Tune in on Friday, August 16th at 11:30am when Penny Royal hosts Oakland-based musician and writer, Brontez Purnell, for a live in-studio interview in advance of his upcoming performance at BAMPFA later that same evening at 7:30pm.
Purnell has centred his queerness and Blackness in projects Gravy Train!!! and Younger Lovers as well as in his award-winning books 100 Boyfriends and Since I Laid My Burden Down. He is also a dancer, film maker and choreographer.
Hot on the heels of recent 7” singles for Sub Pop, PPM and his first solo electronic record No Jack Swing (Dark Entries / Papi Juice), Brontez returns in DIY-punk band formation for his latest album entitled Confirmed Bachelor, out now on Upset The Rhythm. These twelve songs presented are of the no-time-wasted variety. Fuzzed-out pop songs, hotly delivered from the heart, often sassy, sometimes sappy, always snappy!
Brontez’s band includes the multifaceted talents of Vice Cooler (who also produced and mixed the album), Sean Teves (of Younger Lovers) on drums, Kevin Preston (Prima Donna, Green Day) on guitar, Aaron Minton (Prima Donna) on piano and saxophone, and Laena Myers-Ionita on violin. The album was recorded in Los Angeles at The VCR.
For his upcoming BAMPFA show on August 16th, Brontez Purnell and his six-piece band perform songs by his uncle J. J. Malone, a blues musician who migrated to Oakland from Alabama in the 1960s. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration.
Photo: Benoît Rousseau
