Billy Catfish is a man about town of the highest order and a renaissance man to boot. The good-humored, sometimes-mustachioed/bearded bard has been a performing and recording musician since '89, playing with numerous Experimental, Punk and Garage bands. In keeping with our town's musical zeitgeist, he's currently doing the "laid-back Country-Folk Singer-Songwriter thing."  

Independent publishing house Aurore Press has had strong ties to the local music community since its inception, releasing a book by Robert Sturdevant (aka Jughead, singer for Cincy Punk legends SS-20) and compilations featuring writings by various local musicians, writers and artists. Aurore now it turns its attention to religion with the release of 'godLESS,' a compilation of critical musings on religion that includes contributions from local musicians.  

Meet the new, revamped, increasingly-better-subsidized Bad Veins, Cincinnati's Indie Rock golden boys. Through their dignified tenacity, a fever-pitch of hype and their undeniable good looks, they've gone and gotten themselves picked up by L.A.-based Dangerbird Records.  

When I ask the members of The Read (pronounced "red") who all live together in Bike Haus on Clay Street one block away from Main in OTR, about their close residential proximity to such supposed clear and present danger, to say they shrug it off would be an understatement.  

We here in the CityBeat music universe just got word that thanks to a vote last month by City Council, $950,000 of a capital improvement program allocation earmarked for Evanston will go toward rebuilding King Records Studio a few blocks up from its original location at 1540 Brewster Ave. While the recently placarded historical site will continue to stand on Brewster, council plans to acquire three properties around the corner along Montgomery Road with the intention of transforming them into an all-in-one facility housing the King Records Memorial Hall.  

A local gentleman named Paul O'Moore has put together the Saturday show under the banner of his Vibrant Fringe Productions group, an essentially pro bono, one-man promotions organization founded to "exclusively support local and regional music" and to be "a partner in rebuilding Greater Cincinnati's music scene." The event includes two days of music, a campout and proceeds go to benefit Advocates for Deaf Education. Saturday and Sunday at Hannon's Camp America in Oxford.  

Having met while filling in for Sunday band regulars at their local house of worship, songwriters Ryan Adcock and Craig Dockery put their heads together and decided to start a faith-based band — but not just any old Christian band. They wanted to avoid worn-out cliches and over-the-top sanctimoniousness and focus instead on honest and personal accounts of the struggles and successes that a life with religion can offer. They called their duo Flaregun.  

State Song's success is based on the idea of three members who feed off one another's chemistry, energy and intensity. What makes the band sound bigger than life, however, is the members' willingness to burn slowly, to embrace dynamics, to use a sampler and a keyboard. To maximize the sonic potential is the main goal.  

State Song is a successful operation based on its particular triad, the idea of three members who feed off one another’s chemistry, energy and intensity. There's an accomplished Pop undercurrent to allay the noisier elements. Listening to State Song, though, is no emotionally measured experience. It’s more like riding a boat through calm waters and suddenly being swept up in a tsunami. See them play at the Northside Tavern with Mallory.  

For a non-coastal, Midwestern town with a notoriously parochial attitude and a penchant for going on obsessive jags over swaths of in-vogue bands that operate in one genre, Cincinnati and The Flight Station, with their decidedly lofty major-label-fame-and-fortune goals, don't always see eye-to-eye ... to say the least.