The seven members of Lake share a connection that spreads through the audience.  Each member is a unique artist on his own right.  They play musical chairs with their instruments like they are having a good time with friends at a house party – Ashley picked up a guitar here, put down a tambourine there, and moved over to the keyboard in between chiming in with vocals and garden bells during their show at the Fontee Fest – and their obvious charisma invites the audience in to join. 

“We’re like a band, a real band,” Eli Moore, a fellow Lake member, chimed in.  “We’ve been trying to do things more old-fashioned, with everyone playing at once rather than doing things over and over.”  Ashley told me that they aim for a friendly sound that has a “life to it, a breadth,” and I completely agree that they are right on the mark. 

Eli tells me that a creative role model is the producer and musician Karl Blau, a close friend of the band.  “We work with him and we really look up to his music, and his ethics,” he says.  “In recording, [this] has a lot do with embracing happy accident, things you didn’t plan.  Taking things for what they are, value things that happen by chance.” 

“When I moved to the Northwest was when I started going to lakes a lot,” Ashley explained, and the name seems to cover the gist of the ideas behind the band.  A lake represents the Northwest, peace and summer, spending time with your friends, she said, a lot of ideas converged into one general picture of happy times.  It’s the sort of serendipity that the music of Lake communicates. 

Lake is coming to Moscow:  March 25 2009, Wedn., 8:00 p.m, The Nuart Theatre (516 S. Main St., Moscow ID 83843).  Check em out: MySpace, Heaven Vimeo, Ashley & Eli (Water Island)

 Molly is a freelance journalist and a senior at New St. Andrew’s College with a special interest in postcards and goldfish.  She writes for The Loop 21 and keeps the blog A New Amsterdam.

Johanna Kunin

Piano-lovers, music-lovers, dream-lovers, and the rest of you,  lovers, of Moscow, come be transported to Cascade rainforests and other lands far, far away by the luxuriant piano reflections of Johanna Kunin. Johanna’s piano, laced with flute, percussion, vibraphone, inspiration, and the serenity of her own voice, frequently illumines the radio-waves of Seattle. Other times, Johanna electro-funks keyboard with the band Velella Velella, or opens for her friend Karl Blau.
Johanna studied the traditional classical/jazzical piano course during her childhood in Minneapolis. It was a good diving board to launch her into her own genre.  Besides her extensive resume as composer and performer, you can be impressed by the fact that Johanna recently both designed and bound a volume of her compositions in an Etsy masterpiece for you to enjoy at home on your own personal piano. Now that her masterpiece book is finished, Johanna often stirs it up with a self-professedly “mustachio’d” 10-piece orchestra.
8:00 p.m., March 06, 2009 (that’s a Friday), Johanna performs with the Foundry Field Recordings at The American Legion Cabin (317 S. Howard Street, Moscow ID 83843).  Soar to new heights; dream new dreams.

Molly is a freelance journalist and a senior at New St. Andrew’s College with a special interest in the Cascades, postcards, and goldfish.  She is an intern at The Loop 21 and keeps the blog A New Amsterdam.