For Immediate Release:
GALVEZTON Announces Upcoming Album Some Kinda Love - a Tribute to The Velvet Underground, Due Out Feb 23, 2024 on La Izquierda Records
album art & photo credit: Samantha Wiley
Who is GALVEZTON? GALVEZTON is the stage name that eclectic writer/musician Robert Kuhn uses to release music and perform under. He adopted the moniker prior to the release of the 2022 colorful independent rock ’n’ roll album PERSEVERE to draw awareness to the island Robert adopts as home and its collective creative/cultural scene which gives rise to this music and the community organizing movement, La Izquierda Surf and Music Festival (first weekend in May).
GALVEZTON is an ancient bar of sand drenched in greasy sea foam grit and salty afterglow. It was once home to the proud Karankawa then squatted on by artists and finally sold to rich vacation short term renters and left for dead before the rising global tides and jellyfish swallow her whole.
GALVEZTON loves to surf and play music with friends and children. He makes up songs that seem to be about nothing and everything at the same time; a vignette of a feeling. The beat changes but the voice is real and honest. A surprising number of music journalists compare GALVEZTON’s sound to that of the Velvet Underground and perhaps there is a shared lineage. You can probably owe that to Kuhn’s frank, laid back lyric delivery and common elements like drony, psychedelic pads on top of tom heavy primal surf beats. Instead of fighting it, their manager encouraged them to own it and make a tribute album. So, they got the band together one windy night after the Misfits Mardis Gras parade for a well fueled live recording session. They captured nine Velvet Underground songs before morning. It was rock and roll at its finest and gave substance for the new GALVEZTON release, Some Kind Love.
Some Kinda Love is a 9 song collection of songs by The Velvet Underground that GALVEZTON recorded live in their Galveston, TX studio last year. The band that night/early dawn was made up of: Robert Kuhn (vocals, rhythm guitar), Rob Bastien (lead guitar, background vocals), Jahrel Pickens (keyboards, background vocals), Dave Jacoby (bass),
Victhor Resindez (drums), and Justine St. Cyr (background vocals) on “Pale Blue Eyes”. Ishmael Reyes mixed them down and mastering engineer Chris Longwood put the sweet sauce on it - the end result a joyous live album celebrating not just the VU but the spirit of music and the vibes of GALVEZTON as a band live.
“Some Kinda Love” - Jan 19th single
It's the title track of the album and also the lead single. We picked this one because it’s a banger. The pulsing kick drum is the root of all dance and house/techno music. It’s upbeat and fun but substantially faster than the downer saturated original released on the Velvet’s self titled 1969 release. Ours almost turns into ska and doesn’t sound much like the original, but thats alright because it’s kind of an obscure B-sider for the Velvets anyway. The message of “Some Kinda Love” is where its at and seems even more relevant today than in the sixties. “No kinds of love are better than others”. We’re all tired of the people who think they’re in charge telling everyone else how to live their lives. More love period.
“I’m Set Free” - focus track on street date
I was solo touring the Southwest in an old minivan with a cd player when a friend gave me a VU mix cd he’d burned
along time ago. “I think you’ll like this”. It was my introduction to the Velvets. A few days later after a show in Bisbee, AZ I was driving back to New Mexico all alone through the desert, listening loud with the windows down when I saw the red/blue light approaching in the darkness. A tail light was out and they took me to jail for a suspected victimless crime. Four mornings later they apologized and released me just in time to make it to the next show in Santa Fe. The cd was still in the player when I got back on the road and the song “I’m Set Free” came on. Tears came to my eyes as I sang along with the chorus at the top of my lungs. To be set free, you must first be bound. There is no greater feeling. Each time I belt this one out I remember the smell of the dawn after four dark days locked in a lonesome cell. That is joy.
