Hometown Sounds

As I’ve seen NOVA-based musical acquaintances perform over the past couple of months, whispers percolated of a big thing coming for them in the fall, but none would spill the beans. Today beans were splashed all over social media with the announcement of the Magnificent Intentions Music Festival October 17th-19th. Clarendon’s Iota, long the home base of DC and especially NOVA’s singer-songwriter crowd, hosts the 3 day showcase featuring Justin Jones, Olivia Mancini, The Beanstalk Library, Derek Evry, Margot MacDonald and more TBA. Much like July’s In It Together Festival highlighted the punk and indie rock house show scene and brought a lot of media attention to it, Magnificent Intentions should elevate the status of these talented musicians to larger DC audiences often hesitant to cross the river.

Andy Zipf put a long solo career as singer-songwriter on pause to assemble The Cowards Choir band with two of the best percussionists in DC, Ben Tufts and Adam Neubauer, and The Beanstalk Library’s Ryan Walker on bass. Zipf’s luminous tenor vocals remain the highlight of the music, which you can and absolutely should catch tonight at Vienna’s Jammin’ Java playing alongside Eliot Bronson. Check out this gorgeous video of Zipf performing Promise & Purpose from his 2011 solo album Jealous Hands, captured live two years ago by OurVinyl.tv.

Tonight The Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan hosts a singer songwriter showcase headlined by Andy Zipf. Zips breaks the mold of traditional singer songwriters by bringing extra energy and creativity to his live performances, and by making most of his music avaialble for free for limited durations. This includes his most recent release, 2011’s Jealous Hands (go get it now!). Today we’ve got a simple, no frills live performance of We Will Carry The Weight, from Zipf’s 2009 EP The Cowards Choir.