Roar Shack Live: Lazyhorse
Raven Chacon with Mali Obomsawin, Andy Meyerson, and Travis Andrews
Lazyhorse is a rotating collective ensemble, prompted by contributed fragments, shards and shared effects from various members. The music of Lazyhorse is an embracing of distortion, classical extended techniques, and song collage.
Noe Music Kids - Danny Clay, Mark Applebaum, and The Living Earth Show
Get ready to explore the wild side of sound with composers and instrument-inventors Danny Clay, Mark Applebaum, and the boundary-busting duo The Living Earth Show! In this interactive concert, everyday objects become musical instruments, experiments turn into adventures, and kids help shape the music itself. Together we’ll discover how curiosity, play, and imagination can transform noise into art and sound into community. If you were there last season, you know how much fun this really was! Your kid might even start fancying themselves a composer.
We’ll offer this 45-minute performance twice: first from 10:30–11:15 am for the general public, and again from 12:00–12:45 pm as an Azure concert designed for autistic and neurodivergent kids and their families.
Big Ears Festival: Trust Me
Trust Me – a new band featuring queer storyteller Lynn Breedlove, guitarist Travis Andrews, and percussionist Andy Meyerson – performs a live set from their debut album, Why I Like Dead Guys, at the iconic Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN.
A satellite project of The Living Earth Show, Trust Me centers this first album on the unfathomable tragedy Breedlove experienced in 2020: the brutal murders of his father and stepmother by his stepbrother in their Grass Valley home. In August 2024, the trio recorded the project and built a live show that tells the story of grief, love, and growth over seven days in the house where the murder took place.
This live performance coincides with the release of Why I Like Dead Guys on all digital platforms on March 27.
Big Ears Festival: Lazyhorse
Prolific composer-visual artist Raven Chacon (Navajo Nation) turns away from the gravitas of the art world and returns to one of music’s most immediate, elemental forms: the band. Though well-versed in the terrain—having played in metal and thrash groups like Tenderizor, Kilt, and White People Killed Them—Chacon now channels the raw energy and aggression of these genres into an exploratory, almost meditative excavation of American country western music. Teamed up with bassist/composer/singer Mali Obomsawin (Abenaki First Nation), folk singer/composer/improviser Miriam Elhajli, lap-steel player Steve Hammond, and The Living Earth Show, the band Lazyhorse brings experimental noise into the realm of spaghetti western.
At its core, Lazyhorse is in conversation with the western movies and music—injecting its own mythologies and moral ambiguities into the clean-cut heroics expected in American frontier stories. In Lazyhorse’s hands, its disillusioned antiheroes become sonic centerpieces leading us through landscapes where distortion, silence, and satire collide. Spaghetti westerns may conjure images of isolated frontier towns overrun by warring factions of gangs and outlaws, caricatures of Manichean forces of good and evil. The term may also call to mind wanton violence: dueling firearms, fistfights, and flying arrows. Underlying the spectacle lies the unsubtle fact of Lazyhorse exerts what feels like violent intensity within its starkness— music simmering just on the edge of the known world.
“The First Light Sessions” #2
Musicians Travis Andrews (guitar), David Coulter (musical saw/multi-instrumentalist), and Andy Meyerson (percussion) perform live in the gallery, improvising in response to the solid light works on view. As visitors move through the space, touching and interacting with the cones of projected light, they immerse themselves in these cinematic sculptures and the live music, journeying through and creating their own perspectives of sight and sound. The program is modeled on “Four Simultaneous Soloists,” a music series organized by David Grubbs for a previous McCall exhibition.
Sliding Scale Tickets Free -$60
Roar Shack Live! Spring Season
Led by Juba Kalamka and featuring Andy Meyerson, Travis Andrews, and Van Jackson Weaver, Dr. Bittinger is a rock, rap and rhythmic blues-fused confrontational Black queer ancestral reckoning with reappropriated pimp-slapping bass to your face.
6:45 PM - 7:30 PM Doors open. Grab a drink!
