Shwayze are an indie hip-hop odd couple that hail from Malibu, Calif. and will bring their hip-hop/rock mash-up to KRUXfest on Friday.
Young rapper Aaron Smith aka Shwayze met producer/Whitestarr frontman Cisco Adler at a Whitestarr show when Shwayze got on the mic and freestyled, catching Adler's eye and ear. The two immediately began making tracks together in Adler's studio and eventually recorded and released Shwayze on Geffen Records in 2008, which landed them on the Billboard Top 100.
Their songs combine Adler's rock swagger with Shwayze's cool flow for a decidedly unique sound.
"It's a new West Coast sound, it's California chill, West Coast stoner music," Shwayze said in his bio. "It's about Malibu being like an endless summer. It's about wanting summer to come back, waiting for the sun and kicking it on the beach."
Chasing women is also a recurring theme on Shwayze.
"I was single, Cisco was single, and we partied in the pool, partied at the beach, chillin', hangin' out with chicks," Shwayze said. "That's what we were writing about."
Shwayze are everywhere, even starring in their own reality show on MTV called Buzzin' that deals with their ascent to indie hip-hop glory.
Shwayze are playing a string of dates that take them from New York to Nevada. And according to Adler, they have a new album in the can that is set to be released in May of this year. The album is also rumored to feature Will.I.Am and Warren G, among others.
Shwayze will perform Friday at the NMSU Pan Am Center. The show is free and doors open at 6:30 p.m. Opening acts are The Royalty and The Lusitania.
Sleepercar is the alt-country side-project-turned-day-job of El Paso native Jim Ward, and will perform this Saturday at KRUXfest.
Ward was a founding member of influential post-hardcore acts At The Drive-In and Sparta and Sleepercar was reportedly started right around the time that At The Drive-In broke up. Ward hoped to make it his main focus, but upon the inception of Sparta, Sleepercar was pushed to the back burner.
"I had been listening to the Old 97's and slowly discovering that some sort of country and rock and roll combination was taking me over," Ward said in the Sleepercar bio. "I made some half-joking plans to start a country band, but then got distracted by life. At The Drive-In ended, Sparta began."
Ward continued working on Sleepercar material on breaks from recording and touring with Sparta, scraping together a few demos and even putting together the first incarnation of Sleepercar to play a Fourth of July show in El Paso.
When Sparta went on indefinite hiatus in June 2008, Ward was free to pour all of his creative energies into Sleepercar. By this time Ward had assembled enough family, friends and songs to record a Sleepercar album called West Texas, which was released in April 2008.
The band quickly went on tour, opening for City and Colour in the summer and Coldplay in the fall. In 2009 the band played music super-festival South By Southwest in Austin, Texas and provided support for Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band on a few dates.
Ward says he has no plans of reviving Sparta anytime soon, and as for the rest of 2009, Sleepercar is scheduled to play KRUXfest and a handful of dates in El Paso before returning to the studio to record the follow up to West Texas.
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