Woodsist / Mare

Kazar, Liam

Due North

Woodsist / Mare

Liam Kazar makes joyful rock songs so irresistible they feel timeless. Just ask Jeff Tweedy. “I love everything about Liam. His voice, his songs, the way he plays instruments, his smile, his cooking... Everything,” says Tweedy. ”Whenever I hear one of his songs for the first time I almost immediately start thinking to myself, ‘oh yeah! This song! I love this song.’ It’s a magic trick very few people can pull off: making something brand new sound like a cherished memory.” But on Kazar’s debut album Due North, out via Woodist and Mare Records, the album’s ten tracks are full of so much charm, wit, and heart it can’t be a sleight of hand.The Kansas City-based, Chicago-raised musician and acclaimed chef / founder of the Armenian pop-up restaurant Isfahan, describes the making of Due North as a personal revelation, where the more he wrote the more his songs showed what kind of artist he’s always wanted to be. While he’s consistently been a dream bandmate over the past several years, performing with artists like Tweedy, Steve Gunn, Daniel Johnston, and more, making his own songs presented a chance to finally find his own voice. But figuring out how to step out was a rewarding challenge. “This record kind of all stemmed from a conversation I had with Jeff,” says Kazar. “I showed him some of my earliest songs I was working on and he told me, ‘It sounds like you’re writing for the people in your bands, you’re not writing...

Morby, Kevin

Harlem River Dub (Peaking Lights Remix)

Woodsist / Mare

“I wanted to do something to honor the title track off of my debut album, Harlem River, turning five years old this year. Its been very good to me over the past half decade as well as a staple in my live show. I’ve asked Aaron [Coyes] from Peaking Lights to breath some new life into it and give it a remix and I’m very happy with the results. This December I will be performing an hour long version of the song featuring many special guests. I wrote the song to be about new explorations, and it continues to give me—year after year—just that.” —Kevin MorbyLimited edition 12″ featuring 2 extended Harlem River Dub remixes by Aaron Coyes / Peaking Lights with art by Robbie Simon. Digital includes an extended version of the original track. Edition of 1,000 on black vinyl.

Night Shop

In The Break

Woodsist / Mare

Night Shop is the songwriting project of Justin Sullivan. Sullivan has worked as a touring drummer for the past twenty years with a half dozen DIY punk bands, including Ringers and an early incarnation of Worriers. In 2009, he joined The Babies alongside Kevin Morby and Cassie Ramone. When the band went on hiatus in 2013, Sullivan moved to Los Angeles with Morby and continued working with him as a staple of the live band and playing on all of Morby’s studio albums. In the meantime, Sullivan also formed the fuzz punk outfit Flat Worms, with Tim Hellman of Oh Sees and Will Ivy. But in the middle of a tour in August of 2016, Sullivan realized the rigors of the road had grown to be too much. He made the decision to take a full calendar year away from touring and focus, for the first time, on writing his own music. Like most of Sullivan’s projects, the album is a family affair. His former touring and recording partner in the Kevin Morby band, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) plays bass on several of the songs and sings backup vocals on a few as well. Flat Worms cohort Will Ivy plays lead guitar on some, while Mare labelmate and soon-to-be touring partner Anna St. Louis sings backup on two songs. The album was engineered by Jarvis Taveniere of Woods and mixed by Drew Fischer who previously worked with Sullivan on Morby’s first two records and The Babies second album Our House...

St. Louis, Anna

First Songs

Woodsist / Mare

Despite her last name, Anna St. Louis was born and raised in Kansas City. She grew up a painter and singing in punk bands, eventually leaving her hometown to attend art school in Philadelphia. After graduating she made the move to Los Angeles where she began teaching herself guitar, writing songs and recording them on her own in her bedroom. First Songs is the sound of someone discovering their talent in real time—a peak into the collage of a wonderful mind that is absorbing their new surroundings and using new tools to put them into the room. Listening to this collection you can feel the sun coming in through the window—St. Louis on the foot of the bed with a guitar on her knee, finding her voice. She wears her influences well—think Patsy Cline singing over John Fahey—but has a style all her own. And while one can take the artist out of the midwest, one can’t take the midwest out of the artist—so let this be known: this is Midwestern music ran through a California filter. Anna St. Louis will have many more releases in her lifetime, but let it all begin here—First Songs.  “a low dangling cigarette of psychedelic folk.”  —NPR Music  “...gorgeous and smoldering”  —Pitchfork

Lay, Shannon

Living Water

Woodsist / Mare

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork.  The debut release on Mare, Kevin Morby’s new imprint with Woodsist Records, Shannon Lay’s Living Water is an instant classic. Recorded by Emmet Kelly (Cairo Gang, Bonnie Prince Billy, Ty Segall) in his Los Angeles home studio, this is an album where the room reacts to the music taking shape around it. Lay’s voice transcends time and space. One can’t tell if she’s old or new, if she’s sitting next to you, on a mountain top, or down in some canyon. Her second album to be released in 2017, she is a prolific songwriter, who lives and breathes melody, with guitar skills to boot. Despite its fourteen tracks, the album comes in well under forty minutes, but like Pink Moon or Just Another Diamond Day before it, this is music so potent it exists outside the realms of time—in a world specific only to itself and the new feelings it creates.