tour Dates:

8/2 – Indianapolis, IN @ Melody Inn
8/3 – Dayton, OH @ Blind Bob’s
8/4 – Cincinnati, OH @ Tree Bar

THEN the greatest sing-along-road-warriors City Mouse are doing a li’l midwest run of their own with San Diego’s Squarecrow.

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City Mouse Tour Dates:

8/10 – Milwaukee, WI @ Quarters
8/11 – Lansing, MI @ Avenue Cafe
8/12 – Bloomington, IL @Nightshop
8/13 – Chicago, IL @ The Burlington

AND THEN this insane party is happening in Trenton, NJ on August 18 for Honah Lee’s 10 year anniversary. The Plurals are heading out for a quick jaunt to the east coast and back to be a part of it!

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The Plurals Tour Dates:

8/16 – Dayton, OH @ Jimmie’s Ladder 11
8/17 – New Jersey
8/18 – Trenton, NJ @ Mill Hill w/ HONAH LEE
8/19 – New Hope, PA @ Bucks County Playhouse

There’s solid shows the rest of the month too…

8/2 – City Mouse @ GTG House (Lansing, MI)
8/2 – Hat Madder @ New Dodge Lounge (Hamtramck, MI)
8/3 – Disappointed Dad @ The Avenue Cafe (Lansing)
8/4 – The Plurals @ Taste of Michigan City (Michigan City, IN)
8/5 – Wade Wilson @ The Avenue Cafe
8/18 – HONAH LEE TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY @ MILL HILL (Trenton, NJ)
8/18 – Two Houses @ Hexagon (Minneapolis, MN)
8/27 – Drinking Mercury @ Pyramid Scheme (Grand Rapids, MI) w/ Jonah Matranga

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Let’s just bask in that last show for a second… Jonah Matranga is an indie rock legend from his work with Far and he’s also in many ways a pioneer for the modern DIY musician with his various solo activities. In the early 2000s your humble author saw Jonah play in a small cafe in Grand Rapids and his warmth and connection with the audience as well as his sliding-scale merch that he sold himself left a huge impression and has been a big influence for how GTG has come together. Jonah is touring on the 20th anniversary of Far’s “Water and Solutions” and it’s a wonderful full-circle moment for Drinking Mercury, the band that laid the foundation for GTG in the first place, to open up the show. Sounds like the best way to wrap up summer activities before the GTG Fest madness! Get yer tickets!

See you out there!

Tommy Plural Solo Album Out This Week

Tommy Plural Front Cover
This week will see the release of the first official solo album from Tommy Plural entitled “Idiot Cousin.” The person that updates this website is said Tommy Plural so I’m going to cut the third person crap and get to the point! I played all the instruments on this album and while I’ve done a couple shorter, more experimental releases as a solo studio project this is the first time I made a focused effort to create a collection of songs that are meant to hang together. And in general I spent more time on this, to the point where I worried briefly that I had fucked up my hand from trying to play beyond my meager drumming abilities. Dangerous! Here’s a song from the album called “Düdes” that tackles earth-shattering topics like hating to go to work and loving the music of Hüsker Dü.

Anyway, the project is still very much supplemental to my band work but I will be using this album as the starting point for a catalog of songs to do with various musician friends, hopefully with a tour down the line. This Saturday I’ll be performing songs from the album with a much-more-talented-than-me-solo lineup of Dave and James from Small Parks and longtime friend but first time collaborator Adam Aymor, so head over to GTG House THIS SATURDAY (April 8th) to check that out. This house show is the release party for the record and also the debut of Ryan Andrews (Red Teeth) new band No Skull, the first Lansing area show by New Jersey indie-punks Alpha Rabbit, and the return of Tim and Dim from Honah Lee! It’s GTG wild card night baby!
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GTG Bands On Tour! Plurals, Honah Lee, YEAH!!

First off, check out this new video for “Facebook” by The Plurals! Shot on tour last summer, coming out now in anticipation of a new tour. Also, we discovered when we tried to advertise this video on the, uh, real facebook that you cannot promote non-official products that have the word “Facebook” in them. Well aren’t we just little rebels. But anyway, that’s the video up there. This is a link to it too, because why not?

Anyway, The Plurals are going on tour. Here’s the tour dates!

