Right after the premiere of our workshop run in 2018, somebody posted a video of Black Dyke Rock band Skip the Needle playing the the title track off their 2nd album, We Ain’t Never Going Back, live at El Rio in San Francisco.
Anand NEEDED THESE PEOPLE IN HIS LIFE. Their next live show happened to be coming up soon, so he and Adrian went up to the Ivy Room in Albany, CA and got their socks blown off. After the show, they fanboied at the merch table and told the band about the project and asked if they’d be interested in covering “Patterns” from Vol. 1.
That initial conversation turned into another conversation, and another, and our two groups slowly built a real relationship with each other. Schedules aligned in 2021, and Anand met up with band members Vicki Randle, Kofy Brown, Katie Cash, and Shelley Doty to bring to life additional moments from Octavia Butler’s life that hadn’t made it into Volume 1.
We recorded the Volume 2 EP at Bird and Egg Studios in Richmond, CA, in December 2021 with Nino Moschella as engineer. The official release happened in 2023, and Skip has incorporated the 6 songs into their regular and touring gig sets.
The EP is available on streaming, CD, and Vinyl at Skip the Needle’s bandcamp.
Here’s a taste:
Album artwork for Vol. 2 by Matt Applin III.