Aireene Espiritu Jim Pugh, the veteran keyboard player who toured the world with Etta James and Robert Cray and now roams the Central Valley and Bay Area byways looking for unknown musicians to savor and record, first heard the Filipino American singer Aireene Espiritu a few years ago at the Folk Alliance conclave [...]
Jim Pugh, the veteran keyboard player who toured the world with Etta James and Robert Cray and now roams the Central Valley and Bay Area byways looking for unknown musicians to savor and record, first heard the Filipino American singer Aireene Espiritu a few years ago at the Folk Alliance conclave in Oakland. She was [...]
How can someone go back to where they have never been? How can a ukulele playing folk singer accomplish searing blues and soul vocals with such sincere expression and emotion? These are just two of the mysteries surrounding Aireene Espiritu. Her release Back Where I Belong, reveals the answers, and much more. Though Espiritu has [...]
Talent “that wouldn’t otherwise be heard” is what Jim Pugh, founder of Little Village Foundation, looks for and then goes about promoting. “It’s like pebbles on the beach. You pick up one and it’s beautiful, but when you hold four together the commonality emerges. It’s breathtaking, and the bigger picture of what America really sounds [...]
When Jim Pugh [founder, Little Village Foundation] asked if I’d be interested in recording Sugar Pie DeSanto’s songs, I was open to it, thought it might be a really fun project, especially being something different from my usual folk scene. I had seen Sugar Pie live many years ago at a blues festival in Ashland, [...]
Check out a video of Mariachi Mestizo recording at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, CA. En las noches de sábado, todo lo que necesitamos es el traje de charro para sentir cuan arraigadas están en nuestras venas los guacos de mi padre y las tonadas de mi abuela. El guitarrón y el arpa, la [...]
2016 Release Artists in a benefit concert for Little Village Foundation at Freight & Salvage.
In the day and age of instant discovery of new music on the Internet, it's easy to assume that all emerging artists utilize YouTube, Spotify, and social media as their primary ticket to stardom. It's 2016, throngs of artists have launched their careers online over the past quarter of a century. But what about those [...]