3/18/16 – Cincinnati, OH @ Northside Yacht Club
3/19/16 – Beckley, WV @ Wild Fire Saloon
3/20/16 – Charleston, SC @ The Tin Roof
3/21/16 – Savannah, GA @ The Wormhole
3/22/16 – St. Petersberg, FL @ Fubar Downtown
3/23/16 – Gainesville, FL @ Hardback Cafe
3/24/16 – Jacksonville, FL @ The Headlamp
3/25/16 – Atlanta, GA @ Cunt Cave
3/26/16 – Murfreesboro, TN @ Mothershack
3/31/16 – Bloomington, IN @ Root Cellar
4/1/16 – Dayton, OH @ Blind Bob’s
4/2/16 – Ft Wayne, IN @ The Brass Rail
4/7/16 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Rocky’s w/ Jeremy Porter & the Tucos, Vibrolas
4/8/16 – Lansing, MI @ The Avenue Cafe w/ Jeremy Porter & the Tucos, Vibrolas
4/9/16 – Detroit, MI @ Northern Lights Lounge w/ Jeremy Porter & the Tucos, Vibrolas

Fun stuff, and during that little gap in Tennessee at the end of March we’ll be in the studio making a new album! Very exciting.

Honah Lee are going on tour too!
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3/16 – Morgantown WV @ Atomic Cafe
3/17 – Dayton OH @ Blind Bob’s
3/18 – Lansing, MI @ The Avenue Cafe
3/19 – Indianapolis IN @ Melody Inn
3/20 – Cincinnati OH @ Northside Yacht Club
3/22 – Lexington KY @ Al’s Bar
3/24 – Greensboro NC @ Tuba House
3/25 – Washington, DC @ Dougout
3/26 – Trenton, NJ @ Mill Hill Basement

Just in time for this tour our friends at Durry Dog Tapes released a limited edition cassette version of Honah Lee’s 2015 LP 33 On 45, so that baby’s now available on vinyl, CD, DVD, and cassette (at Honah Lee’s shows only!). And digital, of course. Insane! Honah Lee are up to a bunch of cool things currently, including collaborating with a member of Kool & the Gang on the theme song for a documentary about Ghostbusters. True story!

The Hat Madder are, of course, finishing their tour now. Here’s the last couple dates!

3/16 Saginaw, MI @ Counter Culture
3/17 Lansing, MI @ The Avenue (also the Red Teeth 7-inch release!)
3/18 Toronto, ON @ Cherry Cola’s
3/19 Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk Place
3/20 Mono, ON @ The Tractor Shop

And finally, their GTG Session from last week, cuz it rules!

Happy Dickety-Sixteen

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In case you’re just blacking in, six days ago we began a 366 day (for real) cycle that shall be labelled as “2016.” In addition to celebrating the birth of Leap Day William, this year also promises plenty of exciting releases from GTG Records. Red Teeth will be making their label debut with the Light Bender 7-inch, which is at the pressing plant with an early spring release targeted. The Narc Out the Reds 10″ is mastered, the next Hat Madder record is approaching the mixing stage (and the band will be touring the east coast and midwest with When Particles Collide in March), the new Sleeping Timmy-fronted project Carm’s debut is in the tracking stage, and the Plurals just booked studio time (and a tour of the southeast) in late March for a fourth album. Honah Lee will also be hitting the studio in the spring, but first they’ll be doing some midwest tour dates. Plenty to look forward to! We also have some really cool split releases to announce and a few more things in the works so get those turntables warming up! Is that a thing? You probably don’t want to burn out the belts on those things now that I think about it. Clean your ears… yeah, that’ll do.
But before we get too future-fixated, let’s take a look back on the previous year. We released three albums in 2015:
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Honah Lee – 33 On 45 – 12″ LP of 10 catchy as hell punky rock and roll anthems. Reviews earned them comparisons to Superchunk, Lemonheads, Weezer, and more and they put in some serious road time on the east coast and in the midwest, including festival appearances at Death to False Hope Fest and GTG Fest. The LP gained enough traction that Creep Records in Philadelphia took on pressing up a CD version as well.
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The Plurals – An Onion Tied To My Belt – 12″ LP and CD of 12 Plurals-like Plurals songs that we had the pleasure to co-release with Florida’s Infintesmal Records and Arizona’s Diet Pop Records. Tommy Plural is the one writing this update and clearly I’m too close to this record to objectively judge it but we did some coast-to-coast touring with it and people at keyboards (not to assume too much of anyone else’s process) compared it to the Replacements, Husker Du, early 90s DC noise, late 80s SST, and more. And to me it’s a (non) reflection of the style of the time.
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Dreadpool Parker – self titled – CD featuring 11 tracks from New Jersey rap crew consisting of MCs Wade Wilson and Raymond Strife with Dready Mercury making the beats. We go way back with Ray (Nich Plural has potentially the best “first impression” story every involving him, and I basically quit drinking to excess after a blacked-out night with him a few years ago) so when he told us that his new group was doing some touring and putting out an album this year we had to get behind it (and book them for GTG Fest). As it stands it’s not only the first rap release on our label but also just a blast of catchy, witty, and fun music that stands tall among our catalog. Can’t wait for them to tour again!