The band originated in Galveston, Texas around 2012 when songwriter Kuhn moved to town from Nicaragua and started making friends by sharing his music at the historic Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe. At the time, the project was simply called Robert Kuhn, playing surf bars and listening rooms in the area. They cut a live album in 2014 at Sugarhill Studio entitled Everybody Knows (2014). It was embraced by the local press and commercially successful enough to free him from his day labor at a Houston Shirt Factory and devote time and energy to touring and playing music with his surf, rock ’n’ roll, blues, folk and reggae band of friends which included the late great extraterrestrial blues legend, Little Joe Washington. They toured all over the United States and Mexico until the last day of August 2019. While on the road in Western Colorado in support of their second release, Maria the Gun, Kuhn was in a nearly fatal van wreck that left him hospitalized in critical condition. He returned to Galveston six weeks later hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, but happy to be alive at all. With funding and support from friends and fans from around the world, Kuhn began a long quiet healing process that yielded their last album PERSEVERE. During the touring cycle behind that release, Velvet Underground songs often slipped very organically into the sets. After one such show, his manager suggested they do an EP or album of VU covers to help people figure out where they are coming from - apparently sometimes an issue for the industry tastemakers’ and gate keepers. So it came to be...
GALVEZTON’s previous album scored some kind words:
“Just before you put this wondrous music on, smoke a phatty (purely medicinal, of course) and then let Robert Kuhn aka GALVEZTON transport you to a magical, dry-mouthed desert space, a hypnotic place of peace, which you will insist on returning to again and again. Sounding not unlike Lou Reed and early Velvets at times, this funky behemoth grooves along beautifully at all times, and whether discussing hexagrams and Confucian concepts of ritual and propriety on the trance-like ‘Li”, or like the ancient map signifier, here be ‘Dragons’, it’s the groove, baby, that carries you away into euphoric oblivion and deep relaxation.
‘Looking Glass’ was sent up to the International Space Station, where friend and astronaut Christina Koch spent a year floating blissfully, while her muscles atrophied and her bone density diminished considerably. Kuhn himself is also a space traveller; he is a spirit guide, pointing out the wonder and magnitude of our inner space. Robert Kuhn formed GALVEZTON in 2012 when he moved to Galveston, Texas from Nicaragua. Whilst on tour across the US in 2019, Robert’s world changed when he was involved in a near-fatal car crash, which left him with a humungous bill for medical expenses and a long, painful recovery. Hence the title PERSEVERE for this album and Robert’s uniqueinsight into the human condition.”
- Muff Fitzgerald/Rock And Reel Magazine (February 2023)
“Named for the place he calls home and the southern Texas island where he records, GALVEZTON’s music isn’t the easiest outfit to classify or categorize. Yet that’s also what makes it so fascinating. The tone and temp vary, from the straight-ahead pace of “Ll,” which brings to mind early Dire Straits, and the pulsating rhythms that drive “Dragon,” to the slow, throaty vocals of “Screen Savior” and the atmospheric environs shimmering through“Looking Glass,” Kuhn makes the most of sound and suggestion. As a result, there are times, particularly on tracks like “Shake Attack” and “Persevere” in particular, where the conflict between darkness and desire reaps some decidedly disquieting results.
Then again, Kuhn is clearly out to alter perception and leave his listeners grasping for the same sort of meaning that he’s hoping to discover despite uncertainty and intrigue. Nevertheless, PERSEVERE is a fascinating progression and an impressive example of the way invention and intrigue can be all wrapped up as one."
- Lee Zimmerman/American Songwriter (1.12) - https://bit.ly/3Y1o07j
"Working on the book (Leaving Is Returning), the experienced songwriter found “a different level of vulnerability. 'It’s really telling you straight up what my life was like, whereas with music, it’s all hidden behind metaphors,' says Kuhn. 'But this is very direct, and it’s very honest. I’ve tried to be honest with my music too, but this is a different level of honesty with who I was and what I was doing, and things I was thinking and feeling.'
PERSEVERE, meanwhile, is spacey and opaque, closer in spirit to Kurt Vile or The War On Drugs than the gruff yet vulnerable typical Texas-songwriter fare. Yet there’s something unmistakably Galveston (or Galvezton) about it. The sinewy Shake Attack' sounds like Love and Rockets learning to surf; 'Walk On’ radiates warmth like a slow island sunrise...”
