Monday, March 2, 2009
Restaurants Rock star barista hitting the road
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 8:43 PM
The Ansley Starbucks is one of the few coffee shops whose staff actually lives up to the rep of barista culture. In the five-plus years I've made the place my writing office, the staff has included actors, musicians, PhD students and the occasional refugee from corporate culture.
This is Brad Hagen, barista and, more important, drummer for the band Trances Arc, which is headed to Washington, D.C., Wednesday to go on tour for two weeks with The Whigs. Trances Arc has been around since 1997, but began to break out of obscurity in the last few years.
They regularly play at Smith's Olde Bar and the Earl, where they are scheduled to appear April 3
Here's how Chris Parker described the band in Creative Loafing, May 28, 2008.
TRANCES ARC: The stylish corners and waxy glow are only the door-opener for Trances Arc. The keen, gently curving arrangements slalom from buzzing British mod ("Parliament") through soul-soaked ballads that never get soggy ("Champagne Wishes") to dreamy, new-wave rave-ups such as "Tell Me Where You're Going," without missing a hook. Tasteful, atmospheric shimmer and punchy melodies balance in an alluring package on their debut, XOXOX, proving sweet but not sickly, confident but still demure.
You can listen to the band and see details about the tour on Facebook. Brad says the band plans to blog its experience on the road and you can read that on their website. And you can read the rave reviews its CD, XOXOX, earned on the Slush Fund Recordings site.
Brad is terminally pleasant and I have only seen him in one troubing moment. That's when I observed him asking Neil Boortz to autograph his book. Brad says the book was for his mother. I guess I buy that. After all, I got Dick Gregory to autograph his autobiography for my mother after she and my father made (as a joke) a donation to Ronald Reagan in my name.
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