Toys and Tiny Instruments + Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak @ The Way Station

8pm- Toys and Tiny Instruments
Genre: Psych-rock, experimental folk, indie
For fans of: They Might Be Giants, Polyphonic Spree, "Rocky Horror," Tom Waits

The Toys and Tiny Instruments” present Freudian Trip: a three-part musical saga told through three separate shows on three different nights. Witness a harrowing tale of deceit, perversion, and the drama that unfolds when you rip apart the inner workings of the human mind. This event is brought to you by “Oedipal Arrangements."

Toys and Tiny Instruments is a Brooklyn-based psych-pop band formed in late 2009 as a side project of the musical duo My Friend Other.  Toys specialize in a rhythmically complex, quirky and whimsical sound and have been relentlessly active on the NYC music scene, performing in venues ranging from a converted nuns' convent to sweaty bars to South Street Seaport. They released their first full-length album, "Thunder Clap Machine," in early 2013.

“Toys and Tiny Instruments are insane musician magicians. They brought the energy and fun in a major way”. - Chris Gethard, TheChrisGethardShow.com

“This Brooklyn-based band gives off a total Barenaked Ladies meets Magnetic Fields meets Broadway musical vibe. In other words, as quirky, symbolic, intelligent and theatrical as one can get.” - Lindsey Darden, BeatCrave.com

http://www.toysandtinyinstruments.com
http://toysandtinyinstruments.bandcamp.com

10pm- Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak
"You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life.”

So said Sherwood Anderson in his great book, Winesburg, Ohio. Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak knows all about accidents. Of birth. Of place and strange times. Of music heard through screen windows in summer, of lonely faces in discos while blizzards raged outside in the Northern night.

What’s a young criminal to do? Read every book he can get his hands on, obsess over record club 45s, play the theme song to MASH over and over on a rented trumpet, lose a thousand fistfights till he finally wins one. Ride a stolen bike, a bus, a train, get out.

Years later, redemption at last. Robert Whaley is just about where he should be. Compared to everyone from David Byrne to Leonard Cohen, he’s been welcoming audiences into a private world of enchantment and debauchery, and oh the influences are clear:  Anderson (words and emotions), Fossee (dance and controlled hysteria), poetry (Artaud and O’Hara).

Whaley had a lot of practice riding the line between rock n’ roll, performance art, and stand up comedy as the front man for The Niagaras, a legendary force of Manhattan’s live music scene of 80s and 90s, when a wild front man could dance on bar tops and swing from the rafters without getting banned, except for when he was:

“Lunacy? Spectacle? And music too??”- Rene Chun, New York Times

No wonder the attraction included a “celebrity” following – everyone from Ethan Hawke to Kevin Spacey to Gwyneth Paltrow to the good people in Anthrax.

As a songwriter, Whaley has covered a lot of ground and has shown range through a number of outlets.  He cowrote and recorded the original score for the feature film, Joe the King, starring Val Kilmer, and has also written for the stage –his rock musical Wrong Way Up ran off-Broadway at NYC’s Zipper Theater. He is currently working with playwright Matthew Freeman on a musical adaptation of the great 1908 novel, Buried Alive – now titled Selling Sacred Objects.

Meat Market Lullaby, the second album from Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak, reflects an obsession with pre-1974 soul, filled with nuance and tender bitter sweetness.  Jazz pianist Mara Rosenbloom sets the tone with her loose/attacking, touch on grand piano and Rhodes. Pete O’Connell lends a sophisticated sense of drive and counterpoint as both bassist and co-arranger. Whaley’s long-time collaborator, lead guitarist and singer, Tony Grimaldi, shines with masterful harmonies and chunky guitar lines.  Chris Schultz, percussionist with Blue Man Group, shimmers, cascades and of course, rocks.

Recorded live in the studio with a minimum of overdubs, a maximum of misfit charm, and this: “Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.” (Sherwood Anderson, again.)

www.comictalesoftragicheartbreak.com