Root Down in the Shadow

A year after the first Communion show in Philadelphia, they returned again with a selection of touring and local acts at Underground Arts.  No longer festival-ish marathon of 6 bands a night, the touring club night keeps getting closer to a smashing success. Marian Hill Good electronic music is like a chemistry experiment, screw up a few ingredients and you've got an explosion and everything bubbling over.  It might seem cool for a minute, but it's really just a mess.  When it goes well, you've got something amazing.  Duo Jeremy Lloyd and Samantha Gongol of Marian Hill had everything go right at Communion last Thursday night!  The first ingredient gone right is the "club environment", a natural habitat for the band.   The diminutive, but delightful Samantha impressed with her vocals, while her style was focal in the Underground Arts lighting.   Jeremy was spot on with his beats, but the impressive part was the live sampling played through the keyboards,

It's our favorite time of the year: XPoNential Festival time!  Like most things here at Root Down In The Shadow we're going to take a band-centric view of the festival and let them tell you who to go see this year at the 2014 XPoNential Music Festival Presented by Subaru, brought to you by WXPN . SATURDAY - RIVER STAGE - 12:30 PM-1:00 PM Davis Howley - Vox/Guitar - Commonwealth Choir Band Most Excited to Share the Festival Stage with : " Jenny Lewis & Dawes are both really significant to the band.  Rilo Kiley (Jenny Lewis' former band) was sort of the cross over artist for us, as teenagers moving from punk & hardcore to a new genre, they exposed us to country & folk in a modern way, but still bad-ass & sexy.  It's really expertly crafted music." Band Most Excited to see live at #XPNFest :   "We all became obsessed with Dawes .  Individually we started going to see them at shows, covering them at parties, drawin