Dinner with Wander
(photo: Christian Dao) Christian Francisco, the guitarist and de-facto manager for Wander, and I arranged to meet at the Shooting Star Cafe in downtown Oakland. In our emails, Christian had described the menu as “endless,” which honestly still didn’t prepare me for the size and breadth of the menu that was placed before me, with dishes ranging from classic Asian-fusion fare to an array of breakfast options that would put Denny’s to shame. Ryan Francisco, the drummer and songwriter, remarks “this place straight-up sells Cup Noodles” as we take our seats. Flanking Christian is his partner Christina Dao, a designer [...]
Post-rock band Wander releases new music video “March”
First-generation Filipino-American post-rock band (what a title, right?) Wander recently dropped their music video for "March." The band consisting of Bernard Barcela, Joseph Aguda, Ryan David, and Christian Francisco have been in the music scene for a while, playing on multiple stages throughout the Bay Area. From offstage to on the interwebs, now they're here to give you an incredible music video. In an interview with Kerrang!, Ryan David dove in about the song and concept of the video: The song is about overcoming an obstacle in life. A friend of ours recently lost her brother to health problems, so [...]
Live This Month: March 2018 — an audio guide to upcoming Bay Area concerts
Download: Live This Month: March 2018 (Podcast #424) In Live This Month, we sample some of the great local and out-of-town bands performing in the coming month in the San Francisco Bay Area. The terrific punk trio Shopping, pictured above, is one of a number of great artists coming to the Bay Area this month. Also from the UK is L.A. Salami, who is touring around a highly-anticipated second LP of melodic, lyrical folk-rock. This mix also includes two standout bands from Canada, Edmonton's Faith Healer and Montreal post-punk band Ought. New York City's Combo Chimbita describes its music as [...]
Mixtape: The Adventurous Sounds of San Francisco Bay Area Post-Rock
http://media.libsyn.com/media/thebaybridged/Post_Rock_2016_Mixtape.mp3 Download: Mixtape: The Adventurous Sounds of Bay Area Post-Rock (Podcast #392) Support for this podcast is provided by Goldstar. Visit their web site at goldstar.com/thebaybridged The post first ran on KQED.org. Despite the festival-headlining status of Explosions in the Sky, the resurgent Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and the lengthy careers of bands like Mogwai, it often feels like post-rock doesn't get its due. Perhaps it's the genre's terrible name, although is it any worse than "shoegaze"? Or maybe it's a perception that mostly-instrumental, composition-focused rock music sounds more like a novelty than fertile terrain for bands to explore. As [...]
Wander – "Mourning"
With the looming death (or at least apparent dampening) of garage music to come out of the Bay Area being marked this year by local media outlets, including SF Weekly, it's refreshing to see bands come out and move away from the ever-reported garage rock genre and into something different. Wander, a post-rock outfit from the East Bay, falls into that category of bands, showing that the San Francisco Bay Area still nurtures music acts that range far beyond the garage rock or psych-rock genre. Their newest album Mourning, furthers the group into the ambitious feat of remaining merely instrumental. However, [...]