In addition to these full-length releases we also issued an archival live recording of the Hat Madder from a 2008 tour date in France, a free label sampler (and more) nonsensically called Time to Val Kilmer, a compilation of acoustic artists and recordings, and, as always, capped off the year with the strangely-becoming-a-legacy holiday compilation Bermuda Snohawk. And in addition to these additions we also, additionally, released 10 live music video recordings in the GTG Sessions series that featured, alongside plenty of GTG usual suspects, performances by Nato Coles & the Blue Diamond Band, The Devils Cut, Logan & Lucille, and Croatone. What a year, and more to come.

I thought about making it a goal to have every band I’m in put out a physical release in 2016, but this is easier said than done as I don’t think a single band I’ve ever been in has actually “broken up” but… I’m hoping for Drinking Mercury, Calliope, and Frank and Earnest to all put out some solid product this year too. Calling it!



Honah Lee GTG Sessions!!

It’s here! The latest episode of GTG Sessions featuring 6 songs from the original Trenton, NJ party machine Honah Lee!

This was taped in the middle of the GTG Fest weekend and you can see it on their faces! Grab your favorite vice of choice, click play on the video above, and join the party. And check out their new record if you haven’t yet!

GTG FEST – THIS WEEKEND!!!

GTG Fest 2015

This week! Four (damn) days of music and shenanigans in Lansing, Michigan, featuring a lot of Michigan talent alongside cool touring bands. Let’s take a look at what’s happening!

THURSDAY 10/08 @ GTG HOUSE, LANSING MI
DOORS AT 8 PM / SHOW AT 9 PM / $5 SUGGESTED DONATION

11:15 PM – THE FICTION JUNKIES
10:30 PM – Bobby Meader Music (Las Vegas)
9:45 PM – Little American Champ
9:00 PM – Blaine and His Keyboard

Friday 10/09 @ THE AVENUE CAFE, LANSING MI
DOORS AT 7 PM / SHOW AT 8 PM / $5-10 SLIDING SCALE COVER

12:30 AM – THE HAT MADDER
11:45 PM – Small Parks
11:00 PM – MPV (Detroit)
10:15 PM – Dreadpool Parker (NJ – CD Release!)
9:30 PM – Mr. Hipster (Bloomington, IN)
8:45 PM – Narc Out The Reds
8:00 PM – Frank and Earnest

SATURDAY 10/10 @ THE AVENUE CAFE, LANSING MI
DOORS AT 7 PM / SHOW AT 8 PM / $5-10 SLIDING SCALE COVER

12:30 AM – THE PLURALS
11:45 PM – Honah Lee (Trenton, NJ)
11:00 PM – Red Teeth
10:15 PM – The Lippies (Grand Rapids)
9:30 PM – The Hunky Newcomers
8:45 PM – The Free Life (Kalamazoo)
8:00 PM – Carm (debut show!)

SUNDAY 10/11 @ MYSTERY GARAGE, LANSING MI
HANGOUT & POTLUCK AT 3 PM / SHOW AT 5 PM / $5 SUGGESTED DONATION

11:00 PM – RE-EVOLUTION (Lansing’s premiere Devo cover band)
10:15 PM – The Murderburgers (Scotland!)
9:30 PM – The Jackpine Snag
8:45 PM – Immanuel Can’t
8:00 PM – Hailey Wojcik
7:30 PM – Stargrazer
7:00 PM – Comedy Coven – live stand-up comedy!
6:30 PM – Cat Midway
6:00 PM – Middleman
5:00 PM – OPEN-MIC! (music/poetry/comedy/magic/whatever accepted! Limited spots, sign-up starts at 4:00 PM)

Read more about it at the GTG facebook page and check out a free sampler from all of the bands that are playing at our bandcamp page!

GTG077: Honah Lee “33 On 45” OUT NOW!!

The record is finally out, the real record! 12″ of glorious black vinyl featuring 11 new Honah Lee anthems. ORDER ONE NOW!!
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