The Salon Series @ L'Etage
A Philadelphia experiment in bringing back the muse in music held on the third Thursday of every month at L'Etage

Forward Thinking...

Thursday, May 19th: Salon honoring Bob Dylan turning 70 in May. Jesse Leyh (of In Granada), Kevin Fein, Scott Churchman.

Thursday, June 16th: The Yaker Brothers, Joey Sweeney + Special Guests
This awesome recording was made at the Yaker Brothers last Salon appearance (actually it was their first show ever)

//// --- //// .... Ghosts of Salons Past .... //// --- ////

Thursday, April 21st: A special collaboration with The Silver Ages

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HISTORY: Back in California, we did these nights called "Hoots". Musicians would gather once a month at a bar with guitars and instruments. There would be a loosely organized bill, and the evening would be a series of mini-sets generally getting... shall we say looser and looser by night's end. Missing such fun, a group of California ex-pats now living in Philly and New York got together at L'Etage in May of 2010 and played an old California-style get together. We invited Gianmarco Cilli along even though he's never lived in California. Anyway, Much fun was had. Perhaps too much fun. The Song Salon was born.

Now a once-a-month affair, the Salon @ L'Etage is a relaxed and intimate environment for musicians to do things they've always wanted to do but can't convince their bands to rehearse. It's a great place to see music, have a nice cocktail and eat a crepe from the Beau Monde kitchen below. Studies have concluded that just being at L'Etage improves your quality of life by like 3 points.

Here's a spotty, incomplete history of Salons with lots of key information missing:

Dave and Jason from the band Busses, playing a very cool unplugged set.

Thank god the recorder was running at this moment: Here's an awesome version of Oolong Tea by Gerhardt.

Gianmarco Cilli with Dave Hartley and Josh Newman at the first Salon.

This is a nice performance of one of Birdie's songs.

And hard to forget: This was the night that the Yaker Brothers had the crowd by the balls.

OMG: L'Etage + Le Fits + All Songs in French = Bastille Day Show #1

This poster made recent Tyler School of Art graduate Brandt Imhoff famous... and of course, no recording exists from this night. Oh well... c'est la vie. They say the best things in life are ephemeral. This was one of those things. Suffice it to say that there was a certain... je ne sais quoi in the air... and much fun was had by all. We did get a bit of unexpected press that seemed to help our attendance. (click here for a link to Ben's musings about French pop music)

Here's another good one by Brandt:

We met the British band Waterfront at a folk festival in New England, and they were on tour so we invited them down to Philly.
They had matching T-shirts and everything. Check out this song.

Check out this harp and cello space duet (Mary and Helena, an improvised piece) and don't you dare use it in your artsy film without their permission.

Dan Sofaer, one the most irregular regulars at L'Etage: Jacques Brel, George Brassens, The Smiths to Bill Monroe to spoken-word epic poems about Israel... Dan can do it all.

David Copenhafer - the man who suggested L'Etage as the venue and sang a song about Jean-Luc Godard's fan mail, which pretty much sums up the whole experience for me.

Why I believe that's Heyward Howkins!