7:30 PM - 8:30 PM Performance
8:30 PM - 9:00 PM Post-show Hang
PIVOT Festival: Parallel Play
Now in its eleventh year, San Francisco Performances’ annual PIVOT Festival is eagerly anticipated for its fresh, delightful sampling of captivating and compelling music of our time.
Guest curated this season by Andy Meyerson of San Francisco’s own The Living Earth Show, these three programs offer a thrilling and intimate survey of the networks, interconnections, and impacts of new music.
For this performance, choreographer/dancer Myles Thatcher and percussionist Andy Meyerson offer a contemporary take on the classical ballet pas de deux. Their program will include John Cage’s Child of Tree, with choreography by Merce Cunningham, a work that hasn’t been performed publicly since Cage’s death; Nicole Lizée’s The Filthy 15, with choreography by Rex Wheeler (aka Lady Camden), inspired by songs were at the center of a censorship battle in the 1980s; and a world premiere by Myles Thatcher, with music by Bach.
Myles Thatcher is a member of San Francisco Ballet and, among other works, he choreographed the company’s acclaimed Colorforms, an innovative dance and film collaboration with SFMOMA.
PIVOT Festival: Satellite
Now in its eleventh year, San Francisco Performances’ annual PIVOT Festival is eagerly anticipated for its fresh, delightful sampling of captivating and compelling music of our time.
Guest curated this season by Andy Meyerson of San Francisco’s own The Living Earth Show, these three programs offer a thrilling and intimate survey of the networks, interconnections, and impacts of new music.
In this performance, diverse and compelling “bands” of Bay Area composer/performers share the stage for a thrilling evening of music and movement, including Bucket List (Mark Applebaum, Travis Andrews, Andy Meyerson) and KoollooK (Babatunji, Travis Andrews, Andy Meyerson).
PIVOT Festival: Legacies
Now in its eleventh year, San Francisco Performances’ annual PIVOT Festival is eagerly anticipated for its fresh, delightful sampling of captivating and compelling music of our time.
Guest curated this season by Andy Meyerson of San Francisco’s own The Living Earth Show, these three programs offer a thrilling and intimate survey of the networks, interconnections, and impacts of new music.
In this evening of multidimensional works by two generations of living composers, vocalist Tanner Porter joins The Living Earth Show guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson in performances of works by Sleeping Giant composers group members and their protegés. Featured will be music by Timo Andres, Christopher Cerrone, Jacob Cooper, Ted Hearne, Robert Honstein, and Andrew Norman.
Bucket List: Night 2
A band in which ludic whimsy and rigorous discipline coexist in fragile harmony.
Achievement is a continuous, 50-minute piece made up of 13 crossfaded musical modules, each designed by Bucket List’s alter ego—"The Achievement Institute." Performed in the round, some traditional seating will be available, but listeners are also encouraged to take in the soothing tones on their own yoga mat and pillow.
Bucket List
A band whose ludic whimsy and rigorous discipline coexist in fragile harmony.
An artistic whiplash of changing styles, moods, and instruments. The concert showcases Bucket List’s dedication to the deadly serious but playfully ludic execution of carefully planned explosions of absurdity, whimsy, gravity, and levity: funk and rock grooves; subtle jazz improvisations; minimalist phasing accompanied by choreography; mercurial, gritty new complexity chamber music; performance art with office supplies and doodads; time-lapse video of a trip to the grocery store; incompetent but vociferously executed vocalizations made whilst trapped in a purple, three-person pope costume; and the reckless administration of mustard to a series of hotdogs.
Smells Like Queen Spirit
PeachOut Productions’ ROCK OUT! Volume 2: Smells Like Queen Spirit, will occur at The Roar Shack on November 3.
Featuring live performances by Vinsantos, Fauxnique, Carnie Asada, Mama Celeste, Kat Robichaud, Cheetah Biscotti, Kylie Minono, Grace Towers, H.P. Mendoza, and Peaches Christ herself with a live band comprised of Andy Meyerson, Travis Andrews, and Edwin Outwater, Smells Like Queen Spirit presents an evening of grunge exploded and reimagined by some of the most iconic drag performers in the Bay.
