Upcoming Shows: Pezzettino Swings Through Iowa On Her Way East

Pezzettino at CSPS in Cedar Rapids, IA

The constant storm of activity that is Pezzettino is kicking off a tour this week that will take her through Minnesota and Iowa on her way west wrapping up at the end of February on the East Coast. This tour hits a lot of the same stops she made in October of last year, which is a smart move to build her fanbase in some of these cities. When she stopped in Cedar Rapids in October, she played a house show at my home. This was a new experience for me, and it was a lot of fun and she quickly made fans of everyone who attended. She also threatened to kidnap my dachshund, but I’m not going to hold that against her! She also performed a very cool show at CSPS opening for another singer-songwriter named Melissa Greener.

This time she’s playing some key stops in Iowa including an interview and performance at the main Java House location in Iowa City on Washington for Ben Kieffer’s Java Blend radio show on Iowa Public Radio which will air on Friday 2/19 and Saturday 2/20. She’s also performing at the very cool Vaudeville Mews venue in Des Moines and two coffee house shows– Roaster’s Coffee House in Hiawatha, IA (near Cedar Rapids) and Monk’s Kaffee Pub in Dubuque. Roaster’s, incidentally, is where I buy all of my coffee. They roast on site some of the best coffee I’ve ever had and includes Free Trade and Organic coffees.

She announced today via twitter, that all proceeds of teeshirt sales will be donated to benefit Haiti!

While you have your wallet out, I suggest you get the ultra-cool colored 7″ vinyl for “You Never Know” with hand-painted sleeves!!!

Click Here to visit her website, which is pretty much the launching point for all of her online shenanigans.

Tour Dates: (from MySpace)

Jan 27 2010  10:00P  Bedlam Theater  Minneapolis, Minnesota
Jan 28 2010  8:00P  Ed’s  Winona, Minnesota
Jan 29 2010  2:00P  Java Blend Iowa Public Radio  Iowa City, Iowa (Facebook Event)
Jan 29 2010  8:00P  Ames Progressive  Ames, Iowa
Jan 30 2010  8:00P  Vaudeville Mews  Des Moines, Iowa
Jan 31 2010  1:00P  Roaster’s Coffee House  Hiawatha, Iowa (Facebook Event)
Feb 1 2010  8:00P  Monks  Dubuque, Iowa
Feb 2 2010  8:00P  Elbo Room Lounge  Chicago, Illinois
Feb 3 2010  8:00P  Earth House  Indianapolis, Indiana
Feb 4 2010  8:00P  House Show  Bloomington, Indiana
Feb 5 2010  8:00P  House Show  South Bend, Indiana
Feb 6 2010  8:00P  Cole’s  Chicago, Illinois
Feb 11 2010  8:00P  High Noon Saloon opening for Gene  Ween Madison, Wisconsin
Feb 13 2010  8:00P  Arts Council  Racine, Wisconsin
Feb 19 2010  10:00P  Hank’s Saloon  Brooklyn, New York
Feb 22 2010  5:00P  Sonicbids Office  Boston, Massachusetts
Feb 24 2010  8:00P  Parkside Lounge  New York, New York
Feb 27 2010  10:00P  VoxPop Cafe  Brooklyn, New York

Free Download: Pezzettino Covers

I’ve mentioned Pezzettino here before and I have some more to write about her coming up. To sum up,  Margaret Stutt who performs as Pezzettino is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and crafts her unique almost outsider-art singer-songwriter tunes centered around her life and experiences propelled by her trusty accordion.

With two albums under her belt and an infectious new single and a new album waiting to be loosed in the studio, Margaret is currently on a tour of the Midwest and East coast hitting mostly homes and art-spaces. She’s doing this solo– just her and her accordion!

To fund the trip she took donations to make requests for songs to be covered with videos posted to YouTube. The range of covers was all over the map ranging from rap to indie to classic rock. All of them were deconstructed and re-assembled and given a distinctly ethereal electronic spin. When she was in Cedar Rapids in October I suggested that they had a Tricky or Massive Attack feel to which she gave an unfamiliar shrug. The electro-clubby breakdown in her cover of Skynyrd’s “Freebird” prompted me to ask if she’d consider remixing her own material. She said that this style was fun to use for these covers– and easy to do with GarageBand, but she didn’t feel she’d extend to her releases. This is an important point, these songs are fun, but really more of a distraction for her and not really representative of her two albums.

At one point she was going to sell pillowcases that she custom embroidered which would have a download of these songs. Releasing this collection as a free download like this works really well, and is a good introductory collaboration with the artists’ collective Sixty Years War.

It’s cool to get these songs, but to really appreciate these you have to watch the videos. Margaret usually recorded the song and edited the video in a matter of a day which is reflected in the immediacy and detail committed to both aspects of the projects.

Click Here to listen to the tracks and download a .zip file of Covers.

Click Here to visit the Pezzettino Channel on YouTube which includes the Covers project as well as her video blog and live performances.

Click Here to visit Pezzettino’s Blog covering her travels.