- Chris Gray/Houston Chronicle (1.9) - https://bit.ly/3jYOaca
Also an avid surfer and community builder, Kuhn founded an annual surf and music festival, La Izquierda, that will enter its fifth year in existence in May 2024. It raises money to support a Free & Family Friendly Summer concert series, “Save The Locals" across the street from the seawall in Menard Park every Thursday evening in June and July. The stage is an old bandshell that they worked with the city to restore during the Pandemic.
La Izquierda has blossomed into more than a festival as it is now a 501c3 nonprofit organization and record label with Some Kinda Love marking its second album release. This Spring promises La Izquierda’s third release - an introspective and deeply moving acoustic album, Fat He-Man - from singer songwriter Sean Lucy produced by Kuhn.
Kuhn also published his debut autobiographical novel Leaving Is Returning (via Weasel Press) in late 2022 - about his life and adventures in South/Central American indigenous villages
Book excerpts: https://www.dropbox.com/home/kuhn%20(1).porter?preview=Leaving+Quotes.docx
TRACK LISTING:
1) “Temptation Inside Your Heart” 2:36 written by Lou Reed, John Cale Music Inc (BMI)
2) “I’m Waiting For The Man” 5:08 written by Lou Reed, Oakfield Avenue Music, Ltd. (BMI)
3) “Run Run Run” 4:40 written by Lou Reed, Oakfield Avenue Music, Ltd. (BMI)
4) “I’m Set Free” 4:01 written by Lou Reed, Oakfield Avenue Music,Ltd (BMI)
5) “Sweet Jane” 3:02 written by Lou Reed, Oakfield Avenue Music Ltd (BMI)
6) “Pale Blue Eyes” 5:32
written by Lou Reed, Oakfield Avenue Music Ltd (BMI)
7) “White Light White Heat” 3:36
written by Lou Reed, Oakfield Avenue Music Ltd (BMI)
8) “Some Kinda Love” 4:39
written by Lou Reed, Oakfield Avenue Music Ltd (BMI)
9) “Sister Ray” 8:19
written by John Davies Cale, Sterling Morrison, Lou Reed, Maureen Ann Tucker, John Cale Music Inc (BMI), Oakfield Avenue Music Ltd (BMI)
advance SoundCloud link - https://on.soundcloud.com/SKkrYrzyJTS8RHUx8
Photos to chose from - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/vg151yosje4dpohc5rjq0/h? rlkey=2l6zyefbka841srk1fyshzky5&dl=0
Videos (not released yet) - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL20DBNmRNkQUngPUq0wYsfRtO-ecIkGBe&si=6- mh_ek7PstFKdE7
please ask for permission to premiere/use
FIND GALVEZTON ONLINE:
www.GALVEZTON.com www.Facebook.com/galveztontheband https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC22SFNNch-gE4ASQ2YiYI7Q https://www.instagram.com/glvztn
UPCOMING SHOWS/ACTIVITY:
01.26. “Some Kinda Love” single release
01.27 KPFT - 90.1 FM on-air interview & performance - 1pm
www.kpft.org
02.01 Houston, TX @ The Continental Club w/very special guest Darwin Finches HOUSTON RECORD RELEASE SHOW
02.02 Galveston, TX @ The Hotel Lucine
02.23 or 02.24 (t)Houston, TX @ Cactus Records/instore performance
03.01 (t)Austin, TX @ Waterloo Records/instore performance
03.11 Austin, TX @ C-Boy’s/Swollen Circus
03.12-15 (t)Austin, TX @ SXSW
04.04 New Braunfels, TX @ Splice Records River Retreat Festival 04.05 Galveston, TX @ Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe - 8:30pm
05.04 Galveston, TX @ La Izquierda Surf & Music Festival 05.05 Galveston, TX @ La Izquierda Surf & Music Festival