This isn’t karaoke. This is revolution. Live, loud, and unapologetically queer.
Koollooꓘ: Night 2
Koollooꓘ is a multidisciplinary collective exploring the boundaries of sound, movement, theater, and performance. Koollooꓘ has built a site-specific work for The Roar Shack, using physical space as a character for choreography and movement, new music and sounds, and the shared exploration of the boundaries of what live performance can do.
Because the performance occupies the entire space, seating and tickets are extremely limited. Reserve a spot now!
Koollooꓘ: Night 1
Koollooꓘ is a multidisciplinary collective exploring the boundaries of sound, movement, theater, and performance. Koollooꓘ has built a site-specific work for The Roar Shack, using physical space as a character for choreography and movement, new music and sounds, and the shared exploration of the boundaries of what live performance can do.
Because the performance occupies the entire space, seating and tickets are extremely limited. Reserve a spot now!
Lyra at Washington University St. Louis
The Living Earth Show and Post: ballet present Lyra, a new collaborative production featuring the music of composer Samuel Adams, the movement of choreographer Vanessa Thiessen, and the cinematography of Benjamin Tarquin.
Deemed one of the “22 for ’22 performers to watch” (Washington Post), The Living Earth Show presents multimedia productions featuring music, movement, and visual art. WashU will experience the group’s collaboration with composer Samuel Adams ’10MM and Bay Area dance collective Post:ballet with dance artist Babatunji Johnson in Lyra, a program of live music, film, and dance.
Roar Shack Live! presents Black Thursday
Roar Shack Season Two
Come check out Honey Mahogany’s Black Thursday, our first show at The Roar Shack in our new season! Honey is brilliant, and she has curated a spectacular lineup of singers, drag performers, burlesque artists, and musicians to make one of the most unique and powerful drag shows in San Francisco. Tickets are VERY limited!
EMPAC: Lazyhorse
For TOPOS, Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and visual artist Raven Chacon sheds the gravitas of the art world and returns to one of music’s most raw and immediate forms: the band. Drawing on his roots in noise, thrash, and metal (Tenderizor, KILT, White People Killed Them), Chacon channels that energy into an exploratory, almost meditative excavation of American musical traditions: country, folk, and their haunted echoes.
Lazyhorse marks the latest chapter in Chacon’s nearly decade-long collaboration with The Living Earth Show (percussionist Andy Meyerson and guitarist Travis Andrews). Known for transforming the chamber ensemble model into a platform for genre-defying invention, The Living Earth Show builds immersive sonic worlds with their collaborators. After their lauded piece Tremble Staves, Chacon and the duo return with a new vision, this time centering songcraft, improvisation, and the unruly edges of music.
At its core, Lazyhorse is haunted by the spaghetti western—a film genre that injected moral ambiguity into the clean-cut heroics of the American frontier myth. In Chacon’s hands, these disillusioned antiheroes become sonic archetypes, spectral guides complicit in westward violence, leading us through a landscape where distortion, silence, and satire collide.
Commissioned by EMPAC, Lazyhorse assembles a powerhouse lineup: Mali Obomsawin (bass), Miriam Elhajli (vocals, guitar), Steve Hammond (lap steel), Chacon (keys/guitars), and The Living Earth Show. Together, they form a genre-exploding band that dissects and reconstructs the mythology of Americana, stitching together songs that are as biting as they are hauntingly beautiful.
This is no nostalgia trip: Chacon’s topos is resistance. Lazyhorse confronts the violence of empire through sound, turning the stage into a site of reckoning, reclamation, and radical reimagination.
Roar Shack Live: The Qube Chix (Night 2)
A new reunion production created by The Qube Chix (Pamela Z, Leigh Evans, and Julie Queen) with The Living Earth Show.
