Dustbowl Revival Headlines Brighter Sun Benefit Concert at El Rey Theatre

The Michael Bonanomi Foundation is excited to announce that Dustbowl Revival will headline the third annual "Brighter Sun" benefit concert at El Rey on Saturday, March 10 at 7:30pm. Proceeds will support the Foundation's efforts to encourage children and adults to pursue their musical talent, through donations, scholarships and financial assistance to those programs or individuals who demonstrate both a financial need and a commitment to music.

This marks Dustbowl Revival's debut at the famed El Rey Theatre. The LA Weekly notes "In a city like Los Angeles, home to musical stars in nearly every known genre, handing out the Best Live Band title is not easy. But the free-thinking local collective Dustbowl Revival's upbeat, old-school, All-American sonic safaris exemplify everything shows should be: hot, spontaneous, engaging and, best of all, a pleasure to hear."

The Michael Bonanomi Foundation was established in memory of Michael Spencer Bonanomi, who was fatally struck by a hit and run driver on August 17, 2013. He was only 35 years old. The driver fled the scene in a white Mercedes Benz CLS with no license plate. The vehicle and driver have not been found.

The Michael Bonanomi Foundation recognizes the hit and run epidemic in California and champions all efforts toward making California's streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists and all people. At the time of Michael's tragic death, California law did not require a license plate for newly-purchased vehicles for up to 90 days, which made it nearly impossible to identify vehicles involved in crimes. Two investigations, including Michael's, led Assembly Speaker pro Tempore Kevin Mullin (D-San Mateo) to work tirelessly for three years to change the law. Michael's best friend testified in Sacramento in 2014 in favor of Assembly member Mullin's bill, requiring newly purchased cars to have a temporary numbered license plate. On July 25, 2016, Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law, and for the first time, California now has a temporary license plate program that will require car dealers to put a temporary plate on a vehicle when they sell it, beginning in 2019.

Michael had a great passion for all kinds of music and believed that music was a path to greater understanding among people and joy in the world. He was an accomplished musician and songwriter, and his great pleasure came from performing his music, either solo with just a microphone, with a group of fellow musicians, or at countless small venues, as often as he could. Michael was a person with a great moral compass. He hated injustice, he stuck up for the "little guy," he always tried to make things right. And he was probably the most resourceful person on the planet, with the impressive ability to talk his way backstage at some of the biggest concerts in the world!

Michael was a proud alumnus of University of California, Santa Cruz. Over the course of 2016-2017, The Michael Bonanomi Foundation funded the inaugural University of California, Santa Cruz Visiting Artist/Scholar of Popular Music program, designed to bring experts in popular music directly to the university as visiting professors, and contribute to a growing emphasis on popular music in academia. The program officially kicks off in the spring quarter of 2018, and will focus on the music of the iconic American band, the Grateful Dead. Michael was a passionate Grateful Dead fan, to say the least. This program is especially relevant to UC Santa Cruz, as it currently houses the Grateful Dead Archive. Melvin Backstrom, who is currently a PhD candidate studying musicology at McGill University, is the inaugural instructor. Backstrom's dissertation explores the high-low boundary crossings and broader context of the Grateful Dead's music. He will be teaching two classes: a music history survey course, "The Grateful Dead and the Long 1960s," and a performance-practice seminar-ensemble course, "The Collective Improvisational Practices of the Grateful Dead." These courses will encourage a generation of students to appreciate the music of the The Grateful Dead, thereby instilling a passion for the band and a new understanding of popular music.

About Dustbowl Revival

The Dustbowl Revival is an Americana Soul band with eight full-time members who mash the sounds of New Orleans funk, bluegrass, soul, pre-war blues, and roots music, into a genre-hopping, time-bending dance party that coaxes new fire out of familiar coal. Dustbowl is touring behind their self-titled, fourth studio album which spent three weeks on Billboard charts, hit #1 on Amazon Americana-Alt-Country, #2 on Amazon Folk, and has spent 13 weeks on the Americana radio chart peaking in the Top 20.

The band was founded in 2008 in the bohemian enclave of Venice Beach, California. Over the last five years Dustbowl has become known for their free-flowing and joyous live shows, combining their funk rhythm and brass section with a fast-picking string band section - opening for bands as diverse as Lake Street Dive, Trombone Shorty and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, touring China as a guest of the state department and headlining festivals like Delfest, Floydfest, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and recently Bergenfest (Norway) and Tonder Festival (Denmark). The band received a big wave of attention with their music video that featured famous actor Dick Van Dyke for "Never Had to Go", which garnered over 10 million cumulative views. That video is now airing in an HBO Doc titled "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast" starring Jerry Seinfeld, Mel Brooks, and Dick Van Dyke.

While the band has been known for their old-time and bluegrass roots, they have departed from those styles and evolved more into modern soul music. Now, with Producer Grammy Award-winning Ted Hutt (Old Crow Medicine Show, Gaslight Anthem, Dropkick Murphys) who collaborated on the recent album, Dustbowl Revival brings it on, in the good company of neo-Soul contemporaries such as Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats and St. Paul & The Broken Bones. The album delivers eleven hot tracks, dominated by love-triangle funk & soul, tenderized with a nod to the unlikely possibility of true love - i.e. "Honey I Love You", with Grammy Award-winning blues artist Keb' Mo' sitting in.

http://www.dustbowlrevival.com/

About Simon Petty

Simon Petty came to California from northern England and is steeped in the traditions of his home country's musical history. Whether he is singing the songs of the Beatle-led British Invasion of the 1960's, the Celtic poetry of Van Morrison and The Pogues or the good old fashioned rock 'n' roll of his adopted American home, he brings a unique warmth and vibrancy to whichever genre he is performing. Petty is joined by virtuosic violinist Emily Moore. Trained from the age of four in the classical tradition, she moves effortlessly from formal chamber music to bluegrass, jazz and folk, but always eventually returns to the dance music of her Scottish roots. Petty and Moore's brand of up-tempo fiddle-based folk rock combines the raw energy of traditional Celtic jigs and reels with the familiarity of contemporary artists from the Fifties to the present day.

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