Sam Bisbee at the Living Room-CMJ 2011 Festival 10-18-2011

We enjoyed some cool music at the Living Room Tuesday evening during the CMJ 2011 Music Festival in New York City. The Living Room, located at 154 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, is a popular bar/lounge featuring live music nightly and on some Sunday afternoons. There is also a lounge on the second floor called Googie's also featuring live performances by up and coming local bands. The Living Room's decor features some interesting paintings on the walls from various artists. There was a one drink minimum and a suggested $10.00 contribution per show for the band, so we put money into a red tip bucket being passed around during each show. The band Galia Arad, which hails from Indiana, performed at 7 PM. I enjoyed their pop rock tunes, including a funny, energetic take on Britney Spears' "Me Against the Music" with male vocal duo Lollipops(seriously).

At 7:45 PM Sam Bisbee took the stage for a 35 minute set featuring songs from his album "You+Me=Us" and rocked the place. He opened the show with "Five More Minutes" and followed up with "Give It All You Got," "Us," "Crashing," "It's Too Late," "Superheroes," "Break My Fall," and "Hurricane," the song Sam announced as being from the movie "Don't Go In The Woods," which will be released in January 2012 and available on demand. Sam announced that he made the film with Vincent D'Onofrio and found it surreal to see the film now, since "we made it a while ago." He also joked about the fact that in the film "people are being killed to my songs." Sam, who hails from Boston, Mass., performed with his five-piece band, including bass, drums, piano, cello and violin, and Sam on guitar. After his set ended, I said hello to Sam and asked him about this weekend's DGITW screenings at the Rialto Theater in Westfield, NJ as part of the Tribeca Films On The Road tour, featuring Q&A's with Vincent and producer Erika Hampson and Sam. Sam wasn't sure he would be present for both screenings, but would definitely be at the Saturday screening.