The final show in the Roar Shack Live's inaugural season will be a new reunion production created by new wave/experimental performance legends The Qube Chix. Featuring Bay Area luminaries Pamela Z, Julie Queen, and (now Pacific Northwesterner) Leigh Evans, The Qube Chix were one of the foremost experimental performance art groups in the early 1990's. Each member has gone on to illustrious individual careers, but this performance will be the first official The Qube Chix performance in several decades.
Blending new wave, experimental music, performance art, butoh dance, electronic music, and theater, The Qube Chix (joined by The Living Earth Show) will create a fittingly immersive, powerful, and boundary-defying end to The Roar Shack's season.
Roar Shack Live: The Qube Chix (Night 1)
A new reunion production created by The Qube Chix (Pamela Z, Leigh Evans, and Julie Queen) with The Living Earth Show.
The final show in the Roar Shack Live's inaugural season will be a new reunion production created by new wave/experimental performance legends The Qube Chix. Featuring Bay Area luminaries Pamela Z, Julie Queen, and (now Pacific Northwesterner) Leigh Evans, The Qube Chix were one of the foremost experimental performance art groups in the early 1990's. Each member has gone on to illustrious individual careers, but this performance will be the first official The Qube Chix performance in several decades.
Blending new wave, experimental music, performance art, butoh dance, electronic music, and theater, The Qube Chix (joined by The Living Earth Show) will create a fittingly immersive, powerful, and boundary-defying end to The Roar Shack's season.
Roar Shack Live: Post:post:ballet
Join The Living Earth Show and a slew of amazing guests in a variety show tribute to the legacy of our favorite dance company.
Roar Shack Live!'s 9th show will be a variety show tribute to Post:ballet, one of our most influential collaborators.
It's hard to overstate the impact of Post:ballet on The Living Earth Show's existence, practice, and life in San Francisco. One of our longest collaborators, Post:ballet has changed the game in terms of how multidisciplinary experimental art is presented and appreciated. We've performed dozens of shows with them, built a bunch of evening length productions (like Lyra), and have grown as sibling organizations over the past ten years.
This past January, Post:ballet presented its final production as a company in San Francisco. We wanted to pay tribute to the groundbreaking music, movement, and performance that was created as a result of our decade-long collaborative relationship in the form of a wonderfully chaotic variety show.
We've invited some of our pals who we knew from working with Post (who have gone on to become renowned San Francisco creators in their own rights), and we're honored to present an evening of sound, movement, and love inspired by one of the most influential and inspiring arts organizations we've had the good fortune of working with.
With performances by Moscylene ParkeHarrison, Riley Nicholson, Doug Machiz, Producer Dennis (Dennis Aman), Mia J. Cheong, Ben Tarquin, and The Living Earth Show (and more guests to come), Post:Post:ballet will be a one-of-a-kind, one-night-only event.
The event will sell out and capacity is EXTREMELY limited because we'll be putting the dance floor on the bar again, so make sure you snag a spot before they're gone!
Roar Shack Live: Honey Mahogany presents “Black Thursday”
Black Thursday is night of music created by Honey Mahogany & her chosen family of collaborators to celebrate and manifest collective power.
For the 8th show of our Roar Shack Live! season, Honey Mahogany will present Black Thursday: a night of music and performance to celebrate and manifest collective power.
Honey Mahogany is a multi-hyphenate San Francisco legend who has worked in drag, music, and political organizing as a force for queer and trans voices in the Bay Area and beyond.
Honey was the first San Franciscan on RuPaul’s Drag Race, and was one of the first contestants to release commercially available music: her debut single It’s Honey was released in 2012, and she has recorded with myriad collaborators ever since. She has worked with everyone from youth hip-hop group the Alphabet Rockers to punk legends The Homobiles to her and The Living Earth Show’s own queer music collective COMMANDO.
As the co-founder of The Stud Collective, she created Black Fridays, SF’s first all-Black queer variety show, and hosted Mahogany Mondays for five years in the Castro, featuring women, trans people, and people of color performing everything from live music to burlesque.
