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Lee Brice, Electric Grandma
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Lee Brice - photo by Image provided

LEE BRICE

At 9 p.m. Friday, April 27

Desperados, 65 W. Fairmont Ave.  $20 advance, $25 at the door (open at 7).

How often does this happen? South Carolina singer/songwriter Lee Brice had the No. 1 song on Billboard's country singles chart last week ("A Woman Like You") and he's here onstage, in little ole Savannah, at almost the exact moment he's the biggest radio star in the country.

Desperadoes, which has been around for less than a year, bills itself as "Savannah's Only Dedicated Country Western Nightclub," and indeed there's a big dance floor with line-dancing lessons and demos.

The big hit is from Brice's second album, Hard 2 Love (released just this week). That one follows Love Like Crazy, which sent its title song to No. 3 in 2010. "Love Like Crazy" became Billboard's Top Country Song for that year. That's because it set a Billboard record - 56 weeks - for the longest run in the chart's history.

As if the timing on this show wasn't cool enough, everyone who buys a tickets gets a Hard 2 Love CD, which (if they so desire) they can get Brice to autograph after the show.

Outshyne will open.

ELECTRIC GRANDMA

With Basik Lee and Knife, Miggs Son Daddy

At 10 p.m. Friday, April 27. Wormhole Bar, 2307 Bull St.

It’s been a little less than four years since Lucia Aurora Garcia relocated to Savannah from the southwestern United States, and she’s been an indispensible part of our city’s music community for more than half of that time.

Garcia, a singer, songwriter and classically–trained pianist, is a charter member of Word of Mouth, the freewheeling eight–piece band that blends hip hop, reggae, folk, classical and rock ‘n’ roll with an irresistibly contagious, Zen–hippie zeal for life.

Word of Mouth has a remarkable new song, “Speak Your Minds,” that calls for immediate social change through global unity.

“That’s one of our biggest things, is coming together as a whole,” Garcia says. “We’re really about strength in numbers. And that if we all come together, we can really, really change a lot.”

Word of Mouth, she says, is a musical microcosm of this utopian belief system. “It’s been very apparent with just the eight of us as a group – we’re all so different, and we all have so many different opinions, but we make it work because we have the strength and the patience and the confidence to work together. And make things happen as a whole, instead of just individually.”

“Speak Your Minds” is part of the as–yet–unfinished debut Word of Mouth album. The band wants to put 12 songs on the set, but they’re only able to record them one at a time, as they bring in money from gigs. A Kickstarter campaign is in the works (meanwhile, check out “Speak Your Minds” at wordofmouthspeaks.com).

Between themselves, all the Word of Mouth members use kicky pseudonyms. Garcia calls herself Electric Grandma, and that’s the name she chose for her synthy electronica side project.

Electric Grandma music is beat–based keyboard music, strange, hypnotic and trancelike.

“I love producing music on the computer, getting into that,” she says. “For me, Electric Grandma is a way to truly express what’s inside of me without seven other voices around me changing the idea.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love collaborating and I love the way ideas change and morph with seven other people, but I enjoy having the time where I can just really let my subconscious flow out.”

 She writes and records the Electric Grandma songs with her fiance, Word of Mouth pianist Matt Duplessie (a.k.a. Grandpa Fractal).

“It’s also a way for us to keep our relationship fun and different,” adds Garcia. “He’s amazing to be in a partnership with, in this and in life.

“Electric Grandma’s just the two of us. I play keyboards, he plays lead guitar. We both produce the tracks and pretty much we play a backing track onstage, and play and sing over it.”

This Wormhole show is a celebration of the eclectic – along with Electric Grandma and Word of Mouth rapper/singer Miggs Son Daddy, the lineup includes sets from Knife and Basik Lee, core members of the Savannah hip hop collective Dope Sandwich).

See www.electricgrandma.com.

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