Record Release Roundup

Joey Harris and the Mentals are promoting their new ten-track self-titled album with a June 14 release show at Brick by Brick. “Mojo Nixon and Paul and Caren Kamanski will be joining us onstage,” says Harris, “as well as Scottie ‘Mad Dog’ Blinn of the Mississippi Mudsharks, who produced the album and is releasing it on his Double Barrel label. We’ll also have a special appearance by Slim Crowbar and the I.O.U.s.” Brick by Brick is where Harris was once chatted up by Frank Zappa, circa 1980. “I’d just played with [the band] Fingers, [and] Frank said he loved the band’s energy and the songs and asked me to contact his manager in L.A. on Monday morning. I did try. There were a lot of messages, but nothing ever came of it.”

Jeff Berkley’s five-piece rock band Citizen Band will appear June 21 at Brick by Brick to launch their new album Breaker Breaker My Heart. “We’re gonna put our own spin on a Bill Monroe and Peter Rowan bluegrass tune,” says Berkley, best known as half of the roots duo Berkley Hart. “CB allows me to do things I don’t get to do in BH, like kick and yell or have a smoke machine, moody lights, distortion, and tape echoes. Also, there’s more drinking in CB. But BH is just the two of us.”

Experimental rockers Demasiado will launch their new album with a May 31 set at the Casbah.

The freaky-folkies of Astra appear appear at the Casbah on June 5 for the release of their debut CD The Weirding.

On June 21, Sublime-ly groovy jam band Irieside celebrate their full-length debut on Above Ground Records at the Boars Cross’n in Carlsbad.

Stranger releases their new album at Canes on June 5.

Candye Kane’s new full-length, Superhero (Delta Groove Records), debuts on June 19, when Kane appears at Anthology, her final San Diego show before she tours Australia.

This summer will also see new albums from Irish rockers Skelpin (The Singing Bird), acoustic-blues guitarist Joshua Blatchley, head-bangers Wolves of Eden, the Brit-inspired Modlins, and a live recording of songstress Anna Troy.

Chuck Schiele’s compilation of Ocean Beach–based performers, Waves, is set for release June 27, with several acts appearing at that weekend’s O.B. Street Fair. “Everybody knows the jam-band thing has a pretty strong foothold here,” says the Grams front man and operator of StudiOB. “I work counter to that.”