Featuring legendary guest performers by SF drag and music legends Dulce De Leche, Militia Towers, and Lambert Moss and a backing band comprised of The Living Earth Show (guitarist Travis Andrews and drummer Andy Meyerson) and bassist Van Jackson-Weaver, Black Thursday will be a one night only celebration of strength and community.
SFPL Night of Ideas: Music for Hard Times
The Living Earth Show performs Danny Clay’s “Music for Hard Times” at the San Francisco Public Library’s Night of Ideas festival.
Roar Shack Live: Bucket List
A very strange and virtuosic trans-idiomatic band led by Mark Applebaum.
The 7th show of our Roar Shack Live! season: the world premiere of Bucket List.
Bucket List is a band led by Mark Applebaum to make new, often strange, and trans-idiomatic work. This has led to a repertoire of pieces that lean on the traditions of new complexity, experimental electronic music, ensemble game pieces, minimalism, funk, and jazz, with theatric and video elements.
Roar Shack Live: M. Lamar
Machines & Other Intergalactic Technologies of the Spirit is a haunting and powerful new work by M. Lamar and The Living Earth Show.
On the 6th show of our Roar Shack Live! season, The Living Earth Show is honored to present M. Lamar's "Machines & Other Intergalactic Technologies Of The Spirit."
Machines & Other Intergalactic Technologies Of The Spirit is a performance by composer, keyboardist, and vocalist M. Lamar, the experimental music duo The Living Earth Show (guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson), and video artist Sabin Calvert. Drawing from the Black Futurist philosophy of revolutionary musician and thinker Sun Ra, M. Lamar’s work imagines the birth of new technologies that address the various failings of contemporary society. Like Sun Ra, M. Lamar looks to the mystical traditions and astrophysical conceptions of the past as a way to transcend our current societal landscape and provide a path towards liberation. For M. Lamar, this transcendence comes through music, a process he seeks to awaken within the listener.
M. Lamar is a composer who works across opera, metal, performance, video, sculpture and installation to craft sprawling narratives of radical becomings. Lamar holds a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and attended the Yale School of Art, sculpture program, before dropping out to pursue music. Lamar’s work has been presented internationally, most recently at The Rewire Festival in The Hague, Trauma Bar Berlin, Atrium na Žižkově Prague, The Manhattan School of Music, Wellcome Collection London, The Cloisters at The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Funkhaus Berlin Germany, Kunstgebäude Stuttgart, The Meet Factory in Prague, National Sawdust New York, The Kitchen New York, MoMa PS1’s Greater New York, Merkin Hall, New York, Issue Project Room New York, The Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco; Human resources, Los Angeles;Wesleyan University; Participant Inc., New York; New Museum, New York; Södra Teatern, Stockholm; Warehouse9, Copenhagen; WWDIS Fest, Gothenburg and Stockholm; The International Theater Festival, Donzdorf, Germany; Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York; Performance Space 122, New York; and African American Art & Culture Complex, San Francisco; among others.
Machines & Other Intergalactic Technologies of the Spirit was supported through a residency provided by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Image courtesy of EMPAC.
Roar Shack Live: Koollooꓘ
Koollooꓘ is a new performance project led by Babatunji with TLES synthesizing experimental movement, sound, and performance.
On the 5th show of our Roar Shack Live! season, The Living Earth Show is honored to present the world premiere performance of Koollooꓘ.
Led by legendary movement artist Babatunji, Koollooꓘ is a performance trio comprised of Babatunji and the musicians of The Living Earth Show (Travis Andrews and Andy Meyerson) exploring the boundaries of sound, movement, theater, and performance.
In its premiere incarnation, Koollooꓘ has built a site-specific work for The Roar Shack, using physical space as a character for Babatunji's choreography and movement, The Living Earth Show's new music and sounds, and the trio's shared exploration of the boundaries of what live performance can do.
We're honored to give the keys of The Roar Shack over to Babatunji this month. He's made something amazing that we've never seen before, and we're really excited to share it with you.
Capacity for this show is EXTREMELY LIMITED (since a variety of the spaces that have been used for seating need to be reserved for movement), so make sure to get a ticket ASAP!
