FARMINGTON – The Emery Community Arts Center will present Dyado, Oshima Brothers and Izaak Opatz live tonight at 6 p.m. Doors to the ECAC open at 5:30 p.m.
All ages are welcome to the show, which will feature three bands. Attendees are welcome to bring a picnic blanket and dinner; drinks will be served at the bar. Tickets are $8, with students and seniors admitted for $5. Children ages 12 and under are admitted free of charge.
A year ago, a mutual friend introduced Dyado and Izaak Opatz, and against their better judgement they committed sight-unseen to a run of shows together up the West Coast. It was a blind date of sorts.
Izaak Opatz: Our first show was in the backyard of a commune in Oregon, where I met Louisa Stancioff and Matt Lohan and everyone all sized each other up. Real nice to meet you and thanks for doing this, but we were secretly petrified we would hate each other’s music, thinking Hmm, do I have the disingenuousness needed to assure this person I enjoyed their set for the next seven days?
After playing to a crowd of Birkenstocks tapping on hay bales, sharing confessional songs about past lovers and old regrets, we were relieved to find that mutual lemon-faced forced enthusiasm wasn’t on the menu. They liked my sad-bastard country songs cloaked in a patchwork jacket of pop hooks, jazz chords, and left turns, and I fell for Louisa’s voice and spunk, Matt’s deft guitar playing, their warm, spot-on harmonies, and vibey, dreamy country tunes. They call their music dreamcountry; I call mine dirt wave.
At the end of the week, after a show in Montana under the freaky wonder of the Aurora Borealis, we had a hard time saying goodbye. So in the fall we toured through Arizona and Colorado, and felt the same itch to keep going at the end of that one, too.
Now here we are, stuck on the road together for a two-week run up the East Coast, where Dyado’s going to show Izaak a thing or two about spigatoni, Massholes, toll roads and Lyme disease.
The Oshima Brothers and Dyado have a bit of a history as well. Sean (from Oshima Brothers) and Louisa (from Dyado) both attended Village Harmony Summer Camp in their mid-teens and became fast friends. They have stayed connected over the years and both watched each others’ musical adventures from afar, always itching to collaborate. Last year they finally got to, on a week-long tour through upstate New York, Boston and Vermont. The Oshima Brothers are joining the last leg of this tour, playing all the scheduled shows in Maine. From what I’ve heard, I’m sure to learn a thing or two about contradancing from these brothers, and I supposedly won’t want to leave Maine after seeing their sweet life in Belfast.
DYADO, out of Asheville, NC, is Louisa Stancioff, Matt Lohan, and Dylan French. Their first full-length album Dreamcountry, comes out in June. Matt and Louisa are cousins who reconnected later in life in Maine and realized their mutual love for music and adventure.The band is named after their Bulgarian grandfather, a wonderful man who lives in Camden, Maine. Diado means grandfather in Bulgarian.
Izaak Opatz, from Montana and currently living in Los Angeles, has been writing and playing music for the last ten years, releasing two albums with Missoula band The Best Westerns and his first solo full-length Mariachi Static in 2017, which will be re-released by Mama Bird Recording Co. (Portland) July 20th.
Oshima Brothers, out of Belfast, ME, is made up of two brothers, Sean and Jamie Oshima. Their album, “Oshima Brothers,” released in 2016, is a collection of 11 original songs that showcase dynamic vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, octave bass, loops, and percussion. The brothers live in Maine but are often on the road performing, producing music videos, and dancing.
