Joe's Pub Announces Sweetback Sisters, Debo Band, Tamar-kali, et. al., 9/17-19

Joe's Pub announces their line-up from September 17th to the 19th. Performances include Sweetback Sisters, Debo Band, Tamar-kali, Natalia Lafourcade, SHEBA, Amy Lynn, and Justin Bond. Joe's Pub is located at 425 Lafayette Street.

The weekend starts with Sweetback Sisters and Maybelles on Friday, September 17th at 7PM.

Like their pseudo-sister role models, the Davis Sisters, the Sweetback Sisters sing country songs in close, surrogate-sister harmony and matching dresses. The band is fronted by vocalists Zara Bode and Emily Miller, whose honey-sweet harmonies have been described as "seamless" (The Alternate Root), and "like what I'd imagine was coming from your grandma's radio 50 years ago as she was whipping up the evening meal" (Pittsburgh Daily News). The band's high-energy stage show features solid old-time country picking and singing that reveals the players' deep roots in traditional American music while at the same time betraying their youth.

In April 2007, the band was chosen as one of six finalists to play on "A Prairie Home Companion" as part of the program's "People in Their Twenties" talent contest. Since then, they have played sold-out shows up and down the East Coast at festivals, listening rooms and dance parties. Their first full-length album, Chicken Ain't Chicken, was released on Signature Sounds in June 2009.

Original old timey country with three part harmony, banjo, fiddle and guitar. The Maybelles started out in an Ozark Mountain town, and have since had major stints busking in New Orleans; playing New York City Folk Festivals, listening rooms and subway stations. Now based in Brooklyn recent highlights include Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival NY; The International Bluegrass Music Awards (IBMA); The Hudson River County Fair; The Ozark Folk Festival; and The Dumbo Arts Festival alongside fellow Charisma artists The WIYOS, The Luminescent Orchestrii and Will Scott.

The Maybelles play rare pearls from the deep well of tradition on both sides of the pond, and are often described as having an Appalachian/Celtic sound. Live show, album reviews, and feature interviews can be seen in Americana UK; The Village Voice; The Nashville Scene; and The Sunday Times, London UK.

On Friday, September 17th, Debo Band with special guest, Fendika, perform at 9:30PM. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

Debo Band is an exhilarating eleven-piece Ethio-groove collective created as a means of exploring the unique sounds that once filled dance clubs of 1970s Ethiopia. Made popular through the renowned Ethiopiques series, the musical inspiration behind Debo Band is an unlikely confluence of Ethiopian pentatonic scales and vocal styles, American soul and funk, and the instrumentation of Eastern European brass bands - accordion, violins, horns, and drums. Committed to a broad range of musical collaboration, Debo Band recently performed with Fendika, a group of four outstanding traditional Ethiopian artists, at the Ethiopian Music Festival (Addis Ababa, 2009) and the Sauti za Busara music festival (Zanzibar, 2010).

Led by Ethiopia's top dancer Melaku Belay, Fendika is both a musical ensemble and a popular performance venue in Addis Ababa, in a way similar to the dual nature of Zanzibar's legendary Culture Musical Club. With a powerful female vocalist, an exciting male and female dance duo, and a propulsive traditional goat-skin drummer, Fendika adds the vibrancy of Addis Ababa's nightlife to Debo Band's distinctive take on Ethiopian dance music. Fendika will join Debo Band at Joe's Pub in their New York City debut and their first U.S. tour.

On Friday, September 17th at 11:30PM, the Black Bottom Revue: A Rock n Roll Cabaret will perform. It features Tamar-Kali with special guests Khayatolla, The Maine Attraction, Rad Pony, Futurecurrent, Dame Cuchifrita, Betty Black, Spirithood, Miss Harvest Moon, and Judas Priestess. Tickets are $15.

Brooklyn native and resident hardcore-soul queen, Tamar-kali, wields her pen and guitar with equal ferocity. Her hard-rocking brand of outsider art leaps from every track on her 2005 solo EP, Geechee Goddess Hardcore Warrior Soul, enchanting you with its melody, while delivering a swift kick to the gut with its incisive emotional core. Her first full-length release, Black Bottom, packs an even harder punch as audiences are invited to gaze deeper into the recesses of this urban warrior's mind. Her tales of revolution and love may seem contradictory, but the two worlds are inextricably linked by this powerful artist who grasps for the truth in both ideals.

The uninitiated may have discovered Tamar-kali when she appeared in James Spooner's award-winning Afro-Punk documentary, with clips of her incendiary performances putting the world on notice to her unsung talent.

Others saw her dynamic energy support artists like Fishbone and OutKast on the group's acclaimed sophomore album, ATLiens. A whole new audience will feel her full force when Black Bottom her first full length release hits the streets this summer.

Young Mexican pop singer Natalia Lafourcade has a clear, buoyant voice and weaves multi-layered melodies that tap bossa nova, alternative rock, and folk. Her latest solo album, Hu Hu Hu (2009) garnered her a Grammy nomination for "Best Latin Pop Album." She will perform Saturday, September 18 at 7:30 and 9:30PM. Tickets are $25.

SHEBA, presented by New African Productions, will perform on Saturday, September 18 at 11:30PM. Tickets are $15.

What do you get when someone mashes up the majesty of Africa, the island vibes of the Caribbean, New York City's concrete jungle and shake it like a Molotov Cocktail? Welcome to the world of SHEBA^TM; a feisty, dynamic singer/rhymer/songwriter/producer ready to explode your iPod with hot beats, clever, provocative lyrics, wicked flow, melodic catchy hooks and a diva-worthy four octave range. In late 2008, Sheba formed an independent label, (S)onic Dynasty around the buzz from what turned out to be her first Single, a song which unexpectedly took off from a YouTube post. A year and a half later, that one song has traveled the world.

The Ethiopian born Singer arrived to the U.S. in the Eighties, a refugee and descendant of the Solomonic Dynasty, who's family fled the end of Monarchal Ethiopia, living on three continents before finally landing in Queens, New York. In the years following, growing up in exile, she learned to appreciate her rich cultural upbringing through a diversity of music and honed her voice, teaching herself to sing and write songs while her family's travels continued to take her around the globe. It was during a return to New York in 2004, that she teamed up with her mentor Tommy "MadFly" Faragher, a Grammy® and ASCAP Pop Award-winning Songwriter, Producer in Brooklyn and began to record the basis for her first album, "The Lion of Sheba" due later this year.

Amy Lynn and the Gunshow will perform on Sunday, September 19th at 7:30PM. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door.

Inspired by the sounds of legends like Etta James, Janis Joplin and Dusty Springfield, Amy Lynn has been capturing NYC audiences with her explosive and powerful performances for nearly two years. This female powerhouse has spent her time performing across the country with The USO, gracing the stage of Radio City and touring throughout Europe.

Now with the addition of her brassy band The Gunshow, a nine-piece ensemble led by collaborator and co-founder Alex Hamlin, Amy Lynn is breathing new life into the soul music scene of NYC. Please visit www.amylynnandthegunshow.com for more information.

On Sunday, September 19th at 9:30, Justin Bond performs at Joe's as part of his residency. Tickets are $20.

Recently described as "A bar of gold in the new depression" by Hilton Als in the New Yorker, singer, songwriter and Tony-nominated performance artist Justin Bond is an Obie, Bessie and Ethyl Eichelberger Award winner and was named one of the top 40 favorite New Yorkers by Time Out New York and was listed by Time Out London as one of England's 50 Funniest People. His debut EP Pink Slip was released in July 2009. In 2008, he won rave reviews for his GLAAD nominated show Lustre which premiered at PS122 in the East Village and then went on to tour the UK with stops in Manchester, England as part of the It's Queer Up North Arts Festival and in a critically acclaimed run at London's Soho Theatre. Also in 2008, Justin appeared at The Southbank Center in London in the title role of Sinderella an original musical written by Martyn Jacques of The Tiger Lillies. In 2007, he premiered Justin Bond is Close To You, a reinterpretation of the classic Carpenter's album Close To You performed in its entirety as part of Joe's Pub in the Park in Central Park and subsequently presented by The Sydney Opera House in Australia. He regularly Emcees the performance series Weimar New York which has played in such varied locations as the SFMOMA, The Speigeltent, and Joe's Pub at the Public Theater in New York.

Tickets for performances and events at Joe's Pub can be purchase online at www.joespub.com, over the phone at (212) 967-7555, or in person at Public Theater box office from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. or the Joe's Pub box office from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., both located at 425 Lafayette St.

For table reservations please call 212-539-8778. Purchase of tickets does NOT guarantee a table reservation; patrons must call to reserve seats. Seating, as well as standing-room, is available only on a first-come, first-served basis for all shows without a dinner reservation. Two drink or $12 food minimum per person is standard.