Roar Shack Live:Trust Me
Lynnee Breedlove (vocals) Travis Andrews (guitar) Andy Meyerson (percussion)
December 19 6:45 - 9:30pm PDT
34 7th Street, SF, CA
Trust Me is an acoustic punk/folk/storytelling band featuring Lynnee, Travis Andrews (guitar), and Andy Meyerson (percussion), and has become one of the heaviest, most beautiful, most inspirational, and most ambitious projects we’ve ever participated in.
The Living Earth Show and Post:ballet: Lyra
The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is reimagined in this provocative, hauntingly beautiful collaborative production from the experimental San Francisco-based guitar/percussion duo The Living Earth Show and contemporary dance company Post:ballet.
Blending music by Samuel Adams, choreography by Vanessa Thiessen, film directed by Post:ballet Artistic Director Robin Dekkers, and cinematography by Benjamin Tarquin, Lyra explores themes of empathy, technology, and our relationship to the natural world in a stunning new realization of a timeless ancient story.
Tickets from $40
Buttenwieser Hall at The Arnhold Center
New and Recent Work - Raven Chacon
The Living Earth Show and award-winning composer and visual artist Raven Chacon give a talk on their recent work, which explores the sonic, visual, and thematic elements of their experimental practice.
Roar Shack Live! presents Lyra
In their brilliant collaboration, Lyra, The Living Earth Show and Post:ballet embody the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, viscerally studying questions of empathy, technology, and our relationship to the natural world. Lyra explores our shared human experiences of love, loss, and learning to let go.
Experience the screening of Lyra accompanied by a live performance of Samuel Carl Adams’ original score.
SF First Thursday
Downtown First Thursdays (DFT) is a FREE, all-ages monthly street party hosted in Downtown San Francisco taking place on every first Thursday of the month from 5pm to 10pm. Get ready for disco in the streets, DJs, live music, drag, fashion, street performances, and many other surprises still to be announced!
Nearby transportation: Montgomery Station (MUNI & BART)
Roar Shack Performance #2
Market Street Arts and The Living Earth Show have built an innovative partnership to turn a vacant bar into an experimental music hub. The 2024-25 series, Roar Shack Live!, will breathe new life into 34-7th Street, the former home of renowned cocktail lounge Mr. Smith's, turning it into a dynamic venue for experimental chamber music and multidisciplinary performances.
The second concert in the series takes place on Friday, October 18, 2024. The production, Double Wall, has been created by composer/improvisor/guitarist Zachary James Watkins and The Living Earth Show (percussionist Andy Meyerson and guitarist Travis Andrews).
Double Wall uses sound and projection to negotiate sensitive relationships among critical ingredients for psychedelic phenomena: resonant bodies exciting harmonic energy creating diverse waves, beating and phase patterns diffused spatially with full dynamic range, and a deep attention to the body and how it engages with the environment. The musicians of Double Wall activate the resonant frequencies of the room itself to articulate High Vibration Resonance.
To create accessible creative hubs in Mid-Market, all performances will be pay-what-you-can, ranging from $1–$100. Tickets here!
SF First Thursday
Downtown First Thursdays (DFT) is a FREE, all-ages monthly street party hosted in Downtown San Francisco taking place on every first Thursday of the month from 5pm to 10pm. Get ready for disco in the streets, DJs, live music, drag, fashion, street performances, and many other surprises still to be announced!
2nd Street and Market Street, Downtown San Francisco
Roar Shack Live!: Music for Hard Times
Roar Shack Live!--Show 1: Music for Hard Times, performed by The Living Earth Show created with composer Danny Clay and visual artist Jon Fischer.
34 7th Street San Francisco, CA 94103
Tremble Staves
Tremble Staves
Raven Chacon // Sarah Zahid // The Living Earth Show
14–15 September 2024 Den Norske Opera & Ballett (Opera beach)
Saturday, 14/09
17:00–18:00
Sunday, 15/09
13:00–14:00