By Glen Boyd

Alternative Pop band Vegas DeMilo will be performing an acoustic set in support of their just released 4th album Black Sheep Lodge at Easy Street Records in the West Seattle Junction on Easter Sunday March 31 from 5-6 pm. 

Described by the band themselves as a 12-song response to Liz Phair’s 1990s alt-rock classic Exile In Guyville (which was itself Phair’s own response to the Stones iconic 1972 album Exile On Main Street), the new album crackles with a self-infused energy that conjures both the power-pop of bands like the Raspberries and Badfinger and the alt-rock of 1990s bands like the Smithereens and Gin Blossoms. On songs like “Charlie Watts” and “Imaginary Blondes,” the band takes on the clueless personas of the various exes and boyfriends that Phair once railed against with such righteous indignation on Guyville.

You can also hear the Americana influence of bands like Wilco on “Heaven Can Wait” and even the East Coast boardwalk romanticism of early Springsteen – albeit with a slightly darker West Coast twist – on “California Let Me Down.” There is also the more autobiographical band saga “Get In The Van” (that has absolutely nothing to do with a Liz Phair record), which describes two weeks of misadventures on an epic road trip to play Austin’s SXSW, all boiled down to a tidy four minutes of alt-rock perfection.

Formed in San Francisco in the early 1990s by brothers Foster Calhoun Johnson (lead vocals, guitars) and Alec Johnson (bass, keyboards, vocals), Vegas DeMilo built a steady following for the remainder of the decade through numerous personnel changes and three well received albums. This earned them nationwide college radio airplay and media buzz from the likes of Billboard and Music Connection. Just as things seemed ready to break wide open for Vegas DeMilo, the band split up in 2005.

Flash forward to 2020 where the pandemic found Johnson reconnecting with a number of his bandmates through the sheltered-in-place medium of - what else? – weekly Zoom! meetings. They soon found themselves writing and recording the new songs that eventually became  the Black Sheep Lodge album. In addition to the Johnson Brothers, the current incarnation of Vegas DeMilo includes Travis Ballstadt (Guitars, Vocals); Dan Catherwood (Bass, Vocals); Scotti Fraser (Guitars); Andrew Griffin (Drums, Guitars, Vocals, Percussion); Dug Nichols (Guitars, Vocals); and Bradley Wait: (Guitars, Keyboards). 

For the acoustic performance at Easy Street, band members Foster Johnson and Travis Ballstadt will be joined by Travis’ son Wilco on guitar.

Easy Street Records is located in the heart of the West Seattle Junction on the corner of California and Alaska and has previously hosted in-store performances by Pearl Jam, Lana Del Ray and other artists too numerous to list here.

Learn more about Vegas DeMilo at https://vegasdemilo.net