New Earth Farmers are a Northern California band. Paul Knowles, Nicole Storto, Nigel Twist (The Alarm), James DePrato (Chuck Prophet), and Kevin T. White (Shelby Lynn) released “The Sky From The Underground “ in late 2024. The band aims to avoid confining their music to a single genre. “The song drives the treatment and genre of each track,” Knowles explained. “In an era where lyrics often take a back seat to style, fashion, materialism, and hipness, we prioritize lyrics. Our songs ask questions, praise empathy and love, acknowledge inequity, inequality, and tribalism, and seek peace of mind in confusing times. We’ve expanded our influences. While there are Americana elements on the record, we also embrace British influences like The Clash, The Who, and The Beatles.”
While addressing some heavy subjects including gun violence (“Frequency”) and the exploitation of our environment (“Windfall”), the spirit of optimism is in the songs. Paul Knowles describes it with an analogy, “Consider a seed, you can bury it underground, under a bit of earth, water it and if the conditions are right, it grows towards the sky. Likewise, there is optimism buried within the spirit of this batch of songs. We are trying to plant good seeds. Optimistic seeds.”
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, queer singer-songwriter and guitarist Meli Levi (Mehl-Lee Lee-Vigh, she/they) has recently returned to music after a transformative 5-year hiatus away, studying meditation techniques with a master full-time. Meli’s time spent diving into the depths of meditation ignited an unprecedented fire of creativity, pushing forth brazenly honest writing and melodically euphoric progressions. Unconfined by genre, driven by the underlying emotions of each song, Meli’s aesthetic has been best described as a mix of folk-rock and alt-rock in a similar vein to Adrianne Lenker, Radiohead, Brandi Carlile and Jeff Buckley. Having shared the stage with the likes of Brandi Carlile, Amy Ray (Indigo Girls), Kathyrn Calder (New Pornographers) and Kelly Finnigan (Monophonics), Meli’s ability to enchant and engage a live audience is undeniable.
Meli’s songwriting and performing have gained significant recognition, including being chosen as a Semi-Finalist in the AAA category of the 2024 Unsigned Only Songwriting Competition and being named a local favorite by KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco for her 2023 Tiny Desk Contest entry.
Meli is currently back in the studio recording a new full length album.
Victor Krummenacher is a veteran musician with a career spanning over 40 years. He is a co-founder of the band Camper Van Beethoven and of Monks of Doom (with David Immerglück of Counting Crows) and has released 11 solo albums since 1995. Krummenacher is also part of the The Third Mind collective with Dave Alvin, Immerglück, Michael Jerome and Jesse Sykes. He also plays bass for Eyelids from Portland,
Oregon and spent several years touring with David Lowery and Johnny Hickman in Cracker.
As a recording artist, Krummenacher has appeared on numerous projects including releases from Cracker, Mc-Cabe & Mrs. Miller with Alison Faith Levy, and Eugene Chadbourne in Camper Van Chadbourne. Other notable projects include Two Heads (featuring DJ Bonebrake, John Moremen, and Willie Aron) as well as working as a bassist for Charlie Parr, M. Ward, The Minus 5 and The No Ones (both featuring Scott McCaughey and REM’s
Peter Buck) Mushroom, Magnet, and Robi Del Mar